The Manic Mechanic

I found out today that my primary credit card number has been used for fraudulent purposes. Thankfully the card issuer stopped it from going any further, but it tossed a spanner into the works at a bad time. I luckily have a backup card from another financial institution, so not all is lost. I don't use the secondary card often, and I'm worried my sudden usage of it doesn't trigger suspicious activity warnings on it until I get the replacement primary card. In the meantime, more stress piled on at critical times.

Today I took Kodi the the vet for his annual checkups as well as to have a chipped tooth looked at. The little guy had to have the tooth removed, and other tests found he has bladder stones which will require surgery to remove. I was upset, as was Jeff when I informed him. Couple that with his crying as I left him with the vet and I was pretty upset. We have to schedule the surgery date in the near future, as there is a risk of the stones shifting and blocking his urethra, causing even more dire situations. I guess this trip was a blessing in disguise, as the vet originally wanted to give him x-rays for look for other things. I want our "children" to live a long, healthy life with us.

Speaking of doctors, after dropping Kodi off, I headed up to my orthopedist to get some relief for my increasing pain and immobility. He will go through the same process as I've been using for many years now, which begins with shot into my spine. I did get some good news, for this time I won't have to take another trip through the MRI, an ordeal made far worse because of the pain becoming excruciating when I try to lay down. This will save me some money and time too. That was an unexpected surprise.

The little bit of good news wasn't enough to offset the stress, and when I later got the call from the vet about Kodi's condition, I was becoming a complete wigged-out mess. While sitting at the studio workstation I disturbed something on the already cluttered desk that caused a chain reaction of stuff falling, including a glass of water, which landed squarely in my lap. That was the last straw, and I proceeded to clear everything from the desk, clutter, hard drives, peripherals, mixers, paperwork and other debris by hurling it onto the floor. The stress, pain, frustrations and general hate for the world as a whole caused me to pop my cork. I stumbled into the bedroom, climbed into bed, tried to find a position with minimum pain, and checked out for the rest of the day until Jeff came home with Kodi. Snickles, despite being chased out of the room by the initial cursing and flying objects, joined me immediately in bed with a concerned look on his face, then burrowed under the sheets and cuddled closely against my chest. I call this his teddy bear mode, and he seems to know to activate it when I am not myself (pretty often, of late). We both conked out, me with chemical additives to accelerate the process, my arm on top of him.

I am really hoping for some relief from the doc with nothing more than this procedure. I had a similar flare-up in June, which was putting a huge damper on our wedding preparations, and after a couple weeks, I was doing much better. The doctor even remembered about us getting married, asking me about it while at the office today. That put a smile on my face as I gave him the Reader's Digest version. He didn't have any prompting from me, he remembered on his own. I've noticed a lot of folks having definite positive reactions about our wedding, both before and after. So, not everything was tantrum-worthy today, but sometimes blowing off steam is a net positive.

Mother Nature's "heavy flow days" continue to be a thorn in our side. While we remain high and somewhat dry, the garden languishes in a sea of weeds and tomatoes rotting on the vines. We will mount an attack to dig around and harvest the surviving veggies, then once it (eventually) dries up, till the spent stuff under and possibly throw a little bit of fall crops in.

Nature in its infinite wisdom in the form of a black snake has once again run afoul of the Basement of Serpent Doom. For the third time now, I notice a nasty smell hinting about. True to form, yet another snake managed to wriggle its way under the front porch and into the floor joists under the entryway. That area of the basement is unfinished (thankfully) and the joists have fiberglass insulation between them. This insulation is held in place with a plastic mesh netting. Said hapless snake tired to slide through one of the holes in the mesh and became ensnared. You can figure out the rest. I now once again have the displeasure of cutting out sections of fiberglass, insulation and rotten snake. I've found the spot in which the snake gets in under the concrete (I missed the chance of hauling it back out by the tail), so I will seal that up. What I can't locate, because of how the front porch is built, is the entry point into the basement. I now have an inspection camera, which is a tiny camera on the end of a flexible, well, snake that can get into dark tiny areas and return video of the trip. I will use this to suss out the breach of security and seal the area.

I think this also explains Kodi's outbursts of barking a while back. Out of the blue, Kodi would run into the living room barking like a fool. Perhaps the snake was bumping around under the floor and neither Jeff nor I heard, but Kodi might have. No outbursts for a while since.

This is not the only time that snakes have met their demise around here at the hand of the same plastic netting. The aforementioned mesh is the same stuff sold in garden shops that Mom and I used to keep birds and critters out of the berries we had been growing. I've had to cut away the netting to free snakes that became messily ensnared and tangled in the stuff. The snake's scaly skin glides wonderfully in a forward direction, but like a barbed fish hook, gets stuck trying to back out. The poor creatures were lucky when one of us were there checking out things in the garden and could free them. Not so when we had been away for a couple days. I found that the thrashing snakes became quite docile when they discovered they were being freed. The dead ones were deposited in the trash along with the mesh. Jeff and I are currently using the same stuff in the garden to keep wabbits out of the raised bed boxes. Luckily there have been no serpent encounters.

Jeff had been eagerly awaiting the day that Penn State would be playing Alabama (along with over a hundred thousand other fans) and managed to snag tix for the game. Mother Nature also is making this tough on us at the last minute, as flooding along the Susquehanna River and other waterways have caused the closing of numerous roads and bridges along our usual route. So, rather than heading up to his parent's place the night before, we will take a more westerly route tomorrow and try hopefully to avoid the closures and such. Maybe the waters will have receded a bit by then as well. We missed too many shows/games/concerts/events in the past few years due to many reasons (mostly medical, it seems), and it has to stop somewhere. I told Jeff I'll get him to this game if it kills me. :) Wish us luck (and maybe a solid route to travel).

I'm tearing up the studio as I revamp the studio PC and install a gorgeous new 30" Dell display. It's more a nest than a studio, with so much accumulated cruft crammed into nooks and crannies everywhere. Time to clean house. The PC I used as a backup can finally be put back in the garage. What was supposed to be temporary ended up being more than four years! The backup PC with its integrated graphics does not like the new monster display. The new one can handle six of them at once. Ah, to have that much desk space (and money!). lol

Jeff just got home and informed me that the closures and such have been lifted, so we are going to try our usual routes up. Good news for a change!

When posting on LJ, more often than not my location says 'studio'. I thought it nice to give people a glimpse of where those posts come from. I've been trying to clean things up a bit, pare down to the bare minimum but still allowing the setup to serve for what I use it for mostly, which is music post-production and mixing (I dont do anything original anymore), transcription, editing and recording. I also do video work here as well, the two small monitors show video input and output from the PC. This is also the control center for my LAN, with the servers downstairs in the messy workshop, I can perform all my backups, manage the media libraries and just plain geek out. This setup is nothing compared to some of the professional musicians on my friends list, but for a hobby, it works well for me. Plus, it's always changing.



I figure I best post a picture of this before it turns back into the disaster it's been for ages. Not shown is all the crap still sitting on the floor and the sofa on the left. That's gonna go soon.

Taking a weekend break from my editorial/article/longwinded post thingie (because I left my last draft on the PC at work on Thursday and havent been there since). Thanks again to those who joined in the topic by making comments and offering their perspectives. I'm happy to know that I am not the only one out there with the same concerns.

Yesterday I ordered 1200 dollars worth of video cards. For one computer. I think I am certifiably nuts. In that same vein, I was pleased to find out that Western Digital has finally increased the size of their Raptor series of SATA hard drives. 75 gigs these days is nothing to write home about. A doubling of size to 150 gigs, plus NCQ support and features to increase performance in multiple drive arrays makes it even tastier. To top it off, the Raptor X version is actually made with a clear window modded into the cover. w00t. Too bad it'd be tough to see in the case I have.

Got a nice suprise in the mail today. The webmaster at North American Motoring sent out a little gift pack to those of us who moderate the forums and generally help out around the house. A Motoring calendar, some stickers and a 10 dollar gift cert for Amazon.com made for a smile-inducing event. My shopping cart at Amazon has been collecting items for a while again, it might be time to push it out the door again.

Some more progress has been made in the 'reclaiming' of my little studio/den space. After this is done, I will turn my attention to the living room, replacing the big television set which has sat there broken and with no desire in me to fix it, and a general de-cluttering of the place. Once spring time rolls around, the heavy stuff begins.

Work has been an adventure, since no less than 4 people have left, leaving it up to me and others remaining to pick up the slack. Typical reassignments of tasks and moving around is/was inevitable, and the availability of overtime both a blessing and a curse. I dont mind, since it's usually during the craptastic weather of winter that I can put in the time. The extra coinage is most welcome too. As the weather breaks, though, my desire to hang around a millisecond more than I absolutely have to drops drastically.

A trip for me to NYC in the beginning of February is in the works. Like I have done since Mom was dealing with cancer, I will take her to the city for operas at the Met, and do what I can to keep myself occupied in the evenings. Should be fun.

Some noise is starting to come around regarding revisiting the lip-sync meme from a year ago or so. I'll be so there if that's the case. The first time was nothing short of some of the best entertainment I had.

Still having flaky comment notification email issues, as are apparently quite a few on my list. From the LJ status page, "Comment notifications, payment receipts, and other outgoing email from LiveJournal may be delayed or missing.". More can be found in the eyeball-shattering yellow status box on the LJ support page. Also it looks like some will need to reset their passwords:

"In order to make sure your data and journals are extra safe, we're tightening up our password security. This means that many of you will be prompted in the coming weeks to change your password. We know this is a pain in the neck, but improving our password guidelines will make the entire site safer. Please see the password FAQ for our full guidelines."

Been trying to clean up the rat's nest I call my studio. It's been collecting boxes and junk and parts for the new PCs being built here. I need a couple nice new desk chairs, as well as some sort of narrow, tall high-density shelving for the increasing numbers of CDs, DVDs and such. I've already reached critical mass as to what a 12x12 foot room can comfortably hold and not look like a warehouse. Since the studio is situated in the den off the living room, I'd like to keep it looking better than it has been. Since I'm indoors a lot more these days (and getting awfully pale) I get to see how badly I trashed the place when I was busy elsewhere or just coming in here to unwind. Speaking of cleanup, this keyboard is just about ready to be declared a Superfund site. I've been using it since '88 and it looks like it. However, no one has come up with a keyboard quite like this old Northgate. It's taken some poundings over the years and is still going.

It's snowing again, and this time we were promised some real accumulation. It should make tomorrow's commute an absolute ass-stinking hell. Few things in life are as frustrating as Maryland traffic in the snow. It's also when I tell work "I'll get there when I get there", since I was nearly killed going in to work in the snow and to this day the time I was off for recovery gets repeatedly counted against me. Never mind that I was ready and willing to come back in about a month but my employer would not let me back with the restrictions I had at the time. Ah, well, I can be a prick about it too. Current forecast: 6 inches by morning. Wonderful.