your plastic pal who's fun to be with — LiveJournal

05:35 pm - Life is....

... a constant party.
... a banquet.
... a string of funerals.
... about to begin.
... the ultimate victory.
... utterly pointless.
... an excuse.
... fungible.
... in need of a better soundtrack.
... almost over.
... a march to the gallows.
... very confusing.
... the final defeat.
... the only thing that matters.
... a turning of the page,
... a boardgame.
... just the beginning.
... a blank canvas.
... the ultimate justification.
... the only real gift you can give.
... a string of banalities.
... priceless.
... all you'll ever have.
... torture.
... the point.

10:14 pm

Anybody still reading this, or shall I turn out the lights as I leave?

02:18 pm

I've only recently come to the realization that a lot of stuff I do is based entirely on the way I've been living the last twenty years or so.
( For example...Collapse )

• I don't have to wait until the RMA clears from returning this hardware before buying a replacement.  I can afford both, even if I get stuck with one.  It's not a catastrophe.
• I don't need a giant, two-inch-thick winter coat.  I have a car now, and even if it breaks down, I can take a cab instead of waiting an hour for the bus in sub-zero weather.
• I can eat ANYTHING I WANT, whenever I want.  I don't have to shop for stuff that will keep three weeks because I can't get to the grocery any more frequent than that.
• Specifically, that ingrained gut-clenching panic reaction I have to supermarkets is pretty much pointless now.  It's no longer a three-hour exercise in 'How do I eat for the rest of the month on $20?', swapping things in-and-out of the basket and referencing coupons and notes on the prices elsewhere.
• I don't have to hoard things (PC Hardware, screws, nuts, glues and solvents, just to think of a few)  I can keep around the ones I'm likely to use, and just get rid of the rest.  I'll probably keep the box-o-glue around because it's handy, though.
• I don't have to buy all my tools from Harbor Freight and all my appliances from Goodwill.  I can occasionally get good stuff if I think it's worth it - Not that I'm going to stop frequenting yard sales and thrift stores(1).
• I don't have to wait until I need something to buy it.  If it's a good deal and I'm going to need it eventually - Or if I even just don't want to bother with worrying about it, I can buy extra.
• I can tip generously without thinking about the rest of the month.

This is not the green flag to go hog-wild with expenses of course, but it's nice to reflect on what's actually reasonable thriftiness vs. bio-survival token panic.

(1) Went yard sale hopping today because I had a 4a-8a shift - Picked up a monitor for the server, an air nailer(!), and a book for Ren.

11:03 pm - Hey! Help decorate my house!

Put those hard-won SIMS skills to work and design a house layout that (hopefully) won't have me sleeping under the bushes or crying because I can't get to the bathroom without climbing over the dresser.

I got an account on Roomplanner, copied down the plans for the house, then measured all the furniture just for your amusement! You KNOW you want to try it out!

And just because you CAN fill the living room with sheep doesn't mean you SHOULD. :)

12:14 am - For want of a gear...

I spent most of my Monday evening trying to find a rebuild kit for the power steering box in my car - It's apparently pretty sloppy, and the alignment place won't even TRY to get my front alignment into shape until the wobble's gone. The seals of the box also leak fluid. Which wouldn't be so bad by itself except that the fluid is one of those sacred elixirs that costs way too much to spray all over the inside of the engine bay. But it IS the most amazing emerald green and comes in a very quaint can.

(Still haven't found the kit - Apparently ebay has several people selling the gearboxes for $150-$300, which is cheaper than the remanufactured price ($550) but won't do me any good without a rebuild kit: Why put a new one in if it's going to leak too?)

I've also been reading through lending paperwork - I've applied to get pre-qualified for a home loan, and am looking at houses around here. And, even at twice the price I paid for mine back in South Bend, I'm having a hard time finding something that's (A)under an hour away and (B)Not looking like it should be the target of somebody's home renovation show. Everything I looked at this weekend turned out to be postwar housing, with in-slab heat. Which was great when oil and gas were dirt cheap. Much less great now, unfortunately.

09:26 pm - So, what HAVE I been up to?

Well, I reviewed my last actual content posting - Back in the middle of January, f'cryinloutloud. Guess I better catch everybody up - Quick! To the Bullet-point-mobile!

• I bought a car. To wit, This car, a BMW 740i. Extravagant in the extreme, certainly, but who can blame me? Sweet ride, passable gas milage (Was 15mpg, now up to 20-something, hopefully further at some point).
  
• Work, sleep, work, sleep, work. (Seriously, it felt like that)
  
• Ren has this accident in my car. Seeing as how I was 'smart' enough to get full coverage, Progressive decides, rather than paying the $3000 that the body shop wants to repair it, they refuse to do anything other than total the car out.... and give me less than a third of what I paid for the car three months ago.
  
• I spend two weeks going back and forth with the Progressive agent, who keeps ignoring my phone calls, and was actually nasty and belligerent until I point out that A) Jersey is a one-party-consent recording state B) I am in fact recording him and C) I know the arbitration requirements for the state. Eventually I realize that I actually have things to do other than try and deny my claim (And that he's trying to drag things out until he can withdraw his original offer and offer even less)... Eventually I settle for about half value, and get the body shop to make the car drivable, then pocket the rest of the money.
  
• Ren finds me a set of replacement doors at a diiiiistant junkyard for $300. I borrow her car and a trailer, go out and get them.
  
• After finally getting an appointment with a doctor and telling him about this whole tired-as-hell thing that I've been having for the last few years, he looks me over and points me to a string of specialists, which leads to a sleep study, which leads to a diagnosis of (dum-dum-dum) SLEEP AAAAAPPPPNIAAAAA, which apparently kills you at some point. So they got me hooked up to a face-inflation thingie, which I have to wear every night, or I die. Apparently.
  
• I've been cleaning out the garage so I have room to work on the car in it this winter. It's about half empty at this point, and the other half is clearing up nicely.
  
• Got a book on doing body work from the library, took some of the money from the car settlement and bought an oxyacetylene torch at Lowe's, and a set of body hammers from the local cheap-tools place. Going to start by trying to straighten the original doors - After that, I'll move onto fixing up the original body. By then, I might have enough saved up for a decent paintjob. Who knows?
  
• I went to a little fly-in down in Maryland this weekend, and took a ride in an experimental airplane - Specifically, an RV-6. My first flight in a small aircraft. It was a little unnerving, but fun!
  
• Which leads to the current crazy. The other reason I'm cleaning out the garage is so I might have room to start working on an airplane of my own - I was originally considering a Hummel Bird, but after looking around for a while after attending an EAA meeting I started considering a Sonex (or perhaps a Waiex, cause I feel they DO, in fact, look cooler.), for a number of practical reasons.
  
• And my current company is being bought out by another company. And I just got my invitation to continue with the company at current salary and whatnot. I wind up losing all my matching contribution to the IRA because I'm not vested, but that feels like damned little compared to not having to look for a job in this economy. Heck, two months unemployed would eat every penny of my match money.
  

07:06 pm - I can't believe they made me do this to them...

Well, LJ has apparently started pushind ad content on page reloads, with full screen-blocking elements that causes Chrome/Adblock to choke - Displaying the page overlay, but not the ad to click and get rid of it.

So now I am forced to completely block javascript originating from livejournal.com

Sorry if you've got suuuuper Javascript on your friends' page, but that's how it goes.

Anybody else having these problems?

04:02 pm - Fantasy-league Republicans

Took a drive out in Rural Pennsylvania the other day, and came across a giant barn painting advertising "Advancing Freedom.Org". ( Read more...Collapse )

Current Mood: amused

08:22 pm - Looking for a good vein

OK, so I'm moving into an apartment with cable and phone hookups, but nothing currently running. What's the cheapest way to get data service to my computer?

04:33 pm - You gotta be kidding me...

OK - The 'central dogma' of biology goes something to the effect of:
DNA--(is transcribed into)-->RNA --(Which is used as a blueprint for)-->Proteins--(which fold into)-->Biological structures--(which)--> make things happen.
Pretty straightforward. Except the details are enough to make Rube Goldberg have a conniption fit. There's a 1500 page textbook at my elbow, and it glosses over a LOT.
Next person who claims literal divine intervention into human creation gets a detail-by-detail description until their eyes glaze over, where I stop and say "Are you saying God designed this deliberately? Just how bored was he?"