Category Archives: stress

suspiciously adequate

nothing has been going wrong… apart from stuff over which i have no control whatsoever, which is mildly alarming, but not overly so… nothing has been going outstandingly well, but things so rarely hit that mark that it doesn’t really surprise me that much. my unicycle “click” seems to be permanent, which i totally CAN NOT figure out, but, hey, i’m not complaining… we’re into the final week of rehearsals before the panto opens on saturday. one show is already sold out, but another show has only sold one ticket, and they’re talking about cancelling it, but no decision has been made yet.

i keep anticipating something going wrong, especially at this time of year, and when nothing goes wrong, i start getting anxious. 😒

blood pressure, house stuff, medication, mushrooms, stress

maybe only 10 steps back…

Monday, 231106 przxqgl

blood pressure 120/90, which is pretty good considering how much stress i have been under. 😒

the workers showed up and dug some underneath the house… i didn’t really pay attention, because i was irritated with the company that sent them…

the sequence of events was as such: they originally came up with a plan to shore up our sinking foundation which involved drilling through the floor of the living room and dining room… which DID NOT work for us. so they figured out how to do it from under the house, but it turned out that they actually had to ADD another support beam… and, about this time, they switched the job to a new foreman who didn’t know anything except for the part where we said they can’t go through the floor. so when he showed up on friday, he DIDN’T HAVE THE PARTS to finish the job… and, today, it turns out that the company that was supposed to do this job in “one day”, NEGLECTED TO ORDER THE PARTS, which will take a week or so to arrive… so they dug around underneath the house for a while, and then i had to go out, and when i got back, they were gone, leaving behind three enormous holes outside the foundation, and, likely, some smaller holes inside the foundation, under the house, an oxy-acetylene welding rig, and a big pile of metal parts. meanwhile, they’ve taken $5,000 off the original quote, and it’s pouring buckets of rain into the really deep holes that they dug around the foundation of our house. 😖 HU knows when they are going to come back. 😒

HOWEVER… the mushrooms helped a lot more than i thought they would (comma gawd damn it!! 😉), PLUS i got TWO incense orders for a total of $125, i made 100 .25g capsules for my neighbour, and i found a copy of Vol. 2, by the Nihilist Spasm Band, which is something that i had in my pre-crack music collection that i was unable to recover… which, at this point, leaves me “adequate” instead of “meh”. a step up, i guess.

frustration, medication, mushrooms, stress, the very big stupid

one step forwards, fourteen steps back… 🙄

Monday, 231106 przxqgl

the workers haven’t showed up yet, but HoneyBucket^® showed up, took away their porta-potty, and didn’t leave a new one — i suspect because they originally contracted a porta-potty for the “one day” that they said it would take, and never bothered to change the porta-potty contract when it turned out that it was going to take more than one day…

however, moe’s at work, won’t be home until 21:00, they SAID that the “scheduler” would call her on friday, but she didn’t, so even when the workers DO show up, they won’t know what to do, i don’t know what they should do, and moe is in surgery all day, which means that she may not be able to answer her phone.

they originally said that they “do this kind of job all the time”… i wonder if they screw up this badly on the jobs that they do “all the time”, and, if so, how they have managed to stay in business. 😠

.25 g 🍄 @ 08:00, but i don’t think it’s going to help. 😒

house stuff, medication, mushrooms, stress

here we go… 🙄

Friday, 231103 przxqgl

.25g 🍄 @ 08:15…

at 09:00, three guys showed up to jack up our house… allegedly in one day…

at 09:15, they’re in the “what have they done to us?” stage of the job, with one of them under the house, confirming that there ISN’T the three feet of headroom that they requested, in spite of the fact that they told us it would be okay, and that he has to put in an extra support beam, which they didn’t tell him about…

there are only three of them. 🙄

he’s currently on the phone with the structural engineer, who HAS YET to appear on site to see the house.

so far, the entire project has been planned by people who have NEVER seen the house. 😒

it’s DEFINITELY going to take them more than one day. 🙄

at 09:45 they have decided that they’re going to do SOME prep-work to get the site ready, but that the real job of jacking up the house is going to have to be postponed to a yet-to-be determined future date… and which will DEFINITELY take more than one day to complete. 🙄

it reminds me A LOT of the frank zappa song, Flakes

miscellaneous, mushrooms, ocf, players, stress

less than a week until OCF… why am i paralyzed with anxiety? 😒

Thursday, 230629 przxqgl

officially, less than a week until OCF, and i’ve been accomplishing a lot, but i feel like i’m headed for doom… my list of things to take to OCF is about 80% complete and prepared, and i’m already getting things staged to load up the car on monday, because the probability is very high that we (moe, me, and three dogs) are going to leave EARLY tuesday morning, and go some place remote, where there are few people and fireworks… because we have a dog who is afraid of fireworks

she, literally, hides, when people shoot guns, in the distance, which is a fairly common occurrence around these parts, and we’ve learned that, if we go somewhere remote, we can have a good time and the dogs don’t get so stressed out.

i’ve got most of the camping gear assembled, and about 90% of the music stuff assembled (including the harmonic flute/electronics, and the foghorn). pretty much the only thing i haven’t packed yet are my “working clothes” (costumes) and my “mundane clothes” (for hiding in large crowds), a few essential items, and the hats, which i haven’t even decided what i’m going to bring yet…

i ordered a “capsule filling machine” the other day (it’s supposed to be delivered tomorrow), which SHOULD make it easier to fill capsules… which is a good thing, because 1) i have a (new) connection to more psychedelic mushrooms, and 2) i already have one person who wants to buy some, and another person who is interested, but hasn’t committed yet, and filling the capsules by hand is time-consuming, messy, and wasteful. i still marvel at the fact that what was one of my favourite illegal drugs, when i was in my 20s, is, in my 60s, on the verge of legitimacy, and widely praised for it’s qualities.

monday was the “panic rehearsal” for the pre-OCF panto — usually the “panic rehearsal” gets finished at 23:00 or thereabouts, because it’s SUPPOSED TO BE the last complete runthrough before the fair… it’s usually, also, the FIRST complete runthrough before the fair, which it WAS NOT this time… and it actually got out at 21:00 instead, which is when it is supposed to be finished. tuesday, i had an alto sax to work on, which went far easier and faster than i anticipated. the alto belongs to one of the members of the fremont phil, who is going to OCF, so it was important that i got it done post haste, and i delivered it to him on tuesday evening, at the sousa band rehearsal… because he’s thinking about joining the sousa band, because he’s got a serrusophone, and various other things that would fit right in to sousa’s music. 😉 wednesday i went busking with thaddeus. we didn’t make that much ($17 a piece), but it was enough to cover parking with some left over, and it’s kind of difficult to compare with the last time we busked, which was at the fremont solstice festival, where we busked for 3 hours and made almost $100 a piece. but, while we were busking, thaddeus got email from the PDA, asking us if we want to play for another “sunset supper” in august. thursday (today) i went to my circus class, rode my unicycle for the longest time i have EVER ridden it, TWICE, and rode in a complete, 360° circle, TWICE, but i totally forgot that i was going to take some medication from home (for moe’s mom’s dog, her name is lacey, but we call her “the unicorn”), stop by the clinic to pick up more medication for moe’s mom’s dog, and deliver both of them to moe’s mom before my class. 😖 so, AFTER my class, i went to the clinic to pick up the most necessary medication, and delivered that to moe’s mom… she can wait a few days for the other one.

tomorrow, i’ve got to get the last few, essential items for the fair, and i might take mushrooms, if everything works out… because i really need to “not give a fuck” for a while.

mushrooms, pictures, stress

my “don’t give a fuck” pill 🍄

Friday, 220826 przxqgl

mushrooms.

mushrooms are my “don’t give a fuck” pill.

when i get cranky, depressed, irritable, out-of-sorts, and tired of doing anything, my “don’t give a fuck” pill helps me survive all of the unjust, inconsiderate, and outright wrong things that are happening to and around me. 😒

yeah, it doesn’t make the problems go away, or even diminish noticably, but what it does is gives me the ability to “not give a fuck” rather than letting them fuck with my brain to the point of incapacity.

that’s what MEDICINE SHOULD DO!

my MENTAL HEALTH PRACTICIONER TOLD ME to take mushrooms. — it still BLOWS MY MIND that i was given this instruction 🤯

she was right. 😉

so, instead of griping about how unjust my life is these days, and how many things have gone irretrievably wrong, i’m going to post pictures of my cannabis plants, and my trip in the forest. 😉

and it’s only the end of august! 😋

i went up road K again, where i saw the bear last year. no bears this year, but plenty of evidence that they had been there. 😉

because of the fact that it has been so dry, i actually went all the way up road K to the place where there isn’t any road, and there’s a sign that says “trail under construction, use different routes”. i could have gone further, but i was tired, and it was uphill. uphill is great when i’m “on my way up”, but by that time, i had reached a plateau, and uphill was asking too much.

so i walked back down to the old homestead, where i meditated for about an hour.

looks can be decieving… is something my father would have said. 😒

220826 i'm in the middle of nowhere, and i'm not really sure why i'm here, but I EXIST, AND I AM IMPORTANT! — 220826 i’m in the middle of nowhere, and i’m not really sure why i’m here, but I EXIST, AND I AM IMPORTANT!

and the difference in my mood will definitely be to my advantage tomorrow, when there’s going to be game night at the burke’s, and on sunday, when the sousa band is playing at the ballard locks. 😉

anhedonia, depression, getting old, malfunctioning people, political, politicians, politics, stress, stupid people

urgh!

Friday, 220506 przxqgl

from the inside, looking out, life is pretty decent: we’re busking again, there are gigs on the horizon, nothing serious is wrong with the house, i’m getting my art car made… i’ve still got a big, scary thing that hasn’t happened for 2 years, but was pretty much essential to my life for some time before that (which is the oregon country fair)…

but from the outside looking in, 50 years of my life, and most of my identity, has been summarily dismissed by the supreme court, which has indicated its willingness to overturn roe v. wade, despite the fact that there isn’t a single state for which the overturning of roe v. wade commands more than 30% support…

which, of course, is PRIMARILY due to #drumpf, who, despite being impeached TWICE, managed to jam through three supreme court “justices”, two of whom are credibly accused sexual predators, and the other is amy coney barrett, who thinks that a woman’s place is barefoot and pregnant.

and all of that is coming from EXACTLY the same people that gave us matt gaetz, who is under investigation for human trafficking and sex with teenagers, and jim jordan, who is accused of enabling a sexual predator, and roy moore, who is accused of sexually predating teenagers at a mall, and madison cawthorn, who idolises hitler, and films himself fucking his cousin in the ear, and another guy who is a long time republican politician who was convicted of possessing pornographic images of children, and the “jewish space laser lady”, and on, and on, and on, and on, and FUCKING ON!!… 🤬🤬🤬

and the chance that ANY OF THEM are going to face real justice of any kind is vanishingly small. 🤬

and that’s not even to mention the fact that #drumpf, himself, along with ALL his cronies, and partners in crime, are STILL running around free, and having rallies, and spewing misinformation, disinformation, and OUTRIGHT LIES to anybody who will listen, which, apparently, is about 49% of the population of the country…

seriously, politics has gotten so over-the-top, blatantly FASCIST, pretty much ever since #drumpf was elected (but, honestly, i see the first inklings of fascism in the 1970s, when nixon and mcgovern butted heads)… the country, and the world, has gotten so right-wing, “christian”, and “conservative” that it’s beyond merely frightening, and everything i’ve seen seems to indicate that it is going to get orders of magnitude worse before there’s any hope of it getting better…

and, if that wasn’t bad enough on its own, don’t even get me started on climate change… 🤬🤬🤬

anhedonia, brain injury, dead people, health, stress

continued…

Sunday, 220417 przxqgl

as i was saying…

i’m so used to being depressed and anxious that, when things are going well, instead of enjoying the fact that things are going well, it makes me more depressed and anxious, because i KNOW that things are getting ready to go “wrong-er” than they have ever gone before, and they’re just waiting for me to relax and ease my guard a little, so that they will have even more effect… 🤬

once again, i have found myself in one of those places: everything is going smoothly, the moisture festival is over, and, apart from being sick for a couple of days after it was over (NOT COVID!), everything went about as well as i could normally expect… i had a unicycle class today, and i worked on my free-mounting and my turns, and i didn’t fall off… and one time i managed to ride THROUGH a group of people and i didn’t hit one of them! 😉👍 there’s a better-than-normal chance that thaddeus and i are going busking on wednesday… i got two incense orders this week… the next big thing on the schedule is OCF, which IS happening, and i AM going (despite the fact that it terrifies me), but only because the band needs a tuba… i don’t know that i’m going to do an awful lot other than play music, and hide in my tent, but i AM going to go…

and, yet, i have this feeling of impending dread… gilbert gottfried died the other day, and he was 67… only five years older than me. i’ve already tried to die once, and failed miserably… what’s the guarantee that i won’t be more successful the next time?

combine that with the fact that i haven’t seen a doctor, apart from an ophthalmologist, for more than 10 years, and that is PRIMARILY because, in spite of everything (i.e. my brain injury), i am overly suspicious of “doctors” in general: i have had personal experience, on a number of occasions, where, if it weren’t for ME saying something, i would have been treated for diseases or conditions that I DON’T HAVE, because somebody, somewhere, made a notation error, and nobody actually knew me well enough to know that there had been an error made…

my erstwhile GP, doctor wackaloon, had notated in my chart that i had a heart stent, but had no notation about my brain injury… and he had been my GP for 10 years! 🤬 and when i was in the hospital, recovering from my brain injury(!!!!😠), i had to inform the nurse that i am not, in fact, diabetic, which was in direct conflict with my chart, which said i was… 🤬🖕🤬

and even the ophthalmologist thought i had glaucoma, because she made me take the glaucoma test with my right hand, and my right hand doesn’t work about half of the time! i told her this before i took the test, but she said no, that it was “standard” to test people with their right hand. when i took the glaucoma test with my left hand, like magic, glaucoma was no longer an issue. 😒

and i’m really not sure how to resolve my suspicion of doctors, and go see a (different) GP, because of the fact that i don’t have any health insurance other than medicare, AND the fact that i would probably have to personally interview several doctors before deciding, and i don’t really think that doctors make time for that, these days… 😒

but, at this point, apart from entirely expected “getting old” things, like sore muscles and arthritis, my health appears to be pretty good… which — i guess — is as good a reason as any to figure these things out now, rather than waiting until i actually have something go wrong with my health, and having to make the decision out of hurried necessity… 😒

depression, frustration, house stuff, moisture festival, stress

🤬

Saturday, 220402 przxqgl

i’m so used to being depressed and anxious that, when things are going well, instead of enjoying the fact that things are going well, it makes me more depressed and anxious, because i KNOW that things are getting ready to go “wrong-er” than they have ever gone before, and they’re just waiting for me to relax and ease my guard a little, so that they will have even more effect… 🤬

one week of moisture festival down, one fluffing session complete (also, a term used in vaudeville, to describe preparing the awaiting audience outside the theatre for the show they are about to attend: getting them “in the mood”… 😉), and one more week to go… it’s kinda sad that this is probably going to be the last show in the palladium (and, possibly, the last moisture festival, ever), but it’s good that we were the band that had two weeks this year. i realise that i have been complaining, almost every previous year, that other bands were getting more of the limelight, but it’s good that it worked out this way, and i can say that i’ve been a part of the moisture festival ever since the beginning, when we did the show in rev. chumleigh’s tent in downtown fremont…

i’m getting totally fed up with the former owner of our house: ron zeising, general contractor and owner of a “home improvement” business, who thought that, because he was a general contractor, he could make “improvements” on his (now our) house “on the cheap” and skirting (or outright ignoring) building codes. recently (last month?) we paid $6,000 to a HVAC specialist to rip out and replace ALL of the heating ductwork in the house, because poor design (by ron zeising) meant that most of the heat from the very expensive, top of the line furnace (which was one of the selling points of the house), was going into the crawlspace, and the heating bills were through the roof.

of course, ron never had a problem with the heating bills, because, despite the fact that he had an expensive, top of the line furnace AND a heat pump, which provides central air conditioning as well, ron heated the house with the wood stove, and left all the doors and windows open in the summer… 🤷

we just had the last workman leave from rebuilding the “retaining wall” under our deck… and it’s a good thing, too, because, if we hadn’t, the deck would have eventually fallen off. now it is a good deal less likely to fall off, but in order to make it secure, it still needs some work: when it was in the process of being built, ron zeising just piled large rocks, bricks (including half of someone’s chimney, and a large cylindrical concrete footer for a post), and random construction rubble, next to the house, covered it with a thin layer of topsoil, and then built a deck over it… concrete pillars, on top of a thin layer of topsoil, and construction rubble… 🙄 it’s as though he thought that, because of the fact that he was a general contractor, nobody would ever question the work that he did, so he just. didn’t. care. 🤬

however, end result: we got a nice, new, secure, sturdy retaining wall, a couple of new raised beds to grow vegetables, and A LOT of new concrete under the deck pillars(!)… 👍 and yet another $6,000 chunk taken out of our checking account. 🙄

anhedonia, depression, stress

bible study

Thursday, 210708 przxqgl

proverbs 22.6 says “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

when i was a child, from the time i was born, i was trained to believe that i was insignificant, at best, a screw-up most of the time, and a horrible, disgusting screw-up who had no right to live on special occasions.

my earliest memories are of my parents being livid with me… because i had slammed my hand in a car door, because i had “found” a nest of fire-ants, because i cut my finger with a sharp knife at a fancy restaurant… all before i was 5 years old.

my parents never physically harmed me, and to someone looking in from outside, i would have seemed to be a normal, happy child, but they used their words like clubs and straps, often and without mercy.

i don’t remember ever getting a hug from either one of my parents. 😢

my parents, and my younger brother and sisters called me “crummy child”. initially, i think, my parents thought that they were “out of hearing” when they called me that, but as soon as my first younger sister could talk (when i was about 7 years old), she called me “crummy child”, and the other sister and brother just “picked up on it” over the years, as they learned to talk. my father thought “crummy child” was a term of endearment. 😒

my younger siblings are now 55, 53, and 51 years old. i haven’t spoken to any of them in 35 years.

and yet, 61 years into it, i can’t shake this feeling that i am a horrible, disgusting screw-up who has no right to live, and should be called “crummy child” by people who are younger than i am. 😒

thanks, mom and dad. 🤬🖕

if you didn’t already, now you know why i haven’t talked to you for more than 5 minutes in the past 40 years. 😒

malfunctioning computers, stress

aarrgh… (which is a²r²gh for those of you keeping track)

Wednesday, 210707 przxqgl

i want to make a bootable kubuntu 20.04 USB flash drive, but i don’t know how (never done it before) to install from a USB flash drive… and “installing from a CD” is no longer an option.

and, apparently, cheapbytes.com is no longer in business… 😒

so, i go to https://averagelinuxuser.com/make-a-bootable-usb-drive-in-linux/ which contains step-by-step instructions for how to do it.

after spending half an hour figuring out which is the USB flash drive i want to put it on to (/dev/sdc — which i found out by removing all the other USB disk from my system, and typing “sudo fdisk -l”), i try to wipe /dev/sdc and reformat it (because it is formatted for mac), but when i type

sudo wipefs --all /dev/sdc

it says

wipefs: error: /dev/sdc: probing initialisation failed: Device or resource busy

so, i try

umount /dev/sdc

but it throws the same error…

i DO NOT UNDERSTAND!! the device is NOT “busy”, you dumb machine!! 🤬 but then i realise that the machine isn’t the dumb one here, and if it’s giving me an incomprehensible error, it must be because it has been given incomprehensible commands… by me… 🤬

so, i type:

sudo dd bs=4M if=/home/salamandir/Documents/Install/kubuntu-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdc status=progress && sync


and, eventually, it gives me
2643034112 bytes (2.6 GB, 2.5 GiB) copied, 163 s, 16.2 MB/s

630+1 records in

630+1 records out

2643034112 bytes (2.6 GB, 2.5 GiB) copied, 163.442 s, 16.2 MB/s
but after that, it hangs up. when i press "enter", after a LONG delay, it gives me
^C

and, after that... nothing.
i don't have the patience to learn all this again... i just want it to work... 😒
after another HOUR of futzing about, i figured it out... but it's REALLY frustrating, and i really don't have the patience to figure it all out without significant stress.
and, when i booted with the new system, it was UGLY, and i know FOR A FACT that i'm going to have to spend as much time tweaking the system to my preferences as i am going through endless stacks of numbered files, and re-filing them in more-or-less the right place, for about the next 3 years.
just another reason to give up computers all together and become a hermit. 😒


	
	malfunctioning computersstress




	
	
				
			depression, malfunctioning computers, stress
		
			news
		
			Tuesday, 210706 przxqgl		

	


		
		i heard from the data recovery people. they said:
There’s ~4 billion sectors on the 2TB drive. Head 0 died with ~55 million sectors left to read (very small percentage). It’s at the end of the drive so it was probably zeroes anyway. The main issue is that the metadata has been overwritten and the directory structure and file names are gone. This means that the files will have the correct extension but no names and no parent folders.
so, what they recover will be, essentially, files with their proper extensions — .ai, .otd, .doc, .otf, .txt, .mp3, .mp4, .html, .pdf, .eps, .jpg, .flac, .gif, .etc… — but with numbers, instead of file names… and if, as with the files from audacity, the project file uses ancillary files in the same directory, then the project files won’t open until ALL the ancillary files have the correct names, and are in the correct directory… 😒 they said, because of the way i was attacked, actual file recovery is not guaranteed, and recovered but corrupt files are billable, which means that i MIGHT end up with no readable data at all, and STILL have to pay for it. they said their “standard” service costs $600 and takes 5+ days, whereas their “expedited” service costs $1,000 (like moe said, everything costs $1,000 😒) and takes half that amount of time.
i contacted the place that built my last computer, InfoTech, when they opened, at 10:00 this morning. i gave them the specifications for a new computer (pentium G6400 4GHz, 16GB DDR4, Intel UHD 630, 2TB SATA HD, with the 1TB SATA SSD i’ve had since 2018 installed), and they said that they were going to send me an invoice, but, as of 3:00 this afternoon, i haven’t seen an invoice from them. once i’ve got the actual computer taken care of, i’ll ask them about a replacement for my WD cloud drive… although, i think i may avoid further western digital products, at this point. 😒
miraculously, i seem to have all the parts for this month’s incense of the month to be sent out with a minimum of hassle. i suppose that’s a good thing.
	

	
	depressionmalfunctioning computersstress



	
	
				
			malfunctioning computers, stress
		
			more computer headaches
		
			Monday, 210705 przxqgl		

	


		
		so, i still haven’t heard from ace data recovery, because of the holiday weekend, but i decided to get my computer ready to take the new old data (if it still exists), by installing the 1TB SATA drive i’ve had sitting on my desk since 2018, which is the first time i thought i was going to need it…
however, it turns out that, because i got the “low profile” case, the last time i bought a computer (which, according to the label on the back, was 2015), there isn’t enough room to install the SATA drive, despite the fact that it’s ⅓ the size of the “normal” IDE drive.
i have two options. i can either buy a not-low-profile case, and pay someone to transfer all the internal shit (because i’m not skilled enough to do it, any longer), OR, for about $200 more, i can just buy an entirely new computer. 😒
it would cost around $700, give or take, to get a new computer, and have the 2018 SATA drive installed (thus making it a 2 HD system right off the top), and, at that point, i could hook up the hard disk from the old computer, via USB or something, and probably have enough space…
and moe sez it’s okay for me to spend that amount…
so, i guess i’m getting a new computer, as well. i remember when i would have been really excited at the prospect of a new computer, but, at this point, it’s JUST ANOTHER HEADACHE! 😠
	

	
	malfunctioning computersstress



	
	
				
			depression, malfunctioning computers, stress
		
			let’s get on it, then! 😒
		
			Thursday, 210701 przxqgl		

	


		
		today, i got the following message from western digital:
Western Digital is working on a Data Recovery recovery program and allow us some time for the program to be put in place. I understand you sent the drive to a Data Recovery Center. If he (sic) would like Western Digital to assist with the recovery cost, we recommend to wait for the program to be active.
Some My Book Live devices connected to the Internet are being compromised by attackers and in some cases, the attackers have triggered a factory reset that appears to erase all data on the device.

We are here to help. Although this product family is no longer sold or supported by Western Digital, we know some of our customers have been impacted and we want to help.
If you have lost your data because of these attacks, we will provide data recovery services which will be available beginning in July.
We know how important your data is to you and are committed to helping you protect it.
We will provide details about how to take advantage of this program in a separate email.
For more detailed information and updates, please refer to the Security Bulletin listed below.
WDC-21008 Recommended Security Measures for WD My Book Live and WD My Book Live Duo

https://www.westerndigital.com/support/productsecurity/wdc-21008-recommended-security-measures-wd-mybooklive-wd-mybookliveduo
the problem is, i NEED that data. it was driven home to me how much i need that data when i realised (this morning) that all of my federal tax records are on that drive… and they’re due soon… 😒 i DO NOT have the time to wait around for a “Data Recovery recovery program” that hasn’t been developed yet. 😒
“If he (sic) would like Western Digital to assist with the recovery cost, we recommend to wait for the program to be active.”… if “who” would like WD to assist…? I would, very definitely, like WD to assist with the recovery cost. unfortunately, i NEED that data NOW (actually, yesterday would have been better 😠), also, well, this IS july, now, and i haven’t received any indication that this recovery program is much more than a pipe dream.
my plan is to continue at the rate that i’m already going with the “recovery plan”, and if WD has any problems with my plan, they can shove it up their ass, and pay anyway! 😠
i JUST got email from the data recovery place, which says:
Thank you for choosing ACE Data Recovery. We have received your device in our lab.
…
We will be contacting you soon after the diagnostic’s results will be ready. Usually it takes one to two business days.
my impression, at this point, is that WD is GOING to “assist with the recovery cost”, whether or not they think they are now. it’s just a matter of how hard we (the class of people who lost data because of this negligence) are going to have to try to convince them. 😠
	

	
	depressionmalfunctioning computersstress



	
	
				
			anhedonia, depression, malfunctioning computers, stress
		
			so…
		
			Tuesday, 210629 przxqgl		

	


		
		the cloud drive is on its way to dallas, to the temple of the computer wizards, who seem to think that they can actually retrieve data from a drive that has been wiped. whether they can, or not, remains to be seen, and if they can, actually, retrieve data, there’s no telling how much, but the expense increases with every file they retrieve, and i’ve got A LOT of files on that drive.
the current conjecture is that an anonymous, malicious, mindless, skript-kiddie found out about the bug that they’ve known about since 2018, but haven’t done anything about it because it’s a “legacy” device that hasn’t been upgraded since 2015 (despite the fact that MANY WD cloud drives are still in use all over the world), and wrote a script to search out all the IP addresses of MyBook drives it could find, and wipe them…
because they can… 😒
L0L! 🤬🖕🤬🖕🤬🖕🤬🖕🤬🖕
but, according to the latest theory, they didn’t overwrite the data, they just removed the allocation tables… they did a “quick” erase, not a “complete” erase… so the data is, probably, still there, as long as something hasn’t overwritten it, and, since the first thing i did when i couldn’t login was to shut it down, the chance that it’s still there is relatively high. it’s up to the experts, and whether or not i have enough money, to determine whether or not i see any of that data again.
and, as far as remediation goes, i think i’ve learned enough to install the 1TB drive (which is not big enough to store 2TB of data) that i’ve had sitting on my desk since 2018, but i haven’t done it yet, and i haven’t even started to search for a replacement cloud drive, or a backup system, because i’ve been going through an existential crisis, AND temperatures that have been an average of 35°F hotter than they have ever been, which has, essentially, shut down any hope of doing anything other than hiding and hoping it’s all going to be over soon. 😟
but climate change is a myth, created by china! 😒
it’s 25°F cooler than it was yesterday, but it’s still 10°F warmer than normal, for this time of year, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be getting better any time soon.
	

	
	anhedoniadepressionmalfunctioning computersstress



	
	
				
			frustration, HPOI, hybrid elephant, stress
		
			today is 210319, and asses have officially been kicked!
		
			Friday, 210319 przxqgl		

	


		
		so, here’s an interesting twist…
the people i have been talking to on the phone, at US customs (two different CBP air cargo officers, to date), have all been demanding two things: one, that the document they need to see is the “bill of lading”, and the commercial invoice and the master airway bill that i have are not good enough (pay attention to that last one, because it’s important), and, two, that the shipment be manifest in their system, which (allegedly) doesn’t happen until the flight leaves the ground, before they can even think about releasing it.
okay, “bills of lading” are for ocean cargo. if it’s air cargo, the “bill of lading” is called a…
wait for it…
“master airway bill” 🤦
so the broker i’ve been talking to (the one who cleared my shipment the last time) recommended, now that i actually have an email address for US customs air cargo, that instead of going at them on the phone (her precise words were “Customs does not have much patience, and if they have to read too much or explain too much they will just send you to a broker, as they are not obligated to clear low value shipments.”), i should just send them the MAWB and the commercial invoice, with the flight information, and ask them to clear it “under section 321”. so i did.
half an hour later, this was their response:
> Please be advised that AWB 125-91897142, arriving today 3/19/21 on BA49, has been entered and released.
they got the date wrong. this is not for a shipment arriving TODAY, it is for a shipment arriving SUNDAY… 🤦🤦
however…
because of the fact that they actually GOT the master airway bill number correct, i SHOULD BE able to bypass customs on sunday, and just go pick up my shit.
and the broker agrees.
so, come sunday, one of two things will happen. either:
one, i go down to WWFS, pay them their cut, and pick up my shit, or…
two, i go down to WWFS, get the run around, leave, come back on monday (after having talked with a CBP officer on sunday about why their release wasn’t actually a release), and have to pay them their cut PLUS a 24-hour storage fee, before i can pick up my shit.
i pray to the incense god that it’s going to be the first option, because i really don’t have the energy for the second.
ETA: it’s not arriving sunday, it’s arriving TONIGHT! (which is why they got the date “wrong”… it turns out mr. joy gave me the wrong date). because of the fact that it’s already been cleared through customs, AND i have beat the rush (and the $36 extra charge for paying them in person, using CASH ONLY 😒) by paying my ISC online, i can go down FIRST THING TOMORROW and pick it up without incurring extra fees whatsoever!! WOOT!! 😎
	

	
	frustrationHPOIhybrid elephantstress



	
	
				
			house stuff, incense of the month club, pictures, politicians, politics, stress
		
			so…
		
			Monday, 201102 przxqgl		

	


		
		the fence is (allegedly) being fixed on thursday, by the guy who is the friend of the neighbour who is (still) being a dick about paying for the fence, despite the fact that the dead tree which destroyed it was on his property. 😒
the guy who is (allegedly) fixing the fence has already run down a whole list of (bogus) complaints he had about the current fence — i get the impression that he’s not particularly impressed with the quality or consistency of the fence materials, despite the fact that we had the fence made by a different company than the one which made the gates, and that the whole thing was built during the peak of the first round of COVID…
but i get the very strong impression that the guy is going to do everything possible to get away with doing a halfway job and begging off, never to be heard from again, which is why i’m going to be keeping an eye on the work progress, when it happens. 😒
election day is (finally) tomorrow. in spite of the fact that he was impeached, we managed to survive (barely) four years of #drumpf, and i’m not sure, even now, that we’re going to vote him out tomorrow… and, even if we do, i’m even less sure that he’ll leave without making a BIG fuss, and/or flagrantly cheating… and even if we do manage to eject him into the sun, there’s going to be A LOT of #MAGA #chuds who will be stubbornly unwilling to accept it, and even if we are actually able to eject him into the sun, they’re not going to be so “easy” to deal with, nor will they just “go away”, once the solar ejecting has actually been accomplished.
i keep saying it’ll take us at least a hundred years to recover from #drumpf, and i’m not sure we have a hundred years left, even if we do, miraculously, make him and his cronies just vanish.
in other news, i made a new page for the Incense Of The Month Club, but i can’t figure out how to put the background image on it that i want, so it’s not linked anywhere, yet. i bought a 1½” diameter button press (because why not), and now i’ve got to round up some civic organisations which want buttons for some campaign or something.
also, i never heard back from kent.
good. 😒
1½” diameter buttons
pins & buttons
	

	
	house stuffincense of the month clubpicturespoliticianspoliticsstress



	
	
				
			depression, frustration, host services, hybrid elephant, malfunctioning computers, stress, web design
		
			ahhhh! now we find out…
		
			Saturday, 200523 przxqgl		

	


		
		my newly redesigned site uses the enfold theme, which has faulty (under certain circumstances) caching and optimisation routines, so we use lightspeed cache, which doesn’t have those (particular) faults, and works better (under certain circumstances).
except, last year, prior to my site being redesigned (when i was still using the avada theme), i was told (by SOMEONE) to disable lightspeed cache, because it had some sort of incompatibility with… something…
so, i went through the site redesign with a disabled lightspeed plugin. no problem, until i put in the enfold theme, and whatever circumstances that cause the caching and optimisation routines to fail, were happening, which was the cause of the first go-round.
turning on the lightspeed cache fixed the first go-round, but whatever incompatibility i was trying to avoid by having the lightspeed plugin disabled, took effect, which was the cause of the second go-round.
which was further confused by the fact that part of my routine for fixing the first go-round was good enough that it fixed the second go-round well enough that i didn’t find out about it until it was too late.
what i found out, today, via my web developer, is that the people who make the lightspeed cache and webhost python (my host provider) have their own battle going on: on webhost python’s servers (which include mine), the lightspeed plugin causes expired transients to multiply and duplicate. lightspeed says it’s python’s fault. python disagrees…
on the record…
OFF the record, python agrees that there is a bug in their system that they haven’t found yet… compounded by the fact that it was THEIR ERROR which caused the third go-round… 😠 but it’s not for me to say “i told you so”, especially with my already somewhat precarious position with this particular host provider…
and so, i’m caught in the middle. 😒
apparently, for the time being anyway, the plan is to disable the caching modules on both enfold AND lightspeed, keep an eye on the database (which hasn’t blown up since implementing this plan), clear the expired transients manually, and examine other options for a cache.
😒
	

	
	depressionfrustrationhost serviceshybrid elephantmalfunctioning computersstressweb design



	
	
				
			depression, frustration, host services, hybrid elephant, malfunctioning computers, stress, web design
		
			oy! why won’t this just go away?
		
			Friday, 200522 przxqgl			1 Comment
						

	


		
		at midnight (which was 3:00 in the morning, florida time), i got a message saying that the database was blowing up again. they said it was 183 GIGABYTES…
because of the fact that i was asleep (thankfully), i didn’t actually read the message until 7:00 my time (10:00 florida time). i immediately logged into my web server, and discovered that the MySQL disk usage was lower than i have ever seen it before, which is to say 253 MEGABYTES
what this tells me is that there’s something else going on besides this whole “enfold-theme-not-caching-correctly” horseshit.
which is bad.
it also tells me that, whatever it is, we haven’t actually found it… we may have found another problem, but not the one for which we’re looking… yet…
which is bad, but not as bad as it could be.
it also tells me that, whatever it is that is going wrong, the cronjob that we put in place to solve the problem, works, REGARDLESS of the actual problem.
which is good.
but, when it comes right down to it, it is not good for me to be so stressed out about something over which i have very little control.
which is bad.
something has to be done. this is ridiculous.
	

	
	depressionfrustrationhost serviceshybrid elephantmalfunctioning computersstressweb design



	
	
				
			depression, frustration, host services, hybrid elephant, malfunctioning computers, stress, web design
		
			oh, but it couldn’t have ended there, now, could it?
		
			Thursday, 200521 przxqgl			1 Comment
						

	


		
		and the answer is, a big, fat, OF COURSE NOT! 😒
i woke up this morning, and couldn’t log in to my web site… at, like, SEVEN in the fucking morning, i was wide awake because i couldn’t log in to my web site.
at NINE, the web designer gets back to me. he can’t login either. apparently the host provider has disabled the config file that makes everything work — i login using SSH, and there’s the file… everything LOOKS okay, but… the host provider apparently did SOMETHING to my web site. as far as i can tell, everything works, sort of, until you get one or two pages deep, at which point it gives me a “unable to connect to database” error.
😠
so, i file a ticket with the host provider. a couple hours later, (all the while, i’m sweating bullets) they get back to me, apparently, the database blew up AGAIN. they disabled the config file so that nobody could use the web site, because the database was growing by gigabytes A SECOND.
😠😠
eventually (seriously, they took most of the day to UN-disable the config file), the web designer went in and turned off everything having to do with the built-in, screwy, does-not-work, enfold caching and optimisation routines, turned OFF “store transients”, and set a cronfile to delete three rows of a table in the database, every hour.
😠😠😠😠‼‼‼
this better be the last of it for a while, because i’m just about ready to throw in the towel.
	

	
	depressionfrustrationhost serviceshybrid elephantmalfunctioning computersstressweb design



	
	
				
			bizarre, house stuff, stress
		
			maybe i was a bit hasty…
		
			Friday, 200417 przxqgl		

	


		
		it’s definitely “not all bad” living here, but things are definitely NOT “normal”, by any stretch of the imagination.
we were supposed to have a fence installed… BEFORE we moved in… but COVID19 put an end to such frivolities, and we moved in anyway.
now we’ve got to leash the dogs when we let them out to go potty. not because our dogs would be irresponsible, but because the other dog owners on the street are being irresponsible… there are three dogs, from two separate houses, which “roam freely” on the street: no fence, no leash, no humans… three separate dogs. one of them (bentley) is friendly enough when he’s not startled, but the other two (hershey is one of them, i don’t know what the other one is called) are less amicable, and hershey likes to push his limits.
but if it were just the dogs, it would be tolerable… barely…
however, there’s also the issue of DJ, a seven-year-old autistic boy who lives at the end of the street, two doors down from us. this morning, i went out to the mailbox and discovered a partially clothed (he was wearing a shirt, but no pants) DJ, and the two aforementioned dogs, wandering aimlessly by the pond across from our house. i said hi, but DJ doesn’t speak. so i went back into MY house, only to have DJ try to follow me. and when he couldn’t get in the front door, he went around to the back, and climbed over three locked gates and x-pens we put on the deck to discourage the other dogs from coming up on the deck…
apparently, the previous owners thought DJ was cute, or something, and gave him cookies when he showed up on their porch.
and he is “cute” in the way that all children are “cute”… but when encountering him, sans adult, and sans pants, it is a bit unnerving… and when he tried to follow me into the house, and then climbed over the barriers in his way to get onto our back deck, it was more than a little disturbing.
particularly since moe “facebook-messaged” his parents, waited half an hour, got no response, went to his parents’ door, and woke up his father, before she could get help for him.
on one hand, it’s a really good thing we didn’t call the cops, but on the other hand… what parent, in their right mind, allows their non-verbal, autistic child to wander the neighbourhood WITHOUT PANTS, on a friday morning?? and if we hadn’t been warned, ahead of time (moe and her farcebook group saved the day), we probably would have called the cops… and it would have served them right, although it would, doubtless, have been incredibly traumatic for the kid.
it’s a REALLY GOOD THING that, when the fence is installed (we’re hoping for next week… really…), it will be a SIX FOOT fence. 😖
	

	
	bizarrehouse stuffstress



	
	
				
			COVID19, health, stress
		
			COVID19 update
		
			Sunday, 200322 przxqgl		

	


		
		one of the people moe “manages” (one of the doctors who is not the owner of the clinic) got on an airplane yesterday.
shortly after she got on the airplane, word came down from the state that any healthcare provider who gets on an airplane has to voluntarily quarantine for two weeks. in this case, “healthcare provider” apparently applies to veterinarians, as well.
so, along with ramping up her side hustle (she’s already more than half-filled the webinar that she’s giving next sunday), moving into a new house, and managing a veterinary hospital (which is a job, under the best of circumstances), now she has to figure out how to cover for a doctor who potentially “has COVID19”. 😒
but here’s something that i never considered: during the first couple weeks of january, i was sick for two or three days. i got my (very first) flu shot (ever) in november (or it might have been october), and, at the time, i just thought it was a mild case of the flu… but moe says that the symptoms didn’t match the flu: there was minimal nausea, just coughing and fatigue… moe says that it’s possible that i have already had COVID19, and just didn’t realise it.
it’s not totally out of the question: i have spent, at least, the past year’s worth of weekends at the pike place market, which is the first place tourists from cruise ships, and other conveyances, go when they land in seattle…
and healthy people don’t get as sick to begin with…
one of the other doctors moe manages (still not the owner) got sick a few weeks ago, and got better almost immediately, but she still has a lingering cough, and moe thinks she may have gotten COVID19, as well.
	

	
	COVID19healthstress



	
	
				
			COVID19, health, ptsd, stress
		
			COVID19 update
		
			Friday, 200320 przxqgl		

	


		
		safeway has started designating the hours between 7:00 and 9:00 am as “senior hours”… they reset the store at night, then the first thing on tuesday and thursday, seniors get “first crack” at everything in the store. the first one was yesterday.
except that hoarders showed up at 6:00 and cleaned the store out.
i went to safeway this morning.
apparently, hoarders showed up at 6:00 am today, and cleaned the store out, as well. at 10:30 am, there was nothing in the pasta/rice/beans department, all of the paper products were gone, most of the fresh vegetables were gone.
this was AFTER going to costco and finding a line that stretched all the way across the costco, and most of the way across the hobby-lobby next door. they were only letting in a certain number of people at a time… since i only had one item i needed, i decided to go elsewhere, because waiting in a line for ≈45 minutes with other people, many of whom were wearing masks, is just asking to get exposed to the virus.
i’m not afraid of getting the virus, mind you, but i’m not stupid. and there have been rumours that getting the virus also puts one in danger of getting pulmonary fibrosis, which i definitely DO NOT WANT! 😠
i went to fred meyer this afternoon, because i didn’t know that moe needed stuff. fred meyer was a little better, but they didn’t have any paper products, or canned goods.
the thing is… there’s no shortage. there’s ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to panic-buy anything. this is a virus, it’s not a famine… it’s pretty much guaranteed that this panic-buying of stuff will absolutely NOT accomplish ANYTHING execpt to make life extremely difficult for people like me, who are trying to survive as best i can.
fortunately, the moisture festival has been cancelled, so i am pretty much hanging out at home, by myself. moe had a (virus-free) massage this morning, but i’ve even been socially isolated from her, because she is ramping up a new side hussle, now that her old side hussle cancelled on her. 😒
	

	
	COVID19healthptsdstress



	
	
				
			house stuff, moving, stress
		
			ok, it’s official…
		
			Friday, 200320 przxqgl		

	


		
		moe and i are moving.
that’s right, with the coronavirus running rampant, people freaking out and buying the entire store because the world is, literally, COMING. TO. AN. END… moe and i are moving into a new house. 😒
we bought a bigger house. it’s about as far away from downtown seattle as we currently are, but the house is about twice as big as the house we’re currently in, and the yard is about twice as big as the yard we’ve currently got. the address is maple valley, but, in reality, it’s in between issaquah and hobart. it’s right around the corner from one set of friends, and about 10 minutes away from two other sets of friends. i’ll be living a lot closer to ian, for a change. 😉
how it happened is complex beyond imagination, and mostly happened before everybody started freaking out, but, basically, moe has been given the money to buy this house by her employer, who wants her to live “closer” to the clinic. where we live currently is anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half commute to mercer island — where the clinic is located. the new house is only 30 minutes away, during rush hour.
the “good” part about this is that we don’t HAVE TO move right away, or on a certain date, and — for a short period of time, anyway — we will actually own TWO houses… maybe for a longer period of time, if things go a certain way.
my understanding is that we “close and take posession” on the 26th (next thursday).
thrill… 😒
	

	
	house stuffmovingstress



	
	
				
			COVID19, health, stress
		
			COVID19 update
		
			Tuesday, 200317 przxqgl		

	


		
		everybody has been “panic buying”… first it was toilet paper, now it’s pretty much everything…
but here in seattle, one of the “hot spots” for the virus in the US, it’s a different matter entirely: i went to costco yesterday, to buy bread and peanut butter. it was busier than usual, for a monday afternoon, but i’ve definitely seen longer lines at costco. all the shelves were comfortably stocked, although there were some items — like toilet paper and hand sanitiser — which had voluntary limits placed on them. everybody was calm, there was no fighting… i only saw three people with masks. there were standard precautions, people wiping down the carts and everything with clorox wipes (which, it turns out, are NOT on the CDCs list of things you can use to fight coronavirus)… i didn’t use a cart, anyway.
the word of the day is “social distancing”. i would say i have not been “social distancing” more than usual, but at this time of year i’m normally hanging around with huge crowds of people from all over the world — in the moisture festival, which has been “postponed indefinitely”. they also cancelled my circus classes, and pretty much everything else that isn’t essential: restaurants and bars are closed for “in-person” dining, although they’re still open for take-out and delivery service. all gatherings of more than 50 people are banned, including church services (although there are many “christian” churches which are ignoring this, at their peril). in four days we’ve gone from 1,000 cases to 5,000 cases.
at this point, i’m staying home and not interacting with people as much as possible. i went out to costco and the dispensary yesterday. today, i went to the compounding pharmacy in issaquah, and i went out for a walk. tomorrow, i’m getting together with hobbit and making a couple of videos.
i’m not really concerned for myself, but i’m terrified for everybody else, because they are, literally, freaking out to the point where i’m thinking, more and more, that this is, in fact, the “end of the world as we know it”.
	

	
	COVID19healthstress



	
	
				
			COVID19, health, stress
		
			COVID19 update
		
			Monday, 200316 przxqgl		

	


		
		Total US cases: 3,487

Total US deaths: 68
HE WILL KILL US ALL

	

	
	COVID19healthstress



	
	
				
			COVID19, health, stress
		
			COVID19 update
		
			Saturday, 200314 przxqgl		

	


		
		

CDC COVID19 cases in the US
	

	
	COVID19healthstress



	
	
				
			COVID19, health, stress
		
			COVID19 update
		
			Thursday, 200312 przxqgl		

	


		
		all public and private schools in king, pierce and snohomish counties have been closed for five weeks.
seattle has over 1,100 cases currently, and projects having over 25,000 cases by april 7th, unless more is done to contain the virus.
broadway has cancelled all performances indefinitely.
the NHL, MLS, NCAA, NBA and MLB sports organisations have cancelled the season.
the mormon LDS church has suspended all worship services, worldwide.
the CATHOLIC CHURCH has closed all churches in italy.
but our #SCROTUS — who has been in close contact with foreign leaders who are CONFIRMED COVID19 cases, and in close contact with several U.S. leaders who are currently “self-quarantining” over concerns that they have come in close contact with foreign leaders who are CONFIRMED COVID19 cases — is, resolutely REFUSING to be tested, and continues to shake hands with everybody as though he is immune to the virus…
he’s not, of course, but he doesn’t have anything to worry about, because he’s #SCROTUS, and we’re not… 🤬

	

	
	COVID19healthstress



	
	
				
			health, stress
		
			COVID19 update
		
			Wednesday, 200311 przxqgl		

	


		
		they’ve cancelled public school in seattle for the next two weeks. as a result, they’ve cancelled classes at SANCA for at least the next two weeks.
they’re recommending that the public not gather in groups larger than 250 people. they’re recommending that people “socially isolate” and “self-quarantine” because of lack of reliable testing. 😕
ETA: Under the Health Officer’s order in King County:

Events with more than 250 attendees are prohibited.
Public events with fewer than 250 attendees are prohibited, unless event organizers can take steps to minimize risk.

they’re saying that 80% of the population will probably contract COVID19. not 80% of americans, 80% of humans… on the planet.
they’re saying that a vaccine (which is the ONLY thing that will stop COVID19 from spreading) could take as long as a year and a half, and, that there probably WILL NOT be a vaccine sooner than a year from now. 🧟
the center for disease control recommends that people over 60 years of age not travel on airplanes… but the #SCROTUS said that they can’t recommend that, so they took it back… but they’re still, privately, recommending that people over age 60 don’t travel, regardless of what the #SCROTUS says. 😒
last week, #drumpf said that there were only 15 confirmed cases, and that by next week there would be zero cases. in reality, last week there were NINETEEN cases, and this week there are somewhere between 50 and 100 cases JUST IN WASHINGTON STATE.
ETA: “more than 1,000 cases in the U.S.”
#drumpf has placed pence in charge of this disaster PANDEMIC, a religious, science-denier who, when he was governor of indiana, and faced with the largest HIV outbreak in history, did, literally, nothing. 🤬
AND, i found out, today, that my great-aunt rosemary, who i went to warrensburg, missouri to meet in 2015, actually VOTED for #drumpf! 🤮
	

	
	healthstress



	
	
				
			anhedonia, house stuff, stress
		
			moisture, but no festival
		
			Saturday, 200118 przxqgl		

	


		
		as i mentioned last week, our bedroom closet has inordinate amounts of moisture in the back, where nobody noticed it for a long time… like, years…
we had a contractor out, who took the entire south wall of the house apart, and concluded that it was a combination culprit: we had
1) water leaking in through the nail-holes in the composite siding, which was sub-standard (having been built in the early 1970s).
2) water leaking in through a sub-standard (1970s construction) gap in the siding between the rectangular part of the house, and the triangular (roof) part — these days, they put in what they call “Z-flashing” between the two levels of siding. in the 1970s, not so much.
3) no house-wrap — once again, due to 1970s construction methods and the fact that tyvek hadn’t even been invented yet — but a layer of plain old plastic, which caused water to condense and run down the inside of the walls.
and, because of this, there is also the matter of
4) the “rim joist” — the 2″x6″ beam that runs under the floorboards and holds the whole house up — was the ultimate victim of all of this aforementioned water. it was rotten through, and the guy had to jack up the house to remove it.
end result: the entire south wall of the house has been wrecked and removed down to the studs, and the south end of the house has been jacked up.
what makes it worse is that we discovered this on the 9th, and it has rained, snowed, or some combination of the two, pretty much every day since. it’s warm enough that the snow hasn’t hung around for long, but it affects how much the guy wants to work…
not only that, but now that he’s got the wall in a more-or-less stable (i.e. no longer damp and rotting) condition, he’s got court-ordered visitation with his kids this weekend, so not only is moe gone, and i have to take care of the dogs on my own, but ALSO there’s the detritus of an ongoing construction project in the front yard, the entire south wall is covered in plastic, and the crawl-space (where the dogs ARE NOT ALLOWED TO GO) is open and unguarded, AND the guy WON’T BE BACK TO FIX IT UNTIL MONDAY!!! 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🖕
🤬
🖕
	

	
	anhedoniahouse stuffstress



	
	
				
			anhedonia, drumpf, house stuff, stress
		
			anhedonia… 😒
		
			Thursday, 200109 przxqgl			1 Comment
						

	


		
		i’ve been “sick” for a week. i was actually SICK for two days, starting last thursday. friday i didn’t make it upright, except to vomit, but by saturday i was feeling well enough that i did the last weekend of the panto without too much difficulty. monique got sick on sunday, and she and i have been trading a low-level “sickness” back and forth ever since. one of monique’s co-workers got an especially virulent strain of pink-eye a couple days ago, so the probability is better than normal that all of the rest of us are going to get pink-eye eventually.
#drumpf assassinated the number three guy in iran, with no “approval” or prior warning, a couple days ago, which, once again, brings us to the brink of world war three. he’s been impeached, but not convicted of anything, and probably won’t be, because the body which is supposed to convict him is controlled by the republican’ts, all of whom think he’s doing a swell job. 😒 55% of americans think his actions put american lives in danger, but he’s using it as a campaign talking point, and there’s a good chance, at this point, that he will be re-“elected” for a second term. 😠👎
and that’s not to mention the millions of people who no longer have insurance, nor the disabled people (which includes me) who will no longer have SSDI when his schemes take effect… he’s asked for, and gotten more money for his wall, and even more money for “defense”, but we “don’t have enough money” for health care and education.
meanwhile, the wall in the back of our closet has sprung a leak, which means that a lot of our “formal” and “costume” clothes are now wet — possibly ruined — and we’ve had a contractor out to give us an estimate (and another one tomorrow, alledgedly), but it has been snowing, on and off, since last night, which means that whatever repairs HAVE TO BE made, will PROBABLY NOT be made until… i don’t know, spring, or some time… 😒
i’m sick.
i’m sick of life. 😒
i wish it would end. 👎
	

	
	anhedoniadrumpfhouse stuffstress



	
	
				
			brain injury, depression, frustration, stress, the very big stupid
		
			woo…
		
			Wednesday, 191218 przxqgl			1 Comment
						

	


		
		#SCROTUS #drumpf has been impeached, but the republican’ts in the senate have already said that they’re not going to remove him from office, so it’s not having the kind of effect everybody said it would have. 😒
i lost my sunglasses a couple weeks ago, and i lost my faraday pouch with all my credit cards, my medical permit, my AAA card and my passport, along with $30 or so in cash. it disappeared somewhere in between the time that i walked out of total wine (i watched myself on the security video leaving the store with the pouch in my hand), and the time that i got home. the receipt from total wine was in the recycle bin, so i’m fairly sure the pouch is somewhere at home, but i don’t know where, which PISSES ME OFF!!! ‼
ETA: somebody found it in the parking lot of total wine, and turned it in with everything, including the cash, intact. maybe there’s hope for humanity after all… 🙃 but tulsi gabbard, the democratic representative from hawaii, who is also a candidate for the 2020 presidential election, voted “present” rather than voting for (preferably) or against impeachment… which means that, unless she’s the ONLY candidate running against #drumpf next year, i will not be voting for her. 😒
	

	
	brain injurydepressionfrustrationstressthe very big stupid



	
	
				
			depression, stress, the very big stupid
		
			bleh/catsup
		
			Saturday, 180120 przxqgl		

	


		
		same old bleh: government shut down because democrats won’t agree to fund the wall, or some such horseshit. it’s going to take a generation to fix all the things #drumpf has screwed up. although, it appears, that, with the government shut down, it’s actually impeding #SCROTUS’s ability to vacation in mar-a-lago, AGAIN, and it may also affect betsy devos’ trip to sweden, so it may not be all bad.
got into an accident with monique’s car a week ago. i pulled out of a parking lot into what i thought was a clear street, only to discover that there were two cars on a collision course with my left side. i sped up, to try to avoid colliding with them and succeeded in having only one of them clip my left rear corner, but speeding up caused me to go out of control, and i zipped across the street and ran into a rock in the driveway across the street… and, of course, it’s more than likely 100% my fault.
the weird part is what happened afterwards. the collision didn’t injure anybody, a cop came and took a statement from everyone, but issued no tickets. monique’s car is pretty banged up, it may or may not be a total write off, but they may be able to fix it… but because of the fact that we’ve got insurance, our total out-of-pocket will be $500, plus $4 a day for the rental car, which showed up less than 24 hours after the accident. and, if the car, which is a few months away from the end of its warrantee anyway, is a total write-off, we can use the settlement to buy a new car from monique’s best friend lora’s husband, who owns a car dealership.
there are a number of things that would have happened if i had this kind of accident and were still living in bellingham, which DID NOT happen this time. these things are REALLY freaking me out: significantly, nobody got upset with me, including monique, whose car got munched. she said that’s why we have insurance. then, we went to the beach for 4 days, three days after the accident. if things were as they were when i lived in bellingham, we WOULD NOT have been able to go on “vacation” after an accident as serious as that, even though nobody got injured. and there are a few other things: i’m having my trombone slide rebuilt(!), and it’s costing me around $800. that project would have suddenly been put on hold. also, we’re planning on going to hawai’i(!) for our 20th anniversary, in june, and, after the accident, that would have been out of the question, if this were bellingham.
on the other hand, when i lived in bellingham, most of the time i didn’t actually own a car, and when i did, i only had minimal insurance, and that only part of the time… and in all the time i lived in bellingham, i don’t think i took what i now consider to be a “vacation” even once, despite the fact that i “camped out” in various places a number of times.
upshot of the whole thing is that i’m still thinking i should be in orders of magnitude more trouble than i, apparently, am, currently… and i’m waiting for the axe, which may not actually be there, to fall… which is seriously affecting my ability to enjoy anything else that may be enjoyable. 😕
	

	
	depressionstressthe very big stupid



	
	
				
			depression, frustration, political, rants, stress
		
			salamandir update
		
			Wednesday, 170809 przxqgl		

	


		
		i haven’t been writing much because i’m severely depressed, and have been for some time.
the primary reason is #SCROTUS, who has, once again, alerted the world that, at his leisure, he’s going to dump the entire nuclear arsenal of the united states — his exact words were “fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen” — on a country about 0.013 the size of the united states (north korea), because their “crackpot leader” has been spouting off again. personally, i’d put #drumpf and kim jong-il in the same boat, in terms of being totally insane. and, of course, kim jong-il responded by saying drumpf’s proclamation was a “load of rubbish” and announced a missile test that is going to end 30 to 40 miles off guam. as much as i disliked the gentleman (an alert reader will notice that i don’t refer to drumpf using that term), when obama was president, i could sleep through the night knowing that, when i woke, world war 3 would not have started. 😡
this whole mess was compounded by the fact that i went off 5HTP while i was at OCF, and, apparently, it’s a medicine that you have to take for a while before it starts working. it’s been a month, and i’ve been taking it again for about 3 weeks, so i’m assuming that it’s taking effect — as before, i’m aware of the fact that i’m depressed, but i can function, more-or-less, anyway — but the whole thing with drumpf, ending the world, messing with my (lack of) health insurance, being an ignorant, racist asshole who golfs while the world — which he set on fire — is burning, really doesn’t inspire me to do an awful lot. 😕
this has also been compounded by the fact that climate change has gone from the wettest winter on record, to the longest period without rain on record, and, because of the fact that there have been massive forest fires in british columbia, the weather has been hot and smoky for about a week. i was in tacoma the other day, and i haven’t seen that much smoke there since the infamous “aroma” days. i was in seattle, yesterday, and it was so smoky that i couldn’t see west seattle from I5. the air-quality rating has been “unhealty” for two days… in SEATTLE!! it’s the worst i have EVER seen it, and it’s just going to get worse… and they’re not predicting rain until — MAYBE — sunday. 😡
but because of the fact that drumpf appointed one of his oil-company cronies to the head of the EPA, they are no longer allowed to use the words climate change, which, to them, means that it doesn’t exist. 😡
	

	
	depressionfrustrationpoliticalrantsstress



	
	
				
			depression, mushrooms, stress, web design
		
			broken
		
			Thursday, 160407 przxqgl		

	


		
		i’m pretty severely broken today.
i think that, possibly, the only reason i even noticed is because of the 5HTP that i’ve been taking for the past 6 months or so, but it hasn’t done anything to relieve the symptoms, which are: to start with, i wasn’t even motivated to get out of bed until well after noon, despite the fact that i woke up around 5:00, when moe left for a 5-day trip to alberta… in fact, it’s 7:00 pm now, and it feels as though it should be around 1:00, based on when i normally get out of bed.
and, sad to say, a majority of the time i spent in bed this morning was poking through farcebook, and checking email. then i got up, turned on the computer and started poking through my RSS feed, when farcebook got boring.
i’ve been reading a lot about micro-dosing with LSD, and the effects of mushrooms on PTSD survivors, and how LSD apparently cures farcebook addiction, and all of these things have driven me to the inescapable conclusion that i really should take those 100 dried mushrooms that i found a couple years ago… except that i don’t know whether they retain their potency, and i really need to do some more research before i actually do it, for my own comfort.
anyway, all but two of my plants have died, and, when i was kneeling on the floor scrubbing the toilet, it made my right knee hurt so much, when i got up, that it’s a miracle i didn’t fall. i hobbled over to the bed and it was 45 minutes of heavy breathing on my back before the pain had subsided enough that i could get up and hobble around again. then, after my knee had more or less recovered, i went to deposit one of moe’s $3,500 checks for all of the travelling that she’s been doing recently, and then i went down to auburn to the post office, where i hoped to ask them if they’ve seen the package for which i payed $35, which was shipped from italy on march 4th, and still hasn’t shown up at my house yet… but by the time i got there, it was closed. 😐
oh, and i haven’t even remotely been motivated to eat anything. i forced myself to eat at jack-in-the-box while i was out, and i’ve had a couple of protein bars. i really need to find out where i can get less than a dozen bottles of soylent, because i really like the idea, it’s probably 10 times more healthy than jack-in-the-box… and it’s named after a movie that gives most people the squicks. on the other hand, the smallest number you can buy on their web site is 12, and if i don’t like it, it probably wouldn’t do to try to foist them off on other people.
i’m having the hybrid elephant site redesigned. since i’m not doing it myself, i’m switching “platforms” from oscommerce to wordpress/woo-commerce. i don’t know if i like it so far, but i remember when i was working on oscommerce, at first it really looked horrible, but the closer i got to what i wanted, the more i liked it. an advantage to switching platforms is that i will have a way to process credit cards that is not paypal, about which i am REALLY jazzed, and, even if the site doesn’t come out exactly the way i like, it will be worth it, just for that.
	

	
	depressionmushroomsstressweb design



	
	
				
			stress, the battle of the computer
		
			more battle
		
			Sunday, 130818 przxqgl		

	


		
		okay, i’ve got my /media/home and /media/backup partitions back where they’re supposed to be, however… 😐
when i view /media/home with the file manager, what i see is two empty directories, /Desktop and /Downloads. however, when i right click and choose “Properties”, it tells me that 31.3GB are being used out of the 1TB partition, for 45,227 files…
which means that the data is there, i just can’t see it.
the technical side of the story is here for anyone who is interested. it continues to develop. my guess is that, soon, i’ll have all of my data back…
either that, or i won’t. 😛
ETA: the battle of the computer is over. i have won, once again… i just wish the computer could get the idea that it’s not good to anger the creator…
there has been enough stress in the past 3 days to last me a few years… i wasn’t kidding about taking a break from computers for a while. at this point, email/RSS and posting on my own blog about stuff is verging on too much. we’ll see about other things as they come up, but… 😐
	

	
	stressthe battle of the computer



	
	
				
			stress, the battle of the computer
		
			new information
		
			Saturday, 130817 przxqgl		

	


		
		i haven’t turned on my linux box in two days. i’ve been afraid to turn it on, because something might happen to change the already tenuous hold i have on the concept that, maybe, possibly things can be made right without losing all of my data for the past two years.
during the past two days, i have discovered that KDE (the window manager for kubuntu) has changed the way it mounts USB drives, from /media/drive to /media/username/drive (which has actually been a standard with ubuntu for a couple of years now, and KDE is only “just catching up”). the way to force the system to go back to “the old way” of doing things, is to sudo make a text file with a VERY SPECIFIC filename, that contains a single line of arcane gibberish (the text is actually ENV{ID_FS_USAGE}=="filesystem", ENV{UDISKS_FILESYSTEM_SHARED}="1"), and then sudo reload the process that looks at that file.
which is, pretty much, what i expected the answer was going to be: a very simple line of code that causes the operating system to do something so far under the radar that ordinary “normal” computer users wouldn’t be able to figure it out in a million years.
once i have my drives mounting in the place that they’re supposed to mount, i don’t know for sure what comes next, but it includes the possibility of removing my ~/.kde directory and then rebooting, which will cause kde to re-create a “default” of all of the system settings (including my home directory, and all of my paths)… at which point, it is remotely possible that all of my lost data will suddenly reappear.
that is the best case scenario, and the one that i am hoping will happen. i haven’t actually done it yet, because i’m still working out the details… “doing the leg work” is what moe says… but i’m hoping that, tomorrow at the earliest, my linux box will be back up and running again.
	

	
	stressthe battle of the computer



	
	
				
			rants, stress, the battle of the computer
		
			OY!
		
			Thursday, 130815 przxqgl		

	


		
		a while back — a year and a half ago, or thereabouts — i decided that i was going to make a separate directory, on an external hard disk, that contained all of my essential data, data that i had created, so that when i upgraded my system, i wouldn’t face the potential of losing everything when a system upgrade didn’t go the way it was supposed to… and, the last time i did a major upgrade of my system, it worked exactly the way i expected it to work, and i was very happy.
basically, instead of my “home” directory being at /home/salamandir on the primary hard disk of the computer, i had a home directory at /media/home/salamandir and everything was fine, i just had to remember to change directories when i was downloading something, because i knew (from first-hand experience) that if i forgot, and downloaded to /home/salamandir/Downloads i would have difficulty finding the data afterwards.
so i did the intermediary system upgrades on my linux box, yesterday. it wasn’t a full upgrade, but there were some more things than normal, and it “hung up” when it got to the point where it asked me if i wanted to keep the configuration file that “i” had “modified”, or if i wanted to download a new configuration file, but when i answered that i wanted to keep the configuration file that “i” had “modified”, the installation procedure proceded as normal.
then i rebooted my computer, because i like to do that, to make sure there aren’t any delayed configurations, or things that don’t get installed at reboot that aren’t working the way they’re supposed to, and that’s where the problems started.
i rebooted, and the first thing i noticed was that the external disks, including the 3TB disk that i have partitioned into a “home” and a “backup” partition, weren’t mounting the way they were supposed to. i didn’t notice this until later, but the reason why the “home” and “backup” partitions weren’t mounting correctly was because, for some (as yet unknown) reason, they had been converted from /media/home and /media/backup to /media/salamandir/home and /media/salamandir/backup
what this meant in the short run is that it couldn’t find the directory that contains my wallpaper graphics, and my “dropbox” folder was “moved” from where it was supposed to be.
this would have been an entirely different problem if i had noticed that immediately, but as it is, i tried to re-establish my directories where they should be, and succeeded only in overwriting (or something, i still don’t know what) the directory in /media/salamandir/home/salamandir — which is where ALL my data from the LAST time this happened, now lives… because i was under the impression that if i kept my data on an external hard drive, that it would be safe from random deletion and/or disasters… like this one is turning out to be.
/media/salamandir/backup (which contains backups of my “real” home directory: i.e. configuration files and nothing else) is still intact, /media/salamandir/home/salamandir-new (a directory i created when i was still trying to deal with the loss of data the last time) is still intact, but /media/salamandir/home/salamandir is NOT intact… which includes all of the printing clients that i have worked for in the past year-and-a-half, ALL of my genealogy data, a huge pile of my (irreplaceable) music files, and who knows what else.
the only good part about this whole thing is that i BELIEVE all of the data is still there: usually it takes a while for the computer to actually delete a couple of gigabytes of information (which /media/salamandir/home/salamandir certainly is), and it didn’t actually do anything that seems like actual deleting, so what i suspect is that i just overwrote the file that tells the computer where everything is, and if i could just replace that, everything would be cool…
but, so far, i haven’t been able to figure out how to do that. 😐
the last time this happened, my computer was down for 5 days, and it was only because of the fact that i was willing to let go of a whole bunch of my data that things eventually made their way back to “normal” again. i’m pretty sure i DON’T want to go through that again. 😐
i think it’s time for me to take a break from my computer for a few weeks… possibly longer… 😐
	

	
	rantsstressthe battle of the computer



	
	
				
			house stuff, spoons, stress
		
			going dark
		
			Thursday, 130404 przxqgl		

	


		
		because of the fact that the process of replacing the floor involves clearing the room that my computer is in, so that the guy can put down new vinyl flooring, my computer is going dark for a couple of days. i may get to post via my laptop, or i may just bag it all together, because my entire office is now in the living room, in boxes and stacks… rather similar to the first year or so that i lived in this house, before we got the workshop built, but, hopefully, for a considerably smaller period of time. pictures of the process can be seen here, for what it’s worth.
	

	
	house stuffspoonsstress



	
	
				
			house stuff, moisture festival, stress
		
			what i’m doing
		
			Thursday, 130328 przxqgl			1 Comment
						

	


		
		Moisture Festival 2013 – this week i’m performing with the fremont philharmonic. next week i’m performing with snake suspenderz.
and, in the middle of all this, we’re having our house completely re-piped to alleviate the massive problems we’ve been having with the plumbing, AND we’re having the kitchen and pantry floor torn out, down to the joists, and replaced, and then we’re having new linoleum laid down in the kitchen, pantry, and my office… which means i have to completely disconnect and move everything, and then reconnect it all once i’ve moved it back.
according to moe, the contractor is coming in to rip out the floor on monday, and he says it should take two to three days to replace it… however, if the joists are still wet, then it’ll probably be longer, because at that point we’ve got to have servicebastards and their portable noise generators (otherwise known as “fans”) come back out and try again…
fortunately, i’m going to be away from the house for most of this… 😛
	

	
	house stuffmoisture festivalstress



	
	
				
			ganesha the car, stress
		
			i still don’t have a car, but…
		
			Tuesday, 110913 przxqgl		

	


		
		i still don’t have a car, but i’ve got a temporary vehicle, thanks to moe’s employer (and the source of my last two cars) for a week. i actually went to sammamish, a fairly large community to the east of the issaquah highlands, neither of which communities were even there 20 years ago, at 7:00 this morning to pick up the pickup…
seriously… i went to high school in that same area, 35 years ago, and the communities along the east side of lake sammamish weren’t there back then… of course the micro$awft main campus is right across the street from where i went to high school, and, back then it was a swampy forested area where all of the “degenerate” students went to skip class, have illicit sex, and take drugs… and i’m pretty sure that the same students are now working in exactly the same place…
so i’ve got a temporary car, and that takes A LOT of the stress away.
furthermore, i (FINALLY) got in touch with the guy who wants to sell me his honda for $800. i’ve been trying to call and text him since sunday, but it kept going straight to voicemail and he wasn’t returning my calls… it turns out that his brand new, fancy, expensive "smart" phone erased itself, and then died on sunday, and he just figured it out… his honda is currently at his mechanic, having an “issue” looked at, but i will probably know more by the end of the week… and that, too, takes A LOT of the stress away.
i still don’t have a car, but…
     i’m becoming more and more sure that i’m going to get through this period without either screwing up or blowing people off, which is a very good thing indeed.
	

	
	ganesha the carstress




		the enlightened rantings of a brain damaged freak
	
	
		
		
Joe Btfsplk
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