DIARY OF A TROUBLED LONER: February 2001 |
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Thursday, February 1 2001
It turns out I need to photocopy my social security card along with all the employment forms I have to send back. It further turns out I can not find my social security card. Much to the disbelief of my family, I don't carry this card around. I know my social security number, so I've never felt the need for the card. And much to my irritation with my family, my card has been moved from its usual place with my business cards to Heaven know where. Some harsh words were exchanged this morning regarding my irritation, which I regretted and which left me rather depressed the whole day at work.Friday, February 2 2001
Spent the morning before work at the Social Security office in Wyandotte, applying for a replacement card. Spent the evening after work at a bar! Yes, I don't know if this groundhog saw his shadow, but he at least did come out of his hole. I went to The Blue Goose in St Clair Shores for a Li'l Stubby & the Disappointments show. I haven't seen these guys in months, so it was fun to see them again. I was hoping to see some faces from my old job (since the Stubby bass player used to work with me), but the only people I recognized were the band's family. I was ale to tape the show...which means I can finally add something new to my Li'l Stubby fan page.Saturday, February 3 2001
Found my copy of Windows 2000 had come in last night. Now I just have to build up the courage to install it -- along with moving plenty of files around so I can blowout one of my partititons. I spent the morning working on my Li'l Stubby fan page, adding a new MP3 as well as doing a little editing. The site is in need of a major overhaul soon.We're thinking of moving our phone, since my computer is causing a lot of interference. It's odd how this has gotten so much worse recently, but I can't figure out why. So now we'll be moving the phone from the den to the family room. I'm planning on going back out to The Blue Goose tonight to see Li'l Stubby again. My boss says he'll stop by too. Sunday, February 4 2001
I really should know better. I was too quick to try installing Windows 2000 this weekend and I ended up hosing the hard drive. Actually, it's not that bad since it only affected one partition, but I've wasted the weekend reinstalling Windows 98 (and then reinstalling some of my programs because of it). In the meantime, I was still able to do a few upgrades on the site. Most notably, I put up two new MP3s of our favorite blues band, Li'l Stubby and the Disappointments, recorded on Friday and Saturday, and available at the fan site.Monday, February 5 2001
A rather quiet day at work again. Spent the evening redoing the Stubby page. Was very upset Comedy Central shafted me out of my two hours of Whose Line is It Anyway? tonight, showing Stripes instead. I really hate it when my routine is altered, especially when it comes to missing Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie (or should I say Colin Mochrie?). At least it looks like this is not a permanent change and the "improv-ers" will be back next week.Tuesday, February 6 2001
I thought we were starting to experience a melt now, but I woke up to find everything covered in a fresh new layer of snow!I heard some rather troubling news about NetFlix, the online site where I rent most of my DVDs. A friend had e-mailed them since he was having trouble finding special editions. The response from customer service was that "In order to offer the world's largest selection of DVDs available for rent, we have decided to only provide the first version of a specific title that is released on DVD. This will allow us to maintain our inventory and alleviate out of stock issues." I frankly can not believe this. To mindlessly get every title as it comes out will certainly give them a wide selection, but it won't be a deep one. And this is a nice way to attract customers but it's hardly a way to keep them. It's as if their idea of offering a selection is to offer no selection at all. As a DVD gourmand I can definitely say it's the special editions which are the biggest attraction, and I have certainly put off buying a title if a special edition is in the works. Why can't NetFlix do the same? Their greatest selling point is the fact you can keep discs longer than the 2 or 5 day local rentals, so you can really get the most out of a special edition -- but here NetFlix is, negating the feature that makes them most appealing. I simply do not understand how they can be so small minded. A big SFG boo and hiss to their grievously misguided decision. And speaking of misguided decisions, I went ahead and tried installing Windows 2000 again tonight. Wednesday, February 7 2001
I'd been led to believe it was possible to run both Windows 98 and Windows 2000, but I found otherwise. I tried to install updated ATI drivers within Windows 2000 and suddenly my video capture card became unuseable in both Windows 98 and Windows 2000. And I distinctly saw files being installed in both partitions. I'm not sure if this is a common problem or if just the fault of the morons who write drivers for ATI. So now I'm thinking of removing Windows 2000 (after less than a day)...and perhaps, maybe, possibly just doing a complete upgrade from Windows 98 to 2000 some time in the future.We're having troubles at work. Someone or something is broadcasting too close to our frequency on the GE4 satellite, causing frequent but brief loss of signal. Removing Windows 2000 turned out to be delightfully simple. The jury is still out on whether to install it again. Thursday, February 8 2001
The blackouts are getting more frequent today. The keepers of the GE4 satellite aren't even sure whose stepping our signal, believe it or not, so there's talk of taking our broadcast network down this weekend to investigate.Spent the evening working with Flash. Eventually came up with "something", which I uploaded to my sister site. I really don't know what came over me on Tuesday, but I found myself agreeing to start up another web domain! Maybe it was the lure of Friday, February 9 2001
I guess I just can't leave my computer alone. I trashed it last weekend trying to install Windows 2000 and now I suddenly have the bug to go buy an internal CDR burner. Trouble is, I'm not sure if I can add a burner, since I already have two hard drives and a DVD-ROM drive. I have the physical space for another drive, but I don't seem to have a socket for it on my motherboard. I can get myself out of most software jams, but hardware stuff intimidates me. The Dell web site was not very helpful either.It was quite warm today and we lost most of our snow -- which is a good thing too since it was starting to get gray and ugly. I really do not like this time of year since it is indeed so ugly: the ground is sodden and the sky is overcast. When I left, the wind was amazingly fierce and it was almost a struggle to make it home. (By the way, I have a confession to make. Because of my computer problems, every diary entry on this page was written tonight and not on the days stated. The events depicted are nonetheless real and legitimate but they weren't actually typed out til now. Just felt I had to be honest ahout it.) Saturday, February 10 2001
Spent most of the day working on my Li'l Stubby page, digitizing three songs to WAV, and editing and EQ-ing two of them to MP3. I had some plans for the day, but they didn't pan out since I was too lazy to leave the computer. In the evening I watched Erin Brockovich (for the first time) on DVD.Sunday, February 11 2001
Added a third song to the Stubby page; also forced myself to go out shopping. Back on Wednesday I ripped my pants at work! No, it's not because I'm that fat. We were trying to move floor panels around (our floor is raised because of all the cabling underneath), and some metal flaps on the bottom of one floor panel sliced a nice right-angled flap in the knee of my left pant-leg. So I had to go out and buy clothes for myself...which is something I try to avoid. I'm always dismayed how difficult it is to find the clothes I need -- all the stores seem to be about three months ahead. (Commerce's equivalent of bar time, I guess.) I've always proposed there should be something like a Guy Store, where they sell Winter clothes in Winter time and Summer clothes in Summer. I don't know how women do it; they "invest" in clothes. But when a guy goes shopping, he's looking for stuff he needs right now.P.S. I went ahead and reinstalled Windows 2000 in its own partition. I figured I might as well put it back in, just to get a feel for it before deciding whether to commit to it or not. I just won't install any drivers or software under it for the time being. Monday, February 12 2001
A surprisingly busy day at work today. We got a lot of trouble-calls, and they all seemed to arrive at the same time. We also had a response regarding our own equipment problems. Our operations room is supported by a company in California (which, hint hint, used to go by a name consisting of two initials). We've got three extant problems, and they finally got back with us on two of them. Of course, two different people called at the same time, so I was on hold with one while speaking with the other.We made a little headway on a device known as RDM. With it we're supposed to be able to dial out and connect with our equipment in the field. Unfortunately, we were not able to get the remote equipment to dial back to us. Someone at the support company figured out the RDM was mangling our phone number. To get it to dial, say, ABC-2001 we would have to instruct it to dial 1BA2C0011. (!) Bizarre. Tuesday, February 13 2001
I bought myself an early Valentine's Day present I guess. I did some searches yesterday on SCSI cards and SCSI CDR burners, since I'm still thinking of finally switching to an internal burner drive. I went to Best Buy this morning before work and discovered they had an IDE card, which was seventy bucks cheaper than SCSI. SCSI is supposed to be faster, but CDRs only put out a small amount of data anyway; and IDE burners are cheaper as well. I've got the stuff sitting in my trunk and now cannot wait to get home and see if my experiment will work.The Napster decision was made yesterday, as you probably know. I'm hardly surprised the court decided to do away with the service, but it's still sad such a simple, easy to use, and addictive service wlll be no more. Especially since I don't care for the alternatives. Gnutella is like an anchor on my system, and BearShare might be easier to get up and running but proves equally onerous and ultimately fruitless. It seems the best bet is still binary Usenet newsgroups (although it's hard to search for individual songs). I saw a couple leads on possible web sites, but I'll have to investigate them more first. I wish my parent company would invest in some AntiVirus software -- my mailbox was full of that stupid Anna Kournikova virus. What does "Here You Have" mean anyway? Wednesday, February 14 2001
I believe I am close the world record on Windows 98 reinstallations. I tried setting up my IDE card along with my Acer internal IDE CDRW burner. The SIIG IDE card box convinced me it was the solution I needed, that I could add even more IDE devices. Unfortunately I found out otherwise. The IDE card conflicted with the IDE devices I already have, so I never get the CD burner running.But the story doesn't end there. I removed the card and burner and uninstalled the drivers, but for some reason things got worse. I was unable to reboot into Windows. Windows Protection Error, I was told. You must restart your computer. I could get into Windows' safe mode (and I could still get into Windows 2000 and BeOS), but I could not boot into Windows. I tried my Norton Utilities diskettes, I tried my Windows boot disk, I tried uninstalling any reference to the SIIG card or the Acer burner or the Adaptec software from my registry (while in Safe Mode). But I could not for the life of me boot into Windows. So...screw it. I reinstalled Windows, for the third or fourth time in a week or two. And then stayed up till five in the morning to get things back up and running. Unfortunately, I can no longer get into Windows 2000...so I'll have to reinstall that some time soon too. Trying to get through a cloudy and rainy day on only three hours of sleep was not the best way to spend Valentine's Day. And today also marks one year since being laid off from my cable job. Thursday, February 15 2001
My boss's boss dropped by today. He brought an old Hendrix LP with him so that I could burn it to CDR. I can't remember what brought it up, but we started discussing Monty Python material. It was amazing how quickly the itme passed once we started in on quoting the wealth of great TV and movie dialogue. My boss, who is not a Python fan, was probably in hell the whole time.Friday, February 16 2001
I guess an excess of Monty Python can actually make people physically sick. My boss did not come in today. I'm still in the process of righting my computer. I downloaded patches for Office 2000 yesterday and I got around to re-downloading Netscape 6.01 this morning. I also did some work on the web site, adding to my Links page. Our tech support company fixed one of our problems today. We finally got a new program up and running, only to find out the dumb thing is completely useless for us. Regarding our bigger problems, I heard a new hard drive is being shipped to us and someone from San Diego is flying over.Saturday, February 17 2001
We had an electrican come over this morning to install some lights in our family room. It's about time. Meanwhile, I tried digitziing my boss's boss's Hendrix LP to my hard drive. Afterward, I discovered I'd forgotten to select my recording option and had recorded forty minutes of my microphone input.I had to spend a couple hours at work, getting home around dinner time. I was very disappointed with our new track lights. They're on the wrong walls. Instead of illuminating the seating areas, the lights are shining directly into my eyes. When they come on, it's like being caught at last call. Or like being on stage. Sunday, February 18 2001
Spent the day working on my boss's boss's Hendrix LP. I was pretty impressed with my audio software's click & pop removal, Still, I wished it had a better EQ since the treble sounds shrill and hissy. The LP, Midnight Lightning, is short enough that I was able to compromise; I could put the album on CD twice, once with noise reduction and once as a straight duplication.Yes, it struck me as shameless brown-nosing too. So be it. My brother and family came over for the evening. I'd hoped to reinstall Windows 2000 for them to see, but I couldn't find time. My younger neice is ailing, due to surgery for an ingrown toenail. Monday, February 19 2001
The hard drive we were expecting did not show this morning. But the tech support guy from San Diego flew over anyway. We found out too late that whoever packaged the hard drive thought there was no shipping today because of President's Day and had scheduled the hard drive to show up tomorrow. Regardless, the tech support guy was able to do some software upgrades and then hang around lovely exciting Detroit for tomorrow.My new CD burner showed up when I got home. Last week, I had been impressed with Best Buy for taking my IDE Acer drive back, plus the SIIG ATA66 Ultra IDE card. I bought a SCSI card instead, admitting this was what I should've done to begin with before being swayed by saving a few bucks. Unfortunately Dest Buy didn't have any SCSI CD burners. I did some online research and was intrigued by the speed of the new Yamaha 2100SZ (internal) which can burn at 16x speed and read at 40x speed. The best price, according to Price Watch, was at Amazon. I didn't even know they sold hardware. I ordered the drive there, for $276 (list $430), and it showed up today. Compared to last week, installation was miraculous. Tuesday, February 20 2001
I tried out my CD burner today. It used to take me forty minutes to burn a CD. This morning it took me ten, and only because I only CDs capable of 8x speed. It's almost laughable to think that's half what my burner can do. Plus, my system didn't come to a complete halt. I could actually do stuff at the same time.The tech guy from San Diego showed up again in the evening, swapping one of our hard drives now that the day's programming was done. Got some more packages when I got home. I finally ordered a copy of The Matrix for my DVD library; I pretty much felt obligated to, since it's supposedly the most wonderfullest DVD ever. I also got The Life of Python box set, featuring Python's 30th Anniversary BBC special. I stayed up til three in the morning. Wednesday, February 21 2001
I thought the weather was warming up, but today was very cold and windy. I finally got a haircut this morning. I'd been putting it off so long that I'd started to get very shaggy. It's not that I fear haircuts...I just like to get my money's worth out of them.We really paid the price for all those quiet days at work. We got nothing but trouble calls this morning. Pretty much all of them described the same bizarre and inexplicable problem. Our customers were only able to receive one channel of video. It was extremely puzzling how they would be able to get video, but only one channel's worth. We could only assume it had to do with the upgrades these last couple days. But our tech support guy was already on a plane. We think we might've solved the problem by the end of the day. But by then our customers had stopped calling. Either they'd gotten sick of us, had gotten used to the problem, or had all gone home. I guess we'll find out tomorrow. Thursday, February 22 2001
My dad had cataract surgery this morning. I guess it shows how dumb I am, I expected the doctor to work on both eyes today; but of course that would be improbable. They worked on his right eye today.Once again I am too optimistic. Our fix from yesterday did not fix the problems at work. Our own tech support company contacted a one of our customers and was able to solve the problem, in this one instance. It turned out to be pretty simple, albeit time consuming. But I swear we tried this same solution yesterday without success. But it worked for them, so they were satisfied. We were forced to comply, and danged if it didn't work for us now too! Friday, February 23 2001
My boss was away again, for testing on a previous ailment. Coworker Reid discovered this week's problem was solved in an even easier way. We could fix the equipment by having customers simply unplug it and plug it back in! It worked for me too, when I came in for the late shift.Earlier this week, Monday to be specific, I had a brainstorm for a new computer game. I've been toying with trying to teach myself game programming, and this might be just the thing to spur me into genuine action. Right now, I'm intrigued by the Dark Basic language. Hopefully something might come out of this. Saturday, February 24 2001
An ugly hard rain, lasting all day.I pretty much spent the entire day defragging my C:\ drive. I could not believe how long it took and how often my defrag program had to restart. My boss's test results came back with some troubling news. Things have turned out to be so serious that it seems rather inappropriate to discuss it here, amid the comparative trivialities of my own life. I'll let it remain a private matter between him and his loved ones...until there is better news to report. Sunday, February 25 2001
Spent the day doing a lot of personal work on the computer. Got a lot of writing done, got a lot of files in order so I put my new CD burner to work. The evening was pretty busy since I had to juggle watching three channels at one: the big X-Files cliffhanger, the Best of The West Wing, and ABC's Judy Garland biopic. I was very impressed with the girl who played the young Judy Garland; she did an exceptional job, especially since the reviews all emphasized Judy Davis's performance. I also got a big kick out of The West Wing. I actually voted for a favorite episode at the NBC web site -- and the one I voted was the second one shown. For sixty minutes I felt an incredible power, as if I could single-handedly rule a TV network. Too bad I couldn't control the promos for Will & Grace.Monday, February 26 2001
It's funny how a little change can revitalize one's interests. Now that I have my new CDR drive, I can't stop burning CDs. I've had these files and folders on my hard drive for months, looking for the time to burn them; but now I've burned about five discs in only a couple days, clearing off substantial and much needed space. The work day was pretty uneventful.Tuesday, February 27 2001
I almost forgot it was Fat Tuesday today. A day almost named after me. I felt obligated to buy some paczkis on the way to work. They're so heavy I only got a half dozen. Only one got taken, so I ended up having to finish the bag off by myself. Paczkis are so filling that I was seriously dreading this, but in fact it was much too easy.Wednesday, February 28 2001
Got a nice long letter from my pen pal in Illinois, giving me lots to read today. We had a lot more trouble calls than usual, at work.Since it's Ash Wednesday, I've been pondering giving something up for Lent. I might really challenge myself this time and give up the snack machine here at work. I've really come to rely on it, especially late into my shift. Back to Trouble Loner homepage To Bitter Old Man site To SFG World |
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