Psychotomy

so, we’ve got a bunch of people hosted on our server. all/most running an image system. i go to upgrade it, b/c it chokes on the mysql5 upgrades i did a few months ago.

took me 3 weeks to build a patch file that fixed my test case. i applied it to the rest of the server last weekend. i’ve now tried 3 more times with faster patches. it shatters every site into even less working order.

W.
T.
F.

*sigh*

wondering if it might be easier to reinstall. problem (with reinstalling and with the patching) is the customizations we’ve done on the templates and such. and apparently every freakin’ site has it’s own little tweaks. grrrrr

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hit ikea this weekend for the shelving units/etc to go with our tv stand. out of stock on the units, and the etc is 6′x1′x6″ 80lb boxes … i can’t pick it up (leverage vs torque, gravity wins!). I was thinking of how to get it onto the dolly cart when it occurred to me i’d have to get it into the house. well, we have a handtruck, ok.

wait, i have to get it up into the car … and out of the car … and up the stairs … fuck this, i can barely lift it, it ain’t getting all inside an’ stuff. so we’re going to go back when it’s all in stock (actually, probably just going back this weekend or next) and order it all for DELIVERY! wheeee. which means i didn’t get jack done with the living room rebuild/room cleanouts.

i did shred 2 bags full o stuff, though. and put away the clothes in the bedroom kinda. her clothes at least. and only things that don’t go in teh closet. b/c i can’t get in the closet yet. and the old headboard/footboard are currently half blocking the bathroom door b/c i didn’t have anywhere else to put them. i’m pretty confident that they are NOT going into the attic, though :/ stupid attic! be less anti-social!

played vanguard a bunch, cooked some. went to whole foods for groceries this week. the crab stuffed tilapia was strangely tasteless :o we decided we like the one i do better, go me! (we like flavor and spices, they were obviously aiming at the bland and tasteless crowd “my kids will eat this b/c it tastes just like nothing!”)

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an ongoing thing the last few years has been my going back for my phd in computers. i kept saying i didn’t want to b/c i didn’t feel i could reasonably come up with thesis material.

because PhD theses are supposed to be “new contributions to the field” and I’m not in a research environment where I can play with things to the extent of coming up ith something new. and as a part time grad student, I wouldn’t be doing enough at school and RAing and such to pull it out. then kiir keeps telling me that if everyone’s eyes glaze over when i describe what i’m working at, it might be phd-quality. despite my protests that i wasn’t doing anything exciting and i was just doing basic blatantly obvious things. “which no one else has done”, she kept adding

so i keep looking at it on and off. hopkins became a non-contender when they told me I’d have to do 1-2 years fulltime as a resident student for their program. and none of my classes from my masters would transfer, b/c they’re sure that the Georgia Institute of Technology is a very good school (sarcasm) but it’s not on their level. It left me so stunned that I couldn’t even respond at the time, but GaTech vs JHU for CS? yeah, they’re A string, you’re C, but you’ve got an overall name people trust so I was willing to take it :o
(more…)

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taped off the two tub full baths yesterday and painted one. may paint the other tonight or something. we don’t have paints for the other two rooms yet, but the first floor needs me to cut out the wall and try again anyway :o go me!

hit ikea to look at furniture bits for the living room/dining room. since we got rid of all the old furniture, we need to get new before i can even work on reclaiming the downstairs rooms! oops, bad planning! oh well. i’ll figure something out.

K had camp saturday, and we played on the computers. i bought a new vid card, too, b/c i was peaking at 15fps in vanguard, while she was getting 30+ average. new vid card (same as hers, basically, now) i’m getting 35-40 usually, 20-30 in populous areas, and down to 15 when it hits a heavy display. which is an improvmenet over 15, 7, 1 :o really fun when i drop to .7fps now, though. “can you say over drawn???”

hopefully my new paycheck (see other post) will start helping us with the cashflow problems :o

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haven’t had my scrip since monday :/ starting to have a noticeable effect on me, i think :( as in, i can suppress it for a day or so, but after 3 missed pills? i’m just getting mean again, oops

K’s at camp yesterday morning through tonight, b/c we went to see wicked in baltimore last night. pretty good show ; probably would have been better if we hadn’t seen it on broadway to compare, already. but still fun, and we like the play itself :) trying to decide if K wants another night at camp or not. ok, really, trying to decide if i want tomorrow puppy free or not. b/c i’d like to sleep in. been dead tired all freakin’ week :(

OTOH, even if he’s not home tomorrow morning, i’d probably get up by 8am ANYWAY, and after two days he’d probably sleep that long. but it’s cold, so i don’t want to take him for walks, either, which will make tomorrow evening and sunday bad :o

shoulder’s been acting up again this week. need to start hitting the gym or krav again. b/c i went to krav once in december, and really haven’t done the gym in a while at all. and i know both of them will let my muscles get enough workout that whatever nerve is pinched or surfaced or whatever that makes my shoulder ache and twinge will be relaxed, worked, whatever so that it doesn’t hurt anymore. *sigh* it’s either that, or i start stabbing myself in the shoulder with knives trying to get lucky and cut a nerve. which would probably be BAD, all things considered. and its not like i don’t need to hit the gym anyway.

*sigh* tired. cranky. achy. blergh

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so i changed the colors on the site header today. medium grey text on a litegrey-to-darkblue background.

kiir tells me the text fades into the background. she tells me the text is green.

so, happy readers, tell me. what do you think?

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yeah, so, i’ve been cleaning for MONTHS, it’s getting ridiculous. annoying too :/

they finished the floors last week (yay obviously) and after I moved the computers back, we were sitting there and we realized something … we LIKE the living room uncluttered and not packed to the gills.

well, hell. now we wanna KEEP it this way.

aw, crap.

Going to IKEA this weekend sometime to look into the bits that go with our tv stand so we can put that up and have somewhere for the dragons and fairies and such. we’re thinking of moving the small shelves from the dining room to the basement and replacing the big shelves with them. obviously, of course, we have to go through our books and figure out what we really want to keep and what we really don’t care about keeping, see if we can reduce the quantity a bit. and by “a bit” i mean “a lot” b/c we have too many books. we have 4 tall shelves (5 levels), and 7 or 8 small shelves (2-3 apiece). things are stacked double in a lot of places, and there are books in boxes from the last time i had to box books for something b/c there’s nowhere to put them.

a few months ago i cataloged the books in the living room (bookpedia! the isight barcode scanner doesn’t work right for me; first it’s hard to get the light right so it can read it, then apparently a lot of my books have OLD codes so the ISBN it reads doesn’t match my book, oops). I think I got 150-200 books. On 4 3-shelf units, counting what was laying around the room too. say 150. we have that many again in the bedroom (3 2-shelf units with her romance books, plus everything that accumulates near and around her side of the bed). then I’d imagine twice THAT in the basement. I’m willing to say we have >1000 books. 2k seems high, but I’d believe 1500. almost certainly >1000 though.

that is going to take for-FREAKIN-ever. then I’m going to have like 500-750 books that we’re getting rid of. Trying to decide if we take them to the used bookstore and sell them (i mean, even at an avg 1$/book, that’s a lotta scratch!), give them to the library (dunno if that’s deductible), or donate them for hte tax writeoff (at which point i think it might average closer to 2$/book … but has to wait a year before we get a cash benefit, and then it’s probably down to 50c/book in terms of cash value) …

kiir’s leaning towards donate/give away, becaues it’s easier. I’m thinking more the used bookstore. of course, that means I have to cart all these books to the used bookstore and hope they’re willing to buy that many books at once an’ all. but we’ll see. it’s not like we’re there yet anyway :o

first I need to start reclaiming the master and guest bedrooms. baby’s room, too, but that’s 90% removing the painting bits that I’ve left in there since i painted. wheeee

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saturday I consulted for my old company to help the new guy figure out what madness I had been doing.  took ~3hrs, give or take a bit.  and it was almost all stuff he could have gotten if he’d looked hard enough and spent the time (except the database root passwords I’d forgotten to write down).  actually, a good deal of I’d documented before and no one had given a damn so the docs had kinda slipped by the wayside.

got an email yesterday from said company, unrelated.  we had won the people’s voice webby and my ‘boss’ had ordered copies of the award statues for everyone on the team.  first he asked, and like ZERO people were interested in paying for an ugly assed statue.  then apparently he went and ordered them all anyway and used project funds.  for an award no one cared about having.  they came in after i left, but they’re engraved so it’s personalized.  now they want me to come in to get it, or give them my address (hello?  you should be sending me my W-2′s!  try that address, yadig?) and they want my phone # “because we’ll probably have to send it UPS or something” … b/c, you know, UPS usually calls before dropping things off.  wtf?

worse, I don’t even WANT the damned thing.  I told them that before, but they’d already been ordered.  that’s how I found out they were engraved, b/c I tried to donate mine to the company to display in their awards case.  so now I have to give them more contact info (i’m good with you emailing me, thanks; I’m much better at saying “no, go away!” in email than in person/on the phone) or I have to go in and pick it up.  then I have to figure out how I want to dispose of it, b/c I [b]don’t want it[/b]  It’s a foot tall crappy looking spring-like thing made of aluminium or something.  but with a heavy base.  so it’s ugly, heavy, and useless.  also known as “clutter” which we’re trying to get rid of.  oi.

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so, how do i do the part on the front, then “click here to read the rest” bit with wp?

b/c i was going to do it, then i realized i didn’t know how …

yeah, that’s kindofa nuisance. must read docs :o

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the last couple days i never got around to posting. thursday i got home and i was depressed, bored, tired. bad combo :/ was gonna blog. but decided that took too much effort. in the end, i ended up playing eq2 for a couple hours (got some real progress too, wow!)

yesterday i was still bored and a little down, and i was thinking. and those three things just do NOT combine well. that’s how i ended up shaving my legs in college. i was bored. the cuts and burns on my arm, bored and depressed.

so, yesterday, i was bored, depressed, and thikning. i’ve got (oh god!) a plan! then i looked up information b/c i was curious and neglected to post. so …

death! yeah, this is why depressed is bad.
by a thousand cuts! … bored bad too
over the course of three years! now? now i’m thinking, see …

so, the brilliant theory was a cut a day on my arm (just enough to bleed (if it doesn’t bleed it’s a scratch, not a cut … yeah, thinkng again)) or something, over the course of three years. thousand cuts == dead. but ,since it’s over 3 years, my body isn’t being subjected to all that at once, see, so i’m perfectly fine (healthy anyway), but i died! sweet eh?

yeah, so, i’m not ACTUALLY going to do it. if i felt i was even vaguely likely to, i’d hand over my pocket knife again (i’ve done it half a dozen times before, not like it’s new to me :o). but, see, thinking depressed bored bad.

OTOH, i learned that “death by a thousand cuts” involved like 30 cuts or something (fingers, toes (or hands and feet), arms, legs, head ; sensationalized to add cutting off of ears, noes, eyes, tongue, joints instead of whole fingers/hands .. romanticized (wow, such a BAD word there eh?) to “thousand cuts” b/c it sounded cooler than “slow slicing” …) … actually, drawn, hanged, (disemboweled, ) quatered looks like it might have been worse :o and apparently the whole “tied to four horses run in different directions” thing? utter crap :o

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