so. slept a couple hours yesterday before going to my sewing class, yeah.
got home, ate dinner,went to bed at 9:30 or 10. got up this morning about 8:30. took k over to camp, came home, watched two eps of law and order, slept for another 2 hours. watched another ep, slept for an hour.
definitely sick :/
i did, however, drink 59oz of OJ today. 900% of my RDA on vit C :)
after dinner, i may go back to bed :o
i appear to be coming down with something.
a sinus headache that threatens to split my skull wide open, and my throat is sore.
spent the morning in session freezing my ass off, shivering, and by afternoon i was cold, yet burning up. i left at 3 during hte afternoon break, rather than waiting for it to end at 5:30. i just didn’t think i was gonna make it that far :/ i was completely out of it, in pain, and feeling sick.
got home, took an hour or two nap and went out to my sewing session. learned about heirloom sewing and the wing needle, dual needles, various bonus feet and plates and stuff. basically, it was a big sell :o but soem of them are damned neat.
they gave us sheets for registering for gifts. i asked if there was any discount, or if this was just to identify. it’s just to identify bits :( too bad. not that i was reall gonna tell anyone “I’m registered for holiday gifts at the husqvarna/viking sewing center in columbia joanns” … b/c, really, who’s gonna be in this area anyway? :o
OK. So.
In late june we put in the order for our kitchen. paid 33% of the price in advance. no problem.
Mid/late august they take out our old kitchen finally. OK there was some broken cabinets, fine, yeah.
It was late september/early october before we got the new counters. another week or two to put them in.
3 weeks (4?) to get the inspector out and to actually PASS the inspection.
November 4 the contractor finishes, finally, and the kitchen is done (it’s been usable since the counter went in, though, at least, otherwise JESUS). That’s … 6-11. between 4.5 and 5 months. FIVE MONTHS.
Afternoon of the 4th we have an answering machine message from HD. “Where’s our money”
Morning of the 5th I get a call “Where’s our money, bitch” I tell them I’ll try to hit the bank and get the check that week.
Evening of the 12th when we get home, there’s a message. “yo, bitch. cough up the money or your punk ass is dead” I go in on the 13th to return the bits the contractor had left over (one of which they couldn’t identify, so I’m stuck with. But they said it was probably worth 40 or 50$. 6 other pieces totalled to 120. yeah, you can’t identify it. uh huh. it’s just worth real money and you wanna rape my ass some more)
I talk to them, get them to put a note in that i’ll go today/tomorrow for hte check. apparently they usually call once and if you don’t give them the money by end of the business day after, they turn it over to collections and legal. So by the 7th i was supposed to have paid them. IT TAKES THEM FIVE MONTHS TO INSTALL THE FUCKER, AND I HAVE TO PAY WITHIN 24 HOURS???? WTF???
I happen to ask if the delivery fee has been credited. It hasn’t. WTF??? I had to carry and cart the fucking cabinets in myself b/c the delivery team decided to leave them outside (“we don’t take them in”) … outside, in my NEIGHBORS driveway. Not even mine. MY NEIGHBORS.
I’m told I have to talk to the “expediter” to resolve it (I DID, you stupid fucks. when it happened. I called and complained to a number of people, and i was assured that the delivery charge would be removed/credited since I HAD TO CARRY THE SHIT MYSELF)
run to the credit union this morning (it’s 30 minutes in the direction opposite of where i needed to go for my conference this morning, mind) and get a check for most of it, and try to call the “expediter” during one of the breaks, at like 3ish. She’s in a meeting for another 10 minutes, then she’s going home. WTF? she goes home at 3??? WTF!
So, I’m supposed to pay within 24 hours, but they take 5 months to do the job and then keep bankers hours when i want to talk to them? fuck.
stayed up way late (2am) last night trying to set up my systems for the conference today. ended up with just the one really working system (emachines: bad drive; HP: slow as heck, and may be having drive problems, linux install kept kvetching)
got up at 6 or 6:30, got my stuff together , ran down to the office to hit the credit union for a check for home depot, then rushed back up to baltimore :o actually got there only a couple minutes late for my session. counting the checkin and stuff.
good session, an’ all. incident handling and response. I’m not really part of the IH/R team of course, they’re the guys that come steal my harddrives when something goes bad. but the rest of the session is intrusion techniques and attack vectors, so it’s useful knowledge and not too much to wade through for hte good stuff.
Turned out that we didn’t need our laptops today (FUCK! i coulda gone to bed at a reasonable fucking hour???).
I took my work laptop (powerbook 12″) figuring i’d hook up to the conference wireless and be able to do some work, maybe chat in irc with folks. no wireless. no networking in the conferene rooms. Not taking that back tomrrow :o
got a book of notes for the session. Actually got 6. one for each day. we went through 250 slides today !!!
stayed after for the vmware session, b/c the directions in the notes didn’t make any sense. there was a typo. just where i thought it was too. convenient, but i figured I might get something else. and it was 20 minutes or so
I left before the intro linux session. i might get some bits from the rest of the week, but i didn’t need to stay for 90 minutes of intro :o
going to a SANS (http://www.sans.org/) conference this week. Hacking, intrusions, and general attacking of systems. Or the detection thereof.
basically “here’s how they’re gonna try to get in. learn it, love it, live it. now stop it”
so, we need a win and a RH boot. i figure i’ll gather some boxes and take in multiple laptops, and throw in a slack install (b/c the last day is an attack period where it’s basically capture the flag/etc, to see how much we’ve learned about the attack vectors and the defense). I fiure I don’t run win or RH, so the slack box lets me see how I REALLY stand up in security.
Except i could only find the power supply for one of my laptops. so i check the spare hardware room at the office. no working laptops. so last weekend we went out and bought me one at a computer show (emachine, 2.8G amd chip, 512 ram, 60g drive. not a bad machine, 600$). it works fine at the shw and the couple times i messed with it this weekend. so this morning i go to install windows updates. long ass online time as it makes me download the validation tool, then validates me, then has me download 30 minutes (i’m on a good conn!) of updates (and 30 minutes to install them i swear). THEN it says “Oh. You should REALLY get SP2!!! You’re not secure until you do!” duh. get it.
another half hour/45 minutes, its downloaded the 80M patch, verified that it downloaded it (i swear it doesn’t do that by a simple MD5 check, it re-downloads it or something). it installs it. it scans my harddrive for everything. it backs up everything it finds. it really installs it. it makes me reboot. and now it don’t talk to the harddrive.
WTF!
first thought: SP2 went fuck. but after some testing, i can’t get even a boot cd to talk to the drive (as in, i can’t even repartition/reformat the fucker). looks like a hit. during the TWO HOUR process of downloading fucking updates it looks like the system got hit. with something good. that locked the bootsector.
mother fucker!
Stepped CivIV back to 2nd level difficulty after spending over a week getting smashed on 3rd. Played last night, and I’m cleaning up. Taken over half of france without a war, and some of china :o I’ve got 50% more points than anyone, and I haven’t been able to trade tech with anyone since I GOT tech trading, b/c no one is as advanced!!!
I think I’ll win for a while before trying 3 again though. I like not losing all the time :)
monday i went to the surgeon for consultation (prescrip was before then after this)
he looks at my ass, asks if i’m sure i had a cyst (no, you dumb fuck, i’m making this shit up b/c i like quacks poking at my ass) b/c he can’t see it. after carefully explaining tha that’s probably b/c she LANCED IT nearly 3 weeks back and it’s had time to heal up, he changes to “i don’t see any scarring or anything to even indicate where it was” in the pilonidal area maybe??? i mean, it’s not like i went in and told him “i have a booboo”. I have a freakin’ PILONIDAL CYST. These happen in a very particular area!! THE PILONIDAL!
then he said that since it was only a first instance (he seemed fairly willing to discount the incident a couple years ago that i’m fairly sure was this too) he wasn’t inclined to operate, since it could be months, or even years, before it happened again.
then he explained the procedure to me. There’s the bascom procedure (or bascom 1) which makes a small incision off the side, cuts back over and cleans out the cyst from the inside and seals it up so it won’t get infected anymore. outpatient, 90% of people go back to work next day.
then there’s bascom 2 for those patients where 1 is insufficient. it involves cleaning it out, still, but then “closing” the cleft … basically sewing the top inch of your ass closed so that it won’t get stuff there to infect it anymore. fun, eh?
then there’s barbarism. where they excise the cyst/abcess. this quack wanted to take out a 2″x3″x1.5″ chunk of my ass (and yes, one of those is DEPTH) as an outpatient procedure. he explained how a lot of things were outpatient, they could take out a gallbladder as an outpatient procedure. I CAN REMOVE A HEART OUTPATIENT, YOU DUMB FUCK, IT DOESNT MEAN THE PATIENT SURVIVES OR ITS SMART!!!
when i decide i need to get this fixed (if it happens again, or if i just decide i don’t want to deal with it happenning again) … I’m gonna find a surgeon who’ll do bascom. I mean, the paper I read on it was REVISED 10 years after publishing, already. Hell. THAT revision is nearly 10 years old !!! THIS IS NOT RADICAL UNTESTED SCIENCE! THIS IS MEDICAL SCIENCE!!!
fucking quacks. keep your butchers knives away from my ass.
Well, it’s been pointed out that it’s been almost a month since i last said anything here. so, here goes something.
about a month ago, during the whole cyst thing, I asked the doc to up my dosage of lexapro, b/c i was still getting some fairly severe mood swings. particularly when i forgot it one night, the next day i was off the charts. but even sometimes when i DID take it i was left of center.
of course, then, in the way of things, I lost the prescription for a few weeks :o finalyl found it monday, dropped it off. went back a few hours later to pick it up, and they were needing to call the dr’s b/c the dosage had changed. I’d been on 20′s now doc had me on 40′s so they wanted to verify it. it’s a fucking prescription with a fucking dr’s signature. what fucking verification do they need that they’ll trust more than the sig????
forgot it a couple days, went to pick it up friday since i was getting fish at the store anyway. ask for it, and they tell me they couldn’t fill it b/c i should have some still and not up for refill until thanksgiving. so i talk to the pharmacist, and point out that yes, i have a prescrip for 20′s. but this is 40′s, and i don’ know what dimwitted fuck monkey put 20 on the computer, but it’s supposed to be a 40. so she pulls out the original prescrip, where it clearly says 40mg. and has been clearly crossed out and has clearly written next to it “20mg per dr” …
FUCK! And of course, I’ve been doubling my 20′s since i got the prescrip, b/c i’m supposed tob e on double dosage, so i’m fucking running out of them. but i can’t get a new one b/c somewhere between the pharmacy, the PPO and the doc’s, it’s gotten all fucked up. again.
but i’m much more mellow and tolerant on 40. it’s all gonna go straight to shit when i run out though and i become the old school monster. esp since i went on the meds b/c i couldn’t control it anymore and it’s just been getting worse (thus the raised dosage)
Created myself a bruiser (basher? something like that; it’s kindof the tank class) this weekend
He has the dark melee attack power, which is what my CoH scrapper uses, and invulnerability for defensive. In release i may change the latter, just b/c i know invuln was a really popular build just b/c it was so effective. not t hat i have anything against effectiveness. i juts like to NOT be villain_0023542 clone :o
But the bruisers have a nice feature. Fury. or rage, whichever. as they take damage, they get pissed off. whole old meaning to “you wouldn’t like me when i’m angry”. Went from my strong attack dealing half damage on a mob to my weak attack almost one shotting them. In the breakout tutorial area there are mobs of mobs, and they just keep spawningtoo. so i waded in and started attacking. and my health was down to half, but i’d blown through the group three times and was oneshotting almost everything i hit :o mmmm pissed off scrapper/tank!
so, when i went to take my shower this morning, i couldn’t get my hair tie out.
on and off during the day i tried, and it wouldn’t budge. when i got home,i finally cut it out. and my hair didn’t go anywhere. apparently i got it so matted, tangled, and knotted that the hair tie had become one with my hair, but wasn’t really DOING anything anymore.
i ended up spending 45 minutes washing my hair. pulling, tugging, tearing, rubbing in conditioner to help it losen up. oi. but as much as was involved, i was DAMNED if i was gonna cut it that short!
DAMNED!
i still need to go and get a couple inchesoff again, to deal with the frays and split ends and everything that this is usually a sign of :/