Monday: Took air conditioner back to Fry’s. The guy wanted to give me a hard time and asked why I didn’t notice the damage until after I took it home. I just said I was in a hurry when I bought it, and waited to see what else he would say. I guess he expected the manager to give me a hard time too, but the other guy just came and entered his code, and he seemed to be more distracted by the new data entry screen than by my return. Anyway, I won’t be buying any more major appliances from Fry’s… what a hassle that was.

Anyway, I went to dinner at Sneha (Indian), it was not as good as the last time I went there. I returned home and watched TV until late.

Tuesday: I went to California Noodle House again, and the soup was good, again. I figure since I have been Jonesing for Vietnamese food so much lately, I had better get my fix while M is away. (Hopefully she is having fun… I called her yesterday and she hasn’t called me back, so perhaps she is distracted)…

After eating I came home and watched a bit of TV, then went for a walk to 7-11 and came back home to watch some more TV. Smallville is excellent so if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Then I came over to the computer and sat in this chair and typed about four paragraphs.

In my future, I predict I will probably click “Post” and then turn the machine off and head for bed, though I might glance at a couple friends’ pages first. Bye!

I am switching my user pic to the “pain” pic this week, to show sympathy and support for gaaneden. Hang in there!

Friends (and you know who you are) – please, if you’re going to post quiz results, or anything with pictures in it, please put in an lj-cut tag!

If I have you bookmarked on my friends page, it’s probably because I like reading what you write, and you’re cool enough to pay attention to. Take that as a compliment! But personally I don’t really care for quizzes, because they’re 1) they’re basically ads, 2) they contain large pictures, and 3) it’s something you didn’t write, and I much prefer to read about what you think, feel, and believe.

Your journal is your journal, and please don’t modify it just to please me. I don’t often express discomfort at what other people are writing, since I’m assuming they are like me and they write for themselves, not for the enjoyment of others. It’s not like I am a paid subscriber to your private life or anything. But perhaps you care about the audience, as I do, perhaps as a secondary concern. In case you care about the readers, I offer this small bit of feedback.

(tyee, this doesn’t apply to you since your page is all quizzes all the time, I don’t read it, but you’re still on the friends list so you can see friends-only entries if they come up)

Good thing: Finally got the old air conditioner installed in the window.
Bad thing: It’s not quite powerful enough to cool the front room.
Good thing: We installed some curtains to separate the front room from the dining room.
Bad thing: Still not enough cooling power, or the curtains aren’t working well.
Good: Bought a new air conditioner on July 20.
Bad: New air conditioner is way too heavy to haul upstairs myself.
Good: My friend John helped me haul it upstairs! yay!
Bad: Haven’t been motivated to install it until this weekend.
Good: Motivated. Saturday.
Bad: AC unit has a corner caved in. Outside of case looks terrible.
Good: Who cares about cosmetic damage? I sure don’t. Bend it back out.
Bad: Whoah, there’s some copper pipes right inside there that look bent up too.
Good: Well I should probably test this thing before I rip the old one out of the window.
Bad: No cool air, fan just moves around air that’s the same temperature as the room.
Good: This thing comes apart for easy installation, maybe I should take the outside case off
Bad: Oh look, this copper pipe is bent all to hell in three places.
Good: Well I guess I should give it one more try, I wonder if I could straighten this pipe here
Bad: No good, the pump part heats up pretty good but doesn’t deliver heated liquid to the radiator.
Bad: OK looks like I’m going to have to take it back. Where the hell is the receipt?
Good: OK found the receipt.
Bad: Now how am I going to get it back down the stairs?
Good: Well I have been putting off buying a hand truck, might as well do that now.
Bad: Now I need to figure out how to tie this box to the hand truck because it’s so huge

Well, that was a burst of productivity with almost nothing to show for it. Damn Frys and their broken equipment. I’ll keep you posted.

Various ideas that may or may not become part of a story. Continue reading →

I went to dinner at California Noodle House, and had noodle soup (#7) spring rolls, soda lemonade and cafe su da (sp?). Everything was excellent. I also poked at the to-do list a bit more.

I am slowly cleaning up my desk. I guess I should put away some clothes from the pile on the bed so I will have a place to sleep.

I was dismayed to find a flea yesterday, jumping about in the bathroom. I killed it, but there are probably more. Well, we have been saying how we would like to get hardwood floors, maybe now is the time. Anyway I need to get some boric acid and sprinkle it into the carpet.

Well, Michelle made it safely to her plane, though it was too late to check her bag, it was small enough to carry on, so everything seems to have worked out. She is going to visit her friend amcnh.

I am not sure what I am going to do with myself for 10 days, but there are a few things on the to-do list I could do, I guess. (See previous entry)

I also plan to go to all the restaurants that I never get a chance to visit while Miche is here. If anyone would like to get dinner at one of the following, this week or this coming weekend, drop me a line! It’s always better to go with someone than to go alone.
California Noodle House (Vietnamese Pho)
Sneha (Indian) Santa Clara
Mongol’s (Mongolian BBQ) San Jose
Kingswood (Hibachi) Sunnyvale
Perhaps others?
And of course after she gets back we will visit
Mudd’s – San Ramon

This is the current to-do list. Both long-term and short-term items seem to be jumbled together. Hmm.
Continue reading →

Everything went fine with the Noc shift and with being on call this weekend, no big emergencies. I was a bit tired last week from a couple of early-morning wake-up calls, but that is not such a terrible thing. Since DB (my boss) and I each covered a shift, now we have some issues to take back to people about what was annoying or what could be improved. Now, about that status report, is it Monday already? (Hee hee :)

I have been trying to write at least a short entry each time I go to the friends page to read about others, so at least I am “doing my part”. Well, this is for selfish reasons really, since I enjoy reading other people’s entries, but it doesn’t give me practice in writing as much as actually updating my own journal, even with small updates.

My weight has been holding steady at 255, for about a month now. Actually it’s like 252 in the morning and about 256 at night, which I find quite amusing. I haven’t been working out much at all, but still watching portion sizes. It’s nice to know I can slack off a little and not immediately slide back, but it’s been a nice lazy month off and I would like to start losing a few more pounds, thank you. Going out for a walk is not so appealing when it’s 90F outside.

I have been playing Neverwinter Nights quite a bit. I have finished Chapter 1 and promptly went on to …play Chapter 1 again of course! However, this time I chose a 7th level character to start (thank you DM mode) instead of 2nd level, mostly because I wanted to see how well the game adapts. It seems to scale pretty well, the encounters were about the same difficulty I thought. For example, where a 2nd-level character might meet two guard dogs, my 7th-level character met two Shadow Mastiffs there. I want to get as much detail as possible so that I can start to design my own worlds with some level of detail.

I actually got the Linux NWN server to work, so if anyone wants to play along with a multi-player game, let me know. I may try to get some people to join me for Chapter 2, at about 8th level, and I can enter as DM and level people up or down if desired. In terms of creating my own game, I’m not sure if I would want to script it all out, like the official story modules, or create a basic “shell” setting and then possess various NPCs as appropriate. I’m pretty sure I don’t care about distributing my modules to others for their private amusement, so I will probably take a combined approach here, and script out a lot of things but leave a little wiggle room in case the characters want to go off in an uncharted direction.

That’s all for now!

I’m taking a shift in the NOC today to fill in for someone who couldn’t make it. (Actually I’m here now and it’s almost over, 2 more hours to go.) It’s not as insanely boring as I feared, I have my laptop playing mp3s and I’m just relaxing, it’s cool. Nothing has really exploded yet.