If Christmas is code for everything breaking, then yes

it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

First up, I bought the Dark Knight Rises two-disc DVD and watched the movie again, put the special features disk into the DVD player, and forgot about it for a week. When I got the inclination to watch them, the player couldn't read the disk. The computer did, so that ruled out a bad disk. The player refused to play any DVDs. Time for a new player.

My parents gave me money for Christmas and early to boot, and blu-ray players were on sale at Best Buy. Upgrade time instead of spending the money on a bill like I've been doing for how many years in a row? But first I had to go sink another $220 into the car on top of the over $300 I put into it at the first of the month for new tires. Bought the player, decided against buying any blu-ray movies since the inner accountant was still pitching a fit about the money spent on the car. (Yes, we did the math before leaving home but that didn't change the reaction.) I also bought the upgrade to BookCAT so I could finish the update to my book inventory and a video game for the rest of my Christmas.

Sunday became laundry day by default since I spent so long in town on Saturday. Started the load, worked on editing, turned CNN on for the Conn. shooting coverage, and it was about an hour before I went to swap the load. Mustard streaked into the house a little freaked out.

Now the washing machine has been on a slow death spiral for ages now. It leaks between loads if you leave the water on to it, so I developed the habit of always turning the water off. This time it decided to never move off of the fill-up-the-tub portion of the cycle, and half the yard was watered by the time I checked. Then I discovered it was watered with hot water because Uncle Scott changed the settings the last time he used it.

"Why do you get jealous every time I have to spend money on the frakkin' CAR!"

Side benefit to semi-rural living, nobody hears you when you yell at inanimate objects. I borrowed Mom's washer to finish, and sorta priced new washers. And by that, I went to one website and twitched so hard at the prices listed, I didn't look anywhere else.

I stayed up too late last night finishing the book list in BookCAT with CNN on. Luckily, my book diet meant that I didn't have that many to add in. Now I have to make corrections to the list from the last backup. Mostly authors' names and title goof-ups and a few duplicates.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Hiatus Over

Thanksgiving is over. And the break between it and Christmas is probably the worst time to reestablish my groove, but I need to find balance again so my brain stops feeling like it must bounce around like a kangaroo on speed.

I'm prickly and grumpy and attempting not to take it out on anyone, which only fuels the itch to go find a punching bag and hit it. Violence, my default setting. That I'm pushing forward with changes is the true culprit and what the inner Beast wants to shred. Maybe I gave it too many changes today.

• Monday yoga routine
• New bra that I thought fit but it pokes me in the arm just like all the rest
• New purse that is a Christmas present but is fraying my last nerve because I can't keep it on my shoulder
• And I'm still annoyed that I left $20 worth of books I bought for me at my sister's in Texas!

*Inhale* Okay, admitting that has eased off the desire to claw at something. But it sucks that my first post in so long is bitchy and whiny.

• Despite not exercising, eating too much, and not measuring, I only gained three pounds since the last time I weight back in August.
• I finally found a website that explains why underwire bras stab me in the arm: I have a petite torso.
• I spent quality time with my family, especially my nephew.
• My coworkers told me how to fix my purse issue, so I can continue to use it without aggravation.
• My shoulder pain is finally clearing up enough to work out again.
• I worked out!

So why the hiatus? When I last posted I was attempting therapy with the Inner Committee on the whole fear of success issue. The therapy fell apart followed by the daily scheduled. Enough chores were avoided to cause a cascade effect on my life, which led to kangaroo brain on speed. Basically while I scrambled to keep up, I didn't want to blog about what a worthless failure I am. And the Inner Committee got off the hook and successfully avoided therapy for over a month.

I need to start it again because I had to be closing in on something uncomfortable for such an extreme reaction. Some time soon.

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The BookWorm

It's Friday Already?

Fifteen minutes late on a Friday, not that it ultimately mattered. After the insanity all week, Friday is my breakdown day. I was hoping it would wait until Saturday.

Paying bills is actually what made me late along with not getting up on time. Notice I'm not in bed yet, the posting time is actually accurate. Back on the bills: everything I thought I was doing to save money--like changing my phone plan--won't take effect until next month. I had to drop off this month's payment on a loan and misjudged the time. Then one of my coworkers called in with a car breakdown; we never saw her for the rest of the day.

After the deposit was delivered, I found a Fraud Assessment payment on my desk that I had missed yesterday. The scanner didn't work. Nobody's scanner worked because something was wrong on the other end. That was 9am. We opened mail, I put my returning check letters together, and the scanners finally came back on at 12:30pm. That set our scanning today's work back by hours.

More mail came in at 3pm, at least four full batches. Another coworker couldn't arrange a later ride home, so she left at 4pm. Since I wasn't going home until I had finished batching and had matched all the assessment payments with their copies. Yes, before we mail out the invoices, we have to make a copy for our files. This year we had to make copies of the amended invoices and keep the wrong invoices. Then we have to match the coupon the companies send back with their payments to the copies. I had two days worth of batching that I needed to match up and then separate what we are going to have to refund.

I left the building at 8pm. 7:15pm made twelve hours at the paying job.

I'm still waiting for the caffeine to wear off so I can go to bed. I'm getting there, finally. Plans for tomorrow: grocery shopping and then avoiding the public for the rest of the weekend. Hopefully, my brain will turn on so I can do something creative with it.

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The BookWorm

Twelve-Hour Work Day

Started on July 9, 2012: It doesn't happen often, but when it happens it is killer. I'm typically the first one in at the paying job around 6:30am. My shift runs from 7am to 3:30pm with an hour-long lunch break. Today I didn't get to leave until nearly 6:30pm and I didn't get the full lunch break.

July 1st is the beginning of our assessment season. We mail the insurance companies invoices June 30th (or as near as the calendar allows, we fix the snafus as they appear, the payments trickle then gush in, and the Department gets its operating budget for the next fiscal year. But every year there is a snafu.

Last year was the Great Address Disaster, when we lost count of how many invoices the Post Office returned to us because another division decided keeping the addresses updated was too much work. This year is so much more worse. I didn't even want to blog about it over the weekend (Author's note: and I've been too busy to type this up for two days now).

All the assessments are based on a percentage of the written premiums minus some lines that are exempted by law. Life premiums aren't assessed but half of Health and Accident premiums count. Since we have moved to sending out invoices, we've never had to mistrust our totals. When I first started this job, we let the companies do their own math and then had to double check it. The companies never got the math right.

This year the IT contractors unveiled the new tax program they built, which included our assessments. We had trouble getting our invoices printed but we mailed them out right on time. Then we came back to work after Happy United States Day to find out that over half of the invoices totals were wrong. The computer program included Life premiums, and all the excluded lines from Property and Casualty, printed out invoices that we mailed for companies that are exempted and have never had to pay.

Monday, we finally had amended invoices to mail to the companies (Yes, it took the contractors two days to fix the program to calculate the totals right.), which we got out on time at the expense of not batching the incoming mail. So we stayed late to get that done. I also have the joy of answering the emails of the companies who noticed something was wrong and contacted us, but another coworker took the phone calls so I ain't complaining about that. Then we had to separate the payments that had already started coming in: the ones that are the correct amount and the ones that aren't. We don't want to cash any checks when the company doesn't owe us a payment (those are getting sent back with an apology letter). The payments in which they overpaid we still haven't figured out the best way to deal with them.

Tuesday, more of the same but without a mail-out I got to leave at 3:30pm. But it's always something new to make the IT contractors fix. We found a company that was missed completely. 83 Risk Retention companies (which are exempted) were still listed as owing the Department assessments until I got those taken out.

Wednesday, I hurt from the base of my skull to my tailbone because my back ties itself into a pretzel when I'm stressed. New things that IT contractors have to fix: just found a company who we changed contact information last year was mailed to the same wrong address this year, which we were promised wouldn't happen when we took over updating the addresses. Wrong payments outnumbered the right payments that have arrived so far. Hopefully by the end of the week, the mail-out will reach the companies and the wrong payments will stop. We still need to contact the companies who owe us less than what they sent, because we really don't want to refund over 700 companies if we don't have to and we're pretty sure they don't want to wait for their refund checks.

Lunch is over and the companies are emailing.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Why Do I Leave So Many Tabs Open?

Lincoln High School in Walla Walla Tries a New Approach to School Discipline - Suspensions Drop by 85%: I sincerely agree that this approach needs to be moved into all schools.

Jezebel: Rock the Slut Vote If you're as tired of old, white men telling you what to do with your body as I am, you should be voting.

Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake! No matter how you feel about Stephen King's writing, he grew up poor and was a poor adult with a family to support when Carrie sold. He understands (a hell of a lot more than Mitt Romney EVER will) why people need government safety nets.

LASERs I'm providing this link so you can educate yourself what new bonehead moves the state Legislature is trying to pull. I need to find a spot of Zen and write up my coherent "I'm a taxpayer, a state worker, voter, and a reader, asshole. Don't you dare try to pull this shit!" letter to my state representatives. Zen, so I don't cuss them out. But this stance of we want government services but don't want to pay anyone to do them is bullshit. And then to tax us for the joy of working for the state government? Colbert, take over please.

Thanks.

More for me than anyone else.

The Earth is warming up. The rate of warming has increased in the past century or so. This corresponds to the time of the Industrial Revolution, when we started dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases warm the planet (hence the name) — if they didn’t we’d have an average temperature below the freezing point of water. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which is dumped into the atmosphere by humans to the tune of 30 billion tons per year, 100 times the amount from volcanoes. And finally, approximately 97% of climatologists who actually study climate agree that global warming is real, and caused by humans. -- Bad Astronomy: More Debunking of the ex-NASA 49 climate change deniers

Matthew Vines: The Gay Debate: Homosexuality and the Bible He has deconstructed the argument with the Bible and it is AWESOME.

Another moment of AWESOME Caine's Arcade. This will be a charity I'll donate to when I can because this amount of ingenuity must be encouraged for the sake of us all.

Lifehacker reviewed KanbanFlow and I decided to give it a try for a few reasons. Namely, I keep looking for a GTD list tool that doesn't let me oops forgot anything and actually encourages me to finish projects but also keeps the repetitive tasks that should be habits by now but aren't at the forefront. Two: KanbanFlow has limits built into it (can only have three tasks In Progress at one time), so I must chose what I'm doing and I'm aware of the choice. Three: felt like it.

It took three days to put in all my lists, but it was time well spent. First discovery: holy crap, I list a hell of a lot on my weekly to do list and rarely accomplish a third of it. Not a new revelation, but it was time to clean off the Big Rocks list and keeping my choices narrowed down to three in progress.

Second discovery: I meant to go through my writing projects and close a lot of them out. The list says I'm still writing most, when all I have left to do is publish it at the Library. Oops.

Third discovery: I wish they had included a copy 'n paste feature, but now that all the repetitive stuff is in, I don't need it as much.

Fourth discovery: I scheduled my timed stuff by 15 minute intervals, so using the Pomodoro timer doesn't mesh well, but it has a nice loud ding that's audible over the podcast I was listening to.

Writing Projects: Now I need to set aside some time to clean off the list, but it doesn't look like it will be this week. I haven't had as much free time at the paying job to concentrate on Stellar Gift of Death and been crashing hard when I get home, 7:30 pm bedtime. Why I haven't a clue. I did find a free map making program so I can make a legible map of the city for Forget the Sun, when I have the time and brain power to learn it.

This weekend is tentatively scheduled to be spent with friends and Marvel-trademarked spandex. Plans are still unformed as of today, but I do need a break from the housework and computer work I've been doing for so long. :p

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Another Week Down

I think the rush is now over. At least, the mail levels today have been normal Tuesday levels and I have time to catch up on posting before I start timing the writing. I finished the beat sheet for Forget the Sun, took a week off, and then have been plugging away at Stellar Gift of Death. The plan (so far that I have one) is to continue concentrating on finishing Stellar’s out-of-sequence scenes, then switch back to Forget the Sun.

Part of the reason my focus has been so not there, TV to watch. But there’s so little I watch I find it hard to feel guilty. The real problem is WHEN they air the shows (no DVR and I tried the taping thing, I still need to watch the third season of Castle). Three days in a row with late bedtimes, and I am a cranky girl who doesn’t want to think. However most of what’s on the TV now are wrapping up their seasons so soon I will sleep again.

Justified: I only watched because of Neal McDonough, but this show soon snagged me as a fan. I don’t know if I’m a fan enough to continue to next season, well, I probably will if Limehouse comes back.

Full Metal Jousting: the History Channel’s show about real jousting and real training for it. And it was a competition for $100,000. I was rooting for the Red team and none of them won. Better luck next year! Seriously, I wonder if they are going to let previous competitors come back.

Shows you already know I love: Castle and Bones. ABC should have ordered more episodes because this spacing the new episode’s out in two-week intervals so the finale falls on May 4 is whacked. Especially how every time they have air a rerun limited to this season (good), and it has never been the few episodes I missed! (WTF?) Bones moved to a new night but it works for my schedule.

Shows I’m trying out and am now probably a rabid fan of: Finder, Once Upon a Time, and Grimm. I adore Walter, the Finder, brain injured war vetern who can see all the patterns no one else can and generally doesn’t give a damn about societal niceties, but I will accept the fact that this is Fox and Fox is stupid so I probably will only have this precious, precious season. Once Upon a Time has me sitting on a list of names these people have on both sides and timeline notes because I should write first before I try to unsnarl the clues. Grimm: this show has dragged poor Nick’s development so damn slow I think it can become the Monroe Show and more people will watch it. The world is fascinating, so I haven’t wrote it off yet.

Dancing With the Stars: I’m watching and voting, and now the other channels have filled up Monday nights so that makes it hard. I’m rooting for Jaleel White.

The light pole saga, or as I like to call it, the new pain in my neck. A couple of weeks ago, Entergy put a stake and a notice that a new pole was going in on our neighbor’s property. The speculation has run the gamut: one of my cousins finally take the piece he inherited, new line getting strung to the cousin at the end of the driveway, new wires getting strung to the cousin at the road. Friday, I found out what it was for when I went out to get Mustard and found my front yard lit up by the new outdoor light.

This light streams in through both my bedroom windows because it is aimed at the driveway and not anyone’s house but mine, so many yards away. Who has issues sleeping with light? That’s would be me. So far I haven’t suffocated myself as the covers go over my head to make the orange glow go away.

Dad got a hold of the cousin who ordered it and he promised to ask Entergy to put the light on his side of the pole. I sent Entergy a complaint to put a lamp shade on it or something. But I think I’ll still buy something to blackout my windows just in case those efforts don’t decrease the light pollution.

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The BookWorm

Some Weeks Should Have Warning Labels

Computer, commute, tire--hey, I'm off the C's! Well it deals with the car so maybe I haven't left the C's at all. let's add crying to the list. I spent a good chunk of yesterday's free time in a depressed funk because of what I have to pay out of the next check. Then I spent this morning working on a debt consolidation list on loan paperwork--namely confirming that the totals nearly equal to one of my take-home paychecks each month.

I didn't want to take out another loan to consolidate, namely because I can be the poster girl for "you can't borrow your way out of debt." And there's no guarantee my credit union will give me one, but if they can get the three biggest albatrosses off my neck for a lower amount that can come out of each paycheck, I may get some breathing room. Breathing room especially important since a second job is not happening.

So I did that math and left for the paying job. After commute hell yesterday, the drive in was smooth and I was ahead of schedule, up to the Capitol building. That's where my tire blew. I managed to get into a parking lot near my building. Roadside assistance changed it to the donut so I didn't lose any time, but buying a new tire was not in the budget!



At this point, I am beyond ready for this week to end. And I think my car got jealous that I wasn't planning to spend any money on it beyond gasoline. Right now, it's been half the day and nothing has blown up, maybe I can work on Stellar Gift of Death.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

What now?

Yesterday was computer, today was the commute. Interstate 12 Open Following Early Morning Wreck. Luckily, I left home late, otherwise I would have been under one of those pipes. But I got caught in the snarl to find an alternative route into Baton Rouge. There's only thee ways to cross the Amite River and also the huge reason why we need the loop project that idiots keep killing, and I was stuck on the north of I-12 side. When I finally reached Magnolia Beach Road and it wasn't moving either, I called in that I was going home.

I had plans of catching up on chores, figuring out my budget for the next paycheck, and writing. Writing didn't happen. Mom co-opted me for a couple of hours, and budgeting the paycheck put me in a funk that was not conductive to fighting with the manuscript. I'll make up for it tomorrow.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Love Affair with TV Monitor Over Already

I didn’t think I would be disillusioned over hardware before the sore feet. Well, I was wrong. The whole reason I used the TV is I didn’t want to deal with moving the monitor and its sensitive cord and I was hoping to transition to watching things on the computer more. I thought all the kinks were ironed out.

This morning was a whole new kink. The margins of the desktop moved off screen on all sides. I spent an hour tweaking everything and researching what could cause this. When I finally stopped to get dressed, I had managed to get the taskbar back (except for the Start Button) and the highest screen resolution, which is too high for the recommended setting.

So tonight’s project will be shifting the monitor and seeing how to kink the cord so it won’t put the images on the monitor in the green spectrum. It’s like viewing everything with Emerald City sunglasses when that happens.

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The BookWorm

Weekend over... what?

I thought I'd be posting about the nice new sink I spent two days putting together. Problem is it's still NOT together. 4 trips to Lowe's and I STILL don't have the missing proper part to keep the drain pipe from leaking. And the only reason I'm not going back to Lowe's right now is that they close early on Sundays.

*repeated headdesk*

Tomorrow morning will be spent cleaning up the construction mess. I'm too pissed off to do it without taking it out on my tools right now.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Two for two

Thank you to all our fallen heroes who paid the ultimate price. Happy Memorial Day to the rest of us enjoying the holiday.

It's been an interesting weekend, like a mild version of the Chinese curse. :p Friday, it finally dawns on my parents that they need to tell me what my paternal grandfather had done Wednesday that FINALLY made Dad put his foot down and tell Mom she wasn't going down to his house to help his father any more and consequently I don't have a second job any more.

It lasted longer than I thought it would.

By Sunday, the senile old bastard (and before I hear any grief about that, my great-grandparents and my step-grandparents were the ones who loved me and my sisters like grandchildren should be loved and they're all dead.) cut Dad out of his will because Dad wasn't jumping up to go help him. I don't feel sorry for him; he has spent a lifetime building up this karma.

Second not-good surprise: my aunt by marriage tried to arrange a blind date for me. I nipped this in the bud, but the real irritation--besides the why don't you believe me that I'm HAPPY single, damnit! feeling--was I told her that's not how I want to meet this guy. Mom and I outlined a plan that wouldn't put my on display and make all my self-conscious freak-out flare up, and she completely ignored it for a group thing with her church who I've only met two other members of! So who would have my back if it totally flopped? Bueller? Anyone?

So far, my weekend clean-off the project list task has been having the best progress. I cleaned up the outline for Stellar Gift of Death, put a door draft guard on my front door, found out that I can't put off dental work any longer and scheduled it for June, watered the big plants in the yard, cleaned the fridge and freezer and rearranged the shelves, cleaned out the pantry and rearranged the contents slightly, caught up on dishes, and have dusted 2 rooms. I still have 21 items on my list to do on top of my usual chores, but if they don't get finished, they'll be ready to pick up next Saturday. If I don't have a new second job by then.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Rizzo is sick again

I finally got home after 9pm last night. And this morning Mustard blinked at the empty driveway and was confused about going outside when it didn't look right.

Left work at 4:30, after a day that ended up being more blah than good. Interstate traffic had thinned out, so I took that route. I had just passed the I-12/I-10 split when my engine gave a little jolt, power steering went away, and the car decelerated quickly. The engine malfunction indicator light popped on and then the low oil pressure light came on. I got the car to the side between the overpasses getting traffic on and off I-10.

Called roadside assistance, then called my parents, then it was a sit and wait. The M.A.P. patrol van finally found me at 5:30-ish. My parents found me by 6, by 6:20-ish, the tow truck finally reached me. Me and my parents then found the mechanics that my roadside assistance recommended who had already closed for the day, and waited for the tow truck. He was a sweet guy, but we didn't get the car dropped off until after 7:30. Supper at IHOP and then home finally after 9:30-ish.

I haven't heard from the mechanics yet, but they just opened an hour ago. I have a phone number, but I'm going to give them a little bit. Plus I just woke up really.

What I'm dreading is my parents to do the sit-down-for-the-facts-of-life talk and to tell me it's time to get a new vehicle. Rizzo still isn't paid off and I'm terrified with a trade-in I will be horrifically upside down with a new car. I want to pay off a car and continue to drive it until I can pay cash for a new-to-me one just once in my adult life!

Midday update: The mechanics called me soon after I posted. The timing belt broke and it will cost $791.29 to fix. I mostly worked it out with my parents and they left to take my grandfather on a trip to Mississippi. And locked their house up tight.

I'm right next door. Without a car.

They left their second car, but the keys are inside their locked-up house. And who has been living next door for eleven years come August and STILL hasn't been given a set of keys to their house for emergencies?

Yeah, I hope the mechanics finish my car before they close today.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Not a happy camper

The commute has stopped being a pass through Purgatory and has now moved into Hell.

I went looking for current images, but there doesn't seem to be any. Usually, I would provide my own but it's a trade off between driving and photography, so probably won't happen. Geaux Wider has an interactive map showing where the issues are. I take the I-12 corridor since it is the most direct route between my house and the paying job.

Yesterday, it took me two hours to reach the paying job and the day never recovered after that. Plus dodging out of the way when a semi decided to cross the yellow line into my lane once I was past the construction zone mess and should have been free and clear. Today it took an hour. I'm used to the evening commute taking that long but the morning commute has always been lighter and finished around 45 minutes, provided there are no accidents. So clearly now everyone is getting up with me to beat the awful construction traffic and they are slowing down to watch the work.

I finally got a schedule that works for me and now I have to adjust it AGAIN. And during daylight savings time when it is nearly impossible to go to sleep because it's not dark enough outside! Annoyed doesn't come close to describing it.

Options: I don't have many. If I leave later to avoid the traffic snarls, that means I need to change what time I start the paying job and when I leave the paying job. I'm saving that headache for shifting to a 4-10s schedule. (A day without driving! Setting a leaving hour late enough to miss the crappy evening commute!)

After filing the above under "not likely to happen unless the state government shift to open for four days a week in an effort to save money," I'm left with leaving home earlier. Right now, I'm aiming between 5:45am and 6am. So if I move it up by thirty minutes, that means leaving between 5:15am and 5:30am.

*GLARES at the daily schedule*

Doing that without changing my wake-up or bedtimes effectively wipes out my entire reason for getting up so goddamn early in the morning: doing the frakking chores while I still have energy to do them.

Shifting everything up so I don't have to remove anything from the schedule, I need to wake-up at 3:09am and goto bed at 7pm.

*headdesk* Great I already have no social life and no television show watching time because I turn into a pumpkin at 8pm. IT ISN'T EVEN DARK YET AT 7 P.M.!!!!!!!!!!!!

I asked about going to 4-10s. Won't fly, our division is too short-staffed right now. *headdesk*

No money for a housekeeper. And no time for chores. Clearly I need a TARDIS for my commute. That would solve everything. And apparently would stop attracting other vehicles to my front grill. I took the surface streets to avoid most of the snarled-up Interstate and a dude started driving his bicycle straight at me! And he wasn't wearing a helmet! He dodged because I had the right away and collusion was avoided but STILL. The last thing I need right now is a wreck.

So yeah, I'm looking for a slightly used TARDIS. Hyper-active Time Lord doesn't have to be included but of course I wouldn't send him away either.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Where Did the Weekend Go?

Belated Happy Valentine’s Day! Or if you watched Bones last night: Happy St. Valentine's Day Massacre! and pass a tommy gun over here. :D

All the plans I had for last weekend vanished under graph paper. It was an avoidance tactic, but I figured I had earned it. Thursday the 10th, I drove past an Acadian-style house with four rooms across the front and tried to see how that would work with my house remodel—it didn’t.

[IMAGE OF NOTEBOOK SKETCH] Oops, forgot to scan that sketch once I finally got the scanner working last night. Trust me, it was making a rectangle out of my house that could only be navigated in a circle.

When I got home, I Googled “two-story Acadian house plans” and found Authentic Historical Designs LLC. Unlike a lot of house plans for sell which just look like the same house with different colors, there people based their designs on existing houses.

I was inspired. I will give credit to the two-story remodel to my ex, who first brought it up as a solution to add more square-footage to my house. But these house plans showed me how it could actually work. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday making outlines on graph paper. Why graph paper instead of house design software I’ll get to later.

Stairs gave me fits since I don’t want to cut the floor of the original house. Upstairs bathroom gave me more fits because I couldn’t use the sharing one design I liked with the stairs. At one point on Saturday, I was seriously wondering why I hadn’t gone to school to be an architect because straight lines on graph paper I can do and if I had I would know if these ideas would work. :p

Which as of right now, I don’t. IF I build/add on this addition, I would have to turn all this over to a licensed architect and have official blueprints made. DIY Diva: The Evolution of a House Plan details what they went through. But as far as giving me everything I need and lust after in a house, I don’t think I did too badly for an amateur. And the footprint fits in my yard!



Let’s start with the second-floor, which is part of the house I live in now. I open the closed-up door between my current bedroom and the front porch again and the current living room becomes a bedroom too. The current bathroom and current office are both removed to become sitting/dressing rooms/something for the bedrooms. The current kitchen and back bedroom (which are made out of a pine lean-to to the cypress house) are demolished completely for the up-to-code new bathroom, stairs, and library.

I didn’t want people walking through the bathrooms to get to their bedroom; feels like bad Feng Shui and even if it isn’t, it makes me uncomfortable. One of the house plans had this ingenious set up between two bedrooms, and the only changes I had to make is to move the doors and add a way out through the sink chambers.

The back room was built to house the staircase, and then I realized that all that wallspace could be floor-to-ceiling shelves that my books wouldn’t have to share with a TV and DVDs, beds, or computer desks. This is where a professional needs to put in the windows so they won’t hurt my books.

Stairs: I don’t do well visualizing 3D space, so I want a pro to go over the math on these especially.



Now for the totally new first floor! A matching porch is a feature in Acadian-style plantation homes, so I incorporated it. The front door opens into the Great Room, which will probably be where the TV ends up. To the south side of the house, there is the hall connecting the first floor bathroom with two more bedrooms. The bedroom facing the front will be my computer office. The one closer to the kitchen will become an exercise and craft room, but both should be able to accommodate extra guests.

The great room and hall lead to a larger kitchen with room enough for a dining table. From there to use up space created around the staircase, I put in a storage room for the house, a mudroom corridor to the garage, and a laundry room. The first floor ends with an attached garage and a store room accessible through it.

Making it prettier to look at: Last time I got on a plan the remodel kick, I tried using Google SketchUp but never could get the hang of it. Then I moved to another freeware program and couldn't put a roof on. On a whim, I bought HGTV’s Home Design & Remodeling Suite.

Oh where to start with how much I hate this program. HGTV should be ashamed to have their name on it. Impossibly hard to figure out how to use the tools, never could make it understand that the house sits on pilings (all I was trying to do was build a virtual model on the current house to plan a bathroom remodel), and never could get the roof to look right. Then printing out a plan with the measurements, what came out could only be read by microscope and I couldn’t change it!

NEVER BUY THIS PROGRAM!!!!!!!

So I’m looking for a new home design program, but this time I’m searching the reviews first before buying. The names that keep coming up with high ratings are Chief Architect Home Design Suite 10 and Punch! Home & Landscape Design. Chief Architect Home Design Suite 10 offers a 30-day free trial of their Pro version, so I’m leaning towards them. If I can learn the trial version easily, they may have my business.

Playing with Chief Architect Home Design Suite Pro: The tools are easy to figure out and they have tons of tutorial videos on their website. But the two issues I had off the bat I can't find the solution to.

1. The mouse pointer becomes target lines on the grid where you draw the floor plan. -- I'm sure this is a matter of turning something off, but I couldn't find it and coupled with issue two, it messed up my ability to draw a rectangle properly.
2. I couldn't read the temporary measurements. -- If I zoomed in close enough to read it so I could see if the wall was long enough, I no longer had enough room to draw the rest of the house.

Mostly, I think I was too tired to deal with it by turning features off and nobody else has claimed it as a problem in their Help sections (probably because it is so simple to turn it off :p).

But what I did find cruising through their Help section was instructions on how to import a scanned sketch and use it to trace the program's version with the bells and whistles. So that's probably what I'll try to do this weekend, though not to the exclusion of everything else.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

I really hate to start a new year this way

I still have no Internet at home. And I'm so ready to reach out and strangle someone over it. It's supposed to be on by Thursday according to the last customer support person I talked to. What kills me is that I was not told what to do when I called Monday morning!

Now I need to go do something else that will calm my blood pressure down.

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The BookWorm

I'm nearly convinced I have a busted capacitor

There is something underneath the slightly off-kilter capacitor and if it's not a trick of the light, there is a slight bulge on it.

Craptastic.

The good news: My RAM, fans, hard disks, DVD burner, audio card, ethernet card, modem card, monitor, and printers are all decent and should be able to move to a new machine.

Not so good news: CD burner gets cranky, USB ports are 1.0 (I think), and the graphics card is original with the computer. The monitor needs a new cable, but I have figured out how to tweak it to fix the color issue. The tower may or may not be salvageable thanks to the switch issue I've been having for years. Dad's supposed to be getting new cases though, so that maybe a free fix.

Bad news: buying a motherboard and a DSL modem at the same time.

So I'm probably offline until next Monday with only some borrowed computer time to check in. Biggest aggravation: my brain finally kicked into gear yesterday and I have things to upload to the Library. That's something I really don't want to do at work.

Hopefully this is an uneventful Wednesday before Thanksgiving, even though we are a woman down in the office. Hopefully everyone who is traveling to or through Baton Rouge will do it EARLY so I can get home at a decent time tonight. As opposed to 6:30 last night, after leaving work at 4:30, to cover a distance of 45 miles.

If I don't get to contact blog readers again, have a Happy Turkey Day! For non-U.S. readers, have a happy un-Holiday!

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The BookWorm

I Don't Think I'm Addicted

But three days with only an over-sized paperweight on the desk has reached irritating status.

DSL Modem is probably dead and I had to reinstall everything to be functional once again. Well, last week the computer developed a will-not-stay-on problem. I thought it was the temperature acting up again, but it still cut off despite having the case open and a desk fan blowing into it. I was already having issues with the switch on the power supply, maybe the power supply has gone kaput.

Saturday a friend suggests another possibility: a capacitor has gone bad on the motherboard. So I'm looking at images of those and I'm not sure if that has happened or not. Ugh!

Thursday, I submitted "Covenant of the Restless," but I couldn't get into the mood to work on anything with the computer in pieces. It really doesn't matter, but at the same time irritates so much I don't want to be in the same room with it. *Shrug* That's going to make for an interesting holiday this week.

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The BookWorm

This is troubling

My computer decided being closed off from the Internet isn't enough fun, and has started shutting itself off and on. I found out on Tuesday morning. I had temperature related shut offs a few months ago, but it hadn't been a problem since I rearranged the computer components. But I also had the AC on then. So I downloaded a program I thought could help me track what the internal temps actually are and see if that is the problem or if my power supply has gone to crazyville without the rest of the computer.

Last night, it wouldn't even stay on long enough for me to transfer the files and try the program out. Even with me opening the case and aiming a desktop fan into it. I'm not having high hopes for the drop in ambient temperature to help either.

If it's willing to cooperate tonight, I think I can get into the BIOS setup and at least turn on an alarm to find out if it is the temperatures doing it.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

What Will It Take For a Win?

Getting to the internet failed again Friday night. A real doozy: computer says everything is connected fine, but none of the programs can update or go anywhere. So I called tech support for the DSL Saturday after my company left. Exhausted everything they could do, problem still unresolved, so they recommended I call in the for-pay tech support.

Sunday after I try shutting off the firewall and virus protection and still can't pull up a website, I call in and charge a one-time issue to my phone bill. First call's final solution: it must be an embedded virus so do a clean install of Windows XP. Second call to make sure I did the clean install properly after I had backed up everything I could to the external hard drive (the program folders kept having fits). Third call was because I still couldn't connect even with a fresh out of the box install of XP. It couldn't find Windows updates. Third call's final solution: the modem has gone bad (even though I can access all the setup stuff for it) and I have to buy a new one.

Final straw for last night: I finally figured out a solution to make an area to stack piles in, moved the piles to it, and now I have to shift the piles again to reach my shelf of computer software I have to reinstall. *headdesk*

So no progress with Elizabethan sea dogs this weekend, my headspace has been too present-day. I'm going to ask Dad if he has a spare DSL modem before I go buy a new one, just in case that isn't the issue. I'm supposed to have a dial-up back up connection but I have to reinstall that too, and I'm not sure if that is worth the hassle.

Also shifting the set of bookshelves in front of the telephone jack has made me realize I need a better set of shelves there and on wheels if I don't want to cut a hole in the bottom shelf to access the phone jack.

Today's plans: finish the edits to "Covenant of the Restless" on paper at least. Reinstall what programs I can to the home computer.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

PHONE!

I have phone. I have DSL. I have happy thoughts.

Apparently demanding a credit for time of no service really does get them out faster.

Read Free!
The BookWorm