Over-Scheduled Weekend

So how much did I accomplish on my list?
Stuff to finish:

• Bloodwork
• Corset
• Cutting out the mock-up for bridesmaid dress
• Mock-up for bridesmaid dress
• Dishes
• Budget
• Empty inbox of all financial papers
• Catch up on website hours
• Catch up on writing hours - edit LJ header file with proper word counts

Instead of feeling all giddy that is done, I'd rather pull my hair out that I didn't finish everything. It's a big mess of can't win.

Anyways, bloodwork did not make me faint and I rewarded myself with Doctor Who. Major thoughts: I just saw a giant eyeball go "oh shit" and run away. "I've put a lot of work into it." (The Doctor referring to Earth.) And a kid raised by the Doctor in the TARDIS. Oh, I know the powers that be won't do it. The Doctor deals with too much potentially scary stuff to subject a child to, but still. Think about it for a while.

Evidently, I'm going to have to work on the rest of this list during the week. No matter how tired I am. No matter how I don't want to deal with the items on the list. No matter how late I have to stay in Baton Rouge, though I'm hoping that won't be necessary this week. I still have my rewards in place. So onto facing Monday!

Rewards for finishing a project:

• Watching Castle: The Last Shaft
• Watching Castle April 19th episode
• Watching V April 13th episode
• Watching V April 20th episode
• Watching the Good Wife
• Watching NCIS: Truth or Consequences
• Watch Doctor Who April 24th episode
• Watch SGU April 16th episode
• Watch SGU April 23th episode
• 30 minutes of video game play for each finished project once I run out of TV shows

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The BookWorm

A fire alarm is great way to start a Friday

So in the office with my supervisor trying to solve a problem with the online payments statement and the fire alarm goes off... at 8am. Spend the next 45 minutes outside waiting for the all clear. It wasn't a drill but the building didn't burn either.

I had to stop at Wally World before work this morning and bought two pairs of jeans in a 16. Going up instead of down. I'm not happy with weight gain, but the concept of watching what I'm eating flew out the window a few months back. I'm stressed over money and I run to my cravings when I'm stressed.

Next week I really start five minutes of exercise every day.

Amazing how a simple thing like getting more sleep can make you feel so damn good. This week has been filled with irritants and I have been sailing above all of them. Now I still haven't caught up on doing stuff at home, so this weekend will be fun attempting to do just that.

Stuff to finish:

• Bloodwork
• Corset
• Cutting out the mock-up for bridesmaid dress
• Mock-up for bridesmaid dress
• Dishes
• Budget
• Empty inbox of all financial papers
• Catch up on website hours - edit Ref. Wiki images
• Catch up on writing hours - edit LJ header file with proper word counts

I'd like a clean slate of a house to start next week off with. That will be a novelty.

Rewards for finishing a project:

• Watching Castle
• Watching V
• Watching the Good Wife
• Watching NCIS: Truth or Consequences
• 30 minutes of video game play for each finished project once I run out of TV shows

Budget needs to become a daily item on my To Do List. Basically because I am a stupid twit and will ignore it until I'm in trouble. Hopefully daily reminders will keep the accounts balanced.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Castle experiment failed

It's been so long since I used the timer recording function on the VCR, I forgot that the VCR has to be turned off for it to work. So I didn't get any Castle. *head desk* I'll remember to turn it off for V tonight.

Now I'm going to see if ABC.com will let me see the episode I missed and if my computer's sound system will be nice about it.

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The BookWorm

SiteGround is mad at me

Why the Library is offline: my account is suspended until I take care of (in their terms get it off our server!) my songs directory. So they finally caught up with me. And I'll deal with it, good sport that I am, but I can't do anything until I get home.

So now I get to figure out what to do with the embedded songs. I really like having that feature in my stories, but apparently the music industry doesn't.

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The BookWorm

Sunday update

Side effect of waiting until the television set dies before buying a new one, I'm stuck with a heavy-ass TV. I did get the wires switched and lost a little video quality going through the VCR, but the timer should work to tape Castle and V. So Monday night I'll be in bed at 8pm. :D

Dixie Carter dies. Julie "The Terminator" Sugarbaker on Designing Women was a role model, fictional role model but nonetheless, Dixie Carter was a wonderful woman and actress. I need to get the series on DVD.

So I need to change the headlight that burnt out in the car and then all my dirty jobs will be finished and I can sew.

Poor Mustard is shedding like crazy. I'm wearing black jogging pants with orange calves where he has rubbed against me.

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The BookWorm

The Schedule Is Not Working

The next entertainment center must have wheels. Yes, I can change the wires so the Direct TV signal goes through the VCR and I can tape it, but it became such a pain in the ass to get to the wires, I gave up and just watched the episode Monday night.

Then I don't want to wake up on time the next morning, so chores get skipped. And then no energy left to do them when I get home from work. I can't remember the last time I exercised. What also isn't working is the amount of stuff I'm bringing with me to the paying job. While I'm never bored, I am slammed with what do I do right now? indecision. The list of Big Rocks doesn't bother me, but I think I need to only pack two things (one web hour project, one writing project) for travel every night. Don't know how useful this will be since I never seem to do anything at night. I can't figure out how to squeeze it all in.

I'm still tired and it makes me feel helpless and hopeless. It's a good idea and I can make it work.

So that has been my general mood all week. I got at least six hours of sleep last night instead of five and this morning was loads better. Except for inexplicable pain in my left hand; no obvious cause or swelling but it is painful to make a fist or extend my fingers and push with it. Weird.

Doing a little bit everyday works as far as staying on top of chores. But it's not working for me with less sleep. So if I manage to get the TV components rearranged this weekend, do I still need to reconfigure the daily schedule? I was thinking of dropping things, but all the chores I need to do. :p So the answer is getting more sleep.

Another recommendation I ran across is starting off exercise with five minutes a day, then add another five minutes the next week until you reach thirty minutes a day. If I can get the chores under control, I should be able to squeeze in five minutes.

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The BookWorm

Yeah, I just went bye-bye

The A-Team Trailer

Who had no clue? ME!

Okay, if you're going to just reboot the original story, this doesn't look too bad.

But the van, *whimper* the van.

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The BookWorm

Spontaneous combustion of hair

Let's establish what we know about the subject moi. I am not a first adopter of anything. While I'm not an Luddite, I don't see any hurry to jump on what everyone else wants to do. Usually because by the time I do, everyone has jumped off to something else. But when I do latch onto something I like, I go overboard and can't leave it alone. I have three blogs, enough said. I'm bitched at work for constantly being on the Internet. My focus SUCKS when trying to ignore updates and pings, and reading what everyone else is doing and I don't write. (Probably a huge contributing factor as to why I feel I get more done with a longhand first draft.)

I think Twitter is a stupid waste of time unless you are organizing a revolution or a protest like Iran did last year. I don't care about what you are doing every five seconds. And I will strangle anyone who says I need that.

The last time I did anything with MySpace, I found it to be written to give morons access to a website and since I know HTML and code my own, I got irritated beyond belief trying to use it.

Yeah, I hear the stammering "buts." No, I DON'T see a difference with Facebook. I have email, I have blogs, I have websites. I am a person who exists with plenty to say. Until I have a published book to promote it will not help me on the job (in fact will probably negatively affect my job since I MUST play with the new thingy I found). And a vast majority of the time, I don't want to be found by people who are only interested in pestering me for more fanfiction faster, which was the reason I stopped using IM.

And despite explaining this very succinctly to people, I am flooded with multiple requests to "join Facebook." Including the latest email today, which was probably an innocent query, but my hair burst into flames.

So rather than go screaming out of my workplace and wait for the nice men in white coats to show up, I put up a poll. You have two weeks to convince me I should a) drink the Koolaid and join the damn thing that I will NEVER update (seriously if I can turn on email alerts and forget it I so fucking will) b) and joining it will not interfere with my life (but it will and I'll never get any more fiction wrote again).

Two weeks. That's it. After that point I will start using the three strikes in response to the pesters. Strike one: assuming that person does not know that I don't want to do that and politely refuse. Strike two: when brought up again, give a lowball reason as to why the answer is still no. Strike three: Get graphic because they asked for it.

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The BookWorm

SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Castle renewed for a third season!

Thank the gods for the return of scripted television! (And it is well-written.)

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The BookWorm

I officially hate today

I'm all so happy underneath the soul crushing lethargy of not-enough sleep because newsletter is going out, project crossed off list, PROGRESS!

And then I see that when I uploaded the story, I neglected to upload the graphics.

Screw it, the newsletter's going out. I'll just add a disclaimer to check back for images.

And I'm crawling into bed as soon as I upload the images from home.

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The BookWorm

New Week Must Be Better

Somebody explain to me how this happens on the biggest pair of work pants I have in my closet? I understand thread breakage if the waistband is straining to go around my torso, but that does not describe how these pants fit that are now held on my a safety pin.

I've reached the conclusion that I should restart my exercise and eating primal regime on April 1st. I'm hoping the Feast of Fools were make my contrary nature behave itself.

Hmm, I don't think I can play with Mediafire while at work. I maybe wrong but Regulator sure goofed up after I downloaded a fanmix.

Yeah, I had a slew of computer issues at work that kept me from typing up the blog posts I had written last week. Now I'm glad I skipped them because my angst that I'm a despicable human because I can't keep a clean kitchen gets old and shouldn't be inflicted on other people. The useful bits:

• Not going to bed until the list was finished was keeping me consistent.
• 15 minutes is long enough for most chores.
• Perfect Girl sees I fell off the wagon and prefers keeping me pressed down in the dirt because I will never, never, ever catch up to the damn wagon so why bother. Unfortunately, she only gets halfway through her statement before the ADD Kid who hates feeling bad gets distracted by a pony ride and we're gone to do that instead.
• The only way to make Perfect Girl shut up is to do what she's telling me I can't out of fear of failure.
• And yes, it takes a week of reflection to realize the above four points. Last week was a doozie is my only defense.

So I have been stabbing at the chores in 15 minute intervals. Some days have gone better than others. What really screws me up is going to bed too late.

I need to break down and buy blank tapes and figure out if the VCR connection is right to tape Direct TV or get a DVR option. Because it doesn't look like they will be moving the shows I'm addicted to to a saner viewing hour for me. :p

The next two weekends have much of wedding craziness filling them. I'm only a bridesmaid, so it's not like I've neglected to tell anyone about a major development in my life. :) But it does mean I need to sew Thursday or Friday nights.

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The BookWorm

Ignore unless you really want the story

Back in Sept. 2009.

(They redid my work computer two days ago and I have to update Firefox so I can reinstall FireFTP and deal with images my normal way.)

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The BookWorm

Aw fuck

And there goes the rug out from under me again. Census Bureau just called back and said the job they offered me is only available during the day. My name is right back in the system again and she was positive that my score would bring me up from the next available evenings/weekend slot, but that doesn't help that sinking despair that I'll never get current, much less pay off the bills that just crashed down on me.

It's not that I'm unwilling to work. I just don't want to have to work Convergys again with the fun of sleep deprivation. But every time I apply for part-time work, I never get selected probably because I'm over-qualified and already employed. I didn't redo my budget calculations based on the expected income since I was going to apply it directly to getting current, the emergency fund, and then debt snowball and that can wait until cash is in hand.

So time to go lose myself in something so I don't end up crying on the job.

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The BookWorm

Today just got a helluva a lot better

The Census job came through! I start training in two weeks. $13 an hour, $0.50 a mile for travel, and the cutoff is 40 hours a week! *Snoopy dance!*

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The BookWorm

Wanted to see how much I acomplished

Work Big Rocks

• Financial paperwork is planning the budget for this paycheck and March.
• FFGarret posts: counts as website hour: need to write one and edit the other and post.
• Challenge Fanmix: counts as website hour: need to write entry and post for after contest
• BMFM: Turbo: counts as writing hour: email former beta readers since I fell off the radar
• Tin Man: Kink: counts as writing hour: editing
• Zy's Novel: counts as writing hour: add background material to wiki
• Strix: counts as writing hour: add background material to wiki

Home Big Rocks

• The inbox: I have divided it into financial paperwork and everything else. And the financial paperwork is the smaller pile! It's not often I get to say that. I need to buckle down and concentrate on just the inbox until I find the bottom.
• Back bedroom: seal the leak
• Phone: Set up the new voicemail
• Taxes: DO THEM!
• Tin Man: Dragons & Memories: counts as writing hour: need to link to Ref. Wiki and depends on Ref. Wiki moving online
• Tin Man/Alice: Making Whole: counts as writing hour - make title banner and other illustrations
• Tin Man: Pirates: counts as writing hour: editing is waiting on beta reader
• Circulation Desk Dev.: counts as website hour: upload changes to Prod. Site (i.e. getting Ref. Wiki online) and a massive headache because of issues. Find the duplicate entry and see if I can connect MySQL Workbench to the server
• Library Dev.: counts as website hour: upload pages once links to Ref. Wiki are fixed
• FFGarret Dev.: counts as website hour: fix CSS--find out why the Zen-created theme doesn't show up on the local server and start it on the prod. site if need be
• Challenge Fanmix: counts as website hour: make cover art
• Challenge Icons: counts as website hour: make them.

KICK ASS! that was a lot. My big rocks list is a whole lot shorter this week and I couldn't be happier.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

No more hair pulling!

I got home on time today. Who would've thunk it? I sure didn't when last I updated. Since I got home on time, I started with the website updating issues. Namely get the Reference Wiki UP!

MySQL Workbench was a total waste of time. I finally made it connect to a database and I was squeeing so hard... until I realized it had only connected to my databases on my local server and it still refused to talk to the production site. *headdesk* Briefly researched what Dreamweaver is capable of and found out the answer was not what I need it to do. So I turned to BigDump, really nervous about using it.

The nervousness was uncalled for because IT WORKED! I had to tweak the export file just a little and then it was done during a commercial break during the Good Wife. Then I had to do some FTP of some modules files that the update script found issues with. But after that Circulation Desk is up with the beginnings of the Reference Wiki!

I still need to take care of some minor maintenance issues, but I should have that done before I have to go to work tomorrow. I'm going to bed happy. :D

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Tuesday not much better

The roof is still leaking and the mail is still pouring in. I hope to get some typing done during lunch.

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The BookWorm

Last Week, Last Month

Thirty-three years old. Time management is still a work-in-progress, so is scheduling. And communication.

Friday: my birthday overall was good. My coworkers took me to lunch, but then I had to work overtime for an hour and got stuck in traffic for two. Got home to no Suzanne yet. Call Mom. She wanted to take me to supper when Dad's available, and no Lipizzaner Stallions tickets because I made plans with Suzanne. I couldn't afford the show, so no flying, leaping horses. :( Hopefully I'll catch them about twenty years from now when they come through again. And there's my communication and scheduling issues example.

Saturday and Sunday: all my groceries take too much time to cook so we ended up eating out more than I had planned on. I knew we wouldn't get as much sewing done as we would like to, but I thought there would be enough time for cooking and sewing. And that would be time management issue example.

Progress on sewing: I have my bridesmaid dress material, and we got the second mock-up of Suzanne's chemise made. We decided on throwing out her bought corset because it does not fit properly. Victorian style may need help to adjust (make a few inches squish somewhere else temporarily) but one person should be able to get it on thanks to the closure in the front without lacing the thing every time. And I gave her a boost about slowing her mother down. There's no point to starting a mock-up for her wedding gown if the foundation garments aren't ready. Measurements change--especially with a corset.

I didn't keep up with marking off the to-do list during the week. I maintained what progress I had made, but nothing got ahead by leaps and bounds. Today wasn't the best start to a fresh start; I spent an hour hitting snooze. *Shakes head*

So now I'm at work and would rather be home with my energized self working on the home list. Since I'm at work, I have to gear up for the work list. It's not that I don't want to do that stuff; I just don't want to do it first. :p *shakes head again* Time to suck it up though.

Well, all my whining "i don't want to do it' is for naught. The mail finally came ten minutes before noon and we have been swamped ever since. March 1st is a deadline for taxes and company licensing paperwork, but it looks like this will be a day I never get to leave work.

Sadly, I wish that was a joke. It's already 3:30 and I'm just starting on my first batch. I usually leave at 4. But not tonight. And so much for my plans for cooking when I do get home. I'll be lucky to get there before I fall asleep behind the wheel.

5pm and still at work. Luckily, I think the end of the tunnel of mail is in sight. (Translation: 5:30 should have me looking for dinner and waiting for the traffic to clear.) Birthday dinner with parents is getting pushed back another day. *sigh* I shouldn't have thought of that, now Hungry is kicking in.

5:30 was overly optimistic. 5:20 and I have another twenty-five checks to do. And possibly another batch after that since I don't know what people have stacked on their desks. I'm not a batch stacked, so if it comes up that no one has grabbed the last batch in the bin, I'll have to do it. I'm hoping someone else gets to it first.

Oh I am an idiot! *headdesk* I bought a whole box of granola bars on impulse this morning at WalMart. Did I bring them up with me to snack on? Nope, still in the trunk. *headdesk*

At least the rain has passed through. Oh good, 6pm is cut-off time and we can go home!

6:30 - stopped at Raising Cane's for supper and to let the traffic go away. Left there at 7. Made it home through sluggish but moving traffic around 7:45. No Castle so I tried to start on my computer/website work. No connection to the Internet. I tried every trick I know to get the connection back, no luck.

Call AT&T DSL tech support. Did not time how long it took to get to a person, but once I did it took us about an hour to get me registered again so the connection would work.

When I saw no Castle, I thought I'd have an early bedtime. I ended up going to bed the same time I would have if Castle had aired and I watched it. :p

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The BookWorm

Found the Culprit

Had around twenty ounces of lemonade on top of my usual drinks and no strange brain fog. Though apparently my snappy mouth is back according to my coworkers "You should watch how you talk to people" *Eyeroll* EVERYBODY gets a little snap to their voice when they are interrupted right in the middle of counting and I don't have a sugar voice. And if I was supposed to say "please" for something I consider can wait until I'm done *eyeroll again*

That'll be my self-righteous tendency baring its head. I will be on this job for 10 years come May with the same coworkers. But I have no idea how long it will take for them to decide that is a personality quirk that isn't going away and they can stop lecturing me about it.

Back to the topic I wanted to deal with: no strange brain fog last night. So keep water on the desk to sip throughout the day is back on the must do list. I slept better last night after washing dishes. So I don't know if the old tale "Never go to bed with a dirty sink" is true or if the combination of steam and dish soap makes me sleepy. *shrug* Now to figure out where I stand on the Big Rocks.

Work Big Rocks

• Financial paperwork is planning the budget for this paycheck and March.
• FFGarret posts: counts as website hour: need to write one and edit the other and post.
• Challenge Fanmix: counts as website hour: need to write entry and post for after contest
• BMFM: Turbo: counts as writing hour: email former beta readers since I fell off the radar
• Tin Man: Kink: counts as writing hour: editing
• Zy's Novel: counts as writing hour: add background material to wiki
• Strix: counts as writing hour: add background material to wiki

Home Big Rocks

• The inbox: I have divided it into financial paperwork and everything else. And the financial paperwork is the smaller pile! It's not often I get to say that. I need to buckle down and concentrate on just the inbox until I find the bottom.
• Back bedroom: seal the leak
• Phone: Set up the new voicemail
• Taxes: DO THEM!
• Tin Man: Dragons & Memories: counts as writing hour: need to link to Ref. Wiki and depends on Ref. Wiki moving online
• Tin Man/Alice: Making Whole: counts as writing hour - make title banner and other illustrations
• Tin Man: Pirates: counts as writing hour: editing is waiting on beta reader
• Circulation Desk Dev.: counts as website hour: upload changes to Prod. Site (i.e. getting Ref. Wiki online) and a massive headache because of issues. Find the duplicate entry and see if I can connect MySQL Workbench to the server
• Library Dev.: counts as website hour: upload pages once links to Ref. Wiki are fixed
• FFGarret Dev.: counts as website hour: fix CSS--find out why the Zen-created theme doesn't show up on the local server and start it on the prod. site if need be
• Challenge Fanmix: counts as website hour: make cover art
• Challenge Icons: counts as website hour: make them.

That makes things much clearer. Depending on "what do i want to work on" has had me dwelling on the stuff I can only do at home, which is aggravating when I have things to do while I'm at work.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

How Did I mess Up Sleep?

Yeah, after two good wake-ups, today was a lousy late start. And considering one of the good was hampered by no electricity (that problem has been solved though), and I went to bed on time, I don't get it.Admittedly, I haven't stuck to 'cross off all items before bedtime' goal this week, but last night I had no concentration. No blame on TV because I had it on music. Even with my list in front of me, I had no mental clarity to follow it.

Besides bedtimes, the only other health cause I came up with is I didn't drink enough. With the holiday crazy schedule, I got out of the habit of keeping some ice water on the desk while at work. I'm going to pay attention to that today and see what happens.

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The BookWorm

This week will be a doozy

Positive from last week: I may not be meticulous about my inbox yet, but I haven't left dishes in the sink before going to bed.

So far, I'm not holding my breath that this week will be stellar--despite my birthday on Friday. I spent three and a half hours Sunday cleaning, putting the shelves up, getting the contents back into the back bedroom so I can use it again. Midnight a thunderstorm rolls in and I heard the unmistakable sound of water hitting the plastic bucket. After all that work Saturday and Sunday, we still managed to miss the damn leak!

It's coming from the seam where two tin sheets overlap. I think we can seal the interior along with the exterior since I uncovered it now. So that feels fixable. But the aggravation levels aren't done.

I broke apart Sunday into writing and website work with the cleanup. It's the easiest method to make sure I don't sit at the computer too long or never take a break from cleaning. So an hour before bedtime, I found myself ready to upload the changes I tested for the Circulation Desk to the production site. Hold the applause; there's a reason why the production site is still in maintenance mode.

All the modules transferred over fine, I'm happily thinking I'll have the Reference Wiki up last night and spend Monday getting links pointed to the nodes, and phpMyAdmin won't import the local copy of the database. Keeps saying it can't find it and then it times out.

Before I pulled myself bald, I went searching if this was a common issue with an established workaround and found instructions for setting up MySQL GUI--a program that acts like a FTP client for MySQL databases (and does other things too). So I clicked away to get it, only to find out it has been replaced with MySQL Workbench and then got mired into them wanting me to wait seven days for a business license to clear. I finally got the open-source version downloaded and went to bed.

Despite not being asleep until after midnight, I got up early enough to have computer time. Program installed just fine, but I could not make it connect to the production site database. All the tutorials I could find are about the other nifty features MySQL Workbench can do, because if you need this program you already know how to make connections. *head desk*

I sent in a feedback form telling my web hosting company that their tutorial is out of date. I may have to go through the trouble ticket route but figured that can wait until I'm home and can actually follow their suggestions. At worse, I can cut and paste to create the Reference Wiki by hand but the whole point of a database is not to have to!

I have to double check that I'm not using two different version of MySQL, but I did have the same issue just importing a just made copy when upgrading to Drupal 6 from 5 (so I don't think that's the culprit). Maybe import in sections, but when the error message says it can't find the file to upload, I don't think that's the solutions.

So Monday is off to a great start. :p

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The BookWorm

Deconstruction Fun

You can see the black icky--potentially mold--on the ceiling sheet rock as a result of the leak. Since we couldn't find the leak from the outside, the goal for today was to take down the sheet rock, see how bad the damage is, find the leak from the inside, and plug it.



With the leak plugged and the AC window unit replaced, the moisture in the room that made the paneling warp and knock my shelving system loose shouldn't be an issue any longer. Then I could flatten the paneling and put the shelves back up.

It's all a patchwork job until I have money for a real renovation, which at this point I think will mean rebuilding the back third of my house from the ground up. Maybe Bob Villa will want to take it on for comedy value.



Silly me thought I could scour the sheet rock with a utility knife and I would only need to take half of it down. After that failed, I remembered seeing the TV experts would knock holes with their hammers. So I tried that. And discovered that not only are the walls a layer of wood with sheet rock on top, so is the ceiling! I couldn't make a hole to get my hands into to yank the sheet rock down.



Luckily, I remembered I do own a pry bar and that tool managed to do what the hammer hadn't. I finally got enough down to see the water damage was very localized. Good news, I figured. That must mean the leak is right above it. Take a shot if, you're playing the drinking game along with this blog post.



I got the water damaged board out, finally finding the rafters and more troublesome, finding a whole metal roof. Where the hell is the water coming from?

I went for help. Uncle Scott figured that it was probably coming from the ridge and then running down. So we finally peeked into my attic.

Confession: I moved in September 2000 and bought the house in December of 2005. When I had moved in, someone had taped black plastic over the attic trapdoor. Then we found the actual door somewhere else. I have been too chickenshit to pull down that plastic and see what was up there. I know the squirrels live up there and I'd rather have the ceilings caving in than to see if there was something worse than squirrels. I figured I'd have to replace the roof eventually and we could deal with the attic from that direction.

Take another shot, the attic is fine. Other than the holes that the squirrels get in and out through, there's no water damage, plenty of room, and fiberglass insulation. According the Uncle Scott, I could screen the squirrel doors, put down plywood, put in an attic trapdoor (maybe with the ladder built-in), and triple my storage space.

The water wasn't coming in through the any portion of the roof above the cypress two-thirds of the house, so that means the issue is in pine lean-to that was built on the former back porch. Mom wandered over while I was bemoaning the change in structural engineering.

"Look, I understand using what they had (my ancestors had their own pine mill at the time, hence the very strange use of pine in the lean-to). What I don't understand is the cypress part is built so well (actual studded wall covered in beadboard, squared off ceiling, the doors almost at the proper heights, etc.), and the lean-to is crap compared to it! Was there a generational die-off of knowledge? The one person who understood studs and framing died before they built the lean-to?"

"Probably," Mom said. "The cypress part was your great-great-grandparents retirement house that they built, and they were long dead by the time the lean-to was added."

Since gutting and starting over isn't in the budget yet (and I really want plans before I do that project), the concession reached was that another layer of Kool Seal should be put on the roof covering the seam where the lean-to attaches to the house to the end of the roof. Longer drywall screws should keep the paneling down and longer screws would reattach my shelves.



Uncle Scott pulled down the whole sheet of sheet rock while Mom and I went shopping at Lowe's.



I screwed the paneling back down while Uncle Scott applied the roof sealant. Take another shot, I managed to go through the wall into the kitchen with some of them. Rather than try to back them out, I decided to cut off the protrusions with the Dremel.



And that's how far five gallons of the roof sealant went. We think we have sealed the potential areas that the water was coming through with this application, but Uncle Scott wants to get another 5 gallons next weekend and finish.

What's left? Cleaning up all the sheet rock particles, putting up the shelves, moving the contents out of the living room into the back bedroom again, and watching to see if there is a leak during the next thunderstorm.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

The Baskets Are Winning

I got distracted last night by the NCIS marathon USA channel runs, and never made it to cleaning out the inboxes, office, or the hour I spend on website work. Woke up late this morning and didn't get a chance to touch them either.

Turning the TV to a show for background noise doesn't work, I'll have to put on music instead. Luckily, Direct TV had radio stations that play through the TV so the hour between Holmes on New Orleans and Bones will be a great time to experiment how that works instead.

Holmes on New Orleans is a special presentation of Holmes on Homes as they volunteered to build the first house for Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation. Canadians working nine weeks in the middle of Louisiana summer; yes, I am easily amused and alarmed. I don't think some of the kids were drinking enough water, Powerade, or Gatorade. Getting snarly with everyone is a sign of dehydration and heat issues. But it was filmed in 2008 (I think) so I guess everyone made it back to Canada safely.

In other things I have been doing, I deleted everything I had done experiment-wise for the Reference Wiki and reinstalled without CKeditor and table of content modules, and it appears to be working now (after I finally found the hiccup making all the links go to Wikipedia). One thing I can't figure out is how to change the default Input Format for just the wiki pages (which are renamed book pages). So I need to make sure the MediaWiki format is available to all users, and then write directions to please choose it. Or make it the default format after making sure it doesn't frak with the forums or newsletters.

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The BookWorm

What Am I Expecting to Get Out of This?

Not exactly sure what I'm expecting to get out of my kick to cross the list off before going to bed. Monday night was my first try. I missed my bedtime by an hour. Luckily, Tuesday was Mardi Gras, so it didn't mess up going to work.

Tuesday, I got to bed on time, and crossed everything off but my exercise hour and emptying my inbox. I have no idea why the inbox is such a hassle for me to stay on top of. Besides the fact that I dump everything into the basket and then don't deal with it. That's the same for all my procrastination piles.

I finally got to the back bedroom. unfortunately, everything I pulled out ended up in the living room and I covered my couch. The reason I hat pulling things out of the back bedroom is I always cover the couch and don't remember to uncover it before I'm exhausted. Then it becomes shuffling of the piles and it's just better to leave it until i can shuffle the piles back into the back bedroom.

My goal: I want the weekends free for big chores (like deconstructing the back bedroom to find a leak) and fun stuff, instead of spending hours catching up on what I should have done all week. I woke up this morning to a clean kitchen, and while the inboxes stare me in the face, Wednesdays are my days to clean the office so I have no excuse not to file the paperwork away. The goal doesn't look impossible.

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The BookWorm

Too Much on the Plate?

As I worked on my weekly review this morning, trying madly to get out the door on time, the reoccurring question of my life popped up again. Am I scheduling too much to do and then wallowing in guilt because I haven't accomplished it all? Usually, the answer is a simple "yes," but this time, I'm not as sure.

I ended up with a three-day weekend thanks to the weather, so I broke my backlog of missed writing time into fifteen minutes chunks and separated the chunks with chores and then things I have been procrastinating on. I never did make it to the back bedroom or finances.

But had I done better with taking my hours Monday through Thursday, that would have been five hours to spend doing something else. I'm not micromanaging my time and I'm proud of the editing progress I made, but I'm not using my time as well as I should. It's a struggle to wake up, it's a struggle to do my chores, and it's a struggle to ignore distractions.

So, besides needing to sit my ass at the computer instead of the TV, what other conclusions can I draw? I shouldn't go to bed before all my daily items are crossed off (barring sickness and if I have made a strong attempt to dent the procrastinated stacks). I really like this one. Too often I let myself get away with saving a chore for the weekend because I didn't do it in the morning and don't feel like doing it at night. And that really makes me sound like a lazy sod, doesn't it?

Let's not go down that path. I'm trying not to give into the cycle of beating myself up because I'm not superhuman. Nothing has a deadline to please someone else, so I don't need to panic over not getting things finished. This is all about establishing a rhythm to enjoy life. because I should be able to take off for a weekend and not feel like I let the house fall apart.

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The BookWorm

DSL faster than I expected

Yeah, I was giving them the seven to ten business days to turn it on, but I was surprised to find it on. I'm guessing someone didn't want to have to deal with it in the nasty weather.

Speaking of nasty weather, I'm home. No snow, but it's still raining and threatening to turn into winter mix. But of course, we employees get mixed messages. The new sources say stay home. But the COOP system, which we are constantly scolded to ALWAYS turn to first as the official what-to-do, hasn't been updated and still says come into work. I got screwed that way with snowstorm Jack. Glad to see nothing's been learned in two years. :p

9:25am edit: SNOW! It took it's sweet time getting here, but we finally have snow.


This is the best shot I have of it falling. Have no idea if it's actually going to accumulate as much as North Louisiana is getting, but I still think it's neat. As long as I don't have to drive in it and have power to use the computer at home.


And here's Mustard watching the raining grits.

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The BookWorm

I have phone again!

And should be getting DSL back next week, and got the monthly bill reduced. Now people can stop freaking out that I have died or fled the country.

I have no idea how many more bills I can pay with this check until I get home but the important one is on.

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The BookWorm

Should have known it

I don't know how I managed to do it but I have managed to do it. Again. *headesk*

The local development environment works fine at home. I thought I had set everything up to be portable, but here I am at work and I can't access any of my Drupal sites. And since I am at work, I don't want to tweak the Windows host file.

There should be a way to avoid this, but it has remained elusive to my Googling.

So that laptop I can't afford is looking more and more necessary to my life. And my nice simple question of what do I do to update the database but nothing gets erased as I synchronize live and test looks simple in comparison. (But no I haven't researched that.) *headdesk*

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The BookWorm

WE DID DAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"It's time to party with the Lombardi!" -- Jim Henderson, voice of the New Orleans Saints.

There is scoffing about power of voodoo and prayer. Well, how many people saw that field goal kick the Colts tried miss totally? *Cackles* Garrett made all of his, for new Superbowl record. And the Tracy Porter interception to run for 70 yards!

So I just hope all the national sportscasters and journalists who scoffed that it was even possible and wanted to hand the Colts the Lombardi trophy without the game even getting played are enjoying the crow they have to eat TODAY!

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The BookWorm

Cooking note

The next time I try the Thai Grilled Steak with String Bean recipe make the following changes:

• Use fresh herbs only: the ratio of the dried and frozen was a little overpowering
• Thicker slab of meat with more fat to cook off and add to the green bean mixture

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The BookWorm

Finances suck right now

2 out of 3 inboxes cleaned out, financial paperwork more properly stored for me to make heads and tails out of it, and so far only the phone and cell phones have been disconnected. *headdesk* Otherwise, I'm fine; I'm just broke.

I can answer emails at work. Use that to communicate with me.

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The BookWorm

Dorothy's a WhoDat?

A little explanation: Buddy D was a legendary sportscaster for WWL and the Saints and he promised that he would parade down Bourbon Street in a dress if the Saints ever made it to the Superbowl.

He died in 2005, never getting to.

His successor and former Saints quarterback, Bobby Hebert, promised to fulfill Buddy D's promise.

Well, it has finally happened this year. And it became an event. It is estimated that 85,000 people turned out for Buddy and Bobby's Brawds Dress March Jan. 31st as they paraded from the Superdome into the French Quarters and then proceeded to have a pep rally.

I didn't get to go (needing to conserve gasoline right now for getting to work), so I was checking out the video and picture galleries WWL has already put up when this one surprised me: Dorothy in Buddy and Bobby's Brawds Dress March.

I had no idea Dorothy was a WhoDat!

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The BookWorm

Hello World!

Been a while since I've been here. Dealing with paperwork are my plans for the weekend.

I'd say more but I need to put on some music to drown out a coworker making inappropriate comments.

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The BookWorm

I watched my first football game

WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FINISH STRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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The BookWorm

Having fun with Zen

I made the theme for the Circulation Desk with the Drupal Zen package, but I couldn't get the spacing right (or some of the colors but I'm dealing with them last) before I needed to go live. So I figure I would fix that before getting lost in developing the wiki.

So I turned on the wireframes, set up Firebug for Drupal, finally got the left sidebar not overlapping the tapestry and wide enough so the words were not making funky breaks, and turned off the wireframes. And the left margin shot over much farther than I wanted as well as the width shrunk so the words do funky breaks again. *headdesk*

Now, I will readily admit that CSS is not a skill I have mastered in my website building, but Zen makes sure to cover any possible CSS change and I think all the extras are confusing the hell out of me. First step, is to re-tweak what I had tweaked before and see if it will move back. If that doesn't work, I think I'll just start the whole theme over again. :p

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The BookWorm

But it's a dry cold

So I have arrived safely at work. They did close most of the area schools and with the wind chill keeping the temps ten degrees cooler than they are, I think it was a smart move. However, the rain fall dried up before the freezing point so no black ice.

No spectacular plans for the weekend. Staying home, staying warm, cleaning house, writing, website puttering, and figuring out what exercise routine I need to start and where to put it in the schedule.

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The BookWorm

Doctor Who: The End of Time Part Two

Okay, so I'm a few days late getting my notes typed up. I've been busy trying to meet the Tin Man/Alice crossover challenge that I don't know will actually happen.

The Master knocked on the barrel four times.

Outside shot of Gallifrey during the Time War. Gallifrey is SO wrecked.

Timothy Dalton is Lord President. Natch.

O.O Okay, it probably isn't any big surprise with anyone with half a brain but Dad and I had a conversation over Nine's tears when Tree lady figured out he was a Time Lord and thanked him for their sacrifice. "Dad, he's responsible. Whatever button had to be pushed to end the Time War that ended up killing the Time Lords and the Daleks, the Doctor pushed it." Dad never got past the Doctor isn't supposed to sniffle. Well, blonde lady at the table admitted that was what happened right before she got zapped. And now after seeing the whole thing, I think the Doctor didn't cast the net as tightly around the Daleks as he could have but made sure to snare the Time Lords.

I like the Visionary. She's my kind of mad seer.

The Master is having too much fun with the multiple copies of himself.

Wilf, don't antagonize the crazy Time Lord.

Master about the Doctor: "He loves playing with Earth girls!" Okay, helpless guffaws for the next half-hour.

The Doctor winked, Donna's defense mechanism, wow!

The Doctor's offer: it's not enough for the Master, not with the drumming driving him. SLASH ALERT!

"The rhythm of four, the heartbeat of a Time Lord." -- You manipulated that moment to make the Master crazy? Yeah, I also suspect voting fraud when you replaced Romana.

Master: "The drumbeat is coming from the end of time itself!"

The Doctor: "You know what I find amazing about you. After all this time, you're still bonehead stupid!" -- I need this as an audio file.

Wilf: "God bless the cactuses!"
The Doctor: "Cacti."
Male green alien: "That's racist!"

The Doctor: "WORSE RESCUE EVER!" -- also set off the giggles forever. Reminded me of one too many gaming sessions.

Wilf: "But we're in space!" Later, "I'm an astronaut."

The Master's body was born out of death and all it can do is die.

Pearl Lady: "I was lost so very long ago." ARGH! From "Journey's End" to now, Ten has repeatedly not taken a companion usually commenting "I always lose them." This does not help in identifying Pearl Lady because Susan was his first companion and he left her behind, and Romana was also left behind.

The Doctor: "I'd be proud if you were my dad." Okay, this is where my knowledge of Classic Who fails me, but I have a niggling sense that what has slipped out, the Doctor and his father were estranged long before he stole the TARDIS.

Wilf: "Kill him first."
The Doctor: "That's how the Master got started." -- I'm sure you had good reason, but boy doesn't that explain the hate-on for 800 or more years. And if you're killing someone who can regenerate, why didn't you FINISH the job? This is was the first version of the scene in The Ten Doctors webcomic but Leela understands the concept.

"Gallifrey rises!" -- And I just know Creation is fucked.

Two that voted against are to become Weeping Angels? Well, that certainly explains the Weeping Angels ability to manipulate time and how they want to feed off the energy of the TARDIS. Course that also raises some question marks about the next time the Doctor runs into the Weeping Angels. Does he know that his people were turned into them? Can the process be reversed?

Time Lords to spare! Yes, the Master is still trying to get a gazillion or more regenerations. You know this whole problem could have been avoided dear boy if you had regenerated instead of deciding it was more fun to make the Doctor cry. Oops, Timothy shut down that plan and saved humanity from being the Master forever.

Just in time for when planets collide! *Headdesk* You guys built black holes and you can't come back without putting two planets on a collusion course. Don't you know what that will do to Gallifrey's already wrecked real estate? Oh, Timothy reveals the true goal and it won't matter.

So exactly what do beings of pure thought and energy do if there's no matter around to play with?

And the Doctor has to live with pushing the button twice. *Squishes Ten*

Pearl Lady was one of the ones who voted nay and the Doctor recognizes her!

Timothy is Rassilon! Nailed it. Oh now, you should have told the Master you were sorry for making him crazy. Have fun zapping them inside the Time Lock.

Wilf is knocking; crap EVERYONE knocks four times. But that, oh that hurt.

Well, I think this is pretty good for a death/regeneration scene. Course the only one I remember seeing any footage of is Four trying to avoid the Watcher and then they merged into Five.

Donna: "Did I miss something? Again?"

Martha and Mickey got married? And Mickey finally butched up. I like it.

Luke and Sarah Jane! And at this point, I realized Ten is saying good-bye to his adopted family of Earthlings. *Sniffles* See Sarah Jane is always right.

JACK! And all the alien species we have seen so far that weren't outright baddies. GEORGE! okay Alonso. Started looking for Mitchell, before remembering that he had shot a historical movie about post-Romantic school of painters in between Being Human series.

Joan Redfern's granddaughter.

Donna and Shuan's wedding -- aw, he did the lottery trick again. And Sylvia has mellowed into an actual human being. "Borrowed a quid off Jeffrey Noble." Still like "Ten Years Later" the best. Wilf asks who Pearl Lady is and the Doctor looks at Syliva and then Donna. Now this is fuel that Pearl Lady is actually the Doctor's mother, and they didn't show the Doctor Who Confidential specifically for this episode, but people report that's who they say she is in it.

I'm a little disappointed but mostly ambivalent. Truth any of the three could work with everything shown. What disappoints is that I was one of the few fans who liked Eight's admission in the movie "I'm half human. On my mother's side." Not that be really NEEDS a reason to be an Earthophile (RTD stole my omnisexual so I'm borrowing this), but I like it for why he keeps watching out for the human race, why he gets so proud of their accomplishments, and so angry at their failures. And after Gallifrey falls, Earth is the only home and family he has left.

Doctor went back to see Rose and Jackie at New Year's 2005. And Jackie mention Howard the mechanic with the tow truck that opened up the TARDIS panel. :D That was nice and tidy and poignant without having to deal with the deal with Doctor 10.5.

MUST GET SOUNDTRACK!

The Ood! Across time and space.

TARDIS does not like radiation. Time to redecorate again.

"Still not ginger!" LOL

Observation of the night: the older the Doctor gets, the younger he doesn't mind looking. I think this was a point brought up in "Time Crash" which I still haven't seen thanks to bloody too high of pricing on DVDs.

Next series preview: Weeping Angels! I loved that alien species and maybe I will get my questions answered.

The Doctor uses a gun? I have to see the context for that scene.

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The BookWorm

FanFiction Personality Test Results

Your result for The Fan Fiction Personality Test...

The True Fan

OOC is blasphemy, canon is everything.

Once you fall in love with a movie, book or TV series, you are loyal like an old dog. You take fanfiction quite serious and use it as a substitute after the canon ran out.

You are probably a walking dictionary of your favourite fandom and you are picky about what you write and read. The closer to the "real thing" fanfiction is, the more you like it.

You rather explore a character in all depth, see new sides and learn more about them than creating new characters or mix up the situations they are in.

Take The Fan Fiction Personality Test at OkCupid

*Snort* No one is really surprised by this. Still, I wish some of the questions would let you pick more than one answer. Or had a sliding scale for choices. "I'm more this than that, but that is higher than zero."

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The BookWorm

Sherlock Holmes

It took longer than I had wanted it to, but I finally got to see Sherlock Holmes.

Final verdict: both DVD and Hans Zimmerman soundtrack are going into my meager Sherlock Holmes film collection. Stop now to avoid any potential spoilers.

Physically Robert Downey Jr. isn't the Great Detective, but he more than made up for that with his manic/depressive cycles and plucking at the violin as a thinking aid. I would have liked to see actual playing, but we can save that for the sequel. And the fighting. :D

Jude Law as Dr. Watson, Super Army Doctor! On a whole, I enjoyed this take on Dr. Watson, his military bearing and doctor skills were both used. And he has learned some of Holmes's deductive skills and can keep up with most of Holmes' train of thought. However, my forehead slapping moments also concerned him. One, no evidence whatsoever of the injuries that ended his army career and it is supposed to be fairly early in the Holmes/Watson partnership. Two, he gets wounded in the course of the case at the very least requiring stitches across his shoulder. Yet after this moment, he is in the thick of the fight knocking baddies around without any repercussion. Good lord, Watson heals like Wolverine!

Eddie Marsan as Inspector Lestrade: this is another role that usually goes to the extremes. Lestrade is often portrayed as an out-an-out enemy that Holmes runs circles around or idiotic comic relief. This Lestrade isn't stupid, and calls on Holmes when he knows he can't figure it out. But it is so underplayed that when he has to act for the bad guys, you know he'll be invited to drinks at 221B Baker Street for an explanation of the case.

Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler: perfect characterization and perfect performance. And I am so copying all of her clothes. Well, okay probably not the dressing gown. But the dresses and her waistcoat and trouser action wear are awesome!

The romantic angles are where a few puzzles remain. While it is canon that Watson marries Mary Morstan, she was Holmes' client in "The Sign of Four." The movie acts like that case never happened and Holmes has never met the lady who he feels is stealing Watson away (which actually isn't played to a slash level). It makes me shake my head, but I'm willing to let it slide because she shows her temper so well as a proper lady.

Irene Adler and Holmes is a bone tossed to the fandom. Honestly though, I think the Irregulars who don't ship this pair on some level are vastly outnumbered. There are a couple of key pieces of dialogue between her and Holmes that intrigue me. She tells him that she got their old room at the hotel. *Eyebrow raise* Okay, intimate relations already? Then after the climax of the film and tells him who her client is and how she has no choice but to work for him. "Everyone has a weakness. He found mine." And then the look she gives him could be read as "you're my weakness and he threatened you (which does happen)" or....

One of the more popular fanon items is that Irene Adler and Holmes had a son. Who grew up to become Nero Wolfe or someone else depending on which pastiche is your favorite. So what has my nose twitching, does the son already exist?

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The BookWorm

And the new year is FREEZING!

My joke has been I was preparing for a cold winter because of how well the Saints were performing. New Orleans had a hard freeze last night, down to the 20s. Now the Northshore, we get hard freezes regularly, but south of the lakes usually stays about 10 degrees warmer. Hence the cartoon.

I've already warned my coworkers that if I wake up and it's raining grits again, I'm staying home. Doesn't stick my ass.

The biggest aggravation is dressing in layers to be warm enough to survive the commute, but once at work, I want to strip down to a short set. I don't know if it's the combination of being under the vent and next to the window that collects a lot of sunlight during the day or what. I do know that I only have cotton panties and pants on my butt because my coat covers that area and it is usually sweating by the end of the day. Weird.

So far the 2010 has started off, not perfectly but nothing to bad to complain about. I do need to find more time for chores and exercise. I was going to start my weight lifting 90 day challenge again, but I've about decided with my painful lack of flexibility showing, I better start a 90 days straight of yoga challenge instead.

The New Year's party was a blast. Though I really don't understand how I managed to be the first human up at 8:45am when I went to bed around 3:30am. *Shrug* Still I had a good time and we decided we need to have more get togethers in 2010.

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The BookWorm

End of the Year

That got here fast. Everything I said I'll tackle in 2010, I get to start on Friday. :p I've made worse planning goof-ups. Actually I'm more worried about hitting deadlines with the holiday.

It's not that I want to be anti-social, but I need the decompression that concentrating on writing brings. When well-intentioned friends drag me from my home environment, getting that decompression is night impossible or considered rude. My family has actually been more considerate on this score, weird. It's not healthy to dread invitations.

WHEW, paying job decided to give us New Year's Eve off too. Lovely, I can spend the day getting ahead of the deadline and napping.

More cheerful subject: the local development environment finally WORKS! I am having a slight issue with getting MySQL to run as a service so I have to remember to turn it on every time the computer reboots. I haven't tested the portability yet; Mondays are always too busy for that kind of stuff. But I can finally start using it. *Happy dance*

I haven't figured out what I'm doing with the instructions I developed. They need a fair bit of editing to be less specific to what I'm doing. But do I want to give them to the Drupal Handbook? Oh look, submission fear rising from the deep. :p

Regardless, that's nonfiction and doesn't deal with my goals for fiction in 2010. And I still don't know what I'm doing! I know I'm going to type the kink story that I may not show any where, but it will count. I've put down on my To Do list to organize the background material into TiddlyWikis for both Strix and Zy's Novel. Can I say for certain that vampires or aliens have seized the brain? Nope, still in holding pattern there.

It's nothing to worry about, the muse and my brain usually work this way. I'll just chug along with the list until something knocks loose.

In bummer news, I've lost one wall of storage in the back bedroom. The warping panels meant I had to take almost all the shelving down before more screws popped loose. So I'm expecting major water damage to the sheetrock. None, best guess is the paneling was adversely affected by humidity from the leaking ceiling. The idea how to fix: find or buy a stud finder, nail paneling to studs, then screw shelves into studs.

Finding my parents' stud finder hasn't happened yet. Last night, while waiting for sleep to come, it dawned on me that the pantry on the kitchen side of the wall doesn't have sheetrock, so I could probably see how the wall was made. I got up than and there to see.

Background: the front half of my house is probably close to a hundred years old, but it is cypress and solidly constructed. The back two rooms have always been referred to as the pine add-on, and are younger but were probably built before home building codes. I already knew the outside walls are 2x6 laid flat and sandwiched between the siding and the sheetrock.

So I really wasn't that shocked to see the same thing in the back of the pantry. In fact, I should have remembered figuring this out back in 2006. *headdesk* So now the fun is to figure out how to fix the leak and make sure there isn't an invisible one above the wall as well as find nails and screws long enough to grab the wood but short enough not to end up in the kitchen.

That's the new action plan. No matter how emotionally satisfying gutting and starting over would be.

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The BookWorm

Thoughts on Doctor Who: End of Time Part One

First off, I GET PART TWO NEXT SATURDAY! *Happy dance* Okay this makes a little more sense knowing my history with Doctor Who on PBS. They would always show the middle of the block of episode dealing with the mission of the day. And then when you actually got hooked and wanted to see the next part, tomorrow night would have a complete different episode. Then SyFy jacking with how long they took to show series. *Sigh* I love grabbing the DVDs, but series four is $85!

Wilf finally made opening credit status! And I think he's officially the oldest companion--not counting Romana.

"Legend of the Blue Box" in the stained glass window; they call him the Sainted Physician. -- I love when those tidbits of the Doctor's influence come up.

Woman in the pearl necklace is played by Claire Bloom, who has quite the resume especially for British television.

O.O Well, no wonder Queen Elizabeth wanted to get his head in the "Shakespeare Code."

Yeah, saw the damn ring coming back. Did not expect the Master to have a harem of devotees. Secret Book of Saxon? Okay, why not, he wasn't that busy frakking with Utopia and winning an election and abusing the TARDIS back and forth.

It's never good when the Ood's eyes go red.

Bio-meteric-whatisit? lasted that long? Really? Time Lord DNA stands up pretty well.

GO LUCY!

"Between us we've got the city covered." -- Seriously, let me adopt Wilf as my grandfather.

The Master is now part grasshopper and Skeletor! (And that was such a giggle when the Doctor called him that too.) He's no Ainsley, but I like John Simms' Master. Completely LOONEY TUNES!

"Sound of Drums" flashback with a vengeance. Still not as creepy as all the humans drumming. Hoped the Doctor locked the TARDIS better this time.

Doctor finally notices he keeps running into Wilf; only three of four times now.

"Ten Years After" is STILL my fanon. Shaun Temple; I so tried to change that to Simon Templar.

Narrator is Timothy Dalton, snazzy robe, Rasslion?

Don't think gluttony with help your condition, Master. Oooo, he's knocking four times with the drumming. Time Lord Mind meld! The drumming is real?

"All these years you thought I was mad!" And for good reason!

Wilf stands at the "heart of coincidence" according to Pearl Lady. I have sneaky suspicion she's Romana.

My thoughts upon seeing Wilf's gun. "Will that thing still shoot?"

Doctor-Donna is still around?

Doctor getting into the TARDIS with Wilf on his heels and Sylvia Noble screaming: "You can't go with me."
Wilf: "You can't leave me with her!"

I know the blonde disguised cactus -- NINA from "Being Human" Oh that hair style looks good on you, hun.

I really hope Gwen kept better charge of the Torchwood stuff in Cardiff. Cause whoever cleaned up after Canary Wharf did a sloppy job.

Clever use of the Obama stand-in, and maybe some news footage.

Donna's not affected? Time Lord biology; can't remember that gooble-gook from the "End of the Journey." Donna's remembering and yes, they are going with the brain frying thing. Can't she catch a break? Hell, Martha got a better ending than this.

"The human race was always your favorite, now it's the Master race!" -- Okay, RTD, I forgive a lot because riding with the Doctor is tons of fun. But we meet and I'm Gibbs-slapping you for that line. Don't care if I get arrested for assault.

TIME LORDS! Time Lords looking an awful lot like Daleks there. So is Timothy Rassion? The Keeper? Vinyard? Some other Time Lord prick?

Inside Doctor Who: Yes, I got the not-good vibe from the Time Lords. Good job with that. Though when told how the Master came back (to help them win the Time War) my first shout was "How badly were you guys LOSING to save the homicidal maniac from final death!" I haven't trusted them for a while.

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The BookWorm

Computer fun

I took part of the cash I received for a Christmas present and bought more RAM. 1GB was the biggest card I could find that my computer would take, but the Geek Squad Agent at Best Buy assured me that I could leave in my original memory card since I had two slots still open as long as the total I put in doesn't go over 3GB (a limit set by my motherboard).

So now I have 1.25GB of RAM, and the computer is running the best it has in a long time. I just managed to get through my GMail inbox without getting a Javascript run error. I haven't tested the games I've noticed have a really bad lag time yet. I have a suspicion that will be fixed too, and I can't remember who told me "oh you have plenty of RAM that's not the issue" every time I bitched about the way the computer ran. I owe them a boot to the head.

Left GMail up while watching Doctor Who. No Javascript errors! Somebody really needs that boot to the head.

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The BookWorm

Busy Weekend

The sun is finally shining! And most of what I have to do is inside the house. :p

I did get out yesterday and found my new boots at Sears. I ended up with Covington brand, style name Paulette, which is really funny because that's my mother's name. Then I headed to Best Buy. I picked out the the LG 22x Internal Super Multi DVD Rewriter, and since I had gotten such a good deal on the boots, I also picked up Breaking Benjamin's new album Dear Agony for the song "I Will Not Bow" and AFI's Decemberunderground for the song "Prelude 12/21."

I had heard "Prelude 12/21" on a Tin Man fanvid that has been killed off YouTube since, but SEE there's not reason to go anti-pirate on fanvids! I bought this CD because of that fanvid! "I Will Not Bow" sounds like the Strix universe, and I think that's where I put their whole Phobias album.

I spent the rest of Saturday installing the DVD burner with a long break for dinner with Mom. I also made sure to find out if I could add more RAM to my motherboard while I had everything open. I only have 256 MB, and this could be why I have hiccups in programs and slow running speeds. There is room; I just have to budget for it. :p

Oi, physically installing the DVD burner took no time. Trying to get the software installed--that's went over three hours. I started only checking on it during commercial breaks from the Doctor Who Inside the Tardis special and Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars. While I waited, I listed computer plans:

• Setting up the portable local development environment
• Clean the duplicate files off the external hard drive
• Replace front power switch
• Replace chip fan
• Install more RAM
• Get a Dazzler DVD Recorder
• Get a scanner that feeds paper through it
• Get a new computer desk

Wonderful, I finally got to install Nero 7. I think I had to reboot five times. Finally, all done and it works! I watched Alice again to make sure that part worked. Now I need to testing the burning.

Thoughts on Doctor Who: BBCAmerica is showing The End of Time Part One on Boxing Day! This never happens with Doctor Who! I usually have to wait a whole frakkin month!

Holy shit, the lighting in his spacesuit helmet making his face a skull. Director, that was GENIUS! This episode really expands the argument that the Doctor is an incarnate of the god of entropy--if not the god himself. This idea came up with a discussion in Rich's The Ten Doctors webcomic:

Dave Says:
December 5th, 2007 at 12:54 am

I believe the Doctor’s best subject at the academy was thermodynamics, according to a conversation he had with Drax in the final part of the Key to Time series. Granted, this is the kind of thermodynamics that would allow him to cancel out the formation of a black hole with a supernova within the time vortex so as to allow energy to remain constant as evidenced in the most recent Children in Need special, but there you have it.

DrkFire666 Says:
December 5th, 2007 at 2:43 am

I think Dave is right. Thermodynamics does seem to suit The Doctor, particularly the 2nd law.

“Entropy increases… Yes daily, The more you put things together the more they keep falling apart. That’s the essence of the 2nd law of thermodynamics and I never heard a truer word spoken.”
–The 4th Doctor, Logopolis [Season 18 - Episode 7]

“Everything has its time and everything dies.”
–The 9th Doctor, The End of the World [Series 1 - Episode 2]

Rich Says:
December 5th, 2007 at 6:11 am

7th Doctor (looking at a broken machine he doesn’t remember building): No, looks pretty far gone. You’d need a genius to unravel it.
Rani (disguised as companion, Mel): But you’re a genius.
Doctor: Oh yes, I definately remember that.
Rani: Especially in thermodynamics.
Doctor: ….How did you know that, Mel?
Rani: You told me. You said it was your best subject at the academy.

-”Time and the Rani”

DrkFire666 Says:
December 6th, 2007 at 2:33 am

“Back when I first started, at the very beginning I was always trying to be old and grumpy and important, like you do when you’re young… and then I was you.”
– The 10th Doctor to The 5th Doctor. [Time Crash, 2007 Children in Need Special]

*Shivers*

He doesn't really like it. After all, he chose the moniker "Doctor" because he wants to fix things for the better. Sometimes, he can use entropy to accomplish that goal; sometimes he can't.

I think I'm sticking with "incarnate of entropy" because the Doctor trying to become a god is the scariest thing I have ever seen on the show. O.O "The laws of time are mine!" "We aren't just fighting the flood; we're fighting time itself!" -- Oh shit, he needs a companion. Donna said it best: "Sometimes, you need someone to stop you."

Course my other thought at the end of this and seeing the promo ad for The End of Time Part One is "Damn, talk about making it hard for Stephen Moffet." I trust Moffett. When it comes down to it, the episodes I want to watch over and over again, the ones I recommend that other non-Whovians need to watch have all been written by him. :)

I can't decide what I'm more excited by: the reappearance of Donna's grandfather or the Master or the Ood. Come on, the Ood are pretty damn cool: giant psychic hive mind of the universe!

So now it's Sunday. The Saints lost last night, but 13-1 is still a record for them and it doesn't hurt the true goal: Black and Gold in the Superbowl! I need to catch up on everything I didn't get done during the week, especially laundry since it's not storming. Let me really get started with today.

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The BookWorm

Number Crunching #163

Quicken Cash Flow = 730.99
STEF Total = 6.15

December Budget Meeting

Reconciling Quicken with bank statements: Reconciled up to Dec. 18th.
Reconciling last month’s budget: I didn’t make a budget the month before. My goal is to try to pay my bills, especially the house note, keep gasoline in the car and groceries in the fridge without racking up bank charges that equal half my take-home pay.

December 15th
Budgeting has too many systems and I’m not keeping up with them really well. I like the philosophy behind the GFD’s budget-to-zero spreadsheet, but I’m notoriously bad at filling it out. I need to get my hands dirty with Quicken’s budgeting features before deciding “ick, no like.” I have to make a plan for the month ahead and stick to the plan so hard I bruise it and me. Yeah, that’s a pleasant image.

In the spirit of budgeting, I got my numbers together for the December bills.

• Dec. 18th paycheck = $824.03 (take home pay)


• Must pay = $1132.26
  
  • Nationwide Mortgage = 429.13
  • Demco = 117.08
  • Verizon = 71.55
  • Liberty Mutual = 224.91
  • AT&T = 289.59


• Would like to Pay = 824.47
  
  • Citifinancial = 333.84
  • Republic Finance = 212.10
  • Chase Student Loan = 122.47
  • TeleRecovery = 45.00
  • Alpat = 62.06
  • TurboTax = 49.00

Notice a small detail of what I don’t have listed: groceries and gasoline. And I already have a deficit. *Pulls hair*

Good news: I got money for graduation presents. *Tears up* I totally didn’t expect that. I am spending some of it on a DVD burner for the computer and a new pair of boots, but the rest will go on running my house. I’m torn between paying things off completely or putting it on a reoccurring bill. Which is better?

December 18th
What have I paid

• Dec. 18th paycheck = $824.05 (take home pay)


• Must pay = $1132.26
  
  • Nationwide Mortgage = 429.13
  • Demco = 117.08
  • Verizon = 71.55
  • Liberty Mutual = 224.91
  • AT&T = 289.59


• Would like to Pay = 824.47
  
  • Citifinancial = 333.84
  • Republic Finance = 212.10
  • Chase Student Loan = 122.47
  • TeleRecovery = 45.00
  • Alpat = 62.06
  • TurboTax = 49.00

This leaves me with $160 in the checking account for fun things like gasoline and groceries. I may end up with more spare cash, since I have set back only $100 of my graduation present money to spend on the DVD burner and new boots, which I probably won't get to shop for until Saturday.

I also apologize for the sudden spamming of budget posts that don't really have anything interesting to say. :p

More will be coming on setting up January's budget.

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The BookWorm

Darth and Droids

This page is so full of awesome it made my day. But probably not the way people would think that the characters did something so awesome in the story, nope. That's not it.

Darth & Droids is set in a world where Star Wars never existed, so the movies are a roleplaying game. Now the players took some time between games (movies) one and two, and some of them played a fantasy game. They forgot to invite Annie (Anakin's player), so she doesn't know anything about it, but Pete (R2-D2's player) is still holding a grudge about how he died in it.

To catch up with current storyline, the GM is sick and Pete stepped in to run the session. And get his revenge for his character death in the fantasy game.

And this is the page I figured out that the fantasy game was the Princess Bride.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

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The BookWorm

Not a good week from crossing things off the list

I don't know if it's the rapidly changing weather or some residual graduation-is-over-stress-let-go thing, but I have had the hardest time concentrating on things I need to get done.

I totally missed the eye appointment I had Monday after work, but luckily rescheduled it for today. I get up too late to work, and when I get home, I'm staring at the computer screen until I remind myself to look at your list. I feel fine; just not here.

I did manage to get the modules fixed at the Circulation Desk and FanFiction Garret without breaking anything this morning. I ran out of time before I could start moving Alt. BM Site's. I divided the setting up a local development environment into nine sub-projects, so as of now, I'm two-thirds done with project one. PROGRESS!

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The BookWorm

Broke, where it counts

I had some crazy delusion that I'd actually get all caught up on my Number Crunching posts today. Down to three, and one of those I have all month to finish, but I feel so disgusted with the status quo I can't enjoy the things have been crossed off the list feeling. Basically, I don't have enough paycheck for all the things due and past due for next week.

My family and friends surprised me with lots of nice gifts and money for graduating that I totally didn't expect to get. I was thinking that I'd get to spend it on something big that I have been denying myself or maybe a few things I consider splurges. :( I don't know if I can justify it with the list of items I'm looking at now.

It's not the end of the road, and I'm probably halfway through the really dark tunnel. It doesn't look good right now because I am tired and need to go to bed. I'm buying boots (if I can find some to fit), I'm buying the DVD burner for the computer (and a new off switch), and I'm buying a few books I've been itching to get since they launched. I'll be uber responsible with the rest.

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The BookWorm

Graduation!

It's all official (even though I don't get my actually diploma for two weeks): Kindra Lynnette Coates M.A.

We had 1330 people graduating in this ceremony: the largest graduating class Southeastern has ever had.

I wish I had my pictures already, but I have to wait for those too.

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The BookWorm

"Did he just call me a vessel?"

First coherent thoughts on Syfy's Alice: "TIMMY, I missed you!"
"MATT, I MISSED YOU MORE!"
"O'Brien what are you doing here?"

Yeah, I skipped Castle, because I'm fairly certain I'll get Castle in reruns without horrid cuts and Syfy is not that reliable.

Overall, I enjoyed part one and I'm certain I'll like part two. I loved how they acknowledged the book and made it history of the world as well as using the characters as archetypes to fill. Working in Dinah the cat and the Cheshire Cat was inspired.

One Massive costuming dept. FAIL: "He must have slipped it in my pocket!" WHAT POCKET on Alice's dress? Yeah, the color combo was interesting, but I want to steal her boots.

Dad is the wise-old guy in the waiting room. Since Mom is Carol, I'm expecting his name to be Lewis.

*Squishes the White Knight* Matt Frewer, I forgot he was in this until he showed up. Where is my A-Team movie? *Sob* Really Hollywood, I figured out what to do with the old cast minus Hannibal and new hot young guys. Call me!

And I'm seriously in love with this rewrite of the Mad Hatter. Don't know if I'm shipping Alice/Hatter yet or just like them as comrades-in-arms, I guess that depends which side Jack ultimately ends up on.

Dr. Dee and Dum beat out Disney's version, which I had thought was super creepy before now.

Haven't been bit by a crossover bug, which apparently a few in Tin Man fandom have. *Snort* I suppose I have my crossover fix already in place thanks to Zack. And my Planes-walker is really glad he doesn't have to go to Wonderland.

Thoughts on Part Two:
"GAETA! How did I miss you the first time! Oh yeah, you only had one line."

So I was totally wrong about Dad and his name should have been Lewis. But this time the Walrus and the Carpenter died and all the oysters survived. :D

Hatter versus the Tweedles and Mad March in the truth room! I was waiting for somebody to start spouting the tea party nonsense.

Hatter/Alice shipper now, and it is so totally canon. But Mom's expression at the end: Mastercard priceless!

Another lovely quote:
Hatter: *Hugging Allice after she gloumped him* "Oh this is nice." *Realizes where they are and let's her go* "We should do this when we're safe."

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The BookWorm

Did I accomplish anything?

I have 9 pages of typed instructions/notes of how I screwed up, 7 handwritten pages of notes to add to the typewritten, 10 or 11 multi-page articles printed out of instructions and how-to's cited in the typed/handwritten notes, an equally thick stack of stuff printed out to consult but didn't end up citing them.

The local multi-sites setup is finally working, but with still so much so wrong, all I want to do is delete and uninstall and start all over.

If I didn't have an empty sink, I'd swear I didn't accomplish anything this weekend. :p

Basically, why my contributed modules didn't work when I thought I had installed them correctly after getting them out of the core module folder? The folder under sites MUST match the virtual host's server name! NOBODY said that when setting up virtual hosts. In fact, I only found it mentioned under doing it online not on a local server environment. Gee, guess what keywords I was using when I searched for directions.

I can fix the production site modules, and then backup everything that already works to make the local development environment out of. I don't know if I can make separate installs work, but I do know what has gone wrong with the multi-site setup. At least to the point where I can get two sites up and running, and will be free to discover new issues.

If I uninstall XAMPP, I could reinstall it on the external hard drive and make it portable. Then I could do all my website edits from it without being limited to what computer I use. I think I understand where all the hiccups were for the virtual host file now. (Provided I get the paths typed in correctly so it doesn't matter if the drive's letter assignment changes.) I think I can get everything downloaded and installed fresh instead of going back and fixing another goof-up I just found I did thanks to not having the damn Drupal handbook memorized.

I don't know what to do about Windows declaring folders "read-only" when I need to write to them, but that is easy to deal with once you know why those error messages are popping up.

I'm tired of not being finished with this. I should be figuring out the changes I want to make to the site, not STILL trying to make this all work without breaking.

I'm done for the night. I'm taking a shower, and then curling up to watch Alice on the Syfy Channel.

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The BookWorm

Didn't we have this last year?

Looks like I get to drive home in the mix of snow and rain if not outright snow to get home. I was so hoping that this wouldn't start until after I was safe at home. And other office have let their people out early but not ours. Craptastic.

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The BookWorm

Um, where's my bounty from the god Caffeine

In case I haven't talked to you already, I'm back from my trip and had a lovely time. Just what I needed to do. However, I brewed my last bag of caffeinated tea before I left and just finished my last soft drink this morning. I've got a cup of hot chocolate to stave off the withdrawal since I don't get paid until Friday. *Sigh*

Anyways, I'm happy to report that the local copy of Circulation Desk is finally running properly in my Development Environment with all the contributed module folders out of the core module folder. Oddly enough, they refuse to work under sites/circulationdesk/modules but will work under sites/all/modules. On the prod sites this won't matter because they each are a separate install of Drupal. I will have to be extra careful in the development environment with which modules go with which site because they will have access to all of them.

Depending on what the lack of caffeine does to me today, I haven't decided if I should fix the other two sites production sites or their local copies first. I know I need to translate my notes of bitching into actual instructions, but I don't feel awake enough for that. :p

In other news, I got my haircut last night! It's chin-length now, and the rest sent off to Locks of Love. Now I just have to make sure I don't break out or flake up and figure out the the twist for the stole for Dec. 12th. Seriously, the included instructions don't work. I'm afraid I may have to safety pin it to the robe so the colors show. Is that against the rules for proper collegiate wear?

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The BookWorm