I forgot to mention: I got to see two of my friends whom I haven't seen in several months (last June at our wedding, to be precise). Yea! The three of us (J, Will, and I) were at Pizza Hut to get dinner, and I look up towards the counter (no apparent reason)... and there they were. I tried getting their attention from our table, but they didn't hear me, so J let me out of the booth & I walked up & said hi. They're both living in St. Louis now (before, one was but the other wasn't), so that's cool. I really need to get in touch with 'em to hang out & stuff. We're all friends from UMR and don't get to talk anymore. Might be a trip to Rolla is in order in the near future...

What in the bloody blasted hell? Some fuckin' kids ran by and threw something at our open window. Looked a little like milk. Turns out they did the same thing to our closed window on the opposite side of the apartment. They didn't get close enough to get any kind of look at 'em at all; it was the giggling voices that even told me they were (male) kids. Other than that...

I went outside to see if I could figure out what the hell it was. A few feet away from each window was a McDonald's half-n-half container. Isn't that fuckin' nice. The window that was open, they mostly hit the side that wasn't open (our windows slide open sideways) but a little came in. The other one, it was about 50/50 which half it hit, which means the part of the window that slides open (and has the screen in front, and which can't be accessed directly on the outside of it) got hit. I wiped off what I could get to on the outsides of the "fixed" windows. I'm going to call the apartment complex and ask them to hose off our windows, as that's really the only way to get that shit off, especially on the window that was closed.

What the goddamn fuck?! I mean, when I was a kid (and most people I know who're several years younger) the thing to do was to go TP someone's house, and it was almost always someone you knew. Parents got a little pissed, but assuming no one was assholish enough to use eggs, etc., it was no big deal. And eggs and the like were usually reserved for a friend's POS car when they'd done something really ignorant. No one threw wet shit at people's fuckin' windows. Especially people's fuckin open windows. That's just fucking ignorant. Somebody's parents need to fuckin teach their kids some fuckin manners and respect.

I still don't have the results of my biopsy. The guy who did it, said to call the endocrinologist's office Thursday afternoon if they hadn't called me. I called, and they said they didn't have the results yet and to try the next afternoon. Well, it was around 3:30 on Friday and I still hadn't heard from them, so I called again. The bloody office was closed! I doubt they still didn't have the results, so it means they didn't call me when they came in. What, are they just going to sit on them forever just waiting for me to call? When I had my initial blood tests run and the ultrasound taken, my doctor's office told me when they'd probably know everything, and they did indeed call me when they were in. Is it too much to expect that a specialist's office would give me a ring when their results were in? I suppose if it'd been horribly cancerous and they'd somehow wanted me checked into the hospital Saturday, they might've called, so that means it's not an emergency, but they still could've (and should've) called.

Well, I had my biopsy today. It actually wasn't too bad. They let me lie down in the chair for it (the doctor taking the biopsy reclined it fully & all that). I kept my eyes closed for the whole thing (well, except between times when I was talking to the assisting nurse -- she stood & applied pressure to the site when he wasn't poking me, while he was putting stuff on slides, etc. The first time he withdrew a good amount of fluid according to him. Then he did whatever he needed to do with that (I presume putting fluid off somewhere, with a little on a slide, plus any actual tissue on another side or slides, etc.). Then he felt around trying to gauge how much of what was left was solid (i.e. tissue and not fluid). Finally, he went in one more time with the needle to make sure he had enough solid tissue. That one hurt a little more, because he was in a slightly different spot and tripped a nerve or something that ached a bit all the way up to around behind my ear. Still, not bad. That's what long fingernails and palms are for, right?

So that's all done. He said that just looking at it in the office it appeared benign, and that the endocrinologist's office should have the results in a couple days. He said to call them (the dr's office, not him) Thursday afternoon if I hadn't heard from them already.

I was going to go back to work afterwards, but around midmorning (10, 10:30?) I had to go to the bathroom rather unexpectedly (and rather urgently) and discovered I've picked up whatever virus J had last week. So... no real food for me, just jello, fruit popsicles, and apple juice for me for a couple days. That doesn't make for lot of energy with which to exercise. Also, it means lots of trips to the bathroom, so I decided to stay home where the bathroom was closer and there weren't lots of people to mark my frequent passage.

Around 4 I went in for a nap, woke up briefly when J said goodbye when he went to his evening class, then slept straight through until a little after 8 when he called to say he was heading home. Wow, 4 hour nap. Might have to take something to make sure I can sleep tonight. Ah well, I prob'ly needed it. I didn't sleep well Sunday night and didn't sleep enough last night.

Well, Sunday was pretty much "sleep in forever" day. J was gonna go run with one of my coworkers in the St. Louis marathon, only in the half marathon part, but the daylight savings switchover bit him. We forgot to set our clocks when we went to bed, and when he got up at 6am only to get on his computer (to look up the event) to find it telling him it was actually 7am, with the race starting in a half hour. He stayed up for a few hours, then went to bed a few hours, with me sleeping the whole time he was up and the whole time after he came back to bed. LOTS of sleep.

The most eventful part of the day came in the evening. First, I cleaned a bunch of stuff on and around my computer (though it still needs more). Then, we installed our new UPS from APC. Turns out that all 8 plugs are battery backup (we thought it was 4 battery backup and 4 surge protected). WOW!! It's now sitting more or less by itself on J's steel file cabinet, as it wouldn't fit easily sideways, so we had to move the printer so it could face front. (Besides, this way we can see all the cool LEDs!)

With everything plugged in and on (router, both little subs, both computers, both monitors) 3 of the 5 load indicator lights are on, indicating roughly 60% load, or 360W. With his monitor turned off, only 2 of the lights are on, so I'm thinking it's more like a half load with everything on, and it just "rounds up" to the next light. This means we'll probably get a good 25 minutes' backup time out of it. After we install the PowerChute software on our PCs (we got the optional 2-serial-port SmartSlot upgrade) we'll probably set it to shut down after 10-15 minutes, after all, no point in sucking down the whole battery while we're gone just because we can, right?

Hopefully this means the next 5 minute power flicker won't screw our computers over. Also, this baby should last a lot longer (and it even self-tests its battery every two weeks, so we should know if/when the battery gets sucky). I'm also thinking of booting to DOS or something on the old PC to see how long its little APC backup lasts before it's drained, then installing the software on it. That way, since we have the 3rd serial port on the UPS, I could install the software on it too, then plug it in to the UPS and have the software shut it down automatically as well. Only thing I'd want to know at that point, is if there's a version of it for Linux, since that's what it's usually booted into these days. If so, then I'll go for it. If not... probably won't bother.

Saturday, J and I met up with a bunch of guys in and around the "greater St. Louis area" who post on the PvP Forums. A good time was definitely had. For a detailed description and pics of our day (or some of it at least... we kept leaving our cameras in our cars!), see this thread.

Now that I have experienced the goodness that is Ted Drewes frozen custard, I can definitely say that I wanna go back. Also, I wonder if they sell anything in the grocery stores... prob'ly not, but it couldn't hurt to look, right? After all, parking anywhere near it is hell... since it was night we ended up parking in a church parking lot across the street. During the day that might be a bad thing to do.

I look forward to meeting w/ everyone again, and hopefully more people come who couldn't before. We're already talking about having one in May... I'm assuming in the middle or near the end of it. Might get tickets for a Cardinal's game too. Should be a lotta fun!

Well, overall Friday was a good day. We had lunch w/ the gang from work, then had time to drop my car off and go to the building inspection. Nothing major was found (didn't think there would be), but it lasted a long time. Over two hours, even after figuring in that the guy was about 5-10 minutes late (3 different accidents on his way there). Got to hammer down a definite "sellers move out" date -- July 23 y 5pm. So we'll be moving in the end of July. That means that as soon as we close on April 25 we can give our apartment complex their 3 months' notice.

We were supposed to go with my parents to an early dinner followed by the Elton John & Billy Joel concert, but our realtor, who was also planning to go, heard on the radio that it was postponed. After finding out more info, it's been postponed till Monday, May 5 and all current tickets will be honored. (I definitely want to call and double-check with both Ticketmaster and the Savvis center that we won't need to exchange them for new tickets.) That Monday is the last day of classes at UMSL before the finals start on Thursday, so J will have to make sure he doesn't have to go to his Monday night class.

Instead, we went to dinner at a more normal time (parents came over at 6) at Lonestar, and that was good. After that we all went back to our apartment to play MahJongg (the real tile game, not the solitaire game with the MahJongg misnomer -- it's Shanghai folks!). We played two games, comprised of 4 rounds each. I didn't win a single round. Ah well, no biggie. Next time. And Zephyr, who'd hid behind the couch for quite a while, finally came out and greeted us, realizing that my parents are definitely cat people and not anyone he needs to be shy around.

So... in spite of the concert being postponed it was a good day, and a fun evening.

For some reason, I can't get to my linux box from my other machine (hell, it shouldn't even matter since I'm not going outside the LAN to do it. But I can't tracert it or anything. Yet I know Apache is running since I'm doing this now (just, as localhost on the old machine itself). So I'm not really sure what the problem is. I'd try and figure it out, but it's already 12:30am and I've a lot to do so I'm not messing with it now.

Edit: Well, not only could I not connect from another box, but also I couldn't get to any outside sites from the old box. So whenever you see this, it means I either copied over the HTML files to a disk and uploaded them from my regular computer, or I got hold of my friend who helped me fix the problem.

Edit 2: Evidently a thing called eth0 which handles LAN connections, wasn't running. A reboot started it again, thankfully. I had help from both my friend and none other than the PvP Forums (thread here). I'm hoping to learn more than I ever wanted to know about this stuff, hehehe.

Anyway, back to my hackneyed posting around, with an update on how my weekend went, as well as to my resolutions.

I know I had more to say that I thought of last night, but.. I can't remember specifically what it was. Hmm, maybe it'll come to me.

Eh, anyway... I had a dentist appointment a little while back, and that went OK. No cavities, and they called today to say that a closer look at the xrays they took came up fine. The scraping was NOT fun at all, 'cause it'd been over two years since I was last in and I had a lot to scrape, plenty of which was under the gumline and which had been making my gums extra sensitive. So now I'm actually flossing (didn't over the weekend though) and he also said to either get a particular mouthwash, or if I already had a regular mouthwash at home to buy some hydrogen peroxide, to toughen up my gums. I already do have mouthwash (which I hadn't used in a while) so I bought the peroxide. He said to take that and pour in a little capful into a regular amount of mouthwash, so that's what I've been doing.

Oh, I think I remembered what I was gonna talk about. My sister-in-law's husband is in the Marines, special ops, and had been planning to get out last fall when they got married. Well, a week before they got married he got called back. We'd been worried since February or so that he'd been called to Iraq, but we found out weekend before this past one that he'd actually been home for a short time (since Valentine's Day till the week before we heard this) and he and his fellow group had been sent to Cuba. Yea! Hopefully he gets to stay there in relative safety (though it's got to be boring) for a while. Sister-in-law doesn't like it much, but she's got to be happy he's not over in the Middle East. I know we're all happy for him.

She sent out an email to a bunch of people with his military address and his email address so we could send him stuff. We'd like to send stuff, but we're not entirely sure what... I'm considering asking on the PvP forums (which moved -- lotsa drama there I mostly missed) as there are a lot of ex-military guys there who could provide some suggestions. If you have any, you know where to find me (since comments are down).

Well, I went to see the endocrinologist this morning. I was a little late, given the fact that (a) I forgot to bring the films with me to work so I had to go home first, (b) I managed to drive right by the medical building and had to ask directions to see how I managed to miss it, and (c) parking really is hell there.

So I was about 5 minutes late, but no big deal. No one else was in the waiting room at the time, and the only guy to come in was a really nice older guy who goes there a lot and got seen soon after. (Nice guy, told me a lot of people manage to miss it, and also the exact location of the parking garage so parking won't be quite such a bear.)

The doctor said that it could be a couple things, one of which he gave a really long name to that I didn't catch quick enough to even attempt a spelling (or to attempt to repeat it verbally if asked). That one, which evidently 20-25% of people get, is where the body develops antibodies to the thyroid and starts attacking it. It gets attacked on one part, then bulges in another direction to compensate, creating a sometimes very lumpy thyroid. For that, he sent me to a Quest Laboratories (there's one close to where we live) for a walk-in lab test (more blood drawn) to see if I have those.

He said barring that, what he'd probably do is give me Synthroid, which basically takes the place of what the thyroid puts out. This would basically give the thyroid a chance to rest as it wouldn't have to do any work, and should shrink the bulge. Also, he felt a tiny growth on the otherside, farther down (that I still can't tell is there by feeling for myself). Basically, just to rule out anything extra abnormal, he referred me for an asperated needle biopsy, for which I have an appointment a week from today at 1pm. Basically, they're going to take a really fine needle and take a tissue sample of the big lump, which they analyze to see exactly why I'm lumpy. I'm not looking forward to it, particularly 'cause it involves a needle (I had to lie down in the room right after they took blood at Quest 'cause I got that weird feeling saying I was gonna pass out soon). But, I figure I'll be lying down already, and I'll get to keep my eyes closed so I never see it. It's still gonna suck though.

Small little glee, but I created a Windows HOSTS file so instead of typing IP numbers to get to MT on my box at home, I get to use a "normal" URL to get to it. GaROOvy, man.

Edit: Well, nevermind. I clicked "save" on the entry and ended up with the IP address in the URL, which of course meant logging in all over again. (If anyone knows how to fix this, perhaps on my Linux box in Apache, let me know by either emailing me (playfulkitten (at) crosswinds (dot) net) or by posting a message to my board -- don't let the tumbleweeds scare ya! And no, I don't want to buy a domain name, 'cause no one's using this box but me, so no one needs to see this box but me.)

Nevermind... I figured out how to get it to work, at least for MT. I had the IP as part of the CGIPath variable in MT's config. I changed that, and it worked. (What gets me though, about Netscape 7 is that I have a custom user.js file to control who can and cannot open popups and where, and I evidently it doesn't work at all when there's just 1 dot in the address. I had the form "xxxx.com" and even though that's what it said in the URL, and that's what I had in my user.js file, it still denied it. I had to add another section, as in "www.xxxx.com" for the URL in HOSTS file, the URL in MT's CGIPath, and in my user.js file, for it to work correctly. WTF??)