Our disposal (mostly) works. Just needs a little hard plastic ring (washer?) put into the connection between it and the horizontal pipe leading to the main drain. We haven't run the dishwasher to test that really tight connection yet, but it hasn't let go on its own yet.

Our heater works. It was nice waking up this morning and getting out of bed into air that was in the upper 60s instead of mid 50s, and for the bathroom floor not to be quite so icy under foot. It was nice to come home to that warmth this afternoon. Winter's here, and it isn't a good time to be without heat.

Our stove and oven are now hooked up and working. The gas company's guy came out this morning and J sent me an IM at work around 9:30 to say it's all working. When I got home he'd made some of the premade cookie dough he'd bought from some HS kid at the school he taught at last year. He'd tried to make them a few months ago and the oven never came on, so now that we had one and it wanted testing and christening, he tried again. Not homemade, but decent chocolate chip cookies all the same. He also made spaghetti on the stove this evening for dinner.

One of the only things left really is to call up the makers of the furnace because I'd think the fan on a furnace shouldn't give out within 2.5 years of installation, so we're going to see if there's a 5 or 10 year parts warranty in order to get reimbursed for the fan itself. (The work was only $48, flat rate even though it took him three hours to replace it because of horrible clearance. The fan itself was $329. Ouch. And it turns out even though the furnace had a big ol' "Superior Heating and Cooling" sticker on it with their number, they didn't install it. Probably the previous owners bought it and had one of the guy's buddies he knows from his carpentry construction work install it.)

We also need to do that last bit under the kitchen sink and test the connection from the dishwasher to the disposal by running the dishwasher and making sure its draining doesn't blow it off. Then, I need to figure out why St. Louis County still thinks we own J's Sable that we sold to my parents just after the New Year and thus still owe taxes on it. (Sorry, but you can't property tax one item twice for two different households in the same year. Doesn't work that way. I'm quite sure my parents, to whom we sold it, also got a bill assessing them for the same car.) Then I need to file what relative little is left to file, shred or trash what little junk was left after last Tuesday night's Big Clean, and then that's more stuff wrapped up 100%. Not the whole house, mind you, just stuff that was started and not yet quite finished.

It's long, but I feel it's important. While all people, male or female, should learn to be aware of their surroundings and take basic steps to avoiding altercations to begin with, this kind of drives home the point that the root of the problem is not the victim and the steps never taken but the perpetrator and in some cases cultures that do not discourage violent behavior, particularly against women.

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape. Women should learn self-defence. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn't have long hair and women shouldn't wear short skirts. Women shouldn't leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn't dare to get drunk at all.

instead of that bullshit, how about:

if a woman is drunk, don't rape her.
if a woman is walking alone at night, don't rape her.
if a women is drugged and unconscious, don't rape her.
if a woman is wearing a short skirt, don't rape her.
if a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don't rape her.
if a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you're still hung up on, don't rape her.
if a woman is asleep in her bed, don't rape her.
if a woman is asleep in your bed, don't rape her.
if a woman is doing her laundry, don't rape her.
if a woman is in a coma, don't rape her.
if a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape her.
if a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape her.

if a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don't rape her.
if your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her.
if your step-daughter is watching tv, don't rape her.
if you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her.
if your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend.

if your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
if your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and tell the guy he's a rapist.

tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it's not okay to rape someone.

don't tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x.
don't imply that it's in any way her fault.
don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl.
don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself.

If you agree, repost it. It's that important.

Edit: I should note that while male on female rape is the most common (that we generally know of) form of rape... this sentiment is applicable to all forms of rape. Be good to each other, and don't be afraid to stand up and do something when you see someone else being a total shit.

There are occasionally things I want to write about that I don't particularly want to put out for every single person in the whole wide world to see (mainly work). Since I'm too lazy and don't really have the time to figure out a good way to have user logins here and stuff, they only go to my LJ. If you have one, or create one, you can drop me a line here with your screen name and I'll (maybe) friend you so you can see those few rare extra tidbits. If I ever get around to writing up some code to handle logins and stuff I might also put that stuff here, or at least put new stuff like that here, but in the meantime if you want to see me being ranty about work stuff (that I don't feel comfortable "just in case" writing here without that) LJ's where it's at.

I changed the default theme to Kittens instead of Blueberries. I only did this after I incorporated the "IE7" plugin (makes IE do CSS2 properly) and saw that the fixed background thing worked right with it in IE. It does, so I switched it.

Then spent 20 minutes or so figuring out why that setting didn't work (it's a DB thing I added) and figuring out how to make it work. Evidently I didn't do much with the code to add support for a database-set default. I also ought to go ahead and change the no database available default, but now at least it's getting the default properly now.

If you've ever been annoyed by having to figure out just the right combinations of numbers into the phone to talk to a real customer service rep, and especially if you're even more annoyed by having to talk to a computer to do the same, you should see this cheat sheet. Cooked up by one Paul English, it gives toll free numbers for bunches of companies along with their particular series of keypresses to get to a real person. Why speak your SSN or CC number into the phone to an automated system when the real person at the other end is going to ask you again anyway?

This is definitely something I plan to bookmark. Not only is it a handy dandy list of toll free numbers to companies I use and won't always feel like looking up, but it'll make it so I don't have to spend an extra 5-10 minutes of frustration trying to guess how to talk to someone real.

We took this last Saturday:

And it's come down at least 10¢ since then. Which is awesome. We didn't think we'd ever see gas sub $2 ever again.

First: Thank you jarphabib! Your wee pumpkin pie arrived intact and scrumptious in Wednesday's mail. I'd show everyone a pic, but well... it would've been a victim pic as we were a little uncivilized and dug right in. It was super yummy.

---

I'm doing Secret Santa fun at f'opolis, and got someone who... was rather brief with their likes and dislikes. So I'll be spending a few days doing some research to see if something pops out at me. If not, I may have an elf help me out a bit. I like to give spiffy, wanted gifts.

Thanksgiving was good. Too much food was eaten, though I did manage not to gorge myself too ridiculously. Got up early Thursday morning so J could help the guys take out an old, large, dead peach tree in his grandma's back yard. Ended up napping a few hours on the couch. J's sister is looking quite healthy in her pregnancy, and it's not been too hard on her, so that's great. She's got until about the beginning of February, so it's getting close. None of the guys were injured in taking out the tree, and the roof was only slightly injured. J's aunt & uncle and younger cousin were there; it was good to see them. Elizabeth was cute and precocious and willful and busy and imaginative all as usual. Girl's just too darn smart, hehe.

Black Friday was spent by us sleeping really really late. Then we headed back out to J's grandma's to hang out some more, though mostly they were busy outside raking and turning the large pieces of the tree into smaller pieces. Then we had to run back to St. Louis for my 10th HS reunion. That was... interesting. Got to see a few people I hadn't seen since graduation, find out about how others who weren't there were doing, etc. It was good, though less people were there than I'd have expected, and the guys greatly outnumbered the women. You could tell the class clowns were still very... funloving and such. Plus there were people who didn't want to shell out the rather high monies to attend, so they hung out in the bar downstairs until the organizer left and then headed up, after 10 (was only reserved till 11 officially). We headed out as most of them were going up. Heh, I was asked if I'd been a cheerleader. A compliment, but no that wasn't me.

Today we slept in somewhat, I got up at about a quarter to 10 to follow up with the dermatologist. He said I look about 80% cleared up, which is goodness. I told him I'm still shedding like a fiend, and he said that'll taper off once I get my scalp totally under control. I'm to come back in 2 months, only use the lotion once a day instead of twice, and then when I go back I should have it 100% normal and he'll switch the lotion for something else so I don't build up a tolerance to it's effectiveness. So I figure I'll really start noticing my hair being thicker again some time next summer given the time it'll take to get enough growth to really notice it being thicker.

After lunch my dad came over to help us figure out why the fan wasn't turning on the furnace. It's either the starter capacitor or the fan itself. Either way we'll have to contact either a store called Granger who sells that stuff, or the company (Superior Heating & Cooling according to the sticker on the side) to see if they'll service it. After that, he looked to see if we could move the cabinets between the fridge and range to get to the gas line that's capped, but we couldn't. So, he helped J replace the disposal under the kitchen sink. That turned out to be one helluva job. They'd put some crap on the threads underneath that attached the main unit to the plastic around the rubber that goes up into the hole in the sink. They first had to use the hammer to bang on stuff to wrench the main unit off, then my dad ended up breaking the plastic thing to get it off when heating it up a bit wouldn't work. Also, we had to go get a new rubber thingy that connects the disposal to the water line for the dishwasher, and well... the hose from the water line isn't really and truly long enough to reach comfortably by about an inch so it was a real bitch for J to get it hooked up. Also, there's this plastic ring that fits inside the main fat pipe that runs from the disposal to where the water drains out of the house, and it cracked through so now the pipe doesn't fit on the way it should.

I took some pictures of the cats tonight, figured I'd post 'em for a change. Forgive the relatively poor quality; this camera can take good pics outside with good amounts of sun, but no matter how bright the lighting indoors, day or night, it's not great for indoor pictures of any real quality. Zephyr was doing "cute kitty" on the floor, on his back with his paws all drawn in and his tail curled around his bottom paws, squinting his eyes up at us. So out the camera came.

Zephyr

Pele

Also for shits & giggles I was messing around in Paint Shop Pro and found something called "edge preserve smooth" that made a nifty watercolor effect, so I used it on a crop of Pele.

My sinuses are so fucked from last night. Been blowing my nose all morning. So much fur and stuff everywhere all over everything and stirred up and ugh. My back isn't too pleased either, plus I bit my lower lip on the inside while eating dinner so that's annoying.

Ah well. Work, then Michael's (didn't get to it yesterday), then home and some cleaning and then dinner and exercise class. Then more cleaning, then bed. J told me late last night that I had it wrong; we're going out to his grandma's early tomorrow morning. He said we should leave by 8am at the latest, which means I get to sleep in an hour over usual. But, we're sleeping in our own bed and in our own quiet house, so I do have a chance of catching up on a little sleep.

We cleaned in the computer room. This may sound easy, but... heh, not so much. I had about a thousand bajillion "to file" and "to shred" items to sort through to get them off the floor. I did desk area cleanup. I moved some shit around. J had even more physical labor. He moved his desk back in here, and to do that he had to rearrange the heavy filing cabinet, heavier UPC (the big 50lb one), and my crafting table with all its shit on and under it. He was careful and didn't reinjure his back though, which is good. He also did a partial vacuum. Between the two of us we filled the shredder's hungry belly twice completely, and then some. The filing cabinet now has a second smaller UPC on it with the scanner taking up the rest of the room. The color printer is up on the top of my two shelves on my desk where the scanner was. The phone is moved onto the corner of the crafting table, including a 5 minute crawl under my desk/table to disentangle the main phone wire so it could be moved without trying to carry 20 other cables with it. The other filing cabinet that didn't get moved has a lot more papers in it, a good four or five fold increase. There are two boxes and a bag full of trash.

End result: goodness, and lots of soreness and itchiness. J's computer is now upstairs, and while Pele is acting like he has forsaken her (she hung out with him all the time downstairs, next to him on the couch) I'm happy with that change. My back is quite unhappy with me, though it's all muscle stiffness and soreness, I don't think I fucked my alignment. My nose was ready to stage a coup, though after lots of nose blowing we may have reached a detente. There's lots more space on the floor to walk now, also good. I'm not having things crowd in on my mouse pad space for my mouse (yes it's wireless and laser instead of ball, but the table I'm using as a desk is apparently too reflective or something to work right).

Of course, there's going to be little chance to recover my sleep debt and I'll probably go to work Monday morning exhausted in spite of the extra two days off on the weekend. I'm already behind, and it's already late now. If I'd been a little clairvoyant I would've asked for tomorrow off in advance; it's a bit late now unless I wake up legitimately sick tomorrow (I feel ridiculously guilty just thinking about calling in sick when I'm not, especially right before a holiday when I should've been using vacation time, since I have it). And I'm not gonna wish for that. Tomorrow night I'll probably hit my toning class, and it'll be a harder one since she'll be packing it all into about 15-20 minutes less, so one exercise then right into the next. Then I'll shower, we'll maybe grab food, then head to J's parents in Jeff City. Wake up earlier than the noon I'd prefer, head to J's grandma's halfway between there and here and have Thanksgiving in a late lunch time frame, trying not to stuff ourselves too terribly much. Then we'll head back to St. Louis and straight over to my grandfather's to do Thanksgiving there (hence the trying not to stuff ourselves too much at one time). Then I finally get to sleep in some Friday, unless I agree to go Black Friday shopping with my mom & sister (well, that wouldn't be a super early day even so; we'd meet up starting with lunch). But then I've got this reunion dinner thing that night, only home before 11 so J can do the Friday night Onyxia run. Saturday morning I have a followup doc's appointment. After that we may drive back out to Jeff City and stay till Sunday. Not sure, but there's a good chance; we haven't had much chance to visit with J's family in the last few months and it'd be nice to see them more than just ~ 14 hours give or take, with half or so spent asleep.

So, now that I'm no longer sweating or sneezing my face off, I'm gonna get my ass in bed, maybe read a bit (I have a hard time getting to sleep if I don't, so I'm better off spending the time reading than tossing and turning) then try to relax enough to sleep.

Having missed my exercise class all week last week, it hurt extra last night. I did 5lb curls though, instead of 4. (Yes, I've already been informed I'm a wuss. Gotta start somewhere. )

Didn't do much of anything last night. Made another cross-stitch design, and will be hitting Michael's for more floss colors. Also I'll be stopping by the bank to deposit a bunch of checks from the insurance company reimbursing me for my scrips. (Yes, they make me pay the full amount at the register, then cut me a check later. Yes, I know this is stupid and I'd love them to change it, no there's nothing I can do to make them change it outside of changing medical plans completely.)

Feeling rather blah today. Sore muscles, not enough sleep, and just... not wanting to be at work today for no particular reason. I still haven't called to extend the fraud report on my credit report to a year yet, at least I don't have to be in a terribly big hurry to do that I don't think. I need to dig in my purse to see what time my dermatologist appointment is on Saturday morning (I want to say 10:30, but I'm not sure). I also need to call and make reservations for my HS reunion dinner, didn't do that yesterday either.

Blah.

so lazy

Seriously, I hardly did anything of real import this weekend. While I like lazy weekends, there's so much I didn't do that I should've done. If I want it done before the holiday it means doing it after work, and I have a workout class Mon. & Wed. night (gotta go, I missed last Mon. from being sick and last Wed. 'cause doing crunches in public when your intestines aren't happy is a recipe for embarrasing disaster). I still haven't washed the tub, toilet bowl, or floor in the main bathroom. Gonna do that tonight I guess. Really, really, really ought to start picking up clothes. I need to be able to get to the closet that has most of my warm winter sweaters and such in it, and to do that I need to clear the mountain in front of the door. I'm going to see if I can put in the dimmer switch myself to the bathroom light, so long as we can find which breaker needs to be shut off. (Yes, my dad can and does work live on such things without hurting himself, but I don't have his know-how or experience, and I'm not used to getting kazapped like he is.) I think I'll leave the sink disposal up to J.

The gas guy turned out to be stupid. He had it wrong which side of the support joist he needed to be on, and even drilling doesn't need doing. There used to be (probably) a sink over where the range is now, 'cause there's 2 holes maybe 6" tops apart from each other that indicate cold & hot water lines. And they're directly parallel from where the gas is going up into the floor now, which is under a cabinet between the fridge and the range (thought it was other side of the fridge, turns out not). So all he has to do is remove the vertical pipe somehow, then run 2 more feet over with it and shove it back up into the kitchen through one of the other holes. But of course the earliest they can send someone out now is November 30. After Thanksgiving. A lot. Which sucks. A lot. At least we don't have to saw into our drywall then put it back up...

Friday afternoon a bunch of employees got an email stating that a company PC with a fuckton of former and current employees' names, SSNs, addresses, and in some cases bank routing and account numbers, was stolen. Anyone in the St. Louis area probably heard about it; it was evidently plastered as a front page story all over local news outlets, both TV and print. So today I went ahead and filled out with Experian (since their website lets you do it over a SSH connection) to have a fraud alert put on my credit report. I also found out I can go through Trans Union to have it extended to a full year rather than the default 90 days, since of course all the Bad Guys out there just wait the 90 days 'cause they're well familiar with that default time period, but most won't bother to wait a full year. So I'm going to call them this afternoon. I checked in our Boeing employee system and supposedly "only" my name, SSN, and/or an address were on it, not my bank info. Then again, I'm still going to keep an eye on my bank accounts closely because it might not be too hard for a Bad Guy to take my SSN and find out my bank info. Might close the accounts, but then I have to change it for direct deposit and bill paying stuff. Which would suck. But according to "the system" they don't have my bank info directly from that PC.

What pissed me off to find out, this was a laptop that was stolen. That shouldn't have even had any of that information on it. Stolen from the person not on company property (i.e. out of their car or something). We have all these laptop security classes we have to take, which specifically have sections about sensitive information and not to put it on there, or at least make sure it's 100% encrypted, etc. How did this person think it was OK not to follow that stuff? Grr.

So anyway, that's fun. Only productive thing I did was get the sweatshirts and some jeans into the wash; J switched 'em to the dryer and got 'em out and stuff. I farmed a bunch in WoW trying to get a flawless draenethyst crystal in the Blasted Lands to knock that quest out, didn't work. Got a few things to put on the auction house. Ended up heading back to the plaguelands to grind Argent Dawn faction instead.

J and I finally watched Blade 3. Not as good as the first two in terms of being all dark and stuff, but I enjoyed it all the same. I think they could've gotten a slightly better actress for the main baddie than they did, as she occasionally felt like she was kinda... overdoing it a bit, like sapping it up a little or some shit. Don't have anyone in mind specifically, but I didn't feel like the woman was 100% believable in the role, particularly her facial expressions. Other than that it was quite good.

J and I will be doing Thanksgiving twice on Thursday. J's family does the "big meal" as lunch time, and we'll be at J's grandma's for that. Then dinner at my grandfather's house with some of my family. Might head to J's parents Wednesday night to hang out with 'em, as we often do. Friday night is the 10th HS reunion dinner, should be interesting. Then Saturday I have a dermatologist followup. I've a short week workwise but it'll be a busy vacation.

How do you not realize that just randomly and obviously peeking over someone's shoulder to look at someone else's shit (in this case, my monitor, but it applies to what people are reading or whatever else that's theirs specifically) without invitation, is rude?

Am I the only one who was taught not to do this? Are there actually a lot of people who do this with no shame, to the point of admitting it with no idea that it's not something that's normal behavior? Or is it just a relative few, and I just happen to have one of them sitting next to me? I guess if the latter, I shouldn't be surprised; he's a chauvinist who has no social graces or manners or knowledge of what's rude or not already, why should this be any different?

*sigh*

But in case you didn't... someone finally figured out how to make soap bubbles in colors. Not only that, but when they burst and deposit their color on whatever they hit, water and friction both will make the stuff change molecular structure so that it disappears completely. It's a rather long article in total, but a very very good read if you're remotely into sciency stuff and how things work. Especially check the last page on the possibilities that got opened up with the new structure of dyes that was created for it to work.

This is probably old news for some, but I only just found out that you can do LiteBrite on the web. Sweet. I always wanted one of these as a kid.

So. No gas in the kitchen yet. Turns out there is a line that goes up to the kitchen. The first problem is that it goes up to what is now a large cabinet between the fridge and the wall between kitchen and hallway. The second problem is that while it can easily be run the 4-5 feet over and sent up in the right spot, there's a wall of drywall downstairs, between the bar area of the main finished area, and the bathroom. We will have to cut about a foot down out of the top of it, along the length needed, so the gas dude can actually have room to work (i.e. run the pipe, drill a new hole up to the kitchen, etc.). We're going to make a new appointment, and this weekend J's going to work on it (with my help if he needs it and it's feasible, of course). Then we'll have to patch up the drywall and it'll be done.

In the meantime, we've no use of the stove, so all our cooking will have to be stuff we can microwave, foreman grill, or do on the outside grill. Probably not a whole lot of that last part, 'cause it's gotten pretty cold the last few days. No snow, but it got down to around 19°F last night and was maybe 40 today. Then we'll probably have upper 40s to around 50 for a few days, which means early evenings will be cooler by a few. I guess as long as we don't have the brutal winds we had yesterday and Tuesday, and we use it early enough that it's still daylight, it won't be so bad...

Got a noticable scratch in the face of my iRiver already. Must be in the last week, too, probably from being in my purse (where it's mostly been since I got it). The rubber case it came with has no case protection, and they don't sell cases for the H10 at all, let alone that cover the screen with even a thin sheet of plastic. So I'm kinda pissed I couldn't do much to protect it unless I wrapped it in something myself every time. The display is undamaged, it's just a surface scratch (well, gouge kinda) but it's annoying that it's no longer pristine. I decided to look around in the middle of writing this post, and misticaudio sells a leather one that has screen protection for $25. It's on back order, which kinda confirms my suspicion that there isn't a lot out there for it still (iRiver doesn't have any at all, and the only other one I've found for the H10 is made by a UK company called Noreve and doesn't seem to protect the screen). Definitely adding it to my wish list.

I can't believe it's 10 already. We both napped from about 4:30 to 7:30, then grabbed some KFC. (So not buying KFC's crispy recipe again... it's so much greasier than their original recipe, sheesh!) Probably won't be up a ton longer in spite of that sorely needed nap... spend a little time with J, read some, then lights out.

Oh yeah, and I made two more Tori icons, the second of which goes with one of the sig pics I made a few weeks or so ago:

"I Park Like An Idiot" stickers. I am very tempted to buy a batch and keep them in my glove box.

... new hotness! Hrmph, I didn't do that right. Ah! No pics of the old POS so no pics of the new either. What do I mean? Got our new range delivered today, woot! We ordered one from Sears, gas now instead of electric. It's all unpacked and ready to go, just need to wait till Laclede comes out and runs the gas to our kitchen (we have gas to our water heater, and gas out the back to the grill the previous owners installed, but no gas to the kitchen, wtf?). That happens Thursday morning.

Need to whip out the camera tomorrow since I forgot today. Gas is $1.99⁹. We'd regretted not taking a pic of that several months ago when we figured that'd be the last we saw of sub $2 gas, and now that it's down there I can hardly believe it. Got to get a picture of that before it goes away again; I have a feeling it'll be relatively short lived.

Zephyr's been in here the last five minutes with a newly-recovered mousie (pulled out from behind the piano when we moved it over to make room for the range to come through) as his mortal enemy. He's been donig the whole "talk to thine enemies before thou smitest them" thing he does, too. No growling, no hissing, just... talking to them with short little "Mow!"s

At work Friday I told a customer that if they wanted something in the existing system they could submit a request to our group inbox. Monday another person who was "FYI'd" on my answer, wrote me directly (instead of our group box where help requests and the like are supposed to go) basically saying "why not?" (apparently couldn't read below the buy's FYI to the reason given...) because this other thing (different chart) can do it. So without getting too detailed I basically repeated myself with the reason and the option to submit a ticket, CC'd the group box so the record would be there. This afternoon My Favorite Coworker (help desk only, usually messes that up) opens a ticket with me as the responsible person (thankfully not a time-sensitive ticket system, more of an issues/enhancements tracker). I find out talking to my team lead that I get to turn right back around and, as business like as possible and with an "unless...", tell them to fuck off because we're not allowing what they're asking for. Doesn't that look just peachykeen wonderful? XD "Oh, go ahead and make a request if you'd like this changed." "Sorry, we're not doing it." From the same person. I decided to wait till tomorrow to do that one, rather than doing it the same day.

Time to go test out my new remote access on the laptop, see if I can get to internal sites and email and such and fill out my time for yesterday's sick day and today's work, then bed. And Zephyr's mortal enemy is still the blue and white mousie with the pink ears.

... that I hate production support? Especially when dealing with transient, difficult to reproduce problems?

Have I also mentioned that having to test something directly in production is something that scares me half to death?

*sigh*

I'm starting to get more and more pissed off at this laptop's keyboard, not so much with the keys themselves but with the fact that the number pad is altogether not there (not really... they mapped it on there so you can use it in a misaligned way with the "Fn" key held down), and the insert, delete, home, end, page up, and page dn keys are squished really small at the top right, above the backspace and +/= keys. So... yeah, I miss having a number pad and I really use those other keys a lot and I constantly "miss" them, hitting + a lot instead of delete, and page dn instead of end, etc. They're entirely too small and too close together to hit them right.

So... anyone know where I can get a USB keypad that has just the number pad and extra keys? I know they make those keypads, but ThinkGeek either no longer has them or they aren't the ones I knew of who used to carry them, 'cause I looked and there isn't anything there. With those keypads, do they make any that have those other keys (insert, delete, etc.)? Or is it pointless to look because they don't?

Aaagh! I'm a geek in need! Haven't hit google yet, so I guess that's my next step. Although it's possible ComputerGear has one, now that I think about it...

If you don't know about it already (and live in the US), you should check out Silver Jewelry Club. They have a new featured silver item (necklaces, rings, earrings, and bracelets), every 20 minutes. You can buy it for those 20 minutes, assuming they're still in stock (out of stock switches the item early), for $5.99 shipping. If it's a necklace you can get a 16", 18", or 20" box chain for $3 if you want, don't have to.

We both went to a chiropracter yesterday. Me for something not having been aligned right for a couple months, J for his back having hurt badly all weekend. Both of us got x-rays and the whole bit. My back was fine, my hips were just shifted so the left one was a bit forward and the right a bit back, making my spine tilt a bit to compensate. He gave it a couple good pops in specific positions, one a very twisting motion, to get me aligned right. Going back Wednesday just to make sure it stayed put.

J's back is another story. See, the lower back leading down into the sacrum area is generally supposed to be a good curve when viewed from the side, with all the vertebrae and discs in an alignment such that the spacing between the bones is wider in front than in back, with a nice spacing overall. See the pic here for an idea. With J's back, the last vertebra before the first sacral one was misplaced. It was tilted in a way it shouldn't, so that the bottom surface of it and the top surface of the first sacral vertebra were nearly parallel. Plus they were too close. Basically, at 28 he's got a noticable amount of disc degeneration between the two, that usually isn't seen until someone's a good 20+ years older than that. That accounts for his vertebra being misaligned and hurting. The doc popped his back a few times and J was feeling better after that, mostly just sore, but it'll be a couple weeks possibly before things are as right as they can be again. No running or biking or such for exercise, no excessive sitting down (he was surprised it only hurt when J got up from sitting, and not while sitting). He's going back today, and will probably have to have a few more sessions (doc said "day by day"). He'll always have to be careful when bending or twisting, and should never do both. Picking things up off the floor he should squat rather than bend, even if he's just picking up a pen or something, and he shouldn't twist too quickly such as is typical for getting out of a car. Pretty much he just has to be generously nice to his back, and eventually he could still end up with the disc further degenerated and/or protruding outward at the front (better than out the back where the cord is, at least) and such.

Then when we got home it was 6:10 and I had class at 6:30. I was trying to get out the OJ and the stuff in front of it went tumbling out of the fridge. I had already picked up the applesauce cups and stuck them on the bottom instead of the top, and was still holding the container of leftovers overhand when the container separated itself from the lid and dropped all over the fridge and the floor. I was already irritated, but then I went from that to near rage. I wanted to chuck the lid through the room but I settled for slamming it (hah, it's too light to slam) on the floor at my feet. Damn near bit J's poor head off raging and yelling and such. I felt like I would be late and wouldn't have time to even have OJ, I was already starting to shake from lack of calories, yadda yadda. I picked up the chunks with a paper towel into the container and refused to wipe up the rest; I was too mad then and thought I really didn't have time to really wipe it up. J very carefully squatted down with paper towel and wiped up the rest. I felt bad at that but was still too angry and shaky to do much about it. He went rather dejectedly downstairs while I went to cool off for a minute or two after having drunk a couple small glasses (out of clean big ones) of OJ in the kitchen, then to quickchange to head out. As I was coming back, I felt bad, 'cause we had two things of leftovers: the ones I spilled and which I wouldn't eat 'cause apples and pears cut into sauteed beef, broccoli, onions, and mushrooms ended up being nasty to me, and my leftover tortellini from Cannoli's. He would've eaten his and I would've eaten mine, and now his had committed assisted suicide at my hand so only one of us had food readily available. So we grabbed Burger King and I told him he should have my leftovers tomorrow (today) for lunch.

So... body toning was good, at least. Was walking in the same time as my mom, so I didn't feel quite so bad about leaving as late as I did. Plus, there wasn't the crowded confusion there was the first class of the session. That one, there were 30 people signed up plus there was a waiting list. In the 6 or 7 years the class has run, there's never been that kind of demand. The first one I attended only had 17 or so people. There weren't enough mats in the room last week, and our instructor had to work with a couple other people who work there to get more mats squeezed in. We had the full 30, and I heard someone at the end tell our instructor she was pretty sure she'd seen at least one or two people signed up who weren't there, which means there were people who took part who hadn't paid. Last night there were two or three mats open, a couple "regulars" who'd been wait-listed were in attendance, and two women who'd been in it last session and who were signed up this session weren't able to make it. So evidently a few people, some who were signed up and probably some who weren't, didn't show, and somehow or other a couple openings must've appeared so the couple regulars who didn't get on in time were able to join after all. Plus the chaos of finding extra mats didn't happen, because the room was ready to go in advance. Plus, the weight racks are usually in the little back room but they were out in the front of the room, so it was easier for so many people to get to them (especially to put them back at the end).

Evidently we both needed a whole bushelful of sleep. Friday night J and I hung out with my sister, her boyfriend, our parents and grandfather at our parents' house. That was way cool, got to talk a lot and play with kitties a lot. My parents' cat Eddie is totally a spaz about the laser pointer dot. My sister's gifts didn't arrive, even though they got to Earth City that morning. Saturday we slept till the doorbell rang at 9:30ish, turned out not to be her stuff but Adventists instead, then again until it rang at 12:32. That "2" is significant, or was: my sister said they were leaving between noon and 12:30 for Springfield. I was thinking, "yay irony!" but called my parents' anyway to see if they'd left. Turned out that her boyfriend's car exploded water all over itself, he'd taken a bus to make sure he didn't miss work, and she was staying till Sunday morning. So we got showers, food, then headed on over. Turns out it was more than likely his water pump, and that it'd probably been having issues for quite a while causing intermittent overheating that the mechanics couldn't identify the source of. My sis liked her stuff (2 tiger pillow shams and a big matching tiger throw pillow).

So J slept a total of ~11 hours minus interruptions, and I slept ~12. Then when we came back we ended up napping 'cause for some reason we were both really dragging. We both slept for an hour or so, then J got up and I couldn't drag myself out of bed for another hour and a half. Then, I was trying to drag myself out and had flopped over sideways, and Zephyr got up on me for lovies and that woke me up enough. I puttered around, read all my comics and my LJ f-lists, etc., hung out downstairs with J for a bit. Then he made pork steaks, storms rolling in shortly after we started them. Tornado watch till 10pm in November, WTF? We ate while watching a local channel's sports (no non-local satellite during big thunderstorms), then we goofed off and stuff after that. I was in bed again by quarter to midnight, and it didn't take me all that long to fall back asleep.

Slept until 10 or so when the phone rang. Was a friend of mine from HS whom I hadn't talked to in at least a year, I'd guess. Probably the only person I've spoken to from HS in 4+ years. She wanted to know I'm going to the 10th anniversary they're holding the night after Thanksgiving (?? bright idea, idiots) and we were both undecided. We caught up and talked for like 2 hours. Her kids are 7 and 6, respectively; she's been married nearly 9 years. Amazing how time flies. They're in their own house which is awesome. We're considering going; I said if J's willing to go with me I might actually go, and I said I'd let her know. Neither of us has a whole mess of people we would want to see, and the few we actively do want to see we don't have any idea if they're even thinking of going 'cause we're no longer in touch with 'em and they're not in classmates.com so we can't see if they said "yes", "no", or "maybe" to them either.

After that J and I got lunch, I puttered around a while on the computer then stitched for a bit. Then I played devil dice for an hour or so while J did a second Scarlet Strat run with the same bunch (they were so good they did the first run in 75 min, so they figured why not do it again). After that we grabbed food so it didn't get too late; we weren't that hungry so we only ate appetizers. Then J helped me with my 60 hunter so I could get a pet that knows something other than growl (unfortunately it doesn't have bite or claw so I can't teach 'em to my other kitty). Kitty's pretty darn cool; no bite or claw (so no uber-aggro-holding) but stealth and dash. I can solo elite dragonkin without kitty dying in Winterspring if they're one of the mages; with a melee dragonkin kitty takes too much damage (J came w/ his druid so kitty stayed healed; even with mend pet rank 7 I can't keep up by myself). Spent a fuckton of money on new pet trainer skills that I can teach my pets that didn't exist before the big hunter changes patch (1.7?), then a smaller fuckton more on my own level 60 skills I wanted. It was good that J had a ton of gold on his mage there 'cause without the 15g I wouldn't have been able to get more than like half that. (I was down to 1g and change after all was said and done, with the 15 he gave me; I had 18 and change on my own after having bought a kickass bow and dagger off the AH.)

So... I got a little done on the stitching project, but not half as much as I planned. I got a few quests done and some new pet skills on WoW, which was successful. Bathrooms weren't touched, computer room wasn't touched, clothes weren't touched. So basically sleep overrode doing anything really useful. I feel well rested though, even after only having slept 5.5 or so hours last night. Maybe I'll be able to get to bed at a decent time tonight so I don't end up with a huge sleep debt by the end of the week...

Woot! I had to add my test page to my trusted sites zone 'cause of the security settings I have for IE at work, but adding the Javascript "IE7" compatibility package fixed it all up. If you try it in IE and see that it doesn't work try adding just that page to your trusted sites zone.

Reference: /archives/2005/November/index.php#003435

Had a nap last night with the windows open, which is good. Didn't get to sleep until after 12:30am, which is bad. Overslept until J's alarm went off at 6:15 after shutting my own off, which is good that I got the much needed extra sleep but also bad because it means I was running late and will have to push off my shower till I get home. (No, I'm not stinky, I didn't do anything remotely near being considering strenuous yesterday, and I'm a generally non-oily non-sweaty person so it's probably better for my skin anyway. But I'm due for my scrip shampoo today, so...)

My mom pushed up my sister's birthday dinner to tonight from Saturday, which is fine, but the stuff I ordered for my sister for her birthday hasn't come yet. I ordered it last Friday afternoon, I think, stuff was in stock, they didn't set up shipping until Tuesday afternoon. She'll be in town still on Saturday though, so if I'm lucky it'll arrive that day (dunno who they're shipping with though, need to look at their tracking links again). I'm still ticked.

I got my "I'm from the internet" t-shirt yesterday, woohoo! I chose the cheapest USPS shipping on it too, and ordered it Monday. They ship fast. That's the kind of thing I like. And yes, I'm a geek who spends way too much time on the internet in some way, shape, or form. So this shirt is definitely applicable to me. Dunno whether I should wear it to work though. I might wear it tonight to give my sister a good laugh.

I've been bad; I haven't been working on the project I started at all. I did on Halloween, while watching Poltergeist on TV. (Would you believe that's the first time I actually saw the movie? I was bad and didn't even watch it with the lights out. Pretty good movie.) I didn't even get through 100 stitches, which is terrible. And then after the movie J and I played Devil Dice on his old PS1 which is upstairs, so I didn't do any after that. I don't think I'm gonna get it done when I wanted to... I think I'll be splitting my free time between that and WoW this weekend since I've been neglecting that as well. Free time being, of course, not personal time spent with J, and of course cleaning the bathroom since it's that time again. I wonder if he wants to start working on rearranging the computer room so he can bring his comp back upstairs...

and came up with this cute little thing. Not the foggiest idea what happens in IE or Opera; my vague guess is that Opera will do peachy and IE will barf.

Not sure if I'm going to use any of it any time soon, but it was a fun little experiment.

Now, off to bed. I had a nap (open windows + seriously fresh and mid 70F air = mmmmm) but it's still getting late.

Evidently I'm not the only one here with a short fuse today (which thankfully so far I've had nothing piss me off other than the now-routine morning coffee slurp). Ah well, I can relate. Hopefully today will go by quickly and anyone who needs it can come in tomorrow a little fresher. If not, at least the weekend will follow that.

And yes, today is looking like it might be a spammy day for me. Apologies in advance.

When I came in this morning I was backing into a space between two cars. Both were recent arrivals, both had nosed in. The driver of the car to my left was getting out as I started so I waited for her to finish, close her door, etc. The driver of the car to my right had just gotten out so he was still there. He scowled at my car the entire time, watching it like a hawk, until he was satisfied that I wasn't going to hit his car. !! Where does the hypocrisy come in? I backed in straight close to centered in the spot, and in fact I'd started out closer to the other car, and had to angle back just to even be close to his car. He, on the other hand, was crooked with his front right tire right within an inch of the inside of the painted line and his right back tire on the line completely. Yet he was paranoid that I'd hit his car. Right. If he wants to worry about someone else parking like shit he can certainly do his part and park decently centered. He had over a foot between the left side of his car and the line at the front of his car, and 18 inches or more between his trunk and that line. In fact, after he walked off I noticed I was still a little too far to the left (I'm as anal, if not more so, about my parking as I am about my driving) and pulled forward so I could get closer to his car so as to be centered. Fuck him, regardless of how shitty he parks it doesn't mean I have to compensate. If he doesn't like that I'm "that close" to his car (I drive a friggin' Corolla, so I still have close to a foot on both sides of my car between it and the lines) then he can do a better job parking next time.

(If he'd watched briefly then walked away, I wouldn't be gripy. But he watched the entire process with a massive scowl on his face like he was almost daring me in his head to go ahead and scrape his precious vehicle, so he could jump all over me about it.)

Yes, I'm very tired and very cranky, why do you ask?

Onyxia has been taken down in a 10 man raid. See the link for all the info. Basically, a horde guild on Mal'Ganis who's been raiding Onyxia since early this year, and who probably have most if not all of their epic gear, took her down. Color me impressed. Even if their characters are twinked to hell and back that's still pretty damn sweet.

I did get finished with the "remember me" stuff, but I did find a problem with what I did with the TypeKey stuff. Unfortunately, when a cookie is deleted by setting it as an empty cookie, an "isset" check on the cookie still returns true; it's not been UNset. Since that's all I was checking, well... after signing out I was signed out (I looked at the cookie in Firefox) but the page was still showing the form. Of course, I delayed myself immensely. I was bogged down trying to find out a way to read the expiry of the cookie; obviously if it was earlier than the current time then it's not a valid cookie, right? Well, eventually I got it through my thick skull that cookie expirations are write-only. I looked at the page again to try and brainstorm something else when I noticed it said "Thanks for signing in, " with no name anymore. Duh! The value isn't valid anymore. So I threw in a check to make sure it isn't empty, and voila! It worked.

So now there's not a lot of JS heavy stuff. I can't remove it all, that would require digging into the CGI code to make it set the "remember me" cookie based on the radio button chosen. However, it doesn't rely on JS to write the remembered values into the form, which I figure is a step up. Another thing I changed, is that since I require TypeKey authentication, if a person isn't signed in they no longer get the form and only get the notification of their not being signed in with a link to do so. I don't see why they should still even get a form if not signed in, y'know?

So I did take longer than I wanted, and definitely longer than I should have, because I'm dense. I couldn't leave it broken though, so...

I'm already done with the JS to PHP change for the TypeKey stuff. Plus I did other things (specifically sign up with Technorati and claim this site as mine, including putting their JS into my footer file and telling them not to display anything in it) while I did that. It's nice, because you don't see all that extra crap (including the cookie name) in the source of the page, and you don't have the "thanks for signing in" paragraph if you're logged out with JS going and hiding it after the fact. Just... one paragraph prints if you're logged in, the other if you're not. Works for me.

The "remember me" stuff might be harder, but now that I'm thinking more about it I may be wrong. It just changes how the form fields are written, I think. There are some onclicks that still have to happen with JS (when one changes the "remember me" from Yes to No or vice versa it removes or sets the cookie as needed; as far as I know the MovableType comments processing CGI won't do this, and that is not something I want to dig into to change) but I don't think I need to do the rest of the stuff on the client end.

I'm going to try to change the commenting stuff on the main site that uses Javascript into using PHP instead so JS can be turned off and you can still comment. I'll tackle the TypeKey signin stuff first, then if I get it working and still have time and momentum before bed I may look at reworking the "remember me" part. Of course, that one is less important, probably well known for being JS, and might be more difficult. It actually sets a cookie; the JS stuff for TypeKey only reads the cookie (the cookie being set by the TypeKey site itself).

What I'll probably do is first see if I can get hold of all the cookie info the JS is looking for, using HTML comments or something just to say "hey, this is what I got." Then I'll do the same/similar if-statement type checks on those things and again use comments to show the results. If the results the PHP gets match with what the JS is getting, I'm good for ripping out the JS and switching to the PHP code completely. I figure this should keep the page from ever breaking for any length of time. (It's possible when I do the final switchover that I'll typo something, but I'll find that immediately and be able to fix it so that probably no one will be the wiser.)

I haven't done any of my own code for a little while so this should be fun. Bonus points for it not involving any database work, heh. Between the MySQL failures here due to an exploit (that, granted, was quickly shut down, kudos to the CW staff), and the almost nothing but database work we did at work today with schemas and setting it up and modeling and... yeah. No more personal DB work for me for at least a couple days.

... then the bath accessories found here might be right up your alley. Jack shower curtain, Halloweentown accessories and towels, etc. Looks like they're all reduced-price too.