Aftershocks
Dec. 3rd, 2002 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cabbitzillaYes, Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I'm still alive. There's been quite a bit going on that's kept me away from here. Given that I've seen some grumbles about 'whiney, angsty stuff' and so forth, the rest will be behind a cut tag. But to be completely blunt, it -is- my journal... and it's really the only place I have to vent at present.
It's been a bit since I updated; new meds and crash projects have diverted me and kept me pulling my hair out. With the stronger patch, nausea for the first 18 hours has proven to be a problem issue. As I'm writing, there are pauses as I dash to the bathroom; I'm still within the nausea period.
Just before we left on the trip up north, a package arrived for me from Sapphi... bless her heart, there were some real treasures in this lot, but I really didn't have a lot of time to delve into it. Chaos grabbed me by the hair and shook vigorously, and then there was no time.
The Thanksgiving visit up to Megan's parents place was relatively smooth this time. At the last minute I got a request to build a replacement computer for the youngest of the girls; the old P100 was no longer fast enough to do her classwork for her college courses. The day before we went up, I assembled a P300 for them, with a slot left open for the modem that was in the existing machine. They'd said repeatedly that the -machine- wasn't fast enough; I queried them on it to be sure, and was assured that the internet wasn't the problem. So the new machine was built up with that in mind, on one of the last of the FIC VA-503+ mainboards from my stock. (It's a particularly potent mainboard, considering that it's a Pentium main. Socket 7 has its limitations, but this board will take any and all S7 chips, up to and including the AMD K6-II 550. It's also got onboard USB, and an AGP 2x slot... and can be overclocked with ease. Outside of a P4/Athlon class machine, it's my preferred mainboard, hands down.) The machine went together with surprising ease, and the Windows Millenium install went off without a single hiccough.
Everything got packed into the car by yours truly; Megan uses any excuse she can think of to avoid actually doing something to help me. For the night before a holiday, the roads were surprisingly empty. Of course, it helps that I rarely use the 'conventional' routes to go anywhere. We made the normally 3.75 hour trip in 3.5 hours, including one stop for me to puke my guts out over the guardrail. I miscalculated the onset of the fresh patch, and it caught me on the road. *sigh* Well, still, the trip up was comparatively smooth. When we unpacked the car, I left the new machine in the trunk... with half the world coming in for dinner the next day, I didn't want it under foot. I crawled into my nightgown and passed out.
Dinner on Thursday went fairly well. I avoided any 'deep' conversations and stayed close to the fire in the fireplace. As is often the case, I simply wasn't able to get warm. I probably could have laid down in the flames and still been chilled. Oh well. As things started to break up for the night, I said my goodnights and retreated to bed a bit early. I figured I'd spend Friday tinkering with the new machine to be sure everything was properly set up, and wanted to get some sleep.
Friday brought the discovery that the 'perfectly fine' modem was an antiquated 14.4. Having been assured that the modem was fine, I'd not thought to bring along my spare 33.6. I set it all up and promised them a faster modem on the next trip (January), and shook my head and walked away. I should -know- not to trust an end-user on ANYTHING, and I got burned.
As a footnote to this, last night they called complaining that the modem doesn't work. It dialed and connected perfectly for me, which means somebody's screwed with something they shouldn't have touched... but somehow it's MY fault that that ancient lump doesn't work. Somebody wallop me the next time I try to do something nice for someone, please?
Saturday's drive back was positively hellish; I honestly believe that every inbred spacecase in the eastern half of the US was out on the road. It was stop and go traffic for long stretches, and even the open parts were congested. What took 3.5 hours going up, took almost -6- on the way back. I was right on the brink of exploding by the time we got home, only to discover that we'd run out of fuel for the furnace, and that the house was ice cold. *sigh* So I spent 45 minutes shuttling back and forth to the local filling station, getting approximately 9 gallons of diesel fuel into the tank and repriming the furnace. Sunday I repeated the performance. Blessedly, Lamar Oil was able to get a truck out here bright and early Monday morning to fill the tank. Now I just need to get the smell of diesel fuel out of the house.
Saturday night, braindead from the road, the cold, and the fuel oil mess, I sat down and started to seriously watch the fansubbed episodes of Chobits that were part of the package from Sapphi. Twenty six episodes in all; I finished them yesterday afternoon. It... is spooky to find that someone out there understands the head space I'm in... spookier still that there's another that shares it. And almost creepy to find that the search for identity and meaning and sharing that I've been trying to cope with for years is the underlying premise of this program. I.. am not going to go any further on this point; there're some that will understand what I'm referencing, and they're welcome to contact me directly.
Suffice it to say that I'm a bit wigged out by this.
Also within the package was a recording of the DCI 2002 championships, which was a definite treat. I've been away from it for a good many years, but the power is still there. Life was simpler then, when I had the music to focus on. It provided a solid core to someone lacking any foundation at all. A large part of me wishes I'd never drifted away from it, but I know in my heart that it was inevitable. Music got me through high school; without it I'm certain I would have ended up a drop-out.
Hopefully I'll be able to get something done today. The house is a complete wreck, and I need to get it cleaned up somehow. I've plans for where everything needs to go, and what needs to happen to get there; I've even pulled Megan's measuring tape out and done measurements. Getting the computers out into the extended living room will be helpful as well; I'll finally be able to properly use the subwoofer without having to listen to Megan bitch. Well, that's the theory, anyway. I've got a machine to build for myself as well - that may end up being today's project.
Right this second, my big issue is that I'm out of cigarettes. I'm seriously craving a smoke, and there's not one left in the house. Maybe the construction guys next door have one they can spare. *sigh* I'm such an addict.
Kweepie's cage is clean, his run swept, food and water freshened. He's popcorning around like a lunatic on speed. :p He's such a silly little fellow, and a real joy to have around. Even if he does chew on the curtains a bit. I need to get another bag of food for him, and maybe another sack of timothy hay. He really seems to like the Nutriphase pellets... I need to canvas the local stores and figure out where I got it at. I know it's from someplace local, I simply cannot remember where. I need to start keeping notes on this stuff.
Of course, I'll likely forget that I'm keeping notes... or where I put them.
I think I'll put Dead Winter Dead into the playstation and work in the living room a bit. It may well turn out to be 'nap on the sofa for a bit' but I'm going to try.
*hugs*
~Ellie-chan
It's been a bit since I updated; new meds and crash projects have diverted me and kept me pulling my hair out. With the stronger patch, nausea for the first 18 hours has proven to be a problem issue. As I'm writing, there are pauses as I dash to the bathroom; I'm still within the nausea period.
Just before we left on the trip up north, a package arrived for me from Sapphi... bless her heart, there were some real treasures in this lot, but I really didn't have a lot of time to delve into it. Chaos grabbed me by the hair and shook vigorously, and then there was no time.
The Thanksgiving visit up to Megan's parents place was relatively smooth this time. At the last minute I got a request to build a replacement computer for the youngest of the girls; the old P100 was no longer fast enough to do her classwork for her college courses. The day before we went up, I assembled a P300 for them, with a slot left open for the modem that was in the existing machine. They'd said repeatedly that the -machine- wasn't fast enough; I queried them on it to be sure, and was assured that the internet wasn't the problem. So the new machine was built up with that in mind, on one of the last of the FIC VA-503+ mainboards from my stock. (It's a particularly potent mainboard, considering that it's a Pentium main. Socket 7 has its limitations, but this board will take any and all S7 chips, up to and including the AMD K6-II 550. It's also got onboard USB, and an AGP 2x slot... and can be overclocked with ease. Outside of a P4/Athlon class machine, it's my preferred mainboard, hands down.) The machine went together with surprising ease, and the Windows Millenium install went off without a single hiccough.
Everything got packed into the car by yours truly; Megan uses any excuse she can think of to avoid actually doing something to help me. For the night before a holiday, the roads were surprisingly empty. Of course, it helps that I rarely use the 'conventional' routes to go anywhere. We made the normally 3.75 hour trip in 3.5 hours, including one stop for me to puke my guts out over the guardrail. I miscalculated the onset of the fresh patch, and it caught me on the road. *sigh* Well, still, the trip up was comparatively smooth. When we unpacked the car, I left the new machine in the trunk... with half the world coming in for dinner the next day, I didn't want it under foot. I crawled into my nightgown and passed out.
Dinner on Thursday went fairly well. I avoided any 'deep' conversations and stayed close to the fire in the fireplace. As is often the case, I simply wasn't able to get warm. I probably could have laid down in the flames and still been chilled. Oh well. As things started to break up for the night, I said my goodnights and retreated to bed a bit early. I figured I'd spend Friday tinkering with the new machine to be sure everything was properly set up, and wanted to get some sleep.
Friday brought the discovery that the 'perfectly fine' modem was an antiquated 14.4. Having been assured that the modem was fine, I'd not thought to bring along my spare 33.6. I set it all up and promised them a faster modem on the next trip (January), and shook my head and walked away. I should -know- not to trust an end-user on ANYTHING, and I got burned.
As a footnote to this, last night they called complaining that the modem doesn't work. It dialed and connected perfectly for me, which means somebody's screwed with something they shouldn't have touched... but somehow it's MY fault that that ancient lump doesn't work. Somebody wallop me the next time I try to do something nice for someone, please?
Saturday's drive back was positively hellish; I honestly believe that every inbred spacecase in the eastern half of the US was out on the road. It was stop and go traffic for long stretches, and even the open parts were congested. What took 3.5 hours going up, took almost -6- on the way back. I was right on the brink of exploding by the time we got home, only to discover that we'd run out of fuel for the furnace, and that the house was ice cold. *sigh* So I spent 45 minutes shuttling back and forth to the local filling station, getting approximately 9 gallons of diesel fuel into the tank and repriming the furnace. Sunday I repeated the performance. Blessedly, Lamar Oil was able to get a truck out here bright and early Monday morning to fill the tank. Now I just need to get the smell of diesel fuel out of the house.
Saturday night, braindead from the road, the cold, and the fuel oil mess, I sat down and started to seriously watch the fansubbed episodes of Chobits that were part of the package from Sapphi. Twenty six episodes in all; I finished them yesterday afternoon. It... is spooky to find that someone out there understands the head space I'm in... spookier still that there's another that shares it. And almost creepy to find that the search for identity and meaning and sharing that I've been trying to cope with for years is the underlying premise of this program. I.. am not going to go any further on this point; there're some that will understand what I'm referencing, and they're welcome to contact me directly.
Suffice it to say that I'm a bit wigged out by this.
Also within the package was a recording of the DCI 2002 championships, which was a definite treat. I've been away from it for a good many years, but the power is still there. Life was simpler then, when I had the music to focus on. It provided a solid core to someone lacking any foundation at all. A large part of me wishes I'd never drifted away from it, but I know in my heart that it was inevitable. Music got me through high school; without it I'm certain I would have ended up a drop-out.
Hopefully I'll be able to get something done today. The house is a complete wreck, and I need to get it cleaned up somehow. I've plans for where everything needs to go, and what needs to happen to get there; I've even pulled Megan's measuring tape out and done measurements. Getting the computers out into the extended living room will be helpful as well; I'll finally be able to properly use the subwoofer without having to listen to Megan bitch. Well, that's the theory, anyway. I've got a machine to build for myself as well - that may end up being today's project.
Right this second, my big issue is that I'm out of cigarettes. I'm seriously craving a smoke, and there's not one left in the house. Maybe the construction guys next door have one they can spare. *sigh* I'm such an addict.
Kweepie's cage is clean, his run swept, food and water freshened. He's popcorning around like a lunatic on speed. :p He's such a silly little fellow, and a real joy to have around. Even if he does chew on the curtains a bit. I need to get another bag of food for him, and maybe another sack of timothy hay. He really seems to like the Nutriphase pellets... I need to canvas the local stores and figure out where I got it at. I know it's from someplace local, I simply cannot remember where. I need to start keeping notes on this stuff.
Of course, I'll likely forget that I'm keeping notes... or where I put them.
I think I'll put Dead Winter Dead into the playstation and work in the living room a bit. It may well turn out to be 'nap on the sofa for a bit' but I'm going to try.
*hugs*
~Ellie-chan
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Hey!
You were a regular poster for long enough that I was a bit worried when you disappeared.
Wishing you the best!
~~KT the Sleep Deprived~~