Life Without A/C

Friday afternoon, my air conditioning stopped cooling. Right before the weekend. Great timing. And with a heat wave of 100+ degree temps forecast. The service company didn't think they could squeeze me in before late Saturday evening, if not Sunday. This wasn't very encouraging.

Overnight, the temperature inside got up to 87 degrees, but with the ceiling fans and a floor fan running, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. I left mid-morning to go to Alan's monthly writers' group meeting, although I felt bad about leaving the cats in the house with no a/c. I kept telling myself that outdoor cats would be in that heat all the time, so it should be okay.

But then ... a miracle! While I was at the writers' meeting, the service company called and said a repairman could be at my house in 30 minutes. I raced home from south Austin, and within about 20 minutes, it was fixed. Turned out, the outside condenser fan had stopped running because the motor was going bad. He showed me how to reset a switch that gets tripped when the fan stops, and how to use a stick or a saw blade (yes, a saw blade) to push the fan and get it going again.

I've known for months that it was time to replace the entire HVAC system, so I figured this was the push I needed. I made an appointment to get an estimate on Monday; the repair guy charged me a nominal service fee and went on his way.

Except ... before the house got below 83 degrees, the fan stopped again. All the sticks I tried broke before they got the fan moving. And even the saw blade didn't help; the fan would move a little and then stop. Needless to say, I was pissed. And it was already mid-afternoon, so the service company couldn't fit me in again until ... well, they didn't even say when.

Earlier, Michelle had offered the use of her apartment pool if I needed to escape my house and cool off. As I was only getting more and more pissed at home, I clearly needed to get away for awhile. And I knew she was already at the pool. So I took off and joined her poolside. It may not make a ton of sense to go lay out in 100-degree rays to cool off (we never actually got in the pool), but it was way better than sitting at home. Barbara eventually joined us, and then we escaped to the air conditioning of Michelle's apartment, where I stayed soaking up the cool air (and eating the stir fry for three that Michelle made) until I had to leave to go to my play. Yes, I'm in a play ... which explains the lack of posts over the past month. More on that next post.

When I got home late that night after the play, it was 88 in the house. Outside, it was starting to cool into the upper 70s, so I opened up a few windows to try to draw in some cooler air. However, I don't like sleeping with open windows. And I didn't want to turn on lights or the TV or the desktop computer and add heat into the house, so I stayed up till 2 am, doing nothing but laying on the sofa, until the house cooled down to 84 degrees. Then I woke up early Sunday morning to open up the windows for a couple hours.

Sunday was the worst. The high was 103. The service company never called, and all I could do was leave voice mail at an automated system. The day dragged on as the temperature climbed. I tried putting a big bowl of ice in front of the floor fan, but it didn't seem to make much difference. Finally, late in the afternoon, I met Michelle and Barbara for a movie. I thought the theater a/c would do me good, but I felt a bit sick instead. I think I was overheated from spending all day in my house. I didn't feel better until halfway through the play that night, but then I got overheated again when I went for a late dinner afterwards with Tom, Virginia, Craig, and Suzanne and we sat outside.

Then, by the time I got home, it was 90 in my house. At 11 pm. And outside, it wasn't cooling off enough either, so opening the windows did nothing. All the fans running brought it down to ... 89. Somehow I fell asleep on the sofa for about an hour, waking up with sweat pouring down my face. Nice.

It was now 12:30 am. It was still hot even outside. No breeze. I walked around my front yard for a few minutes, then sat on my back patio in a lounge chair and tried to sleep. No dice. A tree roach raced across the porch. A tiny toad jumped onto the chair next to me. All sorts of things were rustling around in the dark, but with the porch light on, nothing ventured near. Still, it was doing me no good. So I went back in.

Now past 1 am, I was feverishly trying to figure out what to do. Find a hotel at this hour? What about the cats? Did I dare call any of my friends to ask if I could crash on their couch? Who should I call? I ran through the list of all those who live closest to me, but I couldn't bring myself to bother anyone.

Finally, around 2 am, I decided to try the outside condenser fan one last time. So I went out, saw and flashlight in hand to try to push that damn fan back to life. And ... it ran. And kept running. So I went inside and sat in a cool spot as the house cooled down to a balmy 87.

And then the cooling stopped. So I sat on the sofa and waited 15 minutes. Then I went outside again and successfully restarted the fan. Each time I did this, the fan would run for up to 20 minutes before I had to go outside again. I imagine the sight of a guy carrying a saw and flashlight at 3 am would be cause for alarm.

"Fixing" the condenser fan (saw teeth pointed away from the fan blade)
Click photo to enlarge

I repeated this pattern for the next 2 hours until the house was down to 82. Then, at 4 am, I turned off the a/c and went to bed.

I woke up at 7 am and got ready for work. I decided to work from home after lunch. The house had only warmed to 84, and I was able to use the restarting method successfully each time the cooling stopped. Outside, it warmed up to 103 again, but then some clouds and, I assume, a front rolled in and it dropped into the low 80s outside. So that helped a ton. I was able to stay comfortable all afternoon long until the sales rep came over to give me an estimate on a new system.

So now tomorrow (Tuesday), I'm getting the entire system replaced. Brand-spanking new everything. It'll take all day, and I'll work from home even though it's likely to get hot inside, but I would like to be around for it.

But it's interesting to learn what you take for granted. Central air, for one thing. I know millions of people live in 90-degree conditions all over the world with no artificial cooling. Yet I could barely stand one night. Also, I started thinking about what gives off heat in the house. I haven't run the dishwasher in days because the drying cycle will likely heat things up in the house. The amplifier connected to my TV gets very warm. The desktop spits out some warm air from time to time. My 100-watt floor lamp? Forget it! Only the dim light gets used for now. So I've watched less TV these past few days, though I couldn't stay off the computer for more than one night.

So, by tomorrow evening, I should have a space-age, energy-efficient, quieter, finally-equipped-with-a-standard-filter-size (who the hell makes a 10" x 36" air intake grill???), brand-spanking-new HVAC system.

Whew.

My new wheels: The truth

Okay, that last post was tongue-in-cheek. That's not really my new ride. It's the rental they gave me while my car is in the body shop. I finally took my Passat in to fix the damage from the parking garage incident.

My Passat apparently entitled me to an "intermediate" sized vehicle. The one they were going to rent me had already been rented to someone else, so the only intermediate vehicle they had available was this PT Cruiser. Which, contrary to what I was saying last post, is not the manliest of cars. I mean, look at the tiny wheels on that thing. Not that I drive a sports car, but still, I am a little embarrassed to be driving this thing. And within just a couple hours of getting the rental, I'd already been teased by Michelle sight unseen. And given her generous nature, she happily repeated her comments in the last entry. And it wasn't just Michelle; a 12-year-old (Trish's niece Kayla) thought it was funny too.

So, that's my ride, but only for the next few days. Whew...

My new wheels

Ohhhhhhh yeeeeahhhh. Check out my new wheels. PT Cruiser, baby. I am gonna get so much action in this p----mobile. You know what the PT stands for, right? Poontang. That's riiiight. PT Cruiser. This fine piece of machinery drops panties faster than spiked punch at the prom. Yo, the line starts at the back seat, ladies. You know you want me. I. Am. So. Cool. PT Cruiser cool.

Chickmagnetmobile!
Click photo to enlarge

Nyquil Revelations: The Nature of Time Itself

I just got up after 14 hours in bed. Yes, 14. Actually, in bed and on the sofa.

I've been rearranging my spare bedrooms to store some of Trish and Brian's stuff while their house is being remodeled (see their the updates on their remodeling here). And apparently in between moving my stuff around and moving theirs in, I stirred up a lot of dust plus mixed in dust from their house. So, I've been hit with allergies bad enough that it basically took me out of commission yesterday.

With chest congestion, coughing, a stuffy nose, and a complete lack of energy, it was like a bad cold. Tuesday night I slept fitfully at best. So yesterday, it finally occurred to me to take Dayquil, but once evening rolled around, I thought it was time to bring out the big guns: Nyquil. I was ready to be knocked out. So, around 8:30 pm, I took Nyquil and went to bed.

Over the next two hours, bad storms rolled through. There were reports of a tornado less than 10 miles away. And I slept blissfully through it all.

I slept soundly through this
Click to enlarge

I awoke after a VERY solid sleep feeling refreshed and thinking, "Cool, it must be the middle of the night now."

It was 10:30 pm. Only two hours later. Long before I'd normally even go to bed.

The rest of the night was filled with short bursts of sleep on the bed and the sofa. Yes, I moved back and forth depending on my half-asleep mood. I missed another round of storms at 12:30 am.

I slept through this too
Click to enlarge

And ... I made a startling realization about the nature of time.

You see, each moment in time has a tiny square near the edge that when positioned just right, helps you sleep perfectly through that moment. Each moment is different, of course, so you often have to adjust your sleeping position to find that right alignment. But that's how you sleep well; you constantly adjust to find the perfect position. And so that's why I kept waking up partway, to adjust to find the perfect sleeping position for each moment. And I felt comforted about waking up a lot, because it just meant I was finding the perfect sleep moment for every second, which would help me recover faster.

Hey, it made perfect sense to me for the next 12 hours. Seriously. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Nyquil, the nighttime sniffling sneezing coughing aching stuffy head fever so you're open to revelations about the nature of time itself medicine.

Back to the body shop

For almost 6 years, my car led a collision-free life. That is, until the day after Christmas last year when an uninsured woman behind me decided that stopping for a red light is merely a suggestion, even if the car in front of you has decided to stop.

As a result, by late January, I had a shiny new bumper. It cost me $250, though (half my deductible). Sure, it isn't thousands of dollars, but I'd just come off my third unemployment period in 2 years, when every dollar you have counts triple. And it's not like when I have a job, I take $250 in cash and flush it down the toilet every month. But that's practically what this was, since I'd found myself out a couple hundred for no reason. But at least I had a brand-new bumper, free of the dings of the past 6 years. That was something.

Last week, someone backed into my car in the parking garage at work.

My beautiful new bumper is scratched. The repaired trunk is bent inwards again. And I'm gonna have to go through all this all. over. again. For the second time this year. And it's barely April.

The driver left his card and an apology, at least. Still waiting to hear from his insurance company, but hopefully this one will actually work the way it's supposed to. This guy appears to be taking full responsibility so far, which would be a nice change of pace. The woman in December lied about her lack of insurance (though interestingly, not about her address) and tried to claim I stopped too close to the intersection. Didn't seem to matter that 1) the light was ALREADY RED ... what, was she gonna run the red if I did too??, and 2) I WAS ALREADY STOPPED; you generally don't try to go through a stopped car no matter how close to an intersection they are. And years ago with the blurple car, the girl who ran a red and hit me took full responsibility ... for about 5 minutes, until a friend of hers talked her out of it, and then she cried to the police and got away scott free.

In any case, here I am waiting for this guy's insurance company to call me so I can set up the re-repairs to my car, all while my insurance company is still trying to collect from the uninsured driver that hit me barely 3 months ago.

Sigh.

Sick Daze

I've been a bad, bad blogger. Sorry. I have two excuses for my lack of posts this past month. The first excuse, I'll post in my next entry. This week's excuse is something I hadn't done in nearly 3 years.

I called in sick to work.

It's not that I haven't been sick in those 3 years. However, since my layoff from IBM, I've been sick far less frequently than in the years before. At one stretch, I went 18 months without a cold, which is unheard of for me. And even when I have gotten sick, the colds have been much milder overall. Nothing ever completely knocked me on my ass for a few days, where I'd huddle under a comforter on my sofa, sleeping fitfully 18 hours a day.

Of the 2 or 3 colds I've had since IBM, I can remember only one falling during a period of employment. Had I still been IBM, I would've called in sick to help me recuperate. But as a contractor, I wouldn't get paid if I didn't go in. So, into the office I went, hopped up on Dayquil, muddling through the sickness. Not the ideal, but hey, I wanted my paycheck.

Now that I'm a permanent employee, I have sick time again. But I made it through mid-February without a cold and only mild allergies during cedar fever season, so I was hoping that meant my recent health was more a product of what I've been drinking rather than a product of my unemployment.

See, I've had two theories for my lower frequency and severity of colds; one is that until this season, I hadn't been employed during winter since the 2004-05 season. Not being around a bunch of sick people at the office probably helped a lot. The other theory is that I've been drinking a ton more green tea the past few years, in the form of Sweet Leaf Mint & Honey Green Tea. I hoped that the antioxidants and vitamin C in the drink was a factor in my health as well.

So when I first felt a cold coming on this past weekend, I was mildly annoyed, but I figured I could head things off at the pass. And by Monday, while the cold was still around, it wasn't incapacitating. Which was good, because we had President's Day off for some reason, so I woulda been annoyed if it had made me waste my holiday.

But on Tuesday, I actually felt worse. And one of my eyes was gunky, which never happens when I'm sick. So I did what I hadn't done since IBM and called in sick. And I even went to the doctor. He said it was just a virus and I had to let it run its course, prescribed some drops for my eyes, and sent me on my way.

Naturally, Wednesday was worse. And for the first time in a long time, a cold knocked me on my ass. I was barely awake most of the day. I didn't even have the energy to watch Law & Order in the afternoon on TNT.

Today's been better than yesterday, though I'm losing my patience with this cold. I'm not used to this anymore. I'm not sure why I got this sick. It's not even the flu, because I've had no fever this entire time; I nailed 98.6 at the doctor's office. I've already overdosed on chicken noodle soup. I'm tired of breathing through my mouth.

Monday, when I was still mobile and sharp, seems so long ago now. But I'm not quite as groggy as I was yesterday. I'm just hoping I can be vaguely productive tomorrow and have a mostly normal weekend.

Damn you green tea; you've let me down this week...

Blurple Memories

So, I had my first fender-bender in more than 6 years (a woman from a wealthy neighborhood yet with no insurance rear-ended me with her SUV when she apparently thought a red light meant "no, go ahead, keep going even though the car in front of you has stopped because why drive carefully when you know your insurance has lapsed?"). Ruined my Christmas break and I'm very pissy right now. But this isn't about that.

What this reminded me of was my previous car. Specifically, my "tolerance/hate" relationship with it (I can't call if love/hate). Whereas yesterday my reaction regarding my Passat was along the lines of, "Dammit, my beautiful unblemished car!!", with my Nissan, my reaction woulda been, "SIGH ... what is it this time?"

My Nissan was supposed to be a huge step into adulthood and personal independence. I was 26, and this was the first car I was buying completely on my own. My car at the time, a Dodge Shadow, was one my parents had bought while I was in college. I test drove several different brands with Trish and Brian to narrow down my choices, and guided by them, the semi-sporty Nissan 200SX became the frontrunner. We test drove one and took it to giant empty parking lot, where Trish and Brian taught me how to drive with a stick shift (I'd only driven a stick once before out of necessity, learning on the fly with Trish and Barbara in another car following me, but that's another story). The dealer only had a couple of models on the lot, and none were in the colors I wanted. So I chose the Royal Blue option in the brochure, shown in the middle of the photo below (yes, I still have the brochure almost 12 years later):

Royal Blue ... on paper
Click photo to enlarge

A few weeks later, I went back to the dealer to pick up my first-ever set of brand-new wheels. And it didn't take long for things to go south. I walked in, and there beaming at me in its shiny fresh-paint glory, was a Bright. Purple. Car:

Royal Blue...??
Click photo to enlarge

I asked if there was a mistake. No, that was the correct color, I was told. I stared at this purple beast feeling totally screwed. I'd already bought it. I'd already traded in the Dodge. And now I was gonna have to drive this purple thing?!

In retrospect, I can see there's a purple undercurrent to the brochure color, especially when compared with the royal blue shown in the previous year's catalog (yes, I still have that as well). And a two-inch swatch isn't the same as seeing it on an entire car. And as I would learn over the next few months, at night the color deepened to a dark blue with a purplish tint, almost what was in the brochure. When the lighting was just right. But during the day, there was no way to call it blue. Other than blue mixed with red to form purple. Brian and others coined the term "blurple" to describe my car. But no matter what the name, the car that was supposed to change my life wasn't what I thought it'd be.

Even discarding the daily reminder that I didn't get the car I thought I was getting, the negative experiences outweighed the positive. About 1,000 miles out of warranty, when it was just over 2 years old, the car's alternator died. The reason it died? Someone had jammed one of the plugs in wrong. And just a few months earlier, I'd taken it to the dealer because the check engine light was on, and they'd said they double-checked all the electrical connections. So their tech presumably did a poor job on my car and forced a plug back in, which caused the alternator to die prematurely. And not only was it just a couple months out of warranty when it died, but I couldn't prove that it was their fault.

Oh, and I should mention that when the car died because of the alternator, I was just outside La Grange, 65 miles away from Austin. On my way to Houston. To catch a flight. For a 3-week family trip to Indonesia and Australia. And I was stranded with a worthless car 120 miles from Houston with all my luggage and 6 hours to catch my flight.

To be fair, I was very lucky it died where it did, literally on the outskirts of La Grange within walking distance of a few stores. Had it died just 10 minutes earlier or later, I would've had a long walk ahead of me in the Texas summer sun (I didn't have a cell phone yet ... this was 1998 and I was too cheap). Thanks to one of my sister's college friends, I made it to Houston about an hour before my and my sister's flight. And I had the car towed to Trish and Brian's house, where it sat for the next month. (It was easier than towing it to my apartment, since I wouldn't even be there to make sure it arrived).

In order to take this vacation, I had to take one week unpaid. So that plus the repair and towing costs made for a very happy me when I got home.

Not long after, I was involved in a weird accident where a car in the onramp ahead of me mysteriously stopped dead in its tracks. So I stopped too. No choice. Then the other car took off. But before I could get going again, a pickup truck hit me. This left the trunk unopenable, and I wasn't able to open the trunk again for years. (As I said, I was cheap, so instead of getting it fixed, I pocketed the money I got from the pickup driver's insurance).

On a more positive note, I avoided a major accident by sheer instinct. I was in the 2nd left turn lane. Our light turned green, so I prepared to move forward. But something in my peripheral vision on my left seemed amiss. Plus, the car to my left suddenly stopped. So I did too. The car to my right didn't. And that's when a car going 60 on the cross street ran their red light and plowed into the car on my right, which had pulled into the intersection. I felt a slight shudder when the blur of the car went in front of me, and there was a slight scrape on the front of my bumper. My guess is that the car running the red just barely swiped me before it hit the car on my right. Or maybe the scrape was just a coincidence and they never touched me. Either way, a big near miss, and not one I hold against the blurple at all.

Then there was the big accident, when a girl ran a red and plowed into the rear passenger side of my car, spinning me around.

The last straw
Click photo to enlarge

I had a green arrow, but she cried her way out of blame. After the accident, she said her light was red. She told the cop it was yellow. And his police report said hers was green. (It also said I was white). And my side wasn't helped by an overzealous friendly witness who, in trying to help confirm my blamelessness, ended up muddying the waters and inadvertently put me on the brink of being blamed. From the cop's report, the only reason I didn't end up being blamed was because he couldn't actually prove I didn't have a green arrow any more than he could prove she had a green light, since the only evidence was the conflicting stories of different people. Still, her dad's insurance company had a collection agency try to get money directly from me ... for HER accident.

But the curse of the blurple didn't stop there. My insurance adjuster was lazy at best. He almost never called me back, never gave me updates, and didn't seem to be fighting for my side against hers at all. I had to call him to get any sort of status. And after weeks of him telling me the police report wasn't in, I went to the station myself and got the report, which had been on file for awhile. Isn't that something your adjuster's supposed to do? The car itself took 2 months to fix, or about twice as long as estimated, because the body shop kept ordering the wrong parts. My insurance only paid for 1 month of a rental, so I ended up borrowing Tamara's car for a couple of weeks and relying on people to take me places the rest of the time.

The hassle of fighting not just the police report and the girl's insurance but my own uncommunicative adjuster and the slow-as-molasses body shop wore me out, and I decided that despite having the car for less than 6 years, it was time to ditch the blurple once and for all. But then I learned through Carfax that my car had been totalled. Six months earlier. In Dallas. So I had to get the state to fix that clerical error, because I couldn't sell my car if it had already been totalled. And finally, I sold the car to Bob. Which should end the story of the curse of the blurple.

Except that Bob got into an accident a couple years later (though as he said, he was making a turn where he wasn't supposed to). Fixing it was too expensive, so he sold it to a coworker. Who parked it on the street. And whose neighbor had it towed ... from a public street. And Bob's coworker decided it wasn't worth the impound fee, so he left it there.

So that was presumably the final resting place for my blurple car. I'm sure from there it was torn to bits and sold for parts and scrap. Which seems fitting for the ol' blurple beast. I haven't missed it one bit.

Called into the principal's office

A friend of mine and I were called, separately, into the principal's office and told we'd been bad. I didn't even know what I'd done wrong. Being a goodie two-shoes, I never got into trouble, so this was new for me. Turned out, some of the other kids had complained because their feelings got hurt ... all because of recess.

See, we thought that recess was our time to do as we pleased. There were no organized activities or games; this was our time to run around and play with our friends. A nice break in the school day. It seemed normal that kids would break up into smaller groups; not everyone did the same thing all at once. Some would play football, some would tackle the monkey bars, others would play on the swing sets. Sometimes we'd do things in a huge group, but not always. And apparently some kids got mad that my group of friends didn't openly invite them to do every single thing with us. We weren't shunning the other kids or being mean to them, though. We just weren't best friends with them, so we didn't hang out with them every second like we did each other.

Our principal felt that was wrong. So she singled out me and one of my friends as the ringleaders and told us to make sure that from now on, every kid in the entire class was included in every single activity all the time, not just our friends. No exceptions. Keep in mind these were not official school activities that we were running; we're talking about playtime. But the last thing the principal wanted was for any kid to feel left out, even at recess.

Does that sound reasonable? Before you answer and start debating how best to raise and teach a child in an often cruel world, replace the following words in the above scenario:

• kids --> coworkers
• school --> work
• class --> department
  
• principal --> manager
• recess/games --> lunch
  

Because when I was called into her office to be given that lecture, I wasn't in elementary school.

I was at work, and I was 24. My "co-ringleader" was 29.

That's right. We were given a talking-to by our manager because we weren't inviting everyone to go out to lunch with us every single time.

Lunch. Our free time. Our life outside of work. Grown men and women. And we were being told that we could never go to lunch with only the people we wanted to. We had to invite Every. Damn. Person. In. The. Department.

The worst part is, some of us didn't even realize just how fucked up that was for a workplace policy. This was my first job right out of college, and one of the first for most of my friends. We were still used to a scholastic environment more than an office one. Still used to having a principal more than a manager. It took the eyes of my friends' spouses or my friends outside work to clue us in that, uh hello, we're all adults here, and no manager has the right to tell us who we can and can't eat lunch with outside of work.

Still, to keep the peace, we acquiesced ... sort of. We'd occasionally make a big show of inviting everyone in the department to lunch -- which, by the way, we'd always done regularly. The "problem" wasn't that we never invited everyone to lunch ... we just didn't do so enough, by our manager's estimation.

However, we realized that no one could complain if anyone left the office alone for lunch. So when we wanted to have lunch with a more private group, we'd sneak out of the office one by one. We'd work out the schedule on the phone or email. So, for example, Trish would leave first using one stairwell. CMC would leave a couple minutes later, going down a different stairwell. I'd leave a few more minutes after her and take the elevator. By that time, Trish would have gotten her car from the garage and pulled up to the front, where CMC and I would hurriedly get in and hope no one saw us.

That's right, we had to fake going to lunch alone in order to go to lunch with just our friends. I again remind you, this was an actual workplace with actual (alleged) adults. I mean, I know people often go to great lengths to conceal affairs ... but friendships that everyone knows about?! Yet that's what we felt we had to do.

I was reminded of this story today while having lunch with Barbara and a visiting CMC and her husband (who was one of the ones whose pointed out our workplace dysfunction for what it was). It still boggles my mind that this could have happened at any workplace. I wouldn't expect this to happen even in a high school. Elementary school, maybe. But only maybe. I know our manager's intentions were good, but to this day, I still can't believe that I was once called onto the carpet by my manager because I was going to lunch with my friends.

It's the little things

I went to Best Buy during lunch today. And it felt good.

All I did was browse. Leisurely strolled through the aisles, feeling neither the pressure to buy something nor the pangs of want. And even better, I felt no rush to cut my lunch hour short.

It's been a long time since I went to a Best Buy or Fry's for no good reason. Since the IBM layoff, my trips to stores like that have been rare, in part to prevent me from torturing myself. I'd only go to get Christmas gifts for family or boring supplies like blank DVDs. I missed my occasional window shopping trips, thinking about things I might buy ... even though I almost never followed through. But I guess there's a hopeful quality to window shopping even if you rarely buy something. And I've really missed that.

Strangely, I've also missed running errands over lunch. Or rather, feeling free to do so. Even though I was lucky enough that neither of my contract jobs were with clock watchers, I still felt the need to minimize my lunch hours. I didn't want to abuse their leniency, and after all, I was technically an hourly employee. So the less time I spent "at lunch," the faster I could justify to myself getting out of there and heading home. I'd still make time to meet friends for lunch, but usually, unless someone else initiated lunch plans, I'd stay at my desk and eat as fast as possible.

And so today, on the second day of my new full-time permanent non-contract can I get a hallelujah job, with nothing to do while waiting for IT to give me a laptop, I went to Best Buy during lunch for no reason other than to kill some time. And while feeling free to do that is a tiny, silly thing that has no relevance in the grand scheme of things ... I sure enjoyed the hell out of it.

Blog Resurrections

It's back.

Dammit.

Yes, I'm posting on The Layoff Times again. Today's first entry explains how I've ended up here again; I think I only alluded to it in previous posts in this blog. Subsequent posts will return to the old format that I'd hoped I'd never have to write in again. Nevertheless, it is my sincere hope that the return of The Layoff Times is not accompanied by a return of Whineacharya. To that end, I'll also resurrect Home Dipu Reviews with a vow of at least two new posts a week.

So, be on the lookout for new posts on all three of my blogs! (Hey, I'm trying to be excited ... ain't always easy). And as an added bonus, if you know where to dig down into the main Home Dipu site, you might find some new photo albums that haven't been announced on the main page yet. Just sayin'...

Mood-o'-lantern

My mood before I went to work Monday morning:

My mood after:

The virtues of an unmade bed

I know, I haven't blogged much lately, and this doesn't really change that. But until I have a real post to add, I wanted to share this article that says NOT making your bed might actually be healthier than making your bed!

(I'm guessing that what I do with my bedding every morning, making a "cat fort," counts as not making my bed).

Perfect weather

While I prefer a Texas summer to a frozen northern winter, what I really live for are these perfect spring and fall days. Deep blue cloudless skies, a gentle breeze carrying just a hint of coolness. Like today, sitting by a manmade waterfall just loud enough to drown out the distant sounds of traffic, above a tree-lined valley, watching butterflies flit chaotically past. This is my ideal relaxing break, whether for a few minutes during the workday or for a few days' escape on vacation. The early summer trip to Tahoe delivered too few of these days before a Texas-style heat wave pressed down on the region. But today (Friday), just leaning back in this weather, letting my thoughts drift while surrounded by The Blueness ... this is the life...

P.S. I took this photo with my iPhone...

The Blueness
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Birthday Traditions, Part 3: iSuccumbed

Yes, after all the long-winded needless buildup, the whole point of this is, iBought an iPhone.

I'm not normally an early adopter. I don't like to buy the first generation of any new product. I leave that to Trish and Brian. But my poor aim with my RAZR kinda forced the issue.

I've been planning to buy an iPod for more than 2 years now but never pulled the trigger on it. Hell, even my dad has an iPod now. The strange thing is, I really don't care about the music side of it. It's why I've been able to go this long without one. I'm more about the video. So I've been waiting for a widescreen iPod for my photos and videos. The iPhone and the new iPod touch are so nearly what I want. My ideal iPod would be a 160 GB iPod touch. But it doesn't seem likely within the next few months. And I needed a new phone.

Oh, and what did Steve Jobs do a few weeks ago? He cut the price by $200. That made the iPhone the same price as a normal iPod. And if you buy a refurb model from Apple, that's another $50 off. Suddenly, the iPhone looked like a good deal.

So here's my new toy, this year's birthday gift, in all its touchscreen glory!

Look! It's a photo I took from Tahoe!
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Look! It's Home Dipu ... on my phone!!
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Look! It's this very blog on my phone!!
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Look! A rotated landscape view!
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Birthday Traditions, Part 2: The RAZR's Edge

iWent to Day 2 of the ACL Fest a couple of weeks ago looking forward to a good day of music, but a hot and sweltering afternoon set the stage for a less-than-enjoyable evening. It started off fine; I found Trish and Brian in the early afternoon for Augustana's good show. Some time after Brian split off from us, Trish and I tried to find him, but the cellular network around Zilker Park was overtaxed. Neither of us could get a call or even a text through to Brian. We never could find him at that stage even after Trish managed to get a couple of texts through to him. Then I split off from Trish, assuming I'd meet up with them or others like Barbara later in the evening.

But over the course of the next 5 hours, I never found anyone again. Thanks to the spotty network, most of my texts and calls couldn't even be completed. A few times I managed to send off a text or leave a voice mail, and once I received a voice mail from Babs 40 minutes after she left it. I grew increasingly frustrated at my inability to contact and thus find anyone. And while I still enjoyed the day's closing act, Muse, I was hot and tired and irritated that I couldn't find anyone thanks to the unreliable network. It's one thing to spend a hot and sweaty day with friends when you can leave your chair and other stuff at base camp while you go to grab some food or hit the port-o-potties. When you're lugging all your shit around yourself for hours? Not nearly as much fun.

Back at home, I confirmed with Babs over IM that she had tried sending me texts, and that she hadn't received any from me. Trish would later confirm that all they got from me was one belated voice mail. I couldn't understand why texting had failed me so completely. So then I thought, maybe AT&T doesn't support a la carte texting. Seemed stupid, but I decided to add a monthly texting plan so that I could find people the following day. I went online to do so, but the browser hung as I was adding the plan. So I tried relogging on. And waited as nothing happened. Finally their site told me that my password had to be reset. As this was now 1:30 am, I'd had enough.

So, I threw my RAZR at the sofa. I didn't want to actually damage anything, just get out some frustration, so that seemed like a safe move. But after a long, hot, frustrating day, my aim wasn't my best, even at a target as big as furniture.

The cell phone sailed just over the sofa and hit the wall.

The outer screen was no longer working. The inside screen had some grainy residue on the inside of the screen; I'm guessing that was from the damaged outer screen. But it seemed like I could live with the damage. And in fact, on the final day of ACL, I received and sent texts with no problem. Turned out that despite the browser hangs, the monthly text plan had been successfully added. If I'd just checked my email, I woulda seen that ... and never thrown the phone.

But after ACL Fest, it became clear that the phone was mortally wounded. The inside screen would occasionally go blank, requiring me to remove the battery and put it back to restart the phone. The powdery residue made it hard to see the screen in broad daylight. It was not a matter of if, but when it would fail completely.

Which raised a new question. Should I replace the RAZR with some typical multimedia flip phone that costs $50-100 after rebate, or given that my birthday was the next day, do I throw caution to the wind and succumb to the hype?

Birthday Traditions, Part 1

iDecided to tell a story about a recent development, but first there needs to be some background:

For years, from childhood on, my main birthday tradition was having a party with as many friends as possible. Nothing unique there, but as traditions go, that's a pretty good one to have. (My mom would usually bake a t-shirt shaped cake with black icing and a Pittsburgh Steelers logo on it for the party, but that's another story).

I continued this tradition every year until I entered college. I even managed to pull it off a couple of times during my relatively antisocial college years, though the "parties" consisted of only 2-3 other people. Oh, and let's just say that Blue Velvet is not a good movie for birthday party viewing.

It took a couple of years before I got the tradition restarted once I got to NI. But birthdays were always a good excuse for a happy hour, and mine was no exception.

Then, once I got to IBM, I found myself with a salary that actually met the market average for the first time. I was no longer making substantially less than a tech writer should. That, plus becoming a homeowner, led to the birth of a second birthday tradition: buying myself something major for a birthday gift. So one year, I bought myself a big-screen TV. The next, an entertainment center to go around that. The next year, new bedroom furniture. And finally, in 2004, I bought myself a point-and-shoot digital camera, which was by far the smallest and least expensive of the lot, but still well worth it.

Then, in 2005, I got laid off. I'd been considering getting an iPod photo for an early birthday gift (to take with me on the Alaska cruise), but unemployment put a quick end to that thought. And so after just four years, that tradition died. I still had my usual birthday dinner, but I never bothered buying myself a birthday gift that year. And while I did have a job in 2006, the unemployment had gone on longer than I'd hoped, so I didn't bother getting myself anything then either.

So by the time September rolled around this year, I didn't see any point to this dead and silly tradition anymore. It's not like it was stopping me from buying stuff, like a new laptop, going on vacation, or getting a digital SLR. There was nothing else I was craving to buy. Buying myself a gift was irrelevant.

But then I learned the hard way that AT&T wouldn't let me send or receive text messages on my cell phone without paying for a monthly text plan...

Last One Standing

That first day of P.E.* each school year was never much fun for someone like me. No one believed I'd be any good at flag football, softball, or whatever sport was in season. I was always among the last remaining dregs when it came time to pick teams, and I never expected any better for myself. I accepted the judgment of my peers. And my performance on the field did nothing to dispel those ideas.

And yet, what should have been clear to me was that the truth was far different. The same kid who was never given the chance to do more than rush and block in P.E. was throwing long bombs to his friends in "double-driveway football" at home. The inconsequential batter hitting weak grounders in P.E. softball was belting homers on weekends, even though both games involved the same slow, friendly underhand pitches. And while I was never quite good enough to make the majors in Little League baseball, I became one of the better players in the minor league.

Was I a great athlete? Hell, no. But I was decent. Yet that's not the self-image I had. And so all through school, I was almost always passed over for teams until near the end. I grew accustomed to that. I expected it. That was my lot in life, fair or not.

What's the moral of this story? I wish I knew. If I've taken any lessons from this, what I've learned isn't very good. Because I'll still have moments when I feel like a thin, bony teenager with giant glasses, standing there on the yellow, trampled grass outside the school building. Watching as others are picked ahead of me one by one. Wondering if I'll be the last one standing...



* That's Physical Education, if you didn't know; given our current national obesity rates, I'm even not sure if that's a required thing in school anymore.