Tag: Windows

Still No Window Folks

We are scheduled to have some folks stop over today to check on our new windows. Well… they were new a year and a half ago. They were supposed to come out a few weeks after the installation. What’s a few hours more?

Insert very frustrated sighs here.

I have a couple of errands to run that I can’t do until they leave… and it’s almost 11:00 and they still aren’t here. Soon enough I will graduate from frustrated to full on pissed off.

It gave me time to mix a song though. This is song number 40 for the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. I’m 80% finished now.

https://hearthis.at/musical.blathering.idiot12/so-much-to-give-1/

Oh good. The new song’s player from hearthis.at doesn’t want to embed into this post. Yippee.

Windows Updates

Windows updates are just the worst, aren’t they? Seriously!

I just got prompted to reboot to take a Windows update. Okay, I guess. I was kind of moving between tasks at that moment so it seemed like as convenient a time as any. I rebooted.

30 minutes later* and it’s finally letting me log back in! Damn, Windows updates are just the worst!

*Yeah, it was more like 2-3 minutes, maybe. Time has a way of distorting while you’re taking an OS update, doesn’t it? It’s like Covid. Thanks to Covid, the year 2019 is simultaneously yesterday and 200 years ago.

To quote the great Douglas Adams, “time is an illusion. Lunch time, doubly so.”

Weather or Not

I made a pun in the title of this post. Did you like it? It takes the phrase “whether or not” and replaces whether with it’s homonym, weather because the post is going to be about the weather. Get it? I feel so friggin’ clever I could spontaneously combust*!

We’re supposed to get a nor’easter this week. The forecast yesterday said 3-6 inches of snow on Wednesday into Thursday. I just checked the accuweather website and it’s still calling for some snow on Wednesday but no real accumulation. Then Thursday into Friday we’re still looking at 3-6 inches.

I am taking my father to a doctors appointment on Wednesday and I am working in the office on Thursday. Wednesday is looking good but Thursday might be in trouble. We’ll have to see.

The long range forecast includes something I am looking forward to. When the temperature outside hits 60 degrees I like to open the windows. If the forecast is correct, next week I’ll be opening the windows. It stands as more evidence that I am now officially a really old fart, but stuff like that pleases me immensely. Come on, weather. Let’s let me open the windows. Just stop snowing first, m’kay?

*That’s sarcasm. I am not clever at all. Not even a little bit.

The Scroll Wheel is Dead, Long Live the Scroll Wheel

I take a mouse with me when I work in the office. It’s not the same mouse I use when I work at home, it’s actually the mouse that came with the last desktop computer I was issued at work back in… 1862? Something like that? 2016 maybe?

I was using the scroll wheel to scroll through an email and it just stopped working. I closed the browser and reopened it, thinking it was a software issue. Nope, it still didn’t work. I rebooted my laptop (issued to me in 2021, I think) because I thought it might be a hardware thing outside of the mouse itself. Nope.

The scroll wheel is dead.

I went to Amazon and ordered a cheap-o wireless mouse to replace it. I found a few of various levels of cheapness, then took one of the cheaper ones so that I could spend a little more for overnight delivery to make sure I had it as soon as possible.

Long live the scroll wheel.

On an unrelated note, there have been no stomach issues today. Kick ass. It’s not even 4:00pm yet and I am already close to hitting my water goal, close to having all of my vitamins in, and sort of close to hitting my protein goal. After yesterday’s dietary B.S., things are looking really good today. Killer.

Okay, less than 1.75 hours left in the work day. I have to somehow get through the rest of the day without having a scroll wheel. How did we do it in the old days? How did we even survive without scroll wheels?

In the Office

I took Monday and Tuesday off so that I could be around for the window crew. We were told it would take two days. When they asked to come back for a third day I thought it was going to screw up my work schedule. Today is an in-the-office day so I would be messing things up if I had to stay home. Jen and I worked it out so that I could be there for the morning and then be in the office in the afternoon. I was planning to come in one additional day just to keep the karmic scales balanced.

Fortunately, they showed up early enough today that I could discuss what needed to be discussed, get the house ready for them to start work, and still get onto the road in time to make it to the office by 9:00. Whew! Jen is working from home today, so hopefully they won’t be too loud. Also, the cats are out of Bellana’s room so hopefully they don’t torture the window crew too badly with their cuteness and their insistence on playing at all times. Well… playing when they aren’t sleeping that is.

I was not able to finish my exercise, or watch The Mandalorian, or get much liquid in, or have any real breakfast. I had a protein bar and a protein snack in the car on the way here, and I just got cleared to start drinking, but I am way behind my goal right now. At least I won’t have to come in a second time this week.

231/365

Steam Fail?

I’m a Mac user, babie. None of that Windows crap for me. Well… except for work… and except for when I want to use something that doesn’t run on a Mac.

Jen has inspired me to try my hand at gaming so I installed World of Warcraft on my Mac. It works fine. Cool. Then there was the game I tried to play the last time I tried to get into gaming… which was something like 2012 or so? Star Wars: The Old Republic. That puppy doesn’t run on Mac.

So what’s a red headed Mac douche to do? Emulate, bitches! I installed Parallels and Windows 11. That works fantastically. Groovy like you’ve read about. Next, I installed Steam. That seems okay except that I always always always lose my password and had to jump through 2000000 hoops to actually get in. Once that mess was clean I downloaded and installed Star Wars. Success! Then I had to go through another 100000 password hoops before finally getting into the game and finding out that it doesn’t work with a track pad. I’m sure it works fine if I had an actual mouse with two buttons, but for the moment?

Fail, apparently. Bummer… for now.

What’s Up for Sunday?

Jen has to get up early for work tomorrow so I should get up early too and do some car music. What do you think? Then when I get home I should put leads on anything I manage to finish during the car music. Sound good? We have something going on in the afternoon that’s going to pull me away from things for an hour or so. That’s cool with you, isn’t it?

After that… Halloween. Covid-19 Halloween. Covid-19 Halloween The Second Coming. Shit. Last year the city canceled it all. This year it’s going off as usual. We won’t be playing along. We’ll be hiding in the back of the house. I’ll probably be mixing something. I think you’ll be okay with it. I hope you will, at least.

So should I install Parallels on my MacBook Pro so that I can play Windows games? I had been playing Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic a little. I can’t play that on my Mac. If I get Parallels I should be able to play it. I wonder how much the software costs. Would you think less of me if I got it?

The Bruins are playing The Panthers tonight. They kicked our ass the other night but it was overshadowed by something to do with the sexual abuse scandal that came out of Chicago recently. I don’t know the details, I just know that a lot of people got the sack. I really need to learn the details of this story but I am still really furious over the fact that the catholic church overlooked the sexual abuse of children for decades and any time I come across a similar story I just want to fucking vomit all over the people responsible and I do not want to vomit today. You know what I mean, don’t you?

Now I am pissed off. I didn’t want to be pissed off.

To make matters worse, it’s pouring rain out. Shit. I am so sick of rain.

Desk Craziness

Forgive me, but I am going to reuse a picture I posted yesterday.

Working from home has caused some desk setup questions that I didn’t want to deal with, but I think I finally have.

Prior to social distance I had two laptops on my desk in our home office.  I used my MacBook Pro along with a second monitor for all but the eight hours I was telecommuting on Thursdays.  While telecommuting, I switched to a second laptop, running Windows 10.  I used the same second monitor.  I have a 3-1 adapter that has a USB 2.0, HDMI, and USB C input into a single USB C plug.  I had my USB dock, my monitor, and my power all running into it.  When I switched from Mac to Windows I’d just pull the adapter out of one machine and plug it into the other.  Done.

Once the lockdown started I brought my work PC home from Waltham and used that instead of the Windows laptop.  I couldn’t use the same monitor cable for both machines, and the desktop doesn’t have a USB C port, so I was pulling plugs in and out twice a day.

On top of that, Jen and I are both working from home, both in the same room, and both having to join meetings at the same time.  To deal with this I moved my Windows laptop to our bedroom and jokingly called it the conference room.  At first I was using a dinner tray table as a desk, then I setup one of Jen’s old desks instead, and then Jen brought a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse out and turned the spot into an actual work station.

Yesterday Jen and I both had meetings scheduled for the better part of the day so I bit the bullet and moved my Waltham desktop into the bedroom and spent the whole day in there.  I was planning to move it back to the office this weekend, but instead I talked it over with Jen and we decided to keep a Windows desk in the bedroom and an Apple desk in the office.

Now I am a two desk crazy person.  Certifiably.

237/365

Untitled

The minute the lock down ends, my Waltham machine goes back to Waltham and I move all my stuff back to the office. This is temporary.

Kinda Christmas Shopping

We didn’t go Christmas shopping this morning. More like Christmas reconnaissance.

First, we look for Windows based systems and hardware…


Then when we had our fill of windows we go and look at Apple based systems and hardware…


This is what insufferable computer nerds do. I proudly wave my nerd flag high.