Blog Archives

Sorry for the ads the last few days. It was an easy way to make a few bucks, but I thought I did okay tying it into my life, even if it wasn’t tied into my life at present.

So I shall make a list type thing of stuff that is going on in my life. Feel free to not care. ;)

• 

  Look at this fuzzy shoe

  I broke a nail and tried the bond-it-with-a-coffee-filter technique I’ve heard about. It’s been a weak and 3 applications later, but it seems to work. I just have to hope that I don’t get it caught or stuck on something before it has a bit of time to grow out.

• Phantom is being a crazy whiny baby who is pawing at doors and walls and furniture for no good reason. It doesn’t help me sleep.
• Last night I had games and drinks with friends at my place after enjoying a really good burger at a nice bar with a cute bartender.  I woke up needing pain killers, hydration and a shower, but it was really good times.
• The last two points have contributed to me not getting nearly enough sleep lately. My eyes hurt ,but my schedule is so dumb that I cannot allow myself to sleep as long as I’d like to feel fully rested. Right now, I’m getting up nearly at sunset. I need to reset this thing. Ugh.
• Some good friends are in the area for a while. The reason for their visit/stay isn’t good, but getting to see them is.
• One of my best friends in the world signed a lease in my building, and I am so freaking excited about this!
• I got my electric bill for last month, and it’s so cheap! It went down $10 despite me using my window AC. I think this is because my old refrigerator died, and I got a newer one. I cannot complain either way.
• Although I didn’t have my laptop for over a week because the DC jack broke off inside it, I have it back now. I missed my baby immensely. It’s such a good machine — really.
• I’ve got two really exciting events I’m going to attend coming up: a Pat Benatar concert and the Blues Brothers Revue.
• I’m planning on buying an SSHD to replace the HDD in my laptop. I are excited!
• I recently rooted my phone. I haven’t done as much with it as I plan, but I did it myself and it’s already performing a little better in terms of memory usage.
• I was a little bummed that the shoes I only had for a month and a half wore out, but I found a new pair that’s super cute and cheap. Said shoes are in the picture to the right, but Goliath is definitely more important!
• I will still need to move to a new host eventually, but I’ve got a bit more time to do it now.
• Store are full of Halloween stuff! I cannot wait to get shopping and decorating!!
• I’ve actually been writing poetry again.
• I have some really cool giveaways and reviews going on/coming up on Reviews by Cole.
• I got my hair cut and dyed. The cut is similar to what I had last time, but it’s mostly black with some red. Quite different. I like it more every day, though.

I keep thinking of more things to add. This short blog is longer than I expected. I shall cut it off here!

I have purchased a PlayStation 3.. and I love it. It’s absolutely going to change my life. It already has, in fact. However, the process has been the catelyst to several weird, frustrating and otherwise stupid tech problems in my life.

First, I got the PS3 set up but the actual console was sitting a little too far forward in my TV stand, so closing the door turned it on.. and somehow the game started playing, so when I turned it off.. it wasn’t happy. After powering it back on, I received a notice that it wasn’t powered off correctly and it had to check for corruption on the disk. Everything worked okay, though. However, it did reset some settings, so I had to fix those.

Then, I was trying to set up a media server through WMP. Although I don’t use it, this seemed like the easiest method to use. In fact, it is; but it’s only that easy when you have the PS3 and your laptop hosting the media server on the same network. Oops.

However, network problems quickly arose when I started my computer this morning and it wouldn’t connect to the same network that it’s been on since I moved in here. I could sign on at a guest, but there was some generic error whenever I tried to sign in to the secure network. Oddly enough, both my phone and Ps3 were connected just fine. Later, I started up the computer and it wanted a password, so now I’m signed in just fine.

Nevertheless, my issues don’t stop there. Crazy, I know. When I first connected the PS3 to my TV, it worked right away. I was using the same HDMI cable that I always use with my laptop, but I couldn’t get it to connect for the life of me this weekend when some friends were over. It kept telling me that there was no video signal, even though my laptop clearly connected one. This occasionally happened but I was able to fix it by restarted the computer or switching HDMI ports in the past. Nothing worked at all, so I was surprised when the PS3 started right up with no problems.

That is, until.. I turned it on and the TV wouldn’t register a signal for the life of it (me?) . I figured it must just be the HDMI cable, which is easily replaceable. I grabbed the AV cable that shipped with the PS3, figuring I could just use it in -gasp- SD for the time being. But you know what the fuck happened? No, you don’t! That’s why I’m going to tell you.

The TV wouldn’t detect any signal through the AV cables, either! In either port. So, I don’t know what the hell the problem is. Maybe something’s loose in the television itself, but sometimes all the ports seem to just.. stop working. It’s super annoying but it’s also random. I gave up and plugged the HDMI cable back in.. and the damned thing started working randomly. It cut out when the cat walked by but everything’s been fine since a friend nudged it just a bit. Obviously, the whole thing is stupid, but as long as I’m able to stream movies from my laptop (see above), then I don’t need to touch the system itself or cable.

So, let’s cross fingers that my problems are solved.

Semi recently, we bought a desk – this desk to be exact. It was a desk I had been looking at while living in Milwaukee which Wal-mart carried. Unfortunately, the version they carried had been upgraded so by the time i was able to buy it, it was unavailable and I had to start my search all over again.

As a stroke of luck, they had it at the furniture store on base and I suggested we buy it. Rian wanted to wait and we forgot about it until a couple weeks ago when we purchased it. However, acquiring this desk and being able to use it was a little trying.

First, we measured the box and his car and decided it would fit, only to find that it didn’t fit. After trying to make it fit every which-way, we decided to take it out of the box. As he was doing this, Rian decided to just take out the longest piece which fit in the backseat and smush the end of the box into the car which worked but we both had to have our seats up and not locked into place on the drive home.

We got home but headed out to look for a desk/office type chair only to no avail. They didn’t seem to have any on base and off base we only found Japanese style chairs which were all of 6 inches high but – no need to worry – we were rewarded with a flat tire on the way to the mall which cut our trip short. Rian was admirable as a driver in such conditions and luckily, on the way back to base there was a full service gas station so the blown tire and the other front tire which was damaged from driving on it, could be fixed.

Eventually we returned home and went to work only to find that this was extremely difficult to put together. The screws and holes were picky in the way that you had to get it just right in order for the screws to actually go in and that was difficult because the damned holes were so close to other pieces that there was no room for the screwdriver.

Eventually we had a generally desk-shaped object which needed to be in a different position in order to move on to the next step and upon lifting it up, the screw popped/broke out of the wood. Of course, I didn’t expect the wood to be fabulous but that’s always frustrating.

Add to the list of difficulties that some screws had to be put in upside down which is not as easy as it sounds. Additionally, some couldn’t be put in at all because the holes were off slightly which worried me. I was opting for quitting until we could get a drill because I didn’t want my computer on a faulty desk only to come crashing down and breaking into a million itty bitty pieces.

One angry Rian, one tired Cole, several sores hands and one usably decent desk later, we were finished. Needless to say, we skipped the bookcase.

Anyway, point is that I have a new desk and – if you look at the picture – you can see the highest shelf which is where my monitor now is. Before, it was about eye height which worked well but now that it’s higher, the colour and contrast seems off quite a bit, probably because it’s LCD. Unfortunately, the range of positions into which I can put my monitor is limited and adjusting contrast doesn’t help so I guess I’m stuck.

This is extremely noticeable on my website where I use shades of the same colour of similar colours for certain things (links/navigation, quotes, image displays et cetera) and I cannot tell the colours apart. What used to look really sleek, is now useless to my eyes and it makes me sad. )=