Done last week (20141019 Su - 27 Mo)

[mdlbear]

A couple of dizzy spells, which felt a lot like a return of the orthostatic hypotension I used to get rather frequently before I changed my blood pressure meds, only more severe. Turns out that they could be exactly that, as a side effect of cutting down on my SSRI antidepressant.

Worked from home Friday and half of Thursday due to our office move. Spent Monday (and will probably spend most of today) setting up my desktop box, whose hard drive didn't survive the move. :P Grumble. Only things I'll actually be losing are a couple of little scripts in ~/bin, my .zshrc customizations, and my browser config. Everything else is in git.

Stupidly tried to upgrade the OS on my laptop. Stupid, because it left it practically unusable. A clean reinstall of 14.04 fared better, but there are still some oddities here and there.

Working from home today, too, because I'll be waiting for the washer to get repaired. :P It broke on Saturday. The backup drive on Nova has apparently been broken for a *long* time -- read is ok, but write fails. This may be a timing thing, but switching it from USB to eSATA renumbers the drive letters, so that's kind of a non-starter.

On the positive side, the CenturyLink internet connection is on, and the new modem arrived yesterday. Hopefully today I'll be able to get our network configured -- it may be a simple matter of swapping two routers.

The new building is significantly farther away from the bus stop -- there are closer ones, but it's actually faster to walk than to wait for a transfer. So if it's not raining, I'll do that.

Kind of a rough week. Oddly, the fact that I've cut back on my antidepressant doesn't seem to have made much difference that I can perceive, which says that either it wasn't doing much good, or I'm still bad at detecting my mood. Or both.

1019 Su
  * up 7:40; W=212.4
  @ Log of Smallship One - I don't really know what to call this one about Shifts!
  % 5:30 BP=142/81, P=64.  Weird little "dizzy spell" which I suspect of
    having been due to a cold drink pulling blood into my stomach - felt like
    my postural hypotension, only a lot more so.  Glad I was sitting down.
  % Had a couple of GF frozen waffles with butter and sweet stuff, because I also suspect
    my blood sugar of being very low.
  * Put in my Pegasus ballot.
  * Dinner - turkey stock with chicken (from the freezer) and rice (from the fridge).
    Yum.  Needed a fair amount of salt, but that's it.
  % Dinner helped, but still feeling somewhat wrung out.
  @ Ficlet:  Crowdfunding Creative Jam (prompt from zeeth-kyrah:
    C* AI and human are intimate partners (friends, Ace, a/romantic, whatever you like))
  & doing "make put" from my laptop instead of my desktop proved to be rather destructive
    (though fortunately reversably so).  Have to make it much more selective, but that
    shouldn't be hard now that I'm using git.

1020 Mo
  * up 6:35; W=211, BP=141/85, P=65;
  % another dizzy spell after taking a couple of bites of fried rice.  *exactly* the same
    feeling as when I'm about to vomit.  Marking this "watch carefully".
  @ The Embarrassing Way I Got Into the Best Shape Of My Life f(Deirdre Saoirse Moen)
    % ... then did 10 push-ups just to see whether I could.  I'm a little surprised.
  @ There is at least one report of orthostatic hypotension as a result of sertraline
    withdrawal smoking gun?  Suggestive, anyway.
  @ The Filk Community - Filk Book Index on Github

1021 Tu
  * up 6:30; W=210.4
  * Called bank: balance of the check will be available Thursday
  @ filkindex-convert/filkindex at master · gmcgath/filkindex-convert 
    (*'ed on github for easy findability)
  * Family meeting.  We're dumping Comcast.

1022 We
  * up 6:45; W=214.6
  * Signed up for internet from CenturyLink
  * slow day at work: everyone spent the afternoon packing for the move.

1023 Th
  * up 6:17; W=214.6
  * 7:15ish leave for work
  * 8:30 Customer Connection training session - fascinating
  * Tracked down and installed the Zyxel DSL modem that I got from CenturyLink last year.
    Just in case they turn on the service before the hardware arrives.
  * cleared a box labeled "Colleen's Chair"
  @ WikiHouse: Open-source architecture [LWN.net]
     "WikiHouse is an open source construction set. The aim is to allow anyone to design,
      download, and 'print' CNC-milled houses and components, which can be assembled with
      minimal formal skill or training"
  @ A child’s eye view of death: the power of picture books to explain (ysabetwordsmith)
  : 2:38 Managed to get a couple of glimpses of the solar eclipse, before it started
    raining again.  My usual trick of making a pinhole with my thumb and forefinger.
  & attempted to upgrade Cygnus to Ubuntu 14.10 -- failed miserably due to messed up 
    dependencies.  Reinstalled Trusty, which wasn't particularly -- it insisted on
    encrypting my damned home directory!  *IDIOTS*

1024 Fr
  * up 6:30; W=214.6; Shower
  & the reinstall continues.  Chrome lost my tabs, but seems to be otherwise ok after
    upgrading the installed version.  I may go back to firefox at this rate.
  : aaaaand - internet is live on CenturyLink.  Not clear what it's going to take to
    actually set up, but it's encouraging.
  * 10 expect call from Tom@Clearpoint.  Discussed DMP mechanics.  Made appointment for
    next Tues. to discuss budget.
  ~ signed updated docs from Clearpoint; Colleen had mysterious trouble.
  * Paid off the (remaining) Amex card
  ~ Called C'link (which assigned me a new username and random password, and still uses
    qwest.net for its domain) Damned modem kept resetting itself, but I was able to make
    it work by disconnecting the DSL line while I changed the configuration. 
    Bryce in Boise: Username: savitzkystephem (last time it ended in "n")
  ! accomplished but unproductive and grumpy.
  * Dinner:  chili from scratch, with "Mexican style" hominy, served over corn chips.
  : C'link:  ping=45ms, download= 9.64Mb/s, upload=0.76Mb/s
    C'cast:  ping=20ms, download=33.99Mb/s, upload=3.25Mb/s
  * 15min:  some good box-puttering - brought up 3, cleared 1

1025 Sa
  * up 9:30; W=211.0; shower
  : Damned washing machine broke.  Something in the drive system -- motor running but drum
    not spinning.  Or it could be the pump; drum turned over twice when I put it on dry,
    then got the grinding noise at about the point where the pump kicks in.  It was
    showing an "OE" error when I got up; cleaned the filter but pump could already have
    been damaged at that point.
  : YD made pancakes.  Yum.
  * Put a call in to Jimmy Z's appliance repair.  Didn't get a callback before closing.
  * Shelves for Colleen's sewing corner.  Took about 4 hours, mostly spent struggling with
    the anchor screws, not helped by the fact that the end of a bit broke off at the
    bottom of a hole.  (Ryobi glass/tile bit :P)  Stole the verticals from the corner of
    our bedroom by the chair, since we hadn't actually installed shelves there yet.
  ! drained and unhappy
  @ NASA Posts a Huge Library of Space Sounds, And You’re Free To Use Them
    f(Elizabeth Barrette)
  : High wind warning.  I love to hear the wind and the rain -- from inside the house.
  * 15min:  lots of puttering down in the garage.  Brought up my monitor shelf.
  % restless.  Probably translates as either bored, or not wanting to do real work.
  & checked on Nova - the backup drive is giving errors.

1026 Su
  * up 7:00; W=211.0; shower
  * bouncing Nova to see if I can revive the backup drive.  Which worked.  Maybe.
    Hmm.  last backed up on 9/28, and the one before that was 7/22.  So that's NOT good.
    -> e2fsck -f came out clean; started backup.
    -> write errors.  Tried eSATA, but it changes the drive device names. :P
    The question is whether the drive itself is borked, or whether it's timing problems on
    USB (which I seem to recall seeing before).  OGOH, this is a known failure mode for
    drives, too.
  * Brought up a UPS from downstairs; it probably wants a new battery.
    -> it does.  In stock at Batteries + Bulbs in Southcenter or Northgate!
  * 15min:  cleared a box (consolidated lighting with some unsorted papers, after
    discarding most of the papers for being obsolete, mostly charities)
  * work
  * write checks
  % up and down stairs all weekend -- no wonder I'm tired!
  @ What if Age Is Nothing but a Mind-Set? - NYTimes.com (amaebi)

1027 Mo
  * up 6:30; W=211.0
  : Getting to and from work requires a fair amount of walking, but it turns out that it's
    not significantly longer than waiting for and riding a second bus.
  * call from Jimmy Z Appliance; will call this afternoon with window for tomorrow.
  & Spent most of the day working on recovering my desktop at work -- the hard drive
    didn't survive the move.  Infuriating.
  * New CenturyLink modem arrived.  Setup was painless.  Now I have to splice it in to the
    network, which may be as simple as switching RE with RE West.
  @ Articles: Installing Linux on a Dead Badger: User's Notes, by Lucy A. Snyder
  @ Snow, a film about a love affair between a girl and her neighbourhood--Boing Boing
  % got to bed very late from waiting up for N, G, and the kids to come back from OVFF

Comments

[amaebi]

Oh, man, swoonie fits are awful. :(

I wish things weren't so fiercely two-edged for you.

[mdlbear]

Thanks!

I just have to be careful with my back-swing.