kengr

Ok, from comments in various places (Like Steve Jackson Games' blog) I know that international shipping is still a mess. But it got brought home to me lately.

Way back at the beginning of September, I ordered some stuff from Ali Express. Yeah, yeah I know. But I've ordered similar stuff before and it wasn't too bad. *This* time however...

Estimated delivery date was October 1st. Fine.

On October 10th, tracking finally said that my stuff had "reached the region/country". I noted that it had not passed customs.

On the 29th, it all of a sudden changed to saying it was in Portland and out for delivery. Which it proceeded to keep saying (only with the date changed to the current day) until yesterday (November 5th). Which is when I heard the doorbell, and upon descending to he Front door of the building there was my package (*completely* enclosed in plastic tape!).

Now, as I understand it the big delay (Oct 10 to 29) was likely the overloaded docking situation at Us ports. Ships are sitting out there for *weeks* waiting for a chance to dock and then unload. Hopefully, this will improve with time.

The "out for delivery" bit has got me stumped.

I was awakened at 6am by a pain in my tight side towards the back. and I mean *pain*.

( Medical TMI )
So around 8 I called 911. Basically the pain was getting to me and I was afraid it might be a sign of my hernia getting strangulated. Another thought was it might be a kidney stone.

They sent paramedics, and I managed to dig out my should bag and throw stull in it like my keys, my phone, my kindle, and an external battery.

I managed to meet the EMTs at the door. And during transport they eliminated heart attack as a possibility. They also started an IV (given the choice between a pill and IV anti-nausea meds, I went with IV because I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep a pill down, and I was pretty sure they'd want an IV at the ER anyway)

They also gave me some pain meds (Fentanyl). The pain meds didn't kick in for 20-30 minutes. And wore off maybe 30 minutes later.

They took a urine sample, and a blood sample. And I waited for a CAT scan. While I was waiting the initial pain meds wore off so when the guy for the CAT scan showed up, I requested more pain meds. Which I eventually got. And after a wait, I got the CAT scan.

Fortunately, I didn't have any trouble with the contrast agent injection. I did have some trouble holding my ams over my head the way they needed to be. Especially the one with the IV.

Finally they were done and told me it'd be about an hour for the results. So I gort wheeled back to my spot in the hall.

While waiting the meds started wearing off. It wasn't bad when I was informed that I had a 6mm kidney stone.

It was back to unbearable and I had to ask several times for more pain meds (they kept telling me they had to check with the provider.

I *finally* got them. I texted fayanora at 12:41 and asked her to come over to escort me home when I got released.

She got there around an hour later.

I finally got discharged sometime after 2. Fay was nice and ordered an Uber to take us to my pharmacy to get the drugs I was prescribed. We had to wait a while because of some problem with getting them thru.

We got some stuff (Orange Juice, Cantaloupe and Bananas because I was apparently really low on potassium. Still had to wait for my prescriptions.

Finally got them and Fay went to my apartment with me. I got stuff put away and took meds. Fay went home after that.

I'm okay for now, put I've got the oxycodon handy for when he pain comes back. Bleah

Wish me luck

The Storage company I deal with has a website you can make payments thru. Or rather, it has one you *used* to be able to make them thru. It hasn't worked for several months at this point.

I made a payment over the phone last month. Did it by talking to the manager.

This month I got hit with a phone menu. A horrible one.

I had to enter my credit card number using the phone keypad. Yeah, 16 digits with no possibility of erasing if you mistype. You doi get prompted for confirmation that you entered it right. Except the audio keeps fading in and out, so I had to reenter it because I missed a prompt. Then you enter the card expiration date. Then the zip code pof the address the card is associated with. then the security code.

All this on a tiny keypad on the phone.

yerg...

I finally fund something that actually puts on load on this thing.

I've got a program called Similarity that compare image and audio files and shows you which ones are similar (and how similar). Very useful for weeding out duplicates, near duppes, and stuff like the same image at different sizes or mirrored, etc

Still generate a fair number of false positives, but it's still a *major* help.

But when I compare some of the larger directory trees the CPU usage hits 100% (yet I can still do other things without noticeable slow-downs). The fans also spin up a *lot* and it gets kinda loud.

But I took about an hour to work on 82,000 files. Then I took an hour or so going thru the 1100 potential dupes. When I was done I only had 600 files left, most of which were things like photo sequences where someone had taken a pic every few secs or faster) so moving thru the list gave me a sort of slide so in the part of the display that showed the current image.

Hitting the down arrow fairly quickly moved along fast enough but still let me spot things that needed to be checked out

And toggling between the up and down arrows gives a nice way to compare the images visually. The parts that are the same stay steady and the parts that aren't sort of "blink".

Well, it's a good thing I'm in the process of transferring to the new computer.

At 3 am I was awakened by a beeping noise. It turned out to be the main computer. No pattern to it. Just [beep[ [pause] [beep] [pause]....

I tried figuring out what the problem was, but windows didn't any error messages I could find. Nor were things like various temps out of range.

A few thing didn't work, and so I started closing windows to shut down. but some wouldn't respond. So I had to do a "force shutdown". And *that* was on the "shutting down" screen so long I finally just held down the power switch.

Powering back on it immediately started the beeps again and said something about the configuration not matching. Couldn't get into the setup, so I powered off.

Currently copying contents of the drive from the old to the new (plugging old drive into a spare slot).

Currently working on the one new drive that has been delivered.

Then I'll have to see if I can fit enough from the 500 gig C: drive from the old one onto the 300 gig C: drive on the new one to get things working acceptably.

If not I'll try running the new box off the C: drive from the old box until the new drives arrive.

Once I get the new box completely setup up[ with the new drives, I can put the old box on the bench and see what's hosed.

First of all, I'd like to state that hot flashes suck. especially when you have just gotten comfortable in bed and were about to go to sleep. Grrr.

And for my second presentation...

I was thinking about kid's "monsters". And my mind transposed a couple of words. Thus --

The Monster Under the Closet
The Monster in the Bed

Those would certainly be different!

Supposed to hit 85 later to and be even hotter Tuesday and Wednesday.

Got my first shot of the Covid vaccine this morning.

They had a rather interesting setup at the clinic. We'd been given appointments, but basically, whenever you showed up, they had you fill out the paperwork, think called you into get the shot as they had someone free to give it. Then it was off to a waiting room to wait and see if you had a reaction.

Went quite smoothly. I'm scheduled for the 2nd shot on April 6, so by April 20th, Fa and I should be able to get together again.

In other news, a package that was *supposed* to be delivered Monday was delivered while I was out. and seems to have vanished. Most irritated.

Earlier I managed to tip over the chair I use at the computer. It went over backwards and to my left.

I wound up lying on my side with my belly against small shelving unit. My flailing as I went over had knocked a lot of stuff down from the top. Plus there were a bunch of thiong that were poking me in the gut.

To top things off, I was sort of stuck, I couldn't move the chair back from the shelves using just my arms and I couldn't crawl out of it because there was too much stuff around my head, and my legs were kinda stuck in thee air.

After 5-10 minutes, I managed to move enough of the stuff near my head to slide that way. That let me get my legs to wjhere I could get them out of the chair and (eventually get onto my hands and knees.

Levering myself up to a kneeling position and then to standing wasn't easy. But I managed it.I managed to get the chair righted and sit down to compose myself for a while.

Later I had to gather up all the stuff that'd wound up on the floor. Ow. My knees were not happy.

Needless to say, a new chair has moved *way* up my list of things to get with the next stimulus check (this one is mostly gonna go for the deductibles on my medical coverage)

(to give you and idea how messed up I'm feeling, I origianly had the subject line backwards. Oy)

Any, the new SSD arrived today, about the time I'd beaten the computer into submission with its temporary drive C:. In the process, I'd found that I actually *had* an image backup of the system that was only 2 days old. I hadn't realized that the Windows image backups were still working If I had, I'd have done pone more before tearing things apart.

So I got the new drive in, booted for the Windows install DVD and told it to repair the computer. Since I could point it at image backup, this was merely time consuming. I don't want to think abut how long it might have taken with a normal drive.
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