Archives – February, 2007
I really don’t have anything to report right now. My Aunt and Uncle leave Monday night and my cousin Jeff leaves Tuesday, but I don’t know what time.
I am just really enjoying being alone at home right now – even though I can’t really do anything because the room I would want to work in is inhabited by my aunty’s stuff. Ooof.
My Mom and I went on a bunch of errands yesterday and since I saw that Sear’s had an energy efficient washer and dryer on sale, we decided to go for it and got a brand new washer and dryer. I am pretty excited. It’s like the updated model of the ones that Tom and I got in Portland. It was a little pricey, but I think it will be worth it in the long run. I am just disappointed that it didn’t come with any tax rebates, but oh well. It’s a front loader and I really do prefer those over the top loaders, not only because of the energy and water efficiency, but because I am short and it is sometimes hard to reach into the bottom of a top loader to get that last bit of clothing out.
I think I am also going to take my laptop to the computer place on Monday and let them sort it out and install Windows for me. Grrr. What a fucking pain in the ass. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled numerous copies of windows before on my old computers and never had any installation errors until now. What’s also sad is that I’m almost tempted to get a copy of Vista and install that in the hope that my machine won’t give me any installation errors. I saw a laptop with Vista on it yesterday and the interface looked pretty cool, but coolness shouldn’t be the only factor in upgrading. Grrr.
Ugh, I just want to get on with my life, but I still feel so fucking stuck right now.
February 24, 2007
I am writing this on my Mom’s computer because well, my computer is hosed. Crap. My computer had been running kind of slow sometimes and I was getting a ton of error messages, so I figured I would format and reinstall. Cool, no problem – I’ve done that on multiple machines before without incident – until now.
I reinstalled windows – error message. Okay, I formatted and reinstalled and I would get error messages that I needed to insert the windows cd – the cd that I had in my cd rom drive that it was copying stuff off of before. Grrr. Okay, so I format and reinstalled again – and the installation would freeze while it was going through the set up and then I would get memory dump errors and messages telling me to uninstall any hardware I added since it might be causing some kind of conflict. It’s a fucking laptop! I can’t really install new hardware in it, since it’s a fucking laptop. I mean I guess I could swap out the hard drive and ram, but my ram is already maxed out and came with the machine and I haven’t made any other changes – since it’s a fucking laptop!
I am going to try it one more time with it hooked up directly to the modem to see if maybe I am getting some error messages because I need some kind of windows update I am currently not able to download while I am installing the OS and not all of the drivers yet. Grrr. Otherwise even though I am pretty sure I know what is going on, I am at the point where I just want to take the damn thing to a shop and have them deal with it.
I am starting to feel pretty stressed out I guess. This whole family thing is really stressing me out. Okay, Mom and I live at my Grandma’s house and the rest of the family live on the mainland. Cool. What is really stressing me out though is that even though Mom and I don’t own the house, it’s still our home because we live here and my Aunt does have a right to be here and help out because she is my Grandma’s other daughter, but…. It’s really starting to piss me off because they are acting like they own the place and aren’t being very considerate.
Like, I know my Aunt is here to help out and help clean up and stuff, but I had a bag of recent bank statements and letters in the room that they are staying in and I had that bad in there because I knew that we were going to need those documents when we went to the lawyer. Okay, so I guess my Aunt wanted something to do, so she went through those and well, mixed them all up so I had no idea where they were for when we had to meet with the lawyer today.
I put a bunch of stuff in the storage closet that was going to be my bedroom to get them out of the way and because some of the stuff that I put down there were some personal items that I didn’t want anyone to go through. My uncle disappeared and then all of a sudden I see them coming out of the closet with the dresser I wanted to get out of there and well, they had gone through a bunch of that stuff without telling me. I had one of my framed “art” pictures in there that I didn’t want anyone to see, but when I went in there, – well – there it was in plain view. Grrrr.
My cat would also go in there basically to hide from the kids and so the kids decided to go in there and try to play with the cat. Now, first of all I didn’t want the kids to go in there because there is a lot of dust and mold in there and I didn’t want them to get sick. There are also boxes and boxes of pictures down there and well, just a lot of stuff that they shouldn’t play with, but they went in there and their parent’s didn’t stop them or ask if it was okay for them to go in there. I didn’t realize how long they were in there too until I saw that they took the entire basket of cat toys in there and they were all on the floor there. Grrr.
I don’t know. Maybe I am feeling overprotective of everything because I do live here and I am the one who knows the most about Grandma’s accounts and stuff, so maybe I am just wishing that they would ask first instead of just going through things like nothing here is ours.
It’s just the little things that are really frustrating and annoying.
Tonight’s been a bad night too. I was going to go to the post office to mail some letters and I heard something weird. It sounded like something was dragging under the car. I got out to investigate and lo and behold – one of the tires is flat. Great. Just great. I wanted to try to change it, but I couldn’t even get the fucking hubcap cover off the wheel. My cousin Jeff is home, so he could help me, but he’s sleeping and I don’t know when he might wake up since I have a feeling that his heavy sleeping is because he’s an uncontrolled diabetic and his blood sugar is high. My uncle and other cousins went to dinner at a friend’s house and should be back soon, so they should be able to change it in a few minutes when they get back.
Ugh, tomorrow should be interesting too. We are going to have lunch at a semi fancy place and I just know that they are not going to like the place because the food is going to be too different for them. We are going to go to Alan Wong’s Pineapple Room and I think that is probably one of my favorite restaurants here, but I think the fusion might be too much for them. Oh well, too bad. Afterwards we are going to go see the stockbroker, so that should be interesting.
I just want some peace and quiet in the house so I can really get down to business and start working on things and getting rid of unnecessary paperwork around here.
February 20, 2007
My Grandma’s funeral was today, well, since it’s past midnight, I guess I could say yesterday.
At least that part is over and the real fun begins, but I guess I will get to that.
Friday was a little hectic. We needed to take the programs to the printers and were hoping to do a little more editing, but my computer started freaking out Thursday and really got hosed on Friday. Firefox started to constantly crash Thursday night. It was late, so I figured I would just deal with it in the morning. Okay, the next day my cousin turned it on and then came to me stating that it wasn’t working. Hmmm. I reboot and then I got a message that my copy of windows was not genuine and that I may be a victim of software piracy.
WTF? I know it’s genuine and fuck, it passed all those previous authentication requests I did before, so I had and still have no idea wtf is going on. My computer has been pretty slow lately. I think that I might have corrupted the registry because of all of these hard boots I had to do when I installed the beta for the Lord of the Rings Online and the Yahoo Music Jukebox. My computer kept freezing during those installations, so I would do a hard shut down to get the thing going again. I knew that a format and reinstall was coming, but I didn’t want to deal with that until after the funeral was over.
So I started getting this message that my install of windows wasn’t genuine and my computer would boot, but then all of these other programs would start crashing. I just figured that my clean install was going to be happening a lot sooner than I thought it would, so then I tried transferring my pictures to my external hard drive for backup, I would get a BSOD and the freaking thing would reboot. Tried the transfer and again a couple of minutes later, BSOD and reboot. Grrrrrr. I finally figured that if I transfer the individual folders it would take a little longer to reboot than if I did the whole My Pictures folder at once, but Grrr. What a freaking pain in the ass.
I did at least print a few copies of the program pages the night before so my Aunt had something she could take to the copy place on Friday.
That night we had a family dinner at the house. At first I thought my Mom ordered too much food and then I thought she didn’t order enough, but it came out to be just the right amount. Whew. My Aunt wanted to get Chinese food so we had a whole variety of stuff to choose from. It was a long night, but it was nice hanging out with the family.
Saturday was the funeral and it started off okay. The funeral was at noon and we were told to show up about an hour before the service, but we thought we would get there around 10:30am and it was a good thing we did because some people started coming around then. Of course, the people who showed up early were the ones that had to go somewhere and couldn’t stay for the service, but still… Anyways, I was okay for the most part, but I started to get a major anxiety attack about an hour before the service. I mean major. I get gastro intestinal distress when I get an anxiety attack. It was not pretty. I wasn’t sure if something like that was going to happen, so I did have some immodium with me and I am glad that I did.
I don’t know what it is. I just get nervous and it happens. I know that it usually happens if I am in a crowded area and maybe that is what set it off. All of the people and talking just got to me. I should have gone in the front to meet people paying their condolences, but I just couldn’t until about 10 minutes before the service and I think I took like 4 trips to the bathroom before then. Ach.
I was worried that I was going to have to get up and leave during the ceremony, but I calmed down and was okay for the service. Well, I was okay until we got to the offering of the incense and I just lost it.
We had a Buddhist ceremony for Grandma. I haven’t been to a lot of funerals in my life, and I think I might have gone to one or two Christian funerals, but the majority have been Buddhist. I like Buddhist ones better. There is a lot of chanting and the Reverend bangs a bowl – like one of those Tibetan meditation bowls during parts of the ceremony. It’s just very calming and meditative.
We had the 7 day service right after the main ceremony. Of course the 7 day service was like a week late, but I think it’s okay – especially since Grandma’s ashes didn’t arrive until a couple of days ago.
We catered some food for after the ceremony and I think we would have had enough, but my Mom called the mortuary a couple of days ago and ordered even more food, so we ended up having to bring back like 6 full trays of stuff. I don’t know how we are going to eat it all. Then again, there are quite a few of use here right now, so maybe it will go in a couple of days.
We were all pretty tired when we did get back to the house, but there is still a lot of stuff to be done. My uncle started working on our mailbox. The door broke and we have been meaning to replace it, but my Mom and I were kind of clueless on how. My uncle is pretty handy and put the new one up in no time.
My aunt and I cleaned up a little and since the little kids weren’t around we decided to divide up the jewelry then. My Grandma had quite a few pieces of jewelry but the only thing I really wanted was this blue pearl ring she had since it matched this blue pearl choker Mom gave me a little while back. Grandma also already gave me her favorite ring a couple of years ago, so I was satisfied with that. I picked out a few things for my sister, but I don’t know if she would want them, so I am going to send her some pictures to see if she wants them – after I get my computer fixed.
We are going to deliver flowers to various graveyards in the morning and so I really need to get to bed.
I did take some pictures of the flowers and the altar at the funeral and I’ll try to upload those when I get the chance too.
February 18, 2007
I am so freaking beat right now.
My cousin Paula and her family arrived last night. I wasn’t expecting to see them until Tuesday morning, so I kind of procrastinated on cleaning the place a bit. I should have been cleaning since last week, but just couldn’t bring myself to start – probably because I felt and still feel pretty overwhelmed by what has to be done here.
I didn’t think they would come over Monday night because their flight came in around 8:30 at night, they had to pick up a rental car and they are going to be staying at a condo in Waikiki. I figured that they would be beat and would just head to the condo – but I was wrong – very wrong.
I was in the living room wiping up some dust and I looked out the window to see this van pull into the driveway – ach. I had so much crap out that I was working on putting away before they came over, but they came over before I was ready! Ach!
Thankfully they didn’t stay too long and so I started working – well sort of – I put in the copy of BloodRayne that I borrowed and ended up half watching that and half working. Wow! What a crappy movie that was. It was quite unfortunate since it included a pretty interesting cast – Kristanna Loken, Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez, Meat Loaf, Billy Zane, Udo Kier and Ben “Ghandi” Kingsley. But the writing was bad, the story line was boring and there was quite a bit of unnecessary nudity in the middle that wasn’t there as a plot point, but just as something to hopefully keep the viewers’ attention, but didn’t.
Anyways, I didn’t really start working until 4am and got to be around 6am. I only got about 3 hours of sleep before I had to get up and vacuum.
We went out to breakfast and then came back to the house and started cleaning. Yikes, Paula’s husband is a cleaning machine. He completely cleaned up the kitchen, which is completely awesome. I cleaned up the bathroom and moved the kitty litter to another room for the time being. But, I also tried to entertain the kids a bit, helped Paula a little in making the program for the funeral and tried working on the living room a bit. But, it was hard as the day went on since I was so tired. It’s weird, my legs are hurting now and I am just pooped.
I didn’t get much done after they left, but I don’t know if I feel like sleeping just yet. The cat handled herself pretty well. She kept to herself most of the time and hid from the kids when she was awake.
My other cousin Jeff arrives tomorrow and then the rest of the family arrive on Thursday. Ugh, so much to do. I still don’t know where to start.
February 14, 2007
I came across a couple of cool freebies and thought I would pass them along.
First, Google is offering free web hosting in conjunction with Blogger. So, as long as you have a domain name, you can switch it to Google/Blogger and get free web hosting. Then you can also sign up for free Google Apps for your domain and get email service for your domain through Gmail! I was thinking about switching web hosts because, heck, it’s free! But I was a little wary because I didn’t want to lose my email address and BAM! – this would solve that problem.
But, I am still thinking about it because I was browsing the Blogger publishing sections and couldn’t find a way to import previous blog posts from another service. Hmmm. I know WordPress allows you to backup your blog and you can import blog posts from other services, but I didn’t see anything allowing me to do that with Blogger. So, if anyone is reading this and knows of a way, please leave a comment or use that handy contact section at the top of the page and tell me! PLEASE!
Then, I checked my Hotmail account – just to keep it active and this was in my inbox -
A FREE Microsoft® Office Live Basics account can help add wings to your business by providing you with the tools you need to quickly establish a powerful Web presence and reach new customers.
With Microsoft Office Live Basics, you get:
• FREE domain name and Web hosting
• FREE easy-to-use Web site design tools
• 25 FREE company-branded e-mail account
Okay, so basically Microsoft is also now offering free web hosting and domain email as well. Yahoo! are you listening?
Now, I like having things centralized so I don’t have to go to all kinds of different web pages to check the domain, check email, etc – but my wallet enjoys a bargain and nothing says bargain more than free. I haven’t done a lot of research into the Microsoft thing since I just found out about it and well, I am a little busy these days, but more on that later.
I guess I could also say that I am pretty brand loyal to Yahoo! I’ve been using them for over 10 years now, but I am having some trouble with a lot of the changes they are making trying to make themselves more relevant/more able to compete against Google. I signed up for web hosting through them because one of the features mentioned was that they would do an automatic update for WordPress if one became available.
I’ve since learned by contacting Yahoo and reading some stuff on the WordPress message boards that this is really not the case at all. According to the information I have, Yahoo! has no intention of updating WordPress at all because they feel that the current software meets its users needs – even though the updates that have since come out include numerous bug and security fixes. Heck, WordPress just came out with a version 2.1 and Yahoo is still using 2.02.
Grrr, it’s frustrating. I should switch especially since I can get hosting for free, but I have grown fond of my layout and while I find nothing wrong with Blogger, I just don’t know if I want to go back to it. Grrr – especially if I can’t import my posts from WordPress. I should research the Microsoft one more, but first hurdle is having to use IE in order to access that stuff. Blech.
February 14, 2007
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