So I guess I mentioned that my newly pieced-together computer seemed to be behaving itself as long as I continued to run it with the cover off and keep it in a place where it made it impossible to sit normally in my chair. What I neglected to mention is that on a couple of instances, I told Windows to go head and look for a solution(s) to the problems. I didn’t have much hope, but figured it couldn’t hurt. Last night, I happened to notice that several days ago (coinciding with the time that I thought the old “run it with the covers off” solution was working), Windows found new 64-bit motherboard drivers for the Asus “Cool n Quiet” power management system and the USB 3.0 controller and installed them. I dunno about the USB 3 (no devices plugged in yet), but apparently the MB power management had some sort of issue (from what I’ve read – now – there was also a problem with the Linux drivers, I feel obliged to point out). And Windows actually fixed it for me. So, Asus bad (at least, up until they wrote new drivers). Windows (hate to say this) good. Go figure.

Of course, before I found this out, I’d already ordered a new power supply and video card that I apparently didn’t need. Oh well. Last night, I installed them both, and so far so good. My graphics “experience” went from a 4.5 to a 7.8 (which I can only assume is a big improvement, because 7.8 is like 67% bigger than 4.5).

It ought to be better. The card is literally a foot long and double width, taking up two slots and requiring two external power connectors (hence the justification for the new power supply).

Hopefully everything will keep working. So far, so good.

It’s funny watching last night’s KO, as John Nicols (who is not John Nichols, but I still highly recommend The New Mexico Trilogy) is telling us that the huge turnout could mean more than a three-seat pickup for the Wisconsin Democrats, and might mean a “wave.” Well, turns out not so much of a wave as a ripple. They didn’t even get the three. I’m pretty sure this vindicates Michele Bachmann in some way. And of course the Koch brothers and everybody’s favorite Koch sucker, Governor Scott “Dopey” Walker. Oh well, it’s not like I expect all that much these days.

President Obama is calling for the “ouster” of Syria’s President Assad. Obama is starting to remind me of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Not because of the “black” part, of course, but because no matter how many appendages are lopped off, the BK keeps insisting that he’s not fatally crippled and is still relevant. Obama keeps pretending that somebody gives a crap what he has to say.

We have the potential for the Minor League Baseball “Perfect Storm” brewing here in Central New York. You may recall (but probably not) that Syracuse is the AAA farm team of the Washington Nationals, and that last year’s pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg did a stint here on his way up to The Bigs (where he subsequently blew out his ulnar collateral ligament).

Also recovering from injury is a fella by the name of Alex Rodriguez (yes, yes – Yankees. No need to say you hate the Yankees. Everybody does), who had surgery for a torn meniscus. He’ll be working out the kinks with the Yankees farm team in Scranton (and perhaps working at Dunder Miflin on the side).

As it happens, Syracuse has a 4-day home stand against Scranton coming up from 8/12 – 8/15, which more or less corresponds to both guys’ rehab schedule (in A-Rod’s case, his injury rehab, not any cocaine and/or gambling rehab), so we may see Rodriguez vs. Strasburg right here.

Wouldn’t that be exciting?

No? Well, it doesn’t do all that much for me, either. But, hey, we have time to kill before football season.

What with all the talk of anniversaries lately (happy belated 13th to Mrs and Mr F-and-or-O-Kat, BTW), there’s yet another special date coming up this week. Notice of this one comes via the WTF Podcast Newsletter.

This week, Tuesday marks my 12th year sober.

The thing I’m taking away from that is that I’ve actually been married longer than Marc’s been sober. Maron, of course, has not managed to stay married during all that time, while, I, for my part, have not managed to remain sober for the past 13 years either (though, to be fair, I haven’t actually been trying).

I will, of course, refrain from suggesting that you need to be wasted (at least occasionally) to stay married.

No doubt, not being a neurotic, angry creative genius helps. Also being married to somebody you like, and who isn’t a recovering addict (of course, I don’t really know the circumstances with Marc’s previous relationship, but I’m siding with him because, well, because he was with there with me – and my wife, I hasten to add – in bed every morning for a year and a half).

There’s something to be said for being a happy idiot, I guess. Not that I’m all that happy much of the time (not until I can retire, anyway). But no brain no pain, and if I’m not the most interesting and exciting companion on the planet, at least I try not to bother anybody too much.

Speaking of not very happy and the lack-o-retirement possibilities, how’s that whole 401k thingie doing this morning? In case you didn’t notice, the “markets” (one of those very rare and mysterious singularities that end with an ‘s’ and that nobody actually understands – least of all economists) took a dump yesterday.

If you were listening to “the news” (speaking of plural singularities) you may have gotten the idea that this came about because S&P downgraded the USA. But it turns out, that wasn’t it. It was because the economy sucks (and the economy sucks because the idiot teabaggers and their Republican pimps would rather kill every man, woman and child (except for rich men and unborn children, of course) than pump money into the economy.

Teabaggers are proud of themselves. Republicans are, well, Republicans, and the Democrats are equal parts scared and spineless. And our President is…. Beats me, I quit trying to figure him out. None of that matters, though.

What matter is that, after 4 days off, I have to go back to work today. This really (really) blows.

Hugh Carey croaked yesterday and the tender age of 92 (92 no longer seems like it’s long enough to live, though it’s probably a lot better than I’ll manage). For you non-NYers, he was Governor back from 1975-1982. That’s back when NYC was about to go bankrupt (I think the Dutch were ready to foreclose), and Gerald Ford was “quoted” in a NY Daily News headline: “Ford To City: Drop Dead” (15 cents for a paper back then – imagine that). Stocks tumbled, bonds were downgraded, dogs and cats started living together, the State was looking to not only cancel the NY State Fair, but sell off the fairgrounds. Oh, it was terrible. Fortunately, we’ve learned a lot from this, and that sort of thing could never happen today. 🙄 Carey’s election ended the rather short tenure of Malcolm Wilson, who inherited the office from Nelson Rockefeller (a shame they don’t make Republicans like Rocky anymore – though for some reason he had his panties in a bunch when it came to smoking pot and stuff, and then there was that whole Attica thing that got a little bit messy) who, ironically was Ford’s VP. I never really liked Hugh, though I can’t quite remember why (maybe it was because he always looked like he used a whole tub of black shoe polish on his head and eyebrows), and he was kind enough to pony up $15 million in State funding so SU could build their new football stadium, so I reckon we owe him some gratitude. So, RIP, Hugh. I hope they give you a traditional Irish sendoff, including putting both your casket and a keg of beer on a block of ice at the wake.

Well, so far. it’s been kind of a pain in the ass weekend. Normally, wires for outlets should be, oh, I dunno, in the neighborhood of about 8″ above outlet height. Nope. And We managed to pick a location for the little a/c (being too cheap to run the central air) where there happened to be a wire running vertically (strike 1) and then cut through it where it also was running horizontally in an attempt to get a jack stud in. Didn’t cut through it enough to trip the breaker, though – just the neutral. Much hilarity ensued. Decided that, as I had to redo the wire anyway, the best option would be to add an outlet under the a/c, so as to avoid putting in a hidden junction box. Sadly, the fish tape broke trying to pull the wire back from the existing outlet (a rather expensive fiberglass one, too), and there was no way to route it back through. Fortunately, I never use that outlet anyway, so it’s gone now. And the a/c is in with the wall all buttoned up with the first couple of coats of mud on. Next it was time to fuck up the tractor.

For one reason or other, the 3PH lifter has been refusing to work independently of the mower deck (which is supposed to lock in place in the “top” position). Thought we had that working but, sadly, no. I broke the cam handle, and lets just say it’s fortunate that I don’t need to cut the grass.

With all this farting around, I haven’t even been able to get into the pool, and I haven’t really had much in the way of food around the house, either.

So, I’ll have to see what can go wrong today.

In other news, not only do we have to beg the Rooskies for a ride into space, but now the f*cking Chinese are lecturing us on how to handle our money. All because the goddamn idiot Republicans and teabaggers couldn’t just raise the debt limit as has always been done in the past without insisting on demonstrating to the world how dysfunctional our government is.

Look, teabaggers, I realize you wear your ignorance and stupidity like a badge of honor, and that’s OK around the house (or the House), but when you go out in public, it’s really best not to jump up and down waving your arms hollering “lookit me! Lookit me! I’m an idiot!”

Trust me, people will eventually notice on their own.

Thanks to our brave politicians, led by our brave President, the US Government has avoided haing its bonds downgraded from AAA status to D-. Instead, Standard and Poor’s has downgraded us to AA+ (no word yet on what this means for our AAA baseball team). If only the mean old Democrats and their Socialist President had given John Boehner that other 2% he wanted, this never would have happened. But, hey, let’s face it, we’d have all loved to get AA+s in school (especially in that class that told us why we’re supposed to give a shit what a bond rating agency thinks), so this isn’t so bad after all. In fact, I predict that all it really means is that the riff-raff that considers itself to be 85% of Americans will have to pay more for, well, everything, and the moneychangers will make even more money, which of course will trickle down upon us all (except for Sean Hannity, who, not surprisingly, isn’t having any sex; or at least not any sex that could lead to reproduction, if you catch my drift).

It’s not all good news, though, as S&P also announced that they are putting the US on double secret probation, and may downgrade our credit even further in the future. Quick! To the Suprecongressmobile! I’m fairly sure we need to take some serious measures to avoid this – namely, cut taxes on rich people, revoke child labor laws, officially declare Global Warming a hoax, frack the fuck out of everything between Canada and Mexico, drill baby drill, raise the Medicare and Social Security age to 70, and start killing old people with a net worth below $100 million when they hit 65.

Of course, there should be a grandfather clause. Grandfathers go first.

I think we could also save some money by getting everybody to agree to only have virtual, electronic wars – like in that episode of Star Trek, before Kirk along and screwed it all up (he really wasn’t much for that whole “Prime Directive” thing). Then we just run wars by computer simulation, and if you get a simulated missile dropped on your house, you have 24 hours to report to the disintegration booth (which could double as granny and grampy drop-off sites – unless we want to use big Soylent Green meat grinders instead).

We’re kinda halfway there already, what with the drone warfare and all. Except the simulation part is one-sided (a video game on our end, real death and destruction on the other). That works, of course, but it’s not as cost-effective as total simulation. So let’s get to work on that.

Oh well, it was warm enough (or I was lazy enough) to skip putting the pool cover on last night, so I guess I better go check for skimmer critters.

Now, get out there and be productive, citizens! Oh wait, it’s the weekend, which means you can take time out from working to go and buy crap you don’t need (I recommend an iPhone, because if you don’t have an iPhone, you don’t have an iPhone, plus every iPhone purchased helps pay to run Steve Jobs’ stasis chamber).

Today is my wife’s birthday, so, if she’s out there somewhere reading this, “Happy Birthday!” See, she’s not here. I took the day off and had a huge party planned, but she chose to be out of town until Saturday some time, so I had to cancel everything. Worst part is, I couldn’t get a refund on the Chippendale dancers I ordered. On the bright side, they let me substitute some hoochie-coochie girls instead, so they’ll be over this evening around 8:00. I hope they like dogs.

My only real mandate was to “please feed the cats.” I saw them last night and gave one of them some food, but she didn’t eat much. The other one was outside and didn’t appear to want anything. I’m not about to beg, and they pretty much hang out outside all the time these days, so let ’em eat moles (or frogs; lots of frogs and toads out there). Of course I love the little dears, but I just don’t understand them.

Dogs, I get. They’re like guys.

Food? Good. Eat? Good. More food? Even better! :pup:

Cats?

Feed me.

Feed me now!

Not that. I don’t want that.

Give me that other stuff.

Give me that other stuff now!

I don’t want that.

Feed me. :billcat:

I may celebrate the day by cutting a hole in the bedroom window and sticking an air conditioner in it. Better late than never. I don’t need it, but if it gets really hot again at night, it’s nice for the dogs to have at least one place where it’s cool. The house has central air, but I’ve never turned it on; frankly the house is too damn big to keep cool, and I’m too goddamn cheap. If I get hot, I just jump in the pool.

I only wish I could get the dogs to do it, but no dice. If it was a filthy mud hole, they’d be all over it (see? I get that – mud is good), but the filthy mud hole is (as a guy I used to work with many years ago would say, if he was here – and not dead) “drier than a popcorn fart” and they don’t seem to trust the pool. Too clean – something aint right. I gotta get a mud-colored liner.

In other news nobody’s interested in, when last we spoke, I was kvetching about my computer’s power supply. After monitoring the voltages in the BIOS setup for a while, I decided to turn off the mo-bo’s anti-surge protection. In fact, I’m monitoring it now, and everything seems to be well within a 5% margin. Actually, within about 3% on the 3.3V side, and the 5 and 12 much closer. So I’m guessing the motherboard is just being stupid all of a sudden.

Of course, as soon as I was convinced that the voltages were fine and went to get more coffee, the damn thing crapped out on me again for reasons unknown. I suspect the on-board video, as the driver has been “crashing and recovering” on me. My only real thought it that I’m stressing it out by running two HD displays off it. This is part of the fun of building your own computer, and trying to do it as cheaply as possible (you never know if the day they put your components together, the Chinese salve laborers found out they were about to become organ donors and slacked off a bit). So, anyhow, I ordered a new video card (which helps to justify the new power supply, since I needed one with PCI Express power connectors).

It continues to astound me that a video card can have more RAM on it than my first non-Atari computer had hard drive space, and a way faster processor. I can remember being all excited to be able to upgrade my video card that came with 1 MB of memory soldered to the board by buying two .5 MB chips and cramming them in the empty holes. Not sure what advantage that actually gave me, but, by golly, it was sweeeeeet.

Ah, those were the days.

Of course, at this point in time, the computer is behaving nicely, and has been for quite some time now (overnight, anyway). I attribute this to the fact that it’s pulled out at an angle preventing me from sitting comfortably at my desk with the side cover pulled off (as we all know, things always work great until you put the covers back on). So, who knows?

Hopefully all this hardware type stuff will work itself out (there isn’t much left to replace), because it’s so much more enjoyable to use this than my other computers – including the MacBook Pro, which now seems tedious and annoying. Not that that’s a knock against Apple, it’s just that the MacBook is olden, has a crappy old 32-bit Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and a measly 2 GB of RAM. Oh, and of course the touchpad quit clicking a long time ago, and occasionally goes insane and insists on taking a nap for a few days. Plus it doesn’t have a real “delete” key. And I really don’t find the Mac OS (lion, tiger, bear, or whatever it is) to be all that compelling. As a laptop, though, it’s a shiny, pretty (in an aluminum kinda way), little bugger; I have to give it that. And the aluminum is a nifty little lap warmer.

Speaking of nifty little lap warmers, why doesn’t my Dunkin’ Donuts offer this (or do all I have to do is ask for “extra sugar,” in which case, can I put it on my DD card, and is there any chance I can get it to go)?

Well, golly. After six o’clock already, and I have a whole pot of coffee to myself, so I better get to work on it.

So last night I go to have a look at my “new” computer, and, to make a long story short, I start getting messages that the anti-surge protection on the motherboard had detected a power spike and had shut down (which is not what it said at first; when I found it, it said the BIOS checksum was bad, which was odd as I wasn’t actually in the process of updating the BIOS at the time). So, anyhow, I’m hoping it’s the power supply and not the MB. I was gonna order a new PS anyway (so as to eventually get a PCIE video card, which requires a bit more oomph), so I ordered that and a power supply checker (easier than using a meter) this morning. We shall see. The PS is old, so hopefully that’s it. I’d been having problems with the damn thing crapping out on me, which, going by the minidump, I’d attributed to some sort of hardware issue. What a hassle.

So I got home yesterday, and President Obama was on the radio, saying how now that this who debt business was behind us, he was gonna work at getting the economy back on track. And I thought to myself, “is he kidding, or what?” Does he think he’s in any way, shape or form relevant? Seriously. The Republicans have no reason to pay attention to him whatsoever. He can either do what they want (and then they’ll blame him as their policies make everything worse – see the stock market and the debt “compromise”), or he can veto whatever teabagger-driven legislation crawls out of Congress (and then they’ll blame him when things continue to suck).

I’m trying to figure out who Harry Reid appoints to the Super Congress from the Senate. I’m guessing that, at the urging of the President, Joe Lieberman has gotta be one (‘cuz he’s all independenty and whatnot).

Oh well, early day today, so I guess I better get going.

With nothing much really going on in Congress yesterday (other than Republicans laughing their asses off at how simple it was to have their way with Barack “Neville Chamberlain” Obama – and licking their robust chops while wiping the spittle from their enormous jowls as they salivate in anticipation of “negotiations” yet to come), Michele Bachmann took time out to demonstrate proper teabagging technique to reporters. This, apparently, is the secret to the success of her marriage.

“God appeared to me in a vision,” the Congresswoman said, “and He spoketh unto me, ‘Michele, honey, Marcus has a void that you’re just not equipped to fill. But there’s something else you can do for him.’

“So I close my eyes, open my mouth, and then he, well, here, let me demonstrate….”

And afterwards they go out and get another foster child. No boys, though – only teenage girls.

“Marcus has the boys from his ministry. These girls are my reward from Lord God Almighty, for my service unto Him.”

It’s a touching story of two people in love. Or something.

As far as anything else going on in the world, I am officially in denial. Wake me up in 2016 (if we get through that whole end of the Mayan calendar thing).