Studying to get my pleasure craft operator's license is really
really
REALLY
boring
really
REALLY
boring
Whine like a baby, now with 500% more drama!
- Thread starter strawman
- Start date
Wait.. What... I thought you were the pleasure craft?
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GasBandit
Staff member
Captain Sexington of the SS Mustache Ride
They still block stuff with sex_bill because of the Lewinsky thing? Jeeze. Democrats and free speech, only if it suits'm, right?
GasBandit
Staff member
Oh it gets better. The latest block came from "anime-girls."
Forget it. I will just live without thumbnails. Some things you just can't ask a man to go without.
Yay! Wall o' text!
Dateline: late Monday night.
I have Tue off, so I decide that now that I have all the parts, I'll finally go through with my main PC's upgrade that I've been slowly collecting parts for over the last 3 years (was built with the idea to use now/upgrade to glory later as parts were acquired). It's late at night, but I ferret out and retrieve all the parts and OS install media I've been accumulating from various scattered boxes and get it all ready to go. This is something I've been looking forward to for a long time, and I know it's gonna take a long time...but there's a problem.
Sigrid is sick. She's been old for a while, but now (at 15) she's having even more trouble doing the usual things (dish, litterbox), and I notice that she's hanging around the water dish, but not drinking. For those who don't know, "not drinking" for cats is pretty much a signal that The End Is Nigh. It's almost 2am at this point, nothing to be done for it tonight, so I go to bed.
Tuesday dawns hot and sticky outside. Even though <wife> is being crushed under the continuation of a previous day's migraine and flying high on migraine meds, she also notices Sigrid's newfound hydrophobia. She'll stick her face in the bowl, but not take any. She even ignores her favorite...water trickling from the tap. She spends several forced yet unproductive episodes in the box, working her gut up to the point where she throws up twice. Nothing comes up but foam. <wife> starts to get worried after I tell her this is a continuation of last night's events.
I put all my upgrade and other plans on hold and we go to the vet with no appointment. They're ok with it. Sigrid panics during the trip and poops a bit in my lap. It's especially vile. I forgive her. They weigh her. She's 3.8lb/1.7kg. She was twice that back in December. She has stool present in her colon, so she's not blocked, but she's definitely not in great shape. She looks so thin on the slab. The vet weighs in: office visit is already $30, bloodwork will be just over $150, if we want her hydrated, that would be another $20 or so. If this is 100% a thyroid problem then it can be managed for around $30/month. If not, it might be a few hundred. I check my bank balance. Payday is not until Friday. We pretty much have exactly enough money available for the bloodwork, but that means absolutely no safety net in our budget for several weeks into the foreseeable future...
And now only one remains*. She went scared. We tried but could not soothe her. Between this and the lack of funds, I feel like we betrayed her. Still do.
Between cleaning up after <son>'s egg spree, <wife>'s migraine, and now this, Tuesday is officially A Bad Day. The rest of the day continues under a pall, with <son> asking, "Did you have to give Sigrid medicine to make her die?" No, <son>. The vet did that. It would be against the law if we did (don't want him thinking we'll put him to sleep). "Oh." <son> doesn't seem overly sad, but he will no longer be able to trap Sigrid in a pillow case and sit on her any more, and that fact probably makes him feel a little wistful. On the other hand, for me this tempers the blow of her loss, knowing that she will no longer have to suffer <son>'s "tender" affections whenever our backs our turned.
Eventually <son> is put to bed. I break out my computer and start to work on swapping out components (remove 1HDD & install 2 RE3's for TLER-enabled RAID1, remove 8GB RAM & install 16GB) but even though my case has 4 bays for HDDs, 3 are obstructed by GPU and the main 24-pin power cable for the board. I curse a little under my breath. A couple hours tick away while I try different schemes for routing cables. My heart's really not in this, but I'm committed now because I can't leave the computer strewn about the living room overnight with <son> around. Cranky heads off to his room. <wife> decides to turn in because of her migraine. I continue trying different configurations. Eventually I hit upon a solution that works. Fresh from this success, I grab a floppy with RAID drivers and start the install of XP.
It doesn't go well. Windows Update refuses to talk to my computer, instead either forwarding me to a page that basically says "You need to get a newer computer/OS" or else failing to load pages at all. I eventually learn what updates I need to apply in order to get the browser working well enough to actually download the updates, but of course I can't download them because the browser won't $&#*ing load the pages, and the ones that do load read my browser agent and send me back to the "you should upgrade" page. Fortunately I am rescued by sneakernet to another computer, though by the time I get everything installed and it can update on its own, it is just after 5 O'clock in the morning. I finally drag my behind to bed half an hour later, but our son decides he's gonna get up promptly at 8am Wed and makes trying to get what little nap I could in before work rather difficult. <Wife> borrows my keys to take him to the library for a couple hours. I wisely don't resist. <Wife> is awesome.
I somehow manage to hygienate myself, make it to work promptly at 1:30p, and successfully maintain the façade of friendly, interactive consciousness all the way until 11p when my shift is finally over, and after another hour's drive home I kick off the last round of XP updates and go to bed, finally putting an end to my 48hr Tuesday.
Glad that's over.
...and as I typed that last line, the phone rang. It's the vet, letting us know that Sigrid's cremains are ready for pickup. Looks like there's still one more thing to do...
--Patrick
*(the one on the couch on the left)
EDITed to remove names because Internet.
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Hey now, I didn't corner the market on misery. I left plenty for everyone to have a little.
--Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
Well, all I had to do was remove a server from a rack that had no shelves (all attached only by the faceplate), drag the 40 pound son of a bitch into my office, get it on the workbench, and watch it boot up as if absolutely nothing was wrong.
If I wanted to lift heavy steel things I'd go to the gym.
I should go to the gym.
Is the gym having IT problems?
GasBandit
Staff member
Man, how fun would it be to be the IT guy who works for the gym. Especially if your office had a big window you could stand in front of, where all the worker-outers could see you, and you could eat donuts and drink mountain dew.
Don't get into homebrewing.
Due to family and friend requests, I have 20 gallons of hootch currently brewing in 4 carboys. They all needed to be transferred over to new containers--this is something you have to do after a couple of months to get the product off of the sediment.
That's almost 250lbs of booze I had to bring up from my basement. I only have two spare/empty containers, so then I had to do the carboy shuffle, where I transfer one batch into a new bottle, then clean and sanitize the old one for re-use. Rinse and repeat until all 4 carboys are transferred. This requires repeatedly lifting these big-ass 60+ lb containers off the floor to a counter, to siphon, and then moving the same container back to the floor once it's full of sanitizing solution so it can soak while I make another transfer.
Then I got to haul them all back downstairs and into storage. By then, even the two 15-lb empty bottles felt heavy. No wonder I'm losing so much weight. My shoulders, triceps, and upper back are all sore as hell today.
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On the plus side, you now understand why brewers look like fire men.
Those are ounces by volume, silly pat.
I know. I tried to find a cartoony pic with lifting kegs first, but didn't.
--Patrick
or maybe
would be more appropriate
would be more appropriate
That's a lot of juice.
I'd have to have almost 4 times as much brewing at once in order to reach my legal allotment of 200 gallons a year.
Who the hell can drink 200 gallons of hooch a year?
Have you been to our "I'm too drunk/wasted/etc." thread? Just look for the frequent posters.
You've never had Thanksgiving with my family!
GasBandit
Staff member
Especially if we have friends over a lot.
Seriously, it's like a six pack plus one, every single day of the year. It's insane.
I can't sleep. 
Fucking hell, I'll probably have to call into work tomorrow.
Fucking hell, I'll probably have to call into work tomorrow.
I got one of my injections today and for some reason it hurt way more than usual. I swear to god my son has brushed up against and/or hit my arm 100 times in the last hour. I'm about to flip!
