August 25, 2016

That Was A Day, All Right.

Never mind that I was later than I wanted getting into work... because I was dealing with a stomach upset from dinner the previous night.  Never mind that the claims during work were awful.  Never mind that I was too annoyed at work to enjoy the Cubs game on the radio.  And never mind that dinner tonight was awful... how does one ruin rice in a rice cooker anyway?

No, never mind all of that.  Because I was actually writing something for the blog this evening and was it was coming along quite nicely when the power went out.  It came back after 90 minutes or so, but by that time I had long ago gone to bed.  I noticed when the power came back on... there are enough fans in Pond Central to make the place sound like the EAA Fly-In... but just rolled over and fell back asleep.  Until now, that is. 

Of course, everything I had written was gone.  Thanks, ComEd, for having the power go out to 175 accounts for no reason that anybody there could explain!  And now I'm going back to sleep, because I've still got over three hours before my alarm goes off.  

Yup.  That was a day all right.

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August 15, 2016

Oh We Gots Trouble...

I have something I'm working on, something that I want to get done for this here blog thing.  It's just that, every time I get home from eight hours on the computer, I try to blog and... I find myself distracted by something bright and shiny.  Dinner.  WoWs.  The House Steiner sourcebook (or indeed, any of the Inner Sphere sourcebooks).  Re:Zero.  Something.  So blogginating is taking a back seat to that sort of thing.  Unintentionally, I might add... it just keeps happening that way.

So, um, yeah.  Bear with me, 'k?  I can't promise it'll be worth it, but I can promise there'll be something eventually.  Good deal?  Good deal.

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August 08, 2016

The Meaning Of Ichiro

Ichiro Suzuki recently got his 3000th hit in Major League Baseball.  This makes him the 30th player in MLB history to accomplish this feat.  That's great, but I'm more impressed that he managed this despite not playing in the US until 2001, when he was 27.  He's 42 years old now so he did it in 15 seasons-and-change.  He had to average right around 200 hits per year to do that.

Along the way, he also won the AL Rookie of the Year in 2001, the AL MVP also in 2001, 10 All-Star games, 10 Gold Gloves in Right Field, has a career .314 batting average, has the single-season hit record (262, in 2004), and for all you statwonks out there, his career WAR currently stands at a tasty 59.9.  All of this after playing nine years for the Orix Blue Wave in the NPBL.

That deserves a "Wow".

In tribute to this amazing player, let us revisit his greatest moment ever (may not be entirely safe for work):

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August 06, 2016

And We're Back!

Did ya miss me? 

Hm.  Maybe the better question would be "did you notice I was gone?"  A week is a long time, even for me!  Pond Central's internet connection died Tuesday evening, and it's only now repaired.  Getting it functional again required surgery to a bookcase, repairing a wall connection, and practically rerunning the cable from Pond Central to the building's mechanical room.  All of which would have been accomplished much sooner if the leasing office hadn't lost my paperwork.  Twice.

But we're back now, and I'm sure you're all thrilled to hear it.  I did notice that the long-anticipated Rio Olympics got started Friday night with the opening ceremonies, and oh boy just think of the fun I might be able to have with that...

Not so different from Olympic beach volleyball, come to think of it.  Rio is wearing more, though.
It's good to be back.

Actually, that's very much what it looked like when my modem lit up four greens.  Fewer rubber ducks, though.

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July 29, 2016

Taking The Night Off

Because I'm about ready to be Very Displeased Indeed, so instead, I'm going to withdraw from everything until tomorrow.  It's better that way.  I mean, right now, I'm that guy at the party...

...and after I leave, nobody will remember I attended.  So I'm just going to go away and pretend today, and indeed most of this week, didn't actually occur.  Because otherwise I'll be very unhappy indeed.  Unhappier.  Whatever. 

Thank you for your continued patronage of this once thriving, vibrant blog.

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July 27, 2016

He's Broken Out "wearyduck.jpg", Head For The Hills!


I don't blame you.  I would, too.  If it wasn't for the unfortunate fact that since it's me involved, I'm sorta stuck.

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July 22, 2016

Friday At Last

This week sucked.  It's over now.  It is 830pm on Friday night, and I'm going to take a nap. 

I don't feel bad about that at all.

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July 05, 2016

Graphics Card... Possible Solution!

Did you know that the interwebs come equipped with things called "search engines?"  True story!  You put a request or question into the search engine, and it checks to see if there's something out in the great world of the webz that matches.  I know, right?  I couldn't believe it either!  So I put "new graphics card black screen" into one of these search engines (called "Google") and OMG, hundreds of people have had a similar problem to mine!  So the blown away!  I post the best response I found here, just so I won't lose it:

1. Turn off the computer and unplug
2. Remove Graphic card
3. Plug the monitor to your video output
4. Turn on the computer
5. Click on start and type msconfig
6. Select the Boot tab and click on the box that says Safe boot with minimal selected.
7. Apply then click ok.
8. DO NOT RESTART.
9. Shut Down computer and unplug
10. Install Graphic card
11. Turn on the computer (should boot into safe mode)
12. Go into Device Manager
13. Expand Display Adapter
14. Disable the Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 driver. (DO NOT UNINSTALL)
15. Click the start button and type msconfig
16. Unclick Safe boot
17. Restart
The computer will restart normally and will no longer get the black screen.

Another answer which sounds promising is:

1. Go to bios settings - set primary display device to PEG OR PCI E

What do you, my various and sundry tech wonks, think?  And this is going to sound like a stupid and dangerous question, but where in W8.1 does one get into BIOS?  I figgered out how to get into msconfig without a start button easily enough (right-click on the windows icon on the left of the toolbar... it's beautiful!), but BIOS is hiding somewhere.

You guys are the ginchiest!

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July 04, 2016

Graphics Card... Oh No, Not Again

While the Chicago Cubs whupped the collective tucuses of the Cincinnati Reds at Wrigley Field this afternoon, I finally took it upon myself to install my "new" graphics card. 

Yep, one of these beasts... the ASUS GeForce GTX650 2GB.  Not only is it a low-power card, drawing all the energy it needs from the mobo, more importantly it's a single-slot card.  Anything much larger than this wouldn't fit in the case without major surgery and removing the cooling solution from the Intel i5 processor.  I don't think I would have bothered even when I was young and stupid, let alone my current old and tired and stupid state.  Of course, the advantage of such a card is that, in theory, all you need to do is plug it into the correct slot and voila, you're ready to roll.

As you can guess from the title of this post, that didn't happen.  After struggling to get the card in position (the external mounting bracket of the tool-less case is a right bastard to use), I finally managed the trick, buttoned everything back up, plugged all the cords back in, hit the power button, and... nothing.  Oh, the computer was functioning, the hard-drive light was doing its usual flickering routine, everything was spooling up, and I thought I could even hear the fan on the card spinning... but the monitor stayed dark.  Indeed, it even displayed a "monitor going to sleep" message! 

So I tried again.  Removed the card, reseated it, plugged everything in, did NOT put the case back together, hit the power button, saw the card's fan spin up... but still nothing on the screen.  Perturbed and annoyed, I removed the card, delicately put it back in its box, and tried the onboard graphics again. 

No problems. 

So what the hell?  I bought this card because it was a low-power draw: it's rated at pulling somewhere between 60 - 64w, with a PSU of 400w listed... and I've seen comments saying that it works fine with a 300w.  My PSU is shown as 460w, so that shouldn't be the problem.  That the fan spun up pretty much guarantees its getting power... so what gives?  Last time, even when the card wasn't working right it still turned on the monitor.

I don't want to yank the (new, upgraded) PSU out of my old computer to install it in this one... I just want everything to work!  Is that too much to ask?

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July 01, 2016

Swelling With... Um... Excitement?

I had a lovely dinner with Official First Friend of The Pond Vaucaunson's Duck and his wife Geese on Monday night... three hours of sushi, karaage, more sushi, teriyaki chicken, bbq beef rolls (it's like sushi without the fish and with cows), conversation and red bean mochi.

For the record, the karaage was disappointing, nothing even vaguely resembling what they describe in Shokugeki no Soma.  The dipping sauce was memorable, but not in the way you want to be remembered.  In my defense, it was just about the same color as ginger, or exactly the same color as the dressing they use on their salads.  How was I to know it was actually made out of Greek Fire, napalm, AMFO, and just a dash of (RS)-Propan-2-yl methylphosphonofluoridate for spice?  Anyway, after bidding the San Francisco Duo adieu and heading back to Pond Central, I rapidly pumpkined and called it a night.  The next morning, however, things were... different.  Getting ready for work, I put on my socks and realized that doing so made the top of my left foot hurt, a light burning pain.  Huh, weird.  Finished getting dressed, headed off to work, yadda yadda, came home, took that sock off and... my foot was a little swollen.  Sigh.  One of the perils of a job where you sit in less-than-stellar computer chairs for eight hours a day is that occasionally you get swollen feet, no matter how much you get up and walk around.  Well, so much for that.  And then came Wednesday.

Somewhere around six in the morning I woke up in quite a bit of pain from my foot.  What I couldn't figure out was exactly why it hurt so badly... then I realized: it was because the bedsheet was touching it.  Oh crap.  Once I got out of bed and into a room with some light, I knew it was going to be a long day... the area just behind the toes was a deep, angry red.  That was bad enough, but it looked like my toes had gotten shorter, too.  In fact, they hadn't: they had gotten wider.  I went back to bed carefully... and work that day was a nightmare.  All day long, it felt like someone was holding a lighted match to the top of my foot.  The instant I got home, I took off my shoes and socks, put on my sandals... and nearly screamed from the pain of the leather touching the swollen areas.

When I finally managed to sleep that night, it was fitful... constantly waking up because the sheet touched a toe or something like that.  By Thursday night, however, the worst had past.  Today after work, I hied myself over to an Immediate-Care place where my doctor was... interesting.  She looked like Tyrion Lannister would look if he had Five o'clock shadow and Margaret Thatcher's hair.  Anyway, after examining my foot and hearing my story, she leveled her best diagnosis: gout.  She couldn't be sure, of course, without it really being in full fury and god help me, she looked like she was interested in seeing my gouty foot.  I suppose it's not exactly a disease that's all that common, after all... I, personally, have no interest in that.  Kids, drink lots of water.  You do NOT want Gout.  It hurts.  A LOT.

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June 30, 2016

For The Record


That about covers it, yep.

I have a complete and total lack of interest in doing much of anything right now.  So instead, I'm going to take a nap.

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June 25, 2016

Teknikle Hep Kneeded

Hello, my valued readers.  I have a... not a problem, exactly, but a curiosity certainly.  Y'see, as you may have noticed at the end of my last post, I have taken advantage of this summer's Steam Sale to obtain a couple of new games.  Emphasis on "new"... Fallout 4 and WWE2K16 being the first modern and relatively current AAA games I've installed in my sweetheart of a computer named Nori.

As it turns out, however, these are also the first games that are too much for the onboard Intel graphics system to handle.  The wrasslin' game gets about 13 fps during the benchmark, then dies before completing it.  F4 lets me click "play" on the launch menu, then the screen goes black for a few seconds before returning to the desktop.  Yep, that's right... all those WarThunder and World of Warships screenies were taken using motherboard graphics.  And it's been perfectly playable, too!  Mid-30s fps at all times is a-okay, after all.  But now it is time to install the graphics card I've owned for two years... and I'm terrified.

See, I've realized that I can't remember the last time I installed a graphics card that wasn't replacing a card by the same manufacturer... Nvidia, in my case... and I have no idea just exactly what I need to do!  I'm not that worried about actually putting the card into the case... that's just thumb-and-clip-and-maybe-a-screwdriver work. Do I uninstall the onboard Intel drivers?  Or put in the card, boot the system, then put the Nvidia drivers over them?  If I remove the Intel drivers, will I have any graphics at all when I reboot?  VGA?  What?  And why the hell has it taken me two years to finally get around to doing this?

All advice is welcome, desperately!

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June 23, 2016

Day Three Hundred Sixty-Six

Last night, as I cowered in terror from the latest round of tornado warnings, it struck me... I've been employed for a year.  In what I can only assume is coincidence, there were tornadoes in the area on Day One, too.

I'd love to say that there were celebrations and noisemakers and huge margaritas for the three of us still left from our hiring group, but there weren't.  In fact, we ran out of claims to process after about five hours.  So, after a quick run to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription of "Keep Wonderduck Alive" pills, and a stop at a local gas station to take advantage of their cheap prices on 2L bottles of soda, I came home to Pond Central.

And nearly died carrying 16 liters of soda up a flight of stairs.  See, what I neglected to mention is that the weather is conspiring against all living creatures here in Duckford at the moment.  It is 1) very warm; 2) stupidly humid; and 3) deathly still, with not a hint of breeze in the air.  Halfway up the stairs, 32 pounds of liquid weighing me down, I was sounding like an old steam loco in serious need of a long stay in the shops.  Still, I managed to drag myself into Pond Central's nuclear powered air-conditioning, and that combined with putting down the soda freshened me right up.

But I seem to wandered astray of my point, as I am oft wont to do.  OW sunuvabeetchmartinhowthehell...?

Sorry, had to take a short break to slap a bandaid on the top of my pinkie, where I somehow managed to demeat myself a small amount.  And dump a hipflask worth of Bactine into the hole while I was at it, just to be sure.

Anyway, like I was trying to say before I somehow managed to take a divot out of a digit, I've now been reemployed for a year.  Who knew that'd happen, huh?  Or that I'd be one of the three left out of thirteen?  Plenty of times, I sure wasn't sure, that's for sure.  But I did.  Happytimes.

Point?  No, no point here, you kidding?  What are you talking about, a point?

Update: shortly after I posted this, I discovered that the Steam Summer Sale began today.  Fallout 4 at 50% off?  WWE 2K16 at 75% off?  Yes please and thank you very much!

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June 09, 2016

Unexpectedly Damp

I'm working on a review for the show Servant x Service, and I honestly thought I'd be done with it by now.  However, I'm going to stop writing for the night because the weather nabobs have just started screaming about "thunderstorm" and "large hail" and "flash flood" and "apocalypse".  So, I'm just gonna go huddle in the corner and keen quietly to myself in terror.  Sound good?


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June 06, 2016

Ow. Owie. Owtch. OwwwwwWWWWWwwwwww.

Thanks to the Girls und Panzer movie, your charming and delightful host of The Pond, myownbadself, kinda sorta stayed up waaaaaaaaaay too late last night.  Once I did finally go to bed at Ohcrepe o'clock in the morning, I could not, in fact, sleep well because it was quite warm in Pond Central.  This despite the quite pleasant temperatures outside and the straining of many fans to bring said pleasantness inside from out.  I've never been good at sleeping in such situations.  When the alarm feature on my cellphone triggered, it welcomed to a new day a sluggish Wonderduck indeed.  So sluggish, in fact, that it took a few moments to realize I had a loud, screaming...

...HADDOCK!  Oh god, why me?  It wasn't one of my notamigraines, it was clearly just a case of not enough sleep and too much Monday.  Like a whiny wuss, I immediately considered calling in sick, but realized that was dumb: save it for when I was actually sick... or just sick of work.  So I went in, got everything fired up, checked e-mail for the claims rotation for the day... and realized I should have called in.  We were going to spend the entire day working on the worst, most finicky, stupidest claims possible.

Despite my best attempts and those of the late Mr Robert McNeil's greatest creation, the headache never did go away.  Indeed, as I sit here typing this, it's sitting at the base of my skull, making it clear that I need to crawl into bed and pray for the oblivion of sleep. 

So what am I waiting for?  Well hell, I dunno.

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June 01, 2016

Writing Furiously, Accomplishing Nothing


Bear with me, 'k?  It's important.   Right?  Aces.

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May 29, 2016

I'm Back Up

315pm on Sunday, and I'm back online for the first time since Thursday morning.  The apartment complex's tame internet technician actually had to venture out into sunlight and pay a visit to Pond Central, where he was quite impressed by a recent KanColle figurine acquisition.  Once here, he took one look at my computer corner, realized I knew what the hell I was talking about, and went into the mechanical room to examine how the wiring is connected to my place.  At which point, he discovered that it was screwed up, and quite possibly had been since the day broadband internet was introduced to the apartment complex.

At which point, he did something relatively unheard of... he fixed the problem.  And, if he described what he did correctly, he fixed it in a way that would require actual manual effort to have it go bad again.  So yeah, there's that wrapped.

I'm not going to bother with a Monaco Quals recap... what's the point, since the race is already over?  I should still get the F1Update! up tonight, though.  Fun race, that.  So yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back!

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May 17, 2016

One Shining Star In A Vast Dark Painful Universe

That rather... florid... headline actually describes the past few days around Pond Central.  Monday morning, I woke up with a notamigraine.  That is, a headache that isn't a migraine but will do until the real thing rolls around.  You know the type: bad enough to make you pluck out one eyeball, but not bad enough to get 'em both.

Despite this, in a shining example of work ethic, ignoring of pain, and stupidity, I dragged myself into work.  As soon as I walked into the office, however, I told my boss what was going on in my skull, sat down at my desk, and got to work.  A note: staring at small text on a bright computer monitor is NOT something you want to do when you have a notamigraine.  Despite this, I was able to get some claims done.  Slowly, yes, but they were getting done.  Then came the bi-weekly payroll form distribution.  See, with this we find out just exactly how much our next check will be, and how it breaks down per claim type.  This particular distribution was important because it had the updated "Quality Numbers" on it.

Basically these show just how accurate you've been in the past few months... the better your accuracy, the higher you get paid per claim.  They're based on a rolling three-month average... and I had a fairly damaging error on Month One.  However, with the new Numbers, Month One fell off and the new month's numbers took its place.  Normally, I could figure out what that was going to do to my Accuracy average, but for two things.  One, I had an error in the new month, and Two, my brain hurt.  However, the error wasn't a financial mistake, but a procedural... I did the right thing, but did it in a way that wasn't Correct.  Tshc, whatever.  So my sheet was handed to me and...

...I'm now making as much per claim as it's possible to make.  To say I was excited would be an overstatement.  Yes, overstatement: I was in too much discomfort to be happy.  In fact, I only lasted another hour or so after that before I gave up and went home.  At which point I napped, woke up for a short time, napped again, woke up again (and still had the notamigraine), then went to bed for the night.

This morning, I woke up with a headache.  Not THE headache, just A headache.  Thus relieved of my burden from the previous day, I went into work with a lilt in my voice and a kick in my step.  This lasted all the way up until the instant I clocked in, at which point the "message" light popped on my computer screen: one of the claims I had one a week or two back had been audited and found to have an error.  A financial error.  A not insignificant financial error.  Which I'll see in a couple of months.

Dammit.  Then the rest of the day was filled with frustrating claim after frustrating claim, and when I got home?  The internet was down.  YAY!  Oh, and that headache is still persistent.  Gah.

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May 09, 2016

Placeholder


It's Monday.  Again.

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April 28, 2016

The Peaceful Visage Of Head Trauma





Lux et Veritas, Scott Sterling.  Lux et Veritas.

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