starmalachite and I got home a little while ago. We were one of the houses that didn't lose power; when thelongshot called and offered to check in on the cats we invited him to camp out at our place if so (which we didn't know at the time). He tells us the cats were clingy and glad for the visit.
sleepy
sickstarmalachite's LJ)Decadent Dave Clement is visiting, but he has commitments that require to be back to Winnipeg before Contata, so we're having a pre-Contata house filk this weekend. Sunday June 26, 2011 starting @ 2:00pm Directions appended below. Steven Joel Z. ( DirectionsCollapse )
amusedamusedstarmalachite that the desktop at home was making unaccustomed noises. From what I could hear over the cell phone (and remembered from a brief intermittent incident last week that I never got around to following up), it seemed like a fan issue. I suggested shutting it down until I could get a look at it.
annoyedthelongshot :amusedstarmalachite and I are back from GAFilk after the fourth flight booking finally got off the ground. We arrived back in the DC area just as the first flurries started here (it looks like we'll avoid the brunt of the storm, with just 2-3 inches expected).tiredamusedstarmalachite and I got home last night to four very needy cats. The two new arrivals took the first prolonged absence of their humans better than I was expecting, actually. It helps that the household has settled into two pairs: Vir and Dorothy are the two psycho cats who chase and wrestle each other; Heidi and Kimba(in userpic) are the two sedate cats who keep each other company and generally ignore anything they consider beneath their notice.refreshedstarmalachite, and we got her stowed away in a duffel bag that was emptied into my suitcase to serve as an impromptu cat carrier. We got her home, set her up in a walk-in closet isolated from the other cats, and did the decontamination routine of dumping all clothes right into the wash and showering.starmalachite went out to the car to retrieve something and led us on a merry chase around the neighborhood until I caught her. We're trying to get her to accept that she's an indoor cat now, but she's stubborn.pleasedstarmalachite got a look at me and felt my temperature, she insisted that the EMTs have a look. There was no sign of it being anything worse than a nasty sinus-infection flareup (she had a bad cold last week; I seem to have gotten it worse), and everything tested normal except my blood pressure being a bit high (not surprising under the circumstances; she was clearly worried and I was still thinking clearly enough to realize that the situation just might be worse that it seemed). I was starting to feel better, but she convinced me it was probably best to head back to our hotel.hopefulcynical
starmalachite's accounts. The log had a long list of "could not access file..." complaints.irritated
confusedinfectiousstarmalachite; it's now up to 62). Based on the pattern I observed last night (the pilot igniter came on, the gas jets lit for about 10 seconds, the gas jets quit, about 15 seconds later the pilot igniter came on again, lather-rinse-repeat, accompanied by occasional sounds suggesting strained air circulation), my guess is that the snow was blocking an outlet vent, triggering the safeties to shut off the burner when the exhaust wasn't escaping properly. If so, the problem may have solved itself when enough warm air got through to melt the blockage. I'll be monitoring the situation for now.
coldconfusedamusedgrumpySo far, the shift to the new desktop is going well, except that it locked up twice when I started Firefox first thing in the morning. I suspect that the underlying problem was that Windows Easy Transfer directly ported all the plugins that had been installed under XP straight into the 64-bit Win7 program (they all automagically showed up in the new Firefox install, just like my bookmarks), and some of them either needed to be properly installed in Win7 or are just incompatible. I've scrubbed and reinstalled Firefox and plugins to see if that fixes it. Anybody else know of a possible alternative fix if that doesn't solve the problem?
On the more positive side, I was able to transfer all my (and starmalachite's) archived e-mail with MozBackup.
starmalachite (who had gotten the FedEx package earlier, and was on the alert for the arrival of the other one) to see if something was wrong at home. Everything was normal -- but there had been no doorbell ring or knock (the bell had rung for the earlier delivery, and she re-confirmed that it was working), and there was no delivery-attempt notice on the door.starmalachite left the house that evening, there was a UPS failed-delivery note on the door (much too prominently for her to have simply overlooked it earlier). I can only assume that my complaint was relayed to the driver, who directed his efforts to ass-covering (i.e. putting up the note) rather than customer service (i.e. knocking/ringing at the door to deliver the pacakge while he was MAKING ANOTHER(?) STOP THERE ANYWAY).irritatedannoyedirritatedstarmalachite and I are back from OVFF; we had a one-hour flight delay and some heavy traffic on the way home (kind of like the delays caused by people slowing to watch an ugly wreck, only in this case caused by people going to watch the latest Redskins game). The cats are in the full love-me-love-me-love-me phase of greeting their humanstiredstarmalachite hadn't been sleeping well, so we left as soon as I acquired the aforementioned sketch (a two-part sketch, actually, part by outgoing artist Jamie Noguchi and part by incoming artist Xin Ye). On the other hand, we returned Sunday (originally, we'd been planning to make one last visit to the Maryland Ren Faire for the season, but between the mud and starmalachite not really feeling up to that long a drive, we decided to catch the rest of the con instead). That gave us a chance to see a panel on the significance of the Civil War (featuring author GoH Harry Turtledove, of course) and get in one more Kingsburg game.FBI Director Robert Mueller was banned by his wife from doing online banking after he nearly fell for a phishing scam, he said on Wednesday during a talk at the Commonwealth Club of California.
He received an e-mail purporting to be from his bank that looked "perfectly legitimate" and which prompted him to verify some information. He started to follow the instructions but then realized that that "might not be such a good idea," he said.
"Just a few clicks away from falling into a classic Internet phishing scam," Mueller "barely caught himself in time" and admitted he "definitely should have known better."
He said he changed his passwords and tried to pass the incident off to his wife as a "teachable moment," but she was having none of it and told him, "It is our money. No more Internet banking for you!..."
starmalachite as one of her people (she was smart enough to figure out that the influx of strange cats into a formerly one-cat household was Her Fault).starmalachite (and not for the usual ONOZ I SEE THE BOTTOM OF MY FOOD DISH reason). Later, after we we got home from the dance group meeting and dinner, she let starmalachite hold her and even relaxed into it.Work is going to be a bit busier than usual as the end-of-fiscal-year rush hits, but I was able to distract myself by getting ready for the next batch of conventions.
Usually, I spend most of Capclave in the gaming room, but the programming (especially some of the new-media stuff) looks more interesting this time (and I definitely want to catch the Erfworld party). I'm planning to bring more of the travelling game collection than usual, though; somebody has to pick up the slack now that Hal Haag is no longer with us.
I also made final arrangements for OVFF* (found an excellent deal on Southwest flights in and out of BWI for a little over $200 for the two of us). I'll probably bring a few games along (one advantage of Southwest is that they haven't followed the lead of most airlines in nickel-and-diming passengers for checked baggage).
(*Their site has been hit by malware attacks over the last few weeks; it seems to be OK now but I thought it was prudent to warn people to have shields up just in case.)
