(no subject)

I managed to bounce my rent check; that's an all new and rather unpleasant experience. There was enough money in the account when I wrote the check which is rather frustrating because I was short about twenty-five dollars on a nine-hundred dollar check. *grumps* That's less than the NSF fee is. Andrea and I are dropping off a post-dated check for Monday for rent plus late fee for the landlord on our way to the Cold Stone Creamery tonight, where we are going because it's been too miserably hot for too long, we've been stressed, and we've never been there. There's also the fact that I have an extra eight hundred dollars in my account since it didn't go toward rent...

Which is why I bought new hoses for our wash machine. Friends of my parents gave us their old full size washer and dryer (rennie_frog, I greatly appreciate your gift of a mini wash machine, but it seems that it once again needs another home.) and he and my dad assisted me in man-handling them down into the basement. There was less than a quarter inch of clearance for the dryer at the top of the basement stairs; that was an adventure. I'm waiting on hooking up the dryer until the weekend when I can mess more leisurely with the gas line, but I hooked up the washer immediately. I then found that the hoses leaked. So, while stopping at the hardware store to get replacements cut for the keys to my truck that I lost at Duckon but hadn't managed to replace yet, I decided I'd use some of the extra money to get parts for the washer. We'll save a considerable amount of money on laundry now, and an amount of time and sanity worth at least that much. Assuming they work. We believe they do...

In hardware news, I love my job. Hardware keeps following me home. I have two bare-bones PIII 650 Mhz systems, one of which was going to replace Andrea's aging PII 400 Mhz (overclocked to 450 Mhz) that I used to use in high school when it was top of the line and I lived in the cozy little bedroom that my brother has taken over. That was the computer I was using back when my family was still on dial-up and I finally got brave enough to try looking for this 'furry' stuff that Paul from my gaming group had told me was out there. Of course one of the first things I found was the smut. I wasn't exactly looking for it because I'd never been comfortable or confident enough to actually go and look for it before, but I wasn't exactly trying to avoid it either. But find it I did, and it didn't take long for me to decide that this was much more interesting than stuff with humans in it. Maybe that was just because I disliked humans so fervently...

But I digress. The plan for Andra's computer changed when Andrea pointed out to me the beige box sitting on the curb across the street and said 'Hey Storm, the neighbors are throwing out some computer stuff.' The computer stuff was a PIII 750Mhz machine with 128 MB of RAM (plus a decent monitor that's now living in the garage until I have a need for it). Andrea's computer is now nearly twice as fast and has twice as much memory, plus she has a Sound Blaster Live! Value, DVD drive, and Zip drive that were in the neighbors computer. I hope this makes her happy; she should have an easier time doing picture editing now.

Andrea and I didn't go to the theatre for their usual volunteer night on Wednesday and we both feel rather guilty about it, but neither of us were feeling at all well. In fact, I ended up staying home from work that day, my first day of missed work since I started (which stressed me out significantly even though everyone was very understanding) ostensibly because of an upset stomach from some bad food, but actually because I was just feeling very enervated and exhausted. We slept 'till noon and then got some ebay shipping done.

I do need to go back to the theatre on Monday though for the Peter Tork concert planning meeting. Firstly because I'll be running the lights (yes, I'm running lights for Peter Tork; I'm not a rabid Monkees fan but it is something that excites me considerably and may be the closest I'll ever be to doing lights for a big name gig: it's something cool to tell people at parties for sure!) and secondly because Judy Rossow, the theatre's resident patron angel, and her husband have a large number of aging computers from back in the history of their print shop business that they want to get rid of. Among the stack of 8088/286 era machines were a couple gems including two or three Heathkit computers that they may or may not be getting rid of (though they will let me take pictures of them) and a Bernoulli box and one piece of 10 megabyte media for it. Never heard of a Bernoulli box? Neither had I until I saw this thing. At first I thought it was an 8" floppy drive, and in a way it is, but not quite the same. It was actually Iomega's debut product, on the strength of which they went public back in July of '83. This is serious old school technology. My model is of the 10MB variety, the original size, though according to the information I've found, they went as high as 230MB on the later models, and was manufactured in '85. Though the exact model I have isn't pictured, you can read more about the Bernoulli box here. You can also see the exact drive I have here. It's the one on the left. Oops. It's the one on the right.

Also in their basement were a number of antique printer's tools including an entire vintage printing press that Gordy, the print shop owner, took apart into pieces and carted out of the basement of a house that was being torn down and into his own in order to preserve it. He carried every part of it, including a three foot diameter cast-iron flywheel that I can only imagine the weight of, with his own hands, out of one basement and into another, entirely in the hope of one day having the space to put it back together. That is a true labor of love, one which I can completely understand and deeply respect. Reminds me of my dream of dismantling the 1929 resistance dimmer light board in the Rhode Opera House and assembling in my basement; each room would get it's own 2400 watt dimmer wheel...

Despite now having the hardware to do so, I still have not started playing with my Cisco router. I haven't managed, in my couple of cursory attempts, to make the computer talk to it and I haven't felt quite up to mucking with it in depth. This is odd for me; I wonder if something's wrong. Maybe I'm just worried about money and stuff. Things should be much better after I get paid again.

I've been terrible about updating here and I feel bad about it. There's been a bunch of stuff going on and I wish I hadn't missed writing about things like helping my parents tear down their garage and having imandunewen stay the weekend and accompany us to Bristol on her first time ever at the faire. They were very good things. My life has so many very good things, my love wooisme chief among them. I need to try and keep those things more in my mind than all the stupid details that continually conspire to distract me from them.

I love you my mate: I love you my family: I love you my friends.

*hugs*