From Yellow to Green

I am seeing headlines about some counties in PA turning from yellow to green on June 12, but I am not seeing any indication that Philly is on that list.

I wanted to get back to being an aide for my friend Joe J, which I was doing on Fridays after work when we were pre-COVID-closures, and I was all set to do it when Philly and Delco both went to condition yellow. Trouble is, now he has freaking SHINGLES and his mom got attenuated chicken pox from his case of shingles.

So now, we are waiting for both counties to be yellow AND for them to be free of shingles and chicken pox. Grrrrr.

I am just crossing my fingers that the reopening of PA and NJ doesn't precipitate a big spike in COVID cases. I need my dose of Vitamin SEA, dang it! I will be really irked if things start closing back down right now. 😉 If that happens, I will comply, because preserving lives outranks even doses of Vitamin SEA, but I will also reserve the right to grumble about the timing.

Rumor-mongering Idiots

There is no problem on this earth that can't be exacerbated by RUMOR-MONGERING IDIOTS.

In the 90s, when the terrible Rodney King riots were devastating Los Angeles, I worked in Center City, Philadelphia. I went out to lunch, as was my wont, and when I got back to the office, I heard people talking excitedly that a riot was breaking out at Broad and Walnut. I joined the conversation to say that I had just eaten lunch at 13th and Walnut (which, for non-locals, is a block away from Broad), and had to cross that intersection on my way there and back. There was nothing out of the ordinary going on at Broad and Walnut.

At the end of the day, I took the Broad Street Subway home, getting off at Snyder, and walked home.  When I got to my street, neighbors were excitedly talking about how a riot was breaking out at Broad and Snyder. I told them, "I just got off the subway there, and nothing was going on. So unless the problems broke out within the last five minutes, I am going to say that's not correct information."

It was a Friday, and my parents and I were going to a benefit dinner in NE Philly that night. While we were there, the chatter started. "Someone said there is a riot at Cottman Avenue." I responded, "I already heard two false rumors about Broad and Walnut, and Broad and Snyder. People said riots were going on over there, but it wasn't true. I will bet anything that this report about Cottman Avenue is baloney." Which it was.

OK, so fast-forward nearly 30 years to just now. I had an eye appointment this afternoon. Had, being the operative word. They called me to reschedule and said they are closing early, because of looting on Oregon Avenue. Well, the stores they mentioned are mere blocks from here. Mark got in the car to go look, and of course, nothing is out of the ordinary there. I called the eye doctor back and told them everything I just wrote.

But clearly, some smacked arse(s) decided to create fear and loathing by spreading outright lies. Poxes on these lying imbeciles who do this stuff.

If you hear any of these "OMG WOE HORROR DISASTER IN OUR BACKYARD" rumors, take it with a massive grain of salt unless you can verify it. Because there are some sick wretches out there who get their jollies by upsetting people needlessly.

Laptop woes

My laptop is fritzing out again. I think it’s on its last legs for sure this time.

I just ordered a new one. Le sigh. Thank God that’s an option, but boo hiss on surprise expenses. 

If I can’t revive my machine, I’ll have to work on Mark’s laptop until my new one arrives.

It’s harder than it ought to be to find a 17” screen with touchscreen AND (hardest of all) an optical drive. I’m old school that way. HP came through on all counts. 👍🏻

That moment when you are working on THREE PCs at once

I strongly suspect that the hard drive on my main PC is on its last legs. Argh grumble mumble swear cuss growl.  The disk usage has been tending to be in the 90-100% range consistently, even when I'm not doing anything particularly intensive.

Therefore, this is the setup I have going today

First, I have my main computer set up (after having spent about 30 hours between yesterday and the day before doing resets and a bunch of other "Dear Lord and Patron Saints of Tech, let this work" stuff. We are finally at a point where it takes a little under 10 minutes to boot up. Which is better than getting stuck infinitely during the bootup and not actually booting at all.

Second, I have my main computer remotely connected to my work computer, so that's two PCs I'm using.

Third, I have my netbook open, so that when things are calm on the work front, I can look up fixes for Windows 10 excessive disk usage, and not cause my main PC to use its disk any more than it absolutely has to. Because too much disk usage equals frozen computer, which equals 10 minutes spent recovering from frozen computer, and I do not need that while I am trying to actually get freaking WORK done.

So there you have it. I am working on 3 PCs at once, because I'm just that much of a geek.

P.S. I have also started to apply any of the fixes I find that don't involve a restart. We have gotten the disk usage down to somewhere in the 80% range.  Go, me! That's still way higher than I want it, but it makes Frozen Computer Syndrome less likely, so I will take it.

Tiny But Mighty

Working from home has just gotten a lot more interesting, in the sense of the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times".

My main computer, the 17" laptop, started hanging during boot yesterday. All I was getting was the spinning dots. To make a long story a lot less long, I used Google-fu on my phone and tried a whole bunch of scan and repair techniques, all of which did diddly squat to fix the problem.

So I am left with the nuclear options. First, I am trying to reset the PC such that it keeps the files but reinstalls Windows. In the event that fails, the next option is just do a complete clean install of All The Things and start from scratch.

I am decidedly Not Happy about the fact that it has been showing "Resetting the PC.... 1%" for two hours.

However, this is where the Tiny But Mighty comes in. I have got a 7" netbook, which is barely bigger than my iPhone XS Max Plus screen,  Last night, when it became clear that the likelihood was slim that I would have the main PC up and running by 7 AM this morning, I started setting up the netbook to connect to work.

So that's what I am doing today and, apparently, every day until I get my pain PC back up and running.

What can I say? Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Since this netbook does not have a camera (the one thing I would change about it), I had to go retrieve my webcam from the camera bag and set it up, to ensure that it was working in time for our conference call this afternoon. I actually need the camera more for its microphone capabilities than for its imaging, for the time being, as the netbook's audio drivers got glitched by a Windows update many  moons ago For whatever reason, it doesn't recognize its own microphone anymore, but it does work with the camera's mic, so I set the camera up. Nobody shares audio in these meetings, though we COULD if we wanted to. I don't want to, lol.

So wish me luck in reinstalling Windows on my machine, because I am OVER these blasted problems. #FML

ARRRRRRRRRGH!!!!! I forgot my freaking ID at the appointment I had this AM. Gotta go pick it up when their office reopens. @*@&^$@*&#$^@#$&^

Naturally, I discovered my error AFTER they had already closed early for Good Friday. FANABLA...

Then, when I tried to call the friend I'm meeting later, to say I can't drive w/o my driver's license, I found out that SIRI is having an outage. ARGH. Nothing's going right today. I'm going back to freaking bed.