If you have known me more than a few months, you probably know how I love taking naps. Well, I wasn’t always in love with naps like this. Until about a few years ago, taking a nap only happened a few times a year. Now I take naps on weekends and on my days off out of necessity because I’m usually sleep-deprived during the week. So I take a nap whenever I get a chance so that I can function at work. I even put “nap” on my kanban board.
This past weekend, however, I did not have a chance to take a nap. I was busy Saturday doing weekend stuff like laundry and whatnots and running around different stores to find things I need, like foam for seat cushion and an enzymatic cleaner, etc. I was at work all day Sunday since it was the monthly maintenance Sunday when we do all our maintenance work on the servers and I worked longer hours than usual and hence no naps for me again. So now, yesterday and today, I’ve been having trouble. I’m tired and sleepy. My eyes keep closing and my brain is foggy. All I want to do is lie down somewhere and take a little nap.
Are you wondering if there is any point to this post yet? Cause I sure can’t remember why I started this post like this, but I KNOW I had a point… I just can’t remember. Sorry but I’m telling you I had a point. Trust me although I’m not sure if I digressed somewhere above. I’ll try to update it later if I do remember. Maybe I shouldn’t post this. But then I may never remember. So I’m going to post it anyway. Feel free to give me suggestions on what my point would be.
As I mentioned two posts ago, I’ve been busy. So I started using Agile Zen kanban board in earnest. I’m not really kanban-ing in its true sense as I understand, but rather using it as my to-do list in different stages. It’s easier to manage than just a plain to-do list since I can easily see what stage a certain task is at and I can group related items in the same color. Because I’m using their free version, I can have only one project, but it suits me just fine for my personal kanban. I guess you could say I’m using the colors to represent projects or subprojects.
As you can see, I can work on only a few items a day since I only have an hour or two a day on a good day, and certain things need to be done during certain hours of the day. But I’m not using it to improve efficiency although by organizing my to-do list like this, it did improve.
There are a lot of items in the Backlog category, which I use to put the items that I need to do but not ready to work on or the items that I need to remember to do some time in the future, like buying the frozen raw food patties for the dogs and portion them or preparing the daily medications and supplements for each dogs for whoever is going to take care of my dogs while I’m gone, etc.
It’s a pretty cool tool. I hope they come up with an app for iPhone by the time I get it next year since I would like to be able to see this when I don’t have my laptop or internet connection.
…again. Something is not quite right with Brandy these days. She’s been drinking a whole lot and hence peeing a lot. Her skin around the eyes are raw from too much tears being produced and making her constantly rub her eyes. Yesterday morning, I woke up to a foul smell of her vomit and her urine ALL OVER the kitchen and the den area where she stays. I had to take a day off from work to clean it up and take her to a vet. And of course there is nothing wrong with her medically.
The seat of the chair that she usually sleeps in and I use to hold her upright after her meals is completely soaked with her vomit. So I need to get the foam to replace it, and looking at it online, it’s more than $200 for one stinking foam for the seat! I feel like I’m in a twilight zone or something.
I’m tired. There is a road block everywhere I turn. I still haven’t filed application for passport yet since I can’t confirm the information I have on my parents’ birth place. I left a message for my vet to discuss boarding my dogs there twice. I haven’t heard back. Getting Bailey chair was another circus yesterday. Apparently people who I contacted to have it made are going on a vacation on the 16th of this month for ten days. They were once burned by somebody who had a Bailey chair made and didn’t want it when it was finished, so they do not start making it until they get the payment. So they wanted the check overnighted if I wanted it shipped before they leave for their vacation. But I rarely use checkbook any more, I do my banking online 99.999999% of the time, so I couldn’t find my checkbook. And the story goes on and on and on…
I’m tired. Giving up sounds so sweet right about now.
The other day I found out my mom suffers from arthritis. So I sent her the names of the supplements that should help in slowing down its progress and ease the pain – glucosamin, chondroitin, MSM, vitamin C and fish oil. The reason I know about these supplements is of course because of Georgia’s arthritis. Then I remembered that I completely forgot about Apple Cider Vinegar, which I shall refer to as ACV so that I don’t have to type all that every single time. Yes, I am that lazy, why do you ask. Anyways, I had known that ACV helps arthritis in people and I planned on researching it for Georgia, but I never did. Since I wanted to send mom the correct dosage and usage instructions, I jumped on it right away to get the information.
I gathered all I needed and sent the information off to mom, which, if anybody else is interested, can be found in Earth Clinic ACV page. I was looking around Earth Clinic to get more information for Georgia other than the correct dosage of ACV since, on top of arthritis, she has allergies and is prone to yeast infection and of course has anxiety issues. And you know what caught my eye?
People take ACV to lose weight! Say what? Really? Seriously? Holy crap! Really? Seriously? Really? What baffles me is that there are so many people who obviously are not selling ACV are claiming it works. Out of those who either said Yea they lost weight or Nay they didn’t, about 80% said Yea and 20% Nay. Are these people joking? Are they delusional? One person actually wrote that he lost 12lb, from 193lb to 181lb, in 15 days by taking apple cider vinegar! Excuse me? Come again? Just by taking ACV? Unfuckingbelievable! Are you sure? Are you slightly loopy?
I’m very skeptical doesn’t even cover it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for ACV. There are just too many health benefits well documented to push it aside as some humbug. I know a lot of people are not keen on remedies from “alternative medicine,” which by the way, seems like a misnomer to me because in fact, these remedies have been in existence way waaaaaay before what we now call “conventional medicine” at present. So basically what we call “alternative medicine” really is conventional and vice versa. And I know many opponents of these remedies give an example of somebody’s experience in which a certain remedy has not worked. But people should keep in mind that what works for many doesn’t mean it will work for EVERYBODY and what doesn’t work for many doesn’t mean it will not work for ANYBODY. But I digress. I seem to digress a lot these days, but it’s my blog and I can digress if I want to, kk?
So… where was I? I think I was at skeptical but all for ACV status above. Yeah, and as I read more about ACV, it sounded more like a cure-all miracle substance that could be taken orally or topically on skin. At least according to the ACV enthusiasts, that is. A lot of side effects and warnings were posted as well, but after reading through a dozen or so pages, it seems they were mostly the results of incorrect usage or just plain stupidity. For example, some airhead said she wouldn’t recommend it because her kitten cried in pain and walked around howling when she scrubbed (SCRUBBED!!!) undiluted ACV to a sore with a toothbrush, the practice, by the way, she continued for a whole fucking week! Yes, there are people THAT stupid! But 80% of people who lost weight by taking ACV is too hard to ignore. Either ACV really does help you lose weight, or ACV makes you delusional and loopy.
So after looking at pros and cons, as a community service to you all at the risk of becoming delusional and loopy, because I’m just so wonderful like that, I decided to be the guinea pig and try it out for myself. I’m going to go get some ACV and start taking it. I’m very skeptical, but you know that if anything sounds too good to be true, I’d probably jump on it and try it. No, you don’t? Should I remind you of that gadget I once bought that you wear around your waist and the gadget itself does all the work for you and you get fabulous abs in no time without you moving a muscle yourself? I will record my weight and report back on my weight change if there is any, but there is a great chance of me gaining weight than losing because that has been the steady trend the last four years or so.
Cross your fingers for the day I announce I have lost weight, no matter due to real weight loss or due to delusional and/or slightly loopy tendencies because I’d be happier either way as long as I think I look fabulous.
He and I were not that close. I didn’t particularly like him but I didn’t particularly dislike him either. But both of us being consultants reporting to the same manager, he as a mainframe admin and I as a Unix admin, our desks were usually close together, two desks over at the most. I’ve been working here for eleven years and I spent several hours a day everyday within twenty feet of each other for eleven years whether we enjoyed each other’s company or not.
Eleven years is a long time. Some days we joked around – he especially liked to squeeze in the words “viagra” and “KY gel” somewhere. Some days we had nothing to say to each other than greetings. Some days we argued the mainframe or the Unix server was to blame for printing problem – I was usually right. Some days we talked about current events. Some days we showed each other the pictures of pets and talked about them. He didn’t know how many cats he had. Some days we had screaming matches, in one of which the sentences like “Fuck you” and “Go fuck yourself” flew at each other, and as a consequence, we ignored each other for months afterward. Some days he tried to convince me that I should incorporate myself as a nonprofit organization to deduct expense for my dogs. Some days he tried to sell me vitamins. Some days he tried to convince me I should get an expensive hobby and get a tax deduction. Some days he tried to convince me I should get cash for my clunker. Some days he tried to convince me that I should stop eating red meat and more veggies. Yeah, he usually tried to convince me, come to think of it. Not very successfully, I might add.
Several months ago, he tried to get rid of his pennies by leaving them out on top of a long file cabinet next to his desk. He thought some people would take them. To his dismay, people started leaving their own unwanted pennies there and the number of pennies quickly grew. With so many pennies, some people started creating “penny art,” making images of things or just some abstract patterns with those pennies. Of course some others enjoyed destroying the “art.” He couldn’t understand why nobody wanted to take those pennies even after I repeatedly asked him why didn’t HE?
When I came back to work this Monday after a week’s absence, I was told he had been in ICU for 10 days already. He had called in sick the entire week before the week I missed work, so I hadn’t seen him for two weeks. I was told that he had initially gone to the hospital for throwing up blood and it turned out he had been bleeding internally. It had something to do with his liver, and he had liver cancer removed a few years ago – it must have been around the time we were ignoring each other because I had no idea he had liver cancer until two days ago. The doctors at the hospital wanted to transfer him to another hospital for liver transplant but before they could do that, his condition worsened.
He was a friendly enough person. With all his eccentricities and idiosyncracies, after more than twenty years of working at the same place, a lot of people at work maintained a love-hate relationship with him and he had become like an endearing family member. Some people went to the hospital to visit. I had planned to visit him with two other coworkers today during lunch, even though he was not conscious, because we were told that he didn’t have much time left. His kidney was shutting down.
On top of his desk next to a bunch of scattered pennies, now sits a small leafy plant with a yellow ribbon with a card saying “In loving memory of Ben.” He died around eight o’clock this morning at the young age of sixty-five.
Rest in peace, Ben.
Today I happened upon this CNN article, which caught my eye obviously because of its title, “Digging out from $80,000 debt.” I have a lot of debt, and I’ve lost sleep over this. In fact, I was sick home all week last week, and on two days, I had to stay home without any PDO left, which means I would not get paid for those two days. Sadly, losing two-days’ worth of pay creates a problem for me. Heck, losing even one day’s pay creates a problem. So I had to warn a friend that I would need to borrow money in a few weeks. I admit I’m the one who got myself in this situation by buying the house that I shouldn’t have bought, but I just want to make something clear. I don’t spend money on things I really don’t need – clothes, shoes, cosmetics, manicures/pedicures, beauty shops, movies, etc. Most of my debt consists of payments to the vet for the last 2 years with more than a fair share of health troubles for my furry ones. But I digress.
So I started reading the article, remembering the phone number I memorized this morning from a radio commercial about debt counseling service or something or other, which talked about some government debt relief program for people with debt over $10,000. I did google this program in hopes to find something about it from a government source, but I quickly lost patience seeing 12 billion search results are the websites for debt counseling or debt consolidation services. Anyway, I digress. Again. Sorry.
As I was saying… I started reading the article, and yeah I finished reading it. That’s it. The end.
You know I was lying, right? That’s not it and wasn’t the end. Anyways, it was nothing special. The usual story – somebody got herself into this situation, and after transferring card balances from one credit card to another with really low introductory interest rate, she finally contacted a debt counseling service, and after a year, her debt is now $40,000. Half way there. As I said, nothing special. But I did get something out of it. NFCC – National Foundation for Credit Counseling, recommended by CNN personal finance editor. It’s a nonprofit organization with credit counseling service agencies as its members, who meet certain standards and provide no or very low fee services. I surfed the site for a long time, and I think I’m going to try contacting a counselor and see what she/he has to say. The first counseling session seems to be free.
Wish me luck. I tend to get very nervous about things like this and forget the questions that need to be asked or just get tongue-tied, even though I have nothing to lose. It’s the times like this that I want a husband who could and would take care of this kind of stuff. And I would need some good sleep vibes too from now on since I was also reminded of the fact that my mortgage rate is going to adjust in just about four months… Oh Fuck! Crap! Shit! Moose dick! *bangs head on the wall*
With schools back in session in full swing this week, the volume of traffic is also back to its usual horrendous level from a slight lull last couple of months. And with this traffic, the type of drivers who frustrate the living hell out of me are out and about in full swing as well. I’m talking about this one type of drivers who drive me absolutely batty with their inconsiderateness or obliviousness or callousness or spitefulness or simply just viciousness by blocking the flow of traffic – Those who drive in the leftmost lane leaving a mile of empty space in front and with a stretch of cars trailing behind them in utter frustration. When I’ve been driving 10mph slower than the speed limit on the leftmost lane for a few minutes because traffic is moving slow then look up to see all the way over there a mile ahead there is absolutely empty space spread across the highway, the access to which is blocked by a car in each lane driving leisurely at the exact same speed? Oh the things I want to do to those who create the slow-moving wall of cars on the highway!
I don’t know if you heard about the Montana No Speed Limit Safety Paradox:
The desired safety effect from posting speed limits was achieved by removing them.
This paradox came from the results of the study done by Montana DOT, which revealed some very interesting facts such as:
- The fatality rate in highway accidents decreased during the time there was no speed limit.
- More people used seat belts.
- Posted speed limits had either zero or negative effect on traffic safety.
Well, not so paradoxical to me. I think it’s because of those drivers I mentioned above. We all know fast moving vehicles on the left and slow moving vehicles on the right. With a speed limit, people drive as slow as they like on the leftmost lane, and think it’s their right, no matter how other people want to go past them. And I can just hear them say, hey, I’m driving already at a legal speed, you go around if YOU want, but I’m not fucking budging from my RIGHTFUL place. I have the right to drive in this lane! But withOUT a speed limit, these selfish people have to get out of the way since they don’t have the right to drive spitefully in the left lane. So with these these people out of the way and not blocking the flow of the traffic, less people try stupid reckless things with mounting frustration, tailgating, maneuvering to get in and out of lanes literally pushing cars off the lanes, trying to drive as fast as possible to close that gap and squeeze in, towards that promised wide open space a mile ahead of that moving wall. And then if and when they finally clear that wall, they take off dangerously fast to make up the lost time and to shake that frustration off and behind with that spiteful fuck. No wonder the fatality rate decreases and people drive at more leisurely paces that suit them under no speed limit.
I don’t care how fast you are driving. If you’re driving in the leftmost lane at the same exact speed or slower than the other lane(s), you not only create traffic behind you, but also increase fatality rate. People need to change lanes. People need to get on the highway or get off the highway. People need to merge. So a half of mile behind you, people have to drive 40mph on a highway because you are so fucking callous. Get the fuck out of the left lane if you are blocking the traffic flow for fuck’s sake.
A couple of weeks ago on my way to work, I stopped behind a black SUV at a red light on the southbound RT112. The SUV had a sticker that reminded me that 9/11 was not far away. The sticker’s background had a drawing of Manhattan skyline including the Twin Towers and its foreground had a firefighter’s helmet with the number 343 on it. The upper left-hand side was written “In Memory of” and on the lower right-hand side, I read “Dad.” With tears in my eyes, I wished there was a way to let the driver of the SUV know that his Dad would not be forgotten. How can I? I can still see, smell and breathe in that smoke vividly in my mind. But of course there was no way for me to share this with the driver of that SUV. And soon he went on his way, and I mine.
That it is highly unlikely that the driver of that black SUV would read this is an understatement. But in the event that any one of the friends and family of those three-hundred forty-three who gave their lives that day happens to read this, I want to assure you. They will not be forgotten.
I fiddled with this blog last weekend and I finally managed to redirect yoonamania.com to yoonamania.com/blog. So from now on, you can just type yoonamania.com and come to this blog instead of putting “/blog” at the end. Sorry if you were getting errors over the weekend. For some reason, redirect 301 which works fine for some people didn’t work for me and it would go into an infinite loop. I meant to look into this much sooner, but you know me. I’m lazy.
I also finally scripted and scheduled automatic backups of the database everyday instead of doing it manually when I remember – once every few months, which is much to seldom. This was prompted by the recent security alert on WordPress. In case you still haven’t heard, there is a worm going around which is designed to attack earlier versions of WordPress, if it’s not hosted by wordpress.com. If you are using WordPress under your own domain hosted by anybody other than wordpress.com, you need to upgrade it to the latest version, and you need to do it YESTERDAY. And backup your blog database often if you don’t want to lose the whole thing.
This public service announcement is brought to you by the owner of this blog who couldn’t come up with anything to blog about today.
Have you noticed? On the sidebar to the right, under Old Nonsense and above Friends & Family blogroll. Yup, I signed up at NaNoWriMo. If anybody doesn’t know what it is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s an organization that promotes writing by challenging everybody to write a novel with at least 50,000 words in it during the month of November.
I found out about it only last year. I wanted to participate and started to squeeze my brain for characters and plot lines. I had nothing – nothing but smoke coming out of my ears. I still have nothing. I don’t know how I’m supposed to even start a thing like that. Plot lines? Nothing that is remotely similar to a plot line ever crossed my mind in my whole life. And characters? Yeah, fat chance I get an idea for any character, being the misanthrope I am. So when November rolled in, thankfully BEFORE my brain exploded, I still had nothing and I didn’t sign up.
Photograph by Ionushi, under attribution license
A few weeks ago, the chatter about this year’s NaNoWriMo started to show up here and there. Only thing I could add to that was I wish I could write or I wish I knew how to start or I wish I could come up with characters and plot lines and so forth. But the other day, Cylithria, who will be doing her 10th NaNoWriMo this November, told me that sometimes she just starts with one person, describing her boring job, etc without any other characters or plot lines in mind, just building on this one character. And the story just unfolds, sort of. The only thing is to write everyday. Well I thought, I can do that. So I signed up.
As far as I understand, you are supposed to start writing on the first of November, and by the end of the month, you are a winner if the word count of your novel is at least 50,000, whether or not the novel is finished. You are not supposed to edit it. You are supposed to just write, leaving typos and all kinds of errors untouched. By the end of the month, it’s supposed to be the first draft of your novel, and in the month of December, you edit it.
I’m encouraged to tell everybody that I’m going to write a novel so that I don’t quit. You know, it’s the same with everything. I mean the use of tactics that employs shame and embarrassment as the motivation to do something. Well, good enough for me. And I hope writing a blog post about it is good enough? Anyway, wish me luck. And if you are also participating, I’m yoonamaniac on NaNoWriMo. Buddy me up!
Serious Stuff. Seriously
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.NaNoWriMo
Yeah, I'm gonna try this time. I must be crazy... not surprisingly.
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