Yes. You're ok, grav.

I'll take your word for it.

Tired of being scapegoat, and tired of people who screw up acting dumb about it, and covering up that by being a bitch, and letting others assume it's the newer girls fault. Stupid newer girl.

:mecry:

I'm so fucking tired of it all. What they say about city/county workers? It's pretty true.

ALSO! though I "quote" Clodfobble only because it's so similar:

I've had a cold for at least a month now.
I have a coldsore and can't find my coldsore lotion, so it's throbbing and hurting.
I'm cold and hungry and feel like I'm failing at life (again!)

I think that covers all the bases.

Daaaayum, refrigerator's have gotten expensive.

:speechls:

Bummers all round anon, Sundae and Grav :(

round things with holes in them, bumming my stone today
 

after breakfast, before work
Attachment 55096

after work, before dinner, after $650
Attachment 55097

turns out I can change a tire in 20 mins, under dry conditions, including time to park and text boss at start and end.

Back and leg pain that won't settle without high dose steroids. Some relief today with the 'roids. Waiting for X-ray report, although it won't show anything useful. I'll give the roids a week or so, and if the pain just comes back it'll be time to see the onco.

I hope it miraculously goes away. Any chance it's stress and not sleeping well?

Don't think so, I've had that for the past 2 years. ;)

I'm putting my money on hope for a miraculous reversal too. It came on right on Christmas Day and has only ebbed a bit twice with steroids. I didn't take them more than a few days, though. Hopefully 7-9 days of roids will settle this.

Hope so. If that doesn't work maybe a few days of drunken debauchery might help. I'm sure 3foot would help you execute that plan, warm and wonderful human being that he is. I'd be happy to send champagne. :blush:

Above a motivational level stress is nobody's friend. Take care of yourself.

What'd you hit V?

Roids are helping so far - have to see what happens when the taper starts tomorrow. Practicing mindfulness and reading some inspiring material. Sounds sappy but it helps me sleep. Xrays show multi-level degenerative changes, motion segment instability - lots of problems that really piss me off. It could all be due to this, and hopefully is. If it persists beyond steroids though, I'll need an MRI to be sure there isn't other stuff going on. Xrays don't show that until late in the game.

If it's there, it's there. Nothing I do in the next week or so will change that, so I'm just enjoying the roid relief (and staying up very late due to roid insomnia). If it's not there, I'll have to figure out an approach to all this degenerative crud. It could interfere with running my new practice; can't have that.

I hit nothing. You can see the rim is unscathed. I believe I was hit by a sniper's bullet. Or an asteroid. Or some damn thing. The tire's brand new. Was brand new. I'd just put air in all four the night before. I drive modestly all the way to work. Who knows. I was 90% of the way to work, felt some vibration... whaa??? then I smelled hot rubber. Shiiiiit. Onto the shoulder (just two lanes in this stretch, some guardrail, some serious ditches). I put the hazards on and carefully rolled onward another one or two tenths and found a safe spot to install the spare.

After work, straight to the tire store. I said fuckit and just bought four of the same tire (one level up in their menu of choices, Toyo Ultra 9000). I can't have tires fail. I have no other reasonable options for getting to work, whiny details elsewhere.

No warranty on the old new tire? Seems like a defect unless you hit something you didn't see.

Aren't sidewall blowouts unusual?

There doesn't have to be rim damage to tear up a sidewall from impact, but the radial separation is odd.

Did the tire sit flat on the rim for a while? You could draw a straight line between those arrows

He said he had to drive a short distance on it flat.

Brake line rusted through today. Fun. Now I know what I'll be doing tomorrow.

And because of the warm weather and rain there isn't much snow at the ski area where I work so I've got a few days off.

Aaaaaand, just opened my paycheck and it looks like I was shorted a day or two. Have to check it out tomorrow.

Chief Thundercloud of the Notsolucky tribe. :facepalm:

Email. I haven't been able to send emails since before noon. I called Verizon when I got home about 5, and after the usual chutes and ladders actually got to talk to someone in less than 10 minutes. I guess I should be thankful for that. Anyway, he told me the problem is on their end, they're aware of it, and would be resolved by 8pm. It wasn't. It ain't. :(

Then he says while I've got you on the line, your bundles are old and we can change them so you get the same thing for less money. I asked if he was Nigerian. He said I'll call you right back. Mmm ok.:rolleyes:

10 minutes later he called back. He told me they would take care of me because I was good guy. I told him I have EXs that would argue that point. I get the same service on phone and TV, but my internet is changing from 25/25 to 75/75. However they have to come out and change the entry box on Monday morning.
All for about $40 a month less.
We'll see. http://cellar.org/2015/shades.gif

Hope it works out.

We have phone and internet, and I considered adding TV recently, but they wanted to rent me a box for the TV. They put that in the fine print when they advertise the monthly costs. "Oh, and $15/month for the box." Seems like a rip off if you're going to have the service indefinitely. If it was for two years and then they drop the rental fee once the box is paid off, I might be OK with it, but that's kinda BS.

And it's been pretty much ignored in the mainstream press. (I have seen a couple small articles in the business section.) Over the air broadcast TV, which is what I rely on, may be shut down significantly in the next year. The FCC is holding a bandwidth auction in a couple months and TV stations are being encouraged to give up their bandwidth so it can be auctioned off to other services like cell carriers. So small stations without a lot of viewership will find that the bandwidth they own is worth more than the adverting revenue they get from their programming, and they are likely to just shut down. I'm a little surprised TW hasn't been here to lecture us all on it.

All this is to say that I may be stuck signing up for Verizon's TV package in the future when they take away my broadcast TV.

Verizon charges $3 a month for the set top box, or $10 for a HD set top box. You need one for each TV.

I've essentially given up TV. And I don't miss it all that much. NCIS is the only current show I watch, and it's jumped the shark, so...:neutral:

Yeah, this, motherfuckers.

Suuuuuuure, put in the new box, for nothing, sure.

Turns out that new box for nothing reduces the size of the picture displayed on the TV by... A quarter, give or take. New TV, black bars top and bottom, left and right.

Motherfuckers.

THEIR MENU extends into the black bar area, just none of the content. Choosing "stretch" fills the screen, but extrapolates the picture, so, grainier. Their menu now stretches off the bottom of the screen, unseeable. Fucking fuckers.

This. Every time one of my parents come to babysit, I have to figure out how to turn on live TV all over again, because we don't do it. Ever.

And I watch every single episode of the Colbert late show, and Tosh.0, and Nathan For You. But I'd rather watch them on my laptop through their respective websites, than deal with the rest of it.

This is the first I've head of that, do you have Fios from Frontier? When mine was installed years ago, I already had a plastic pipe from the pole into my cellar that had phone and cable run through it, so they pulled the fiber through that an mounted a big metal box in the cellar. It took the dude much of the day. My buddy up the road just got Vios two months ago and the chick installed the white plastic box on the outside of the house. She was done in 45 minutes.

When he told me that I went online and discovered they use about five different boxes across their coverage. He doesn't have a very big TV but I'll have to ask him about the picture. I don't have a big one either, a 40 inch tube and 42 inch plasma. I'll be sure and question it before they touch it.

It's probably how the TV is configured to show standard def

Metallica has me a little bummed today, because they're making me feel old.


"Master of Puppets" was released thirty years ago today.

It hasn't really been thirty years, has it?:(

I had the same feeling when I watched the trailer forthe new Ghostbusters film. It starts by telling us that thirty years ago a team of scientists saved New York

Thirty fucking years? Jesus, I am old.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

I remember when that came out, huge reaction in the media. I wonder if it was any good? Bad bad music...

I loved the original film. It was so funny. I pretty much fell in love with Bill Murray. It's hard to separate it out now from the huge brand it became, but it was a really well-made and funny film, with a cast of performers who were all right at the top of their game.

Jonathan Goldsmith Ends His Epic Run as Dos Equis' Most Interesting Man In The World


Wiki link-->The Most Interesting Man In The World

Back in early January I applied for a FT job in a kitchen as a cook. (One of my many talents) The initial interview went well, I got a call back a few weeks later and they asked if I would come in for a day and cook as a sort of paid audition, if you will. Things seemed to go well and they said they'd call in a few days, they needed to figure things out with other employees, yada. yada. A week or twp goes by and I figure I will call as I have other irons in the fire. "Thanks for the call, could you come in again for another try out?"

I do, and again things went well; they seemed very positive and so forth, if a lot disorganized. I also noted that they still had their help wanted sign up, but figured restaurants always need help.

They said they'd call in a few days after they figured stuff out. A couple of weeks goes by and no word, meanwhile I need to make a move one way or another, it's been almost 8 weeks since my initial meeting so I give them a call and ask what's up?

They tell me they had some front end people leave suddenly and they need to find replacements for them so they aren't hiring a cook. WTF? Strung along for weeks and then get that weird answer. I happened to drive by the place today and noticed the hlp wanted sign was down.

Just as well that I'm not working there, but WTF? Annoying.

It seems like you were a pawn in a different game. Sorry man, but maybe lucky not to work there.

We've done that to people before. Back in the day, when we used to hire people, we would sometimes interview people for positions we needed to fill, and we honestly wanted to hire those people, but then some event would happen and that would eliminate the need for that particular position and maybe a different position would be open instead. (For example, hiring an entry level person instead of a person with experience, or vice versa.)

Normally you let the candidates know right away, but if there was some uncertainty about what the situation was, and we needed to keep our options open until that uncertainty became clear again, we would have to stall a little.

I attempted to get the bike out of the driveway yesterday by passing too near my wife's car and over a pile of leaf debris. It didn't work, bike got stuck, then wanted to fall over. Bike is very heavy, so I began screaming for help

Roommate and wife come to the rescue. My car keys are required so that my vehicle and wife's can be moved to free the now pretty much fallen over, and laying on the camper tongue, bike. After frantic searching on the part of wife, keys are found to be in my pocket for some unknown reason.

Meanwhile, a herd of dogs has gotten out the front door and are now milling about smartly while roommate and wife are trying to move cars. Then, for some reason, cars run into one another, further wedging bike against wife's car. The Screaming was due to (1) discomfort (I'm still trying to keep the bike from falling completely over and it weighs 660#), (2) frustration, and (3) because all of us are varying degrees of hard of hearing these days, and I wanted to avoid increasing the frustration level by having to say the same things multiple times.

Finally, cars are moved without running over any dogs, the neighbor, having heard the commotion, arrived to help get the bike back upright while other neighbor is carrying our escape artist dog back to us from down the street (this has become so common that she knows the dog's name).

Summary: No real damage done to any of the vehicles, and I'm an idiot.

what?

I did something stupid, made a lot of noise about it, inconvenienced others, and now I feel shame.

haha...that's a funny story Els. I can just see it in my mind and it's making me smile. haha Thanks.

It's a good illustration how bad choices compound, because we can all relate. :o

And you have helpful neighbors, so that's good.

Els, do you have a hearing aid? My uncle's a musician and he regretted not getting his sooner. He hadn't realized what a huge difference had crept in over the years.

My dad did too

Been trying to get Popdigr to get a hearing aid for years.

He just won't do it. Won't make with the cash. Plus, he thinks it (his hearing problem) only bothers him.

I said he thinks it only bothers him.

I'm doing that to the peeps around me as well...

On the other side, don't assume if he gets aids everything will be hunky dory.
I find the biggest help from wearing them(2), is it makes people aware that I can't hear well and they adjust their behavior.

I just learned that my figure ground hearing problem more likely has its roots in ADD and not hearing loss.

Not sure if this is good or not.

There is an attention aspect to mine but it's certainly not the whole show.

Stupid fucking health insurance. If you're unlucky enough to get really sick really young -too young for early retirement- at least be sick enough not to go to work 8/10 days or just die within six months because otherwise you're even more fucked as apparently part-time long-term sick is not possible therefore did not happen, you were at home the whole time, lying and deceiving......


.....and apparently because you were suddenly at home the whole time, even though you were seen at work and got shit done, you lose your productivity bonus because you did nothing.


I might be just a little bit fucking pissed. I still don't want to talk about it, I just want to rant. Fuckshitgitbastards. They will find they have met their match. ktxbai

Fucking shits

part 1:

The gastric bypass is merely a tool...it does not solve your food addiction. It has been a struggle all year to eat, particularly with being on the road most of the year. I have also been dealing with various minor but annoying complications. I do not regret the surgery at all...it saved my life. But there are times when I just wanna punch shit.

As I noted in another thread, I found out yesterday morning that I have an ulcer in my new stomach. This is not the first time, and it's not super serious. But this second time around, it is likely due to my obnoxious consumption of caffeine. Which is stupid because I didn't consume any caffeine at all during the first 8 months or so after surgery. So I'm probably going to be a raging asshole for the next several days...or go into hiding.

I'll be fine...I'm just in a weird place right now...

part 2:

I try to never let work define and/or control who I am...but inevitably it does, at least to a point.

My most recent work is the most productive and rewarding work I have ever done...and I've done some cool stuff over the past 25 years. I met awesome people, saw new places, worked super hard, got great accolades...those moments when they all come together are rare. But it was inevitably going to come to an end, as this was merely for the duration of the election season. And the year after a presidential election is pretty boring, unless you live in NJ, VA or a city like St Louis.

I'm sure there will be various other opportunities that pop up after the first of the year. But I can't seem to rest...I'm already ready for the next challenge. But I must be patient...and grateful, quite frankly. I am fortunate that I CAN rest and get into hobbies or whatever.

It will all come together...I just get so...frustrated...

Time to work on meditation?

Did the docs say it was caffeine?

They told me no caffeine and also put me on a med that coats the stomach...like a thicker version of Pepto, only in capsule form. I'm in the perfect spot right now where I can just ride this out for a few days and just hide in my office or the bedroom and not kill anyone.

Caffeine is a known irritant to new stomachs. You're not supposed to have it at all for 3 months, then in sparing quantities after. I did fine for like 8 months, then started doing the crazy overnight trips to Houston and Denver and such. Then went back on the road doing campaign work.

Been thinking about that and doing floating. My friend works at a float facility here in KC.

I've always wanted to experience a sensory deprivation chamber. Like in Altered States. But, maybe without the devolution.