Marsden is Here

This weekend (since Thursday, so Mr R has been coming to work with me, where he seems quite content to sit at the next desk with his laptop) both D and E have been in Auckland. This has given me the mental, emotional and physical space to make a list (on the big whiteboard) and power through it. Since Friday evening I have, in no real order because there has been a lot of back-and-forth between tasks...

* Cleaned the stove top, oven incl. fittings and trays, and microwave.
- bonus, replaced the oven light blub

* Shampooed the carpet in the living area, which involved moving everything into one half of the room, dry vacuuming, shampooing, waiting to dry, dry vacuuming again, moving everything back, repeat the next day with the other half of the room.
- includes assorted adjacent cleaning, like wiping down the baseboards and power points while I'm paying attention.
- included sorting a lot of things back to where they should be, putting in the garage to to go to storage, or binning them.

* Installed a video card in D's computer.

* Took a car load of containers to the storage unit, picked up a new cat-tree on the way back.
- did I mention we're expecting kittens? Two, brother and sister, once they've recovered from being desexed. Other members of the household couldn't cope with being cat-less at this time.
* Rearranged the garage to function as a proper spare-bedroom (at least during the warmer months) and cattery. Well, 90% completed this task.
- now that we don't have a spare room I've already been sleeping in the garage when D & I's body clocks are at odds, or she needs her audio book to get to sleep.

* Sewed on a pants button.

* Washed a duvet cover and hung the duvet out to air. I only count this as 50% complete as the duvet was still out when this evenings rain rolled in. At the time I was crashed out for a nap after next four items.

* Line trimmed a battery-worth along the back bank (about twice as much area as I had set myself) and sundry weeding.
* Picked up as much as possible of the mummified / buried and still mostly intact cat droppings from the gravel parking area. (About 1/4 of a brown paper supermarket bag). Did not manage part 2, the gravel areas down the side of the house, but that will wait for another day.
* Shovelled the wood chip across the shared drive back out of the gutter and onto the area it is supposed to be chipping.
- this is one of those strange areas which doesn't seem to belong to any of the 3 adjacent properties, although I suspect it's technically the responsibility of the property whose fence actually runs across it. They are not one of the two properties on the drive. The original neighbours at the end of the drive had it chipped when they were doing their landscaping, I weed it occasionally and someone not-me recently went over it with a line trimmer.
* Swept the bulk of the gravel which had migrated out onto the drive since the parking area was put in back in.

* Four loads of laundry, including Mr R's for the week and his bedclothes. Remade the bed.
* Also sundry other regular chores, like feeding the two of us, grocery shopping and and washing dishes.

* Processed and uploaded the Operation Glorious Porpoise photos.
* Made two other journal posts, including this one.

* Got the DVD drive on the main computer (which recently had a motherboard + processer upgrade) sharing and sharing media over the network and managed to watch one episode of Firefly. I'd hoped to manage more, but at least the technical details are sorted out now.

* Did not get to cleaning the Fridge-freezer (which needs it just as badly as the cooking appliances did) but that might be a good place to start next weekend.

~~~
I'm seriously chuffed at accomplishing what feels like a "real person's" amount of work over this period of time and have thoughts about how our home environment is not conducive to this sort of productivity more often, but I don't get to bask in or ponder further it tonight because Mr R has an 8am appointment tomorrow which means a very early start and I had planned to be in bed an hour ago.

This is a diary post covering the period from Xmas to the first weekend of January.

( snip )

Recording quite a surprisingly pleasant weekend. Somehow I found myself under pretty much no pressure to be anywhere or do anything which led to a lot of napping and a surprising amount of productivity in between
- picking up an Xmas present for the elder niblings
- some significant reading
- going to a party and dancing early and hard (which in retrospect may have been a bit of a mistake as it contributed to my fading off home early)
- some significant hedge pruning
- Some minor stuff at the Hall on Sunday - not what I had sort of planned due to the weather completely sapping my enthusiasm for the outdoors but cleaned up some glass indoors and emptied the water containers while photographer etc did their thing.
- catching up on writing game logs (several hours of writing there)

The reading and the writing in particular were aided immensely by finally managing to come up with a comfortable arrangement for sitting up in bed with either book or laptop. (This may in future also result in more media watching). Time spent out of the "office" and away from the preponderance of possible "to dos" on the main computer is good for me.

~~~
Today was also quite unusual - a Hall alarm at 5:15am (unusual time, unusual day), pretty much just on dawn meant by the time I got home again there was little point in going back to bed even though I had only managed 4-5 hours broken, dream-filled sleep (probably due to all of the aforementioned napping). This led to
- doing a load of laundry
- six fairly productive hours at work
- washing the dishes
- vacuuming

At this point I had to take a nap because while I could have pushed myself to do the next thing on the list it would not have been done well and it would not have been good for me I woke up with enough energy and more importantly determination to pick up momentum again.

- mopped the floors -> bringing me up-to-date on the household chores
- cooked a good dinner which will double for tomorrow night
- caught up the accounts (and discovered my recent foray into Bonus Bonds is starting to pay out - must make a separate spreadsheet to track ROI on that)
- dug up some information about our power usage and emailed it off to one of the companies I am talking to about Solar (and probably the one I am going to go with).
- made a dear diary post :)

I'd like to think I'll be able to get a good nights sleep and an early start for an equally good day tomorrow but as I remember all too well from the start of last week, that's actually probably going to prove pretty arbitrary and random.

Everything I want to do right now seems like too much hard work. Or maybe there is no-thing I want to do right now just a list of chores / things I *ought* to do and an aching pit inside.

So I'm working through a list of things that need to be done because what else am I going to do?

~~~
Most of this week followed the pattern of "get through enough hours at work then accomplish one thing at home for the day". I can't clearly remember what/when those things were now. None of theme were very big things. Filling the green bin happened one evening - didn't take very long. Getting the photos from last weekend onto my computer may be one thing - I didn't manage to actually put together the gallery yet.

Around that I played through a very long game of FreeCiv until I'd eliminated a couple of the other civs and could easily have rolled over the remaining ones. I think that has sated my Civ craving for a while and hopefully reset my brain on some level.

By the end of yesterday I was completely exhausted and had to push myself to clean the place up for drinkies that was being hosted here. I as without the spoons to actually participate falling into be shortly after 8, emerging briefly around 11. Sleep eventually came, ironically after the drinkies wound up - but was very broken from neighbour-cat repeatedly coming in through the window I had left open for cat-guest and being met with hissing and spitting. I also had multiple bad dreams involving being late for work - importantly late like for meetings with clients - which ties in with it getting harder and harder to get to work "on time" as the week progressed. (As I don't have a formal start time this means getting to work later and later and repeatedly missing the time I've chosen to aim for.)

It's been an odd sort of a week for me. I've been waking early, getting stuff done first-thing or going into the office, spending quite a bit of time at work (average 5+ hours a day billable), getting more stuff done in the evening. Almost like a fully functioning person.

I think it's the sunshine. Anytime the weather has turned grey over the past few weeks my energy and spoons have plummeted. Which is a valuable reminder of how close to the edge I still am. But the money looks good and desk/computer are back in the office-room (which I'm going to have to rename as not only am I no longer working from here I'm not bringing the big bookcase back in either so "library" is also no longer appropriate); I have a 3rd screen on the computer and as a non-Civ distraction have Diablo II working after a fashion. Various other longstanding minor tasks have been dealt with and I am slowly working on the annual housekeeping (cleaning out cupboards etc).

Obviously haven't moved my journalling yet - I want to complete the Kiera's Thoughts series here before doing the big import and while I did get one knocked out this week there are still at least 2 to go. I may not get one doe over the weekend - all the time at work has aggravated my wrists and I ought to take a break from typing.

I have just finished scrubbing the kitchen floor (which isn't kind on the wrists either) and have the contents of a hallway wardrobe piled about (there was an old spill of some description in the bottom which also needed scrubbing). Later today my parents will be in with a load of firewood and will likely take away some rubbish.

Still a bit groggy after a disagreement with dinner last night and 11:30pm + 4am alarms at the Hall last night. But aware that things are looking bright and want to remember how it feels.

* although actually we updated so C could have more data before going over cap.

After a few technical glitches and two visits by a slightly frustrated technician can haz TelstraClear Warpspeed internet connection (100Mb/10Mb).
Of course since it's feeding into a router which can at best handle 100Mb wired and less by wireless we're not going to get the full benefit of that, but still an advance on 15/2 and I might look at upgrading the router next time I have a good month.

... of course the main issues with speed on this system remain software related - I don't know if it's windows, the browsers of the firewall/virus checker but my initial tabs are all really slow to load when I open a browser.

Loot list: Handmade chocolates delivered Xmas Eve (Thanks J), an uber-fluffy woolen underlay (impressed that my parents managed to find such a thing in super-king, not sure it's exactly what I wanted but come winter will try it), a package of homegrown beef, several non-winning instant kiwis.
( uncling )
Headed back to town before evening dessert (same as midday dessert) and got to Waifs & Strays just in time for 2nd dessert. Which pretty much topped me off for the day, I managed to avoid overeating for a change. Spent a pleasant couple of hours there.

~~~
Spent Xmas Eve day and until after midnight playing Civ. This is only worth mentioning because the game didn't follow the usual pattern - normally a series of wars results in my controlling most of the planet by the time I get to building a spaceship. This time none of my neighbours attacked me until after launch, instead devoting most of their attention through the game to some guy down the other end of the map. Until that point I didn't fire a shot except against some pirates.

What this meant was I had significantly fewer cities than usual but they were mostly maxed out (minimal production diverted to units) and it didn't actually take any longer to build the spaceship. The perception of time may have been because fewer cities and fewer units meant turns were going by faster.

~~~
Today is nominally designated for pottering around the house cleaning things, but I'm awfully tempted to start up another game.

Also supposedly can haz car back later this afternoon.

In the process of upgrading I discovered my previous-er computer still lurking in the hallway cupboard. There because it had a working floppy drive and it's replacement didn't have one at all, and because I haven't made a trip to the recyclers since using it in my first attempts to connect the network/internet to the TV.

It's a little bit sentimental, with HDD and RAM upgrades the basic machine did me many years. In addition to the floppy drive it has an early memory-card reader, which niftily came as part of a DVD-ROM/CD writer drive (DVD writers were still rare as well) This was a later addition, it also has it's original 52x CD-ROM drive (I think that was original).

Anyway, since I'm doing a bit of a de-clutter and I also have a couple of non-functioning printers to dispose of, there will be a trip to Molten Media sometime in the New Year if anyone wants to add stuff.

So I spent much of today transferring to my new computer. Unlike previous moves it was not just much a matter of swapping in the hard drives, but I was glad to note that there is an IDE socket on the motherboard should I ever need it.

As I had hoped Windows 7 (already installed) allows for on-the-fly resizing of the primary partition - although the now seems to be a "System", "Boot" and "Primary" partition before you get into extended partitions). So I was able to quickly shrink it to a size which will hopefully be enough for the OS and then add back in my usual separations. They are of course somewhat larger than the old ones, but once they were set up I was able to just suck applications and data across the network from the old machine. Most of the settings came over as well, Firefox "portable" being a notable exception.

Media and photos are transferred, "work" will be done at a later date in conjunction with my annual tidy up / archive of inactive sites. I still have to set up synchronisation and backups for -anything-, but until there is new data that's not a big issue. I'm planning to more aggressively back up offsite to the cloud this year, so I have to spend some time checking out options.

Navigating two computers with only one monitor was/is entertaining (the old one in the VGA port, the new in the DVI). Also managing two mice and two keyboards, as I kept trying to use the primary keyboard no matter which computer was onscreen. I did have the new box up on the desk while this was going on - now it is down beside and the old box is tucked behind the desk, so there is more room.

The old box gets to hang around as an XP machine for browser testing until I get virtualisation sorted out.

I had issues reading text in Win7 all day, but I've just figured out to turn Cleartype *off* and it's made a world of difference to legibility. The "Favorites" taking up space at the top of the Navigation Pane and the additional "Libraries" and "User" items before you even get to you folder list are incredible annoying. I will look more closely at these "Library" things though, they could be useful.

Pinning to the taskbar is nice, I can -almost- do what I used to with the quick-launch bar but even at a "small" size the icons just have too much space around them. So I have a custom toolbar for the items I use once or twice a day. Chrome also seems to be having issues with launching from the taskbar, or more likely Windows is having issue launching Chrome from the taskbar.

Another issue is VLC not handling wmv files (or anything using WMV1, WMV3 and probably WMV2) encoding) - it'll play the audio fine and Windows Media Player (yuck) will play them, so that's an issue which can be addressed later.

Also left to do at this point/this evening:
- install printer and scanner, will doubtless want to download the latest drivers
- [edit: Fuck. Scanner is obsolete. 64 bit drivers are just not happening]
- install joystick (should be fine) and headset (will probably need drivers)
- see if my favourite configuration of Winamp still works of if I'm going to be looking for an alternative solution to that. Digsby docked to the side of the screen OK, so I have hope.