Parts is parts
Awesome. Misty-kitty just found the reset switch on my power strip. Well, the computer was about due for a clean restart anyway, I guess.
Anyway, to add to the wonderfulness of my week, my Hyundai has learned a new habit: it stalls out sometimes when starting, requiring long wait periods (sometimes hours and hours) before it will again start; once in a while it’ll stall out on the highway, too, which is awfully fun at highway speeds during rush hour.
I managed to get it to the dealer yesterday, after much finagling. The dealer wants to put in a new fuel pump, for $550 – which right now I just cannot afford. So I did a little Internet research. The culprit is most likely not the pump, but the in-pump fuel filter. While one can’t replace said filter with five minutes and a Swiss Army knife, the step-by-step DIY I found is clear enough that anyone with basic intelligence, and an awareness of which end of a screwdriver points out, could do the work. The difference? The necessary part is only $30 or so. BUT – you can’t buy the part at your favorite local auto store. They will all just shrug and offer to sell you the complete pump, which adds another zero to the part’s price. The manufacturer just does not want you doing this yourself.
Well, I found an online source, and I expect the part to be here by Monday – only one more work day of praying that I make it to my job and back, then I should be good with about an hour’s work in the driveway. But it’s just one more source of aggravation. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to pick up some prescriptions for Starr and dinner fixins – the pharmacy’s closed by the time she leaves work. Cross your fingers that I get home!
Ice skating with assault rifles
Shadowrun went pretty decent last night. We finished a big fight with some corp-type security guards, and the group is set up for the finale confrontation next session. The webcam link to Amy functioned pretty well, and there were albino gluten-free cookies for all. Now I have two synopses to type up 🙂 One pitfall which urban-fantasy GMs must always be aware of: while fantasy-game swords kill slowly, guns are instantly lethal, which can sometimes be a challenge to the game.
Our players arrived to a less-than-spotless house. Starr and I had a rare weekend where neither of us worked or had any social commitments, so we spent a lot of personal time together, which meant I didn’t do any cleaning in the living room or kitchen over the weekend. Last night I had to get the place presentable in about 90 minutes time, which I think I managed sufficiently. Luckily my friends aren’t Better Homes and Gardens reps.
Midori started the evening off fairly relaxed, but started panicking once the room filled up, and took a completely unprovoked swipe at Jesse’s face. Luckily, Jesse’s all right, but I’m pretty cheesed at our little evil bitch cat right now. MistyMina, on the other hand, cuddled on ptownhiker‘s and lewisw‘s laps all night, racking up cute points until time for all to leave.
That, by the way, is indeed the new kitten’s name. We tried Matisse, which didn’t work, and then we tried Misty, which almost worked. Starr suggested Mina, the name of a friend, and about then the kitten knocked yet another something over. So we named her MistyMina, for her criminal behavior, and that stuck.
Tonight will be Technicon travel prep. I feel like I know what I’m going to to be doing on Saturday night now, so my main jobs are laundry, repairing a prop, and picking costumes for the weekend. I have four candidates, and only two days of convention 🙂 Really looking forward to seeing everyone!
Bowling for Dilithium
I don’t even know who won the Super Bowl. As the “Mythbusters” marathon unreeled in the background, I spent the day doing laundry and dishes, finding our digital camera which has been lost for three months, and making a little box for the new kitten’s food bowl. The box has an opening through which only she should be able to fit, therefore keeping the other cats from stealing her kitten food. Older cats seem to love kitten food.
Anyway, the Internet’s allowed me to catch up on some of the Super Bowl movie trailers. J.J. Abrams has done me a favor, I think; it’s finally gotten through my head that this is not the Star Trek I grew up on, and that I need to stop worrying and just go along for the ride, or not. Right now, I’m still on the side of giving it a shot – if nothing else, it’s audacious, and the franchise needs “audacious” badly. Besides, I’m a bit impressed with their method of crowbarring this story into 40 years of canon whether it ought to fit or not.
Plus, Enterprise appears to have a LOT of firepower these days. In that one half-second clip, she seems to be absolutely dumping phasers and photorps on whatever’s upset her. Battletech players, remember the “alpha strike”? “Screw the heat, screw the ammo, fire everything!!!”
Having said that: the Ninth Doctor as the arms-dealing mastermind behind Cobra is awesome, but I already miss his mask. And the Baroness’ bodysuit. Also, Land of the Lost didn’t look too bad, once we take out the bits with 20-century junk lying around. And the bits with Will Ferrell. Oh, wait…
Endlessly Mining for Fish
This morning Chesapeake got its first real frost of the season. Combine that with a very light fog, and the drive to work was just generally washed out a bit. Just a little bit dim and faint, as though the world was fading in around me and had gotten stuck at 98% complete.
On the other hand, at least I got to make the entire drive with the sun up. This has nothing to do yet with the longer days, but with the fact that the new kitten fall asleep on my chest this morning as I read the night’s email. I can’t blame it on the kitten – she weighs substantially less than a pound – but she was certainly a contributing factor.
Did you know you can program your computer to play World of Warcraft for you while you’re not there? Pretty pointless of course, and Blizzard and the rest of we players would like it to stop because it messes up questing and the economy, but it can be done. I decry the practice – decry, decry – but the one place I’d consider it is the Fishing hobby.
You can level up your character’s Cooking skill by standing in front of a stove for a few minutes with all those critter parts you’ve been collecting while you killed everything. You can do the same for your First Aid skill by spending five minutes making bandages from all the cloth the bad guys dropped. But leveling up Fishing takes hours and hours and hours and hours of staring at the little float on your fishing line. The higher Fishing level you reach, the larger number of hours you’ll be spending for the next 25-point gain.
WoW fishing is fairly useful in the game, and I wish I had a higher level in it, but this is just too much realism for me.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I will repeat that using the autoplay programs will get a player banned from the game, and myself I agree with Blizzard’s reasoning on the matter. On top of all that, it’s also lame. You don’t want to be lame, do you?
