Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Grays Harbor Transit, you never disappoint...

I'm on the bus to Olympia to have lunch with Wendy, because Jim's new job doesn't give him a long enough lunch to join us. Afterwards, I'm off to Danger Room to pick up my too-long-neglected pull list (a month and a half).

Currently, I'm listening to a woman with facial injuries that is apparently in need of mental help or something. She is claiming police brutality from Hoquiam PD, and is on her way to Montesano to press charges against HPD. She also claims to be an American citizen from Canada, who has $10million that she is going to get from Canada, and bring to the US to help our economy.

Oh, and she says she's blind, but is also talking about having seen someone at the Aberdeen bus station with facial boils all over.

...

I feel odd, hearing all of this. This woman isn't the only person on the Harbor with a variety of issues, whether any of them are genuine, or a delusion brought on by mental illness. Often, experiences like this make me wish that I could help those that need it, in some way.

But, for now, I'm going to conserve phone battery and quit using it. If you need me, I'll be reading on my Kindle and trying to tune out the rest of this crowded, crowded bus.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

#firstworldproblems

I think that my foot should start paying rent to my mouth. Sometimes, I make such an ass out of myself that I think my attempts to learn languages will just mean I can do it with more people, more often. On another note, though....

It's been over a month since I blogged, either here or at Sympathy For The Devil, but that's not entirely for lack of effort. 2013 has not been a good year for my devices. Just in the seven weeks that it's been around, this year has killed (or tried to kill) most of the technology I own. Let's go for a rundown:

While taking pictures at Jim and Wendy's wedding last month, the screen on my camera decided to shit on itself. The camera itself still works and takes pictures, but because I don't have a working screen, I can't preview the images or switch it to video capture. The only good thing is that, if I keep using it, it might improve my "eye for pictures". Sure, it's stuck on the current settings from the last time I changed them, but being unable to rely on the screen to check the picture before taking it means relying on myself.

Then, my laptop decided that it has taken enough abuse. It's been my primary computer for... three years now? Sounds right. It's an Acer netbook with a 250 GB hard drive and 2 GB of RAM (1 GB that I bought and was shown how to install by Ralph). When I tell people that an Acer netbook has been my mostly-reliable primary computer for that long, they're usually surprised. Nowadays, the zero key is missing and both Shift keys are unreliable. Moving it too abruptly sometimes causes the screen to go ass-up, and the WLAN is going out -- sometimes it'll lose connection after an hour or two, other times after five minutes. Restarting it fixes it, but only temporarily.

Lastly, the Kindle. It got knocked out of my hand (by accident) because someone on the bus bumped into me while I was reading it. Half of the screen doesn't work anymore, but because it was only barely out of warranty, the customer support guy gave me a discount toward my next one. All in all, it cost me half of what I paid for my first Kindle to replace it.

The only regularly-used piece of tech that hasn't really had issues is my phone. So, that's why you're getting a 3AM blog from the phone. And if it has shitty formatting, I'll fix it when I can get on a real computer. :-)