War and peace part 2

Were we living in Medieval times, blood would undoubedtly have been spilled last night. (And we have the swords for the job, too.) J and K have a guest staying with them to add to the continual parade of loud people outside our bedroom. Late afternoon yesterday, Tony and I were trying to relax a little before dinner when one of the dogs began running and barking atop our roof. I called J and asked nicely that she stop allowing animals and humans to recreate over our heads.

Things quited down until around midnight.

Tony and I were enjoying our first hour of sweet sleep when a ruckus immediately outside our bedroom window woke us up. Predictably it was J and K and friends, drunk as usual, trying to get through the cursed gate. The usual clomp, clomping of their heavy feet past our window and up their stairs followed by doors slamming and intermittent banging on the walls and floors ensued. Tony yelled, “Quiet!” That’s when the real fun began. They decided it was a good time to make their snippy, yippy little dogs howl and shreik at top volume for several minutes. This was followed by at least 45 minutes of loud talking and laughter and the mysterious, intermittent banging.

I finally just cried. My precious sleep once again ruined by these people who seem to be doing it deliberately at this point. To add insult to injury, we received a rent increase notice yesterday. Beginning Jan. 1, it’s going up $100.

Suffice to say, we’re actively looking now, but I really resent being run out of my home by a family of hillbilly assholes. We’ll have to pay at least $400 more than we are now to get into something decent. I will need to find some work too. Your prayers would be a great blessing right about now.

Rock and a hard place

The Good News: After diligent research, I discovered that many eMacs purchased in the same year as ours have suffered bad capacitors resulting in the need for new logic boards. All the afflicted machines had the exact same symptoms as ours. This has been a huge problem and one that Apple attempted to cover up for some time. Eventually they released an extended warranty to cover this specific problem in eMacs within a certain range of serial numbers. Ours is a match. So, we took it to the local authorized Mac repair outlet and we should know for sure in 5 days.

The Bad News: No matter what, we’re out $95 for a diagnostic fee. If it is indeed the logic board, those are severely backordered and we could be waiting months. If it’s not the logic board, we’ll have to pay.

The Kingdom

 From the Symbol Blog:

“Does the Kingdom of Heaven exist apart from eternal life? In other words, can’t we experience the Kingdom right now, even though we haven’t passed into spirit? Is the kingdom a state of being rather than a place we go to?”

Crap, the sun’s out again

At least the air temp is nice and cool. So I got up at 5:15 a.m. and by 8 a.m. we were enjoying fresh baked (from scratch) cinnamon rolls with our scrambled eggs + black pepper and parmesan.  Would I wake up that early to make cinnamon rolls again? Don’t think so. Pillsbury taste just as good. Plus, it didn’t really rain at all. But, I did get to read the Sunday paper and I sort of enjoyed rolling out the dough.

p.s. We really don’t eat cinnamon rolls often. It’s a rare treat, just so ya know.

Rainy Mondays Make Me Happy

Because I love the rain so much, I told my family that on the first rainy morning I would wake up pre-dawn and make cinnamon rolls from scratch using a kit I purchased from King Arthur Flour/Baker’s Catalog. It looks like that day will be here tomorrow, if the forecast is correct. I guess I’d better get to bed early tonight, so I can enjoy many hours of rain and the smell of cinnamon rolls in the oven. Mmmm.

computer woes

Computer problems exhaust me. Sam’s Emac started having what appeared to be memory issues about a month ago. Little crashes became more frequent. Not immediately having the budget for memory, I trimmed some of her fat instead. This seemed to help at first. Then we installed World of Warcraft. Sam couldn’t play b/c 512 mg is recommended. The crashing/freezing increased.

A few days ago I was babysitting Marin and let her play an old game called Pet Shop. The game set the monitor to 256 colors and I think somehow that seemingly benign detail played a role in the Emac’s now nearly comatose state.

I can’t remember what happened exactly but she started freezing at startup and the display would be all distorted and pixelated. I ran disk repair, hardware check etc. Still, major trouble. So, finally today, I erased the hard drive. So painful, this always is. I installed os X and while there’s major improvement, she’s still freezing and the display is still getting jacked intermittently. I then ran a free repair utility called Applejack. Still, no significant improvement.

I’m at a freaking loss and I can’t afford $125 an hour for someone to fix her or tell me she’s irreparable. I’m beginning to think we just get Sam an affordable PC desktop or laptop but I’m a little sick over the expense of it all.

Do I call a local mac guru (and if so, who?) or do I forget it and buy a PC which I wouldn’t begin to know how to operate? This is the second Mac that’s given us some big trouble and I’m beginning to lose my love of Apple computers. On the other hand, I adore my loyal iBook and her astonishing 9 lives. SIGH.

war and peace

Ugliness is on the rise again in the shire. J and K and their crew finally, two months later, finished their office expansion but not without shredding out nerves on a daily basis. We talked to them and explained (we’ve done this so many times) that they need to keep their dogs inside as opposed to in the common area next to our bedroom window. We explained that their constant comings and goings through the gate area create a disturbance and we’d appreciate it if they tried to pass quietly. We explained that it’s not OK for them to talk on their cell phones in front of our bedroom.

A relative peace was briefly reached.

The noise has begun to ramp back up and it’s making me so edgy that I lost my cool in a very embarassing way last night.

It was 10:30 p.m. and I was sleeping. It had been a very busy day and rest was necessary. Tony was at band practice. I was awoken by very loud voices and a constant banging as if they were in their outdoor porch playing football. I was pissed. I hate being awoken by noise or anything. It’s very difficult for me to go back to sleep. So I lay there, fuming, blood pressure rising, feeling victimized by our neighbors’ complete lack of consideration. Next thing I know, they’re walking around on my roof. There is no insulation whatsoever in our ceilings, so the space between roof and ceiling is about 1/2 inch, which translates to LOUD.

This is when I lost control. I went to window and yelled, “I’m coming up there with a gun if you don’t shut the fuck up.” I know, ridiculous, embarassing—insert insult here—yet totally primal. Truth is, I don’t own a gun, which, given my temper, is a very good thing.

Luckily it was teenage boys who were causing the ruckus, so I think they sort of dismissed the threat. And eventually they quieted down, but this morning at 7 a.m. they were back on the roof.

So, as you can imagine, we’re done. We really can’t take it anymore. We are actively looking for a house with a yard and landlords who will let us have our dog. It’ll be a leap of faith on a few levels but we’re getting comfortable with leaps of faith. If you hear of anything, know anyone, keep us in mind. We’re looking to stay between downtown and the college.

My first wiki?

I don’t know if that’s the correct way to reference it but I did some editing to an article on Mike Ness. It’s my first Wikipedia edit. The previous editor got a few facts wrong but other than that a little tightening was all it needed. I would love to write Mike’s biography (I might be able to jog his memory where needed), but that would likely require travel. Maybe a pitch is in order, anyway?