tl;dr next 3 miles

[psipsy]

Brought the furnace online after its summer hibernation. Went to the bank to unload 60lbs (I weighed it too) of rolled-up change that I've been adding to and stashing away over the years, and felt sorry for the poor teller (I told her it was 60lbs) who had to unroll it and send it all through the coin counter, a process that took about 15 minutes but yielded much more than I had expected, and off into savings it went. Dropped off Yamiko-chan's license plate at AAA. Mowed the grass. Also unloaded a small but significant stockpile of recyclable materials. Found out that Acura stopped making spark plug wires for aichan95, ostensibly due to there being 57 other varieties being made but it sucks anyway because the OEM ones last longer. The bargain wires from Advance are not an option; those are made of poop and will wear out faster than the plugs, which get replaced every 30k miles. (Didja know that bad wires can damage the ignition coil? I learned this the hard way.) Went into the shed and culled out the bottles of used antifreeze and spent brake fluid and the PowerWheels batteries left by previous residents. Ripped out the old lighting fixture in my shed, I can't imagine the old ballast was any good and it was missing bulbs and some of the connectors were blown apart, so I got a whole new fixture. New bulb for the projector ordered, should be here on Tuesday. Finally got my ass over to Ginza, a local Japanese steakhouse, the kind where you sit right at the grill and the chef flips food in the air and sets things on fire (intentionally as part of the show) and shared a table with a young couple who had stumbled across the place after randomly driving around and literally asked me what state they were in.

Yeah, all of that was just on Friday.

Saturday:

Swapped Ai-chan's radio with the newer one that Yamiko-chan had for better ipod compatibility. Went with sarahstalcup on an adventure to drag previously mentioned antifreeze, spent/old brake fluid, and lead-acid batteries to the county's annual hazmat collection thing that they should have more often. On the way home we stopped at a community yard sale where I scored a cordless sabersaw ($2), a scanner ($10), Zip drive ($5), a docking station and remote control for ipods ($5), and half a dozen Smurf glasses ($5). Yard sales of any size are fascinating, it's a window into a world of the things that people buy in the first place, then decide they don't need and what they think they can sell. It's sad when someone is trying to sell an opened box of Wheaties. Got some awesome food at the apparently famous farmer's market. Then after we got home and she went on her own way, I got some electronics contact cleaner, haunted Best Buy's laptop section but didn't see anything that tickled my fancy.

Then got home again and set about installing that new light fixture in the shed. Got everything all put in and wired up right, then looked for any kind of switch that would turn it on but no luck. So I trace the wires, and see a loose plug and an outlet. Ok, I plug it in, and get light. Great! But! The outlets are in the BACK of the shed, and apparently there's no switch to shut it OFF which means turning the lights on and off means fighting through all of my stuff to plug them in. So now the Electric Shed project will entail some added wiring, relocating the outlet and putting in a switch to a much more convenient place (such as, right near the door). Now to find out which breaker it runs off of so I can do all this without cooking myself.

Now, that scanner I found? I got it because my old Umax scanner would only work on my old Powerbook, which is running 9.0.4. They won't make any OSX drivers for it, and XP drivers can only be had by sending $15 for a disc. Since Umax is a sack of flaccid cocks about their drivers, they're not getting my $15 for a measly 9MB of driver data. Anyway, the "new" scanner is an HP, which has drivers for it to work with everything from Win95 to Vista64, but no love for OSX. Then a bit of searching yields this: http://www.sane-project.org/ Which covers the HP, and apparently my old Umax too. OSX as well as Linux users will also find that of interest, especially if you have an older scanner.

Sunday:

Not as intensive as the last couple days. Got some electrical items to facilitate the Electric Shed project, such as the electrical boxes and wire and other assorted hardware. Naturally I forgot a few items. In retrospect I could take the easy way out and just come up with something ghetto involving extension cords and it would work, but y'know, I think I'm better off using the right parts and methods. Because I can. So I'm writing up what I'll want and where it'll go, scribbling notes and primitive drawings.

That scanner from Saturday? Installed the drivers and it actually works and I didn't simply drop $10 on a giant plastic coaster, and with a bit of ceremony, scanned in a cut-out from the comic section of a newspaper from years ago but nevertheless continues to be highly relevant. Back in the day when I was looking for work and going on one interview after another, I would keep this handy and refer to it for a much-needed chuckle.

And so, I dedicate this to those of you in job searches past, present, and future:



Because yes, there have been interviews that may as well have gone like that.

But I digress. While my laundry is being done, I shall commence with planning on what I'll need to take to AUSA. In the meantime, a little gift for those of you that tuned in this long.

Other than that, didn't really do much all weekend. Just more of the usual goofing off.