Happy holidays, everyone. Whatever stuff you celebrate between now and the 1st of next year, I hope you all enjoy every ounce of it.

Keeping a list of things to do every day seems to be helping, though I'm still pretty early in the use. I just folded over 50 items of clothing that I need to put away, and over half (stuff that goes in my dresser) actually got put away. Woo. (I didn't put away sweaters, sweatshirts, or longsleeved shirts, because they go on shelves in a closet, and I can't easily open the closet door yet.) So while I had that item on each daily list since I started making them, and didn't do any of it till today, I did a LOT of it today. Also, the plants are happier (they actually get water in a timely manner now) and the cats are happier with their litterbox usage.

The litter smelled like human pee again in one of the boxes, but I suspect it's from the same clump that caused the smell before. After a while even clumping litter needs changing out 100% because it quits clumping much, and that's where these are now. So probably there was still just loose should-have-clumped litter in there from last time. The problem was that even after I was back upstairs and had washed my hands, I couldn't stop smelling it. The smell had gotten up in my nose and wouldn't leave. Grr. So, I started off grabbing the tea tree, eucalyptus, and rosewood essential oils (one at a time) and just sniffing them deeply. Then I grabbed one of my oil burners (a few drops in water on top, tea light on bottom) and set one up with the rosewood and put it in the bedroom where I was foldling clothes. That helped a ton. Now it's in the computer room with me.

I finally got a last item for my dad for Christmas, and now all I have to do for presents is wrap stuff. I didn't get stuff sent that I wanted to get sent on time, but I figure since some of it is gonna be a surprise it's never bad to get to extend Christmas by receiving stuff the week right after, so... It'll get done when it gets done, and sent when it gets sent, and I'm just going to stop fretting over it.

It was nice to sleep in today. I napped from about 5:30 last night till a little after 8, then I slept from around 12:30 to 10am today. Well, 8, then back asleep till 9, then back asleep off and on sometimes rolling over to spoon J, until 10. Got up, showered, dressed, etc. Called Mom so we could do some quick shopping, then we had lunch together. I decided I'd try to be productive since I was up before noon and already had been, hence the good knocking-off of items I really needed to get done. I plan on relaxing some, playing a little WoW, then going and wrapping presents. I'm doing all my wrapping in the spare room on the folding table still in there, so I can get J's stuff wrapped too without him seeing.

Oh, and one more thing: Happy holidays to all you guys. I'm hoping the coming year turns out better for everyone than this year did, whether this year was good to you and the next will be even better, or the year was shit and you need a well deserved respite in the form of a better year.

I have a question for any cat owners (slaves?) out there, as a sort of sanity check.

Cat whiz question follows, and if you don't like icky or cats, or know zilch about cat care, you probably won't have an answer.

Typically cat pee smells very, very different than human pee. As in, cats are pretty much a strong acidic, ammonia smell; people have typically a less acidic, slightly sweet (no, not like candy! ) plus sour (as in milk, not as in lemons) smell. Very different, yes? So... has anyone ever scooped a litterbox and had it smell very strongly and distinctly like human pee, rather than cat pee? I ask because this is really, really new to me. No matter how much time, rather than just a day or a few weeks, it's been since any litterbox I've been responsible for, any cat pee clumps (dry or still wet) have always, always, always smelled like very definitely and undeniably cat pee. If anything, the ammonia only gets stronger the older the stuff sits, rather than fading and only leaving whatever wasn't ammonia. And there's only been maybe two weeks at most (probably just one week) between the last time it was scooped and this time. So, why on earth would there be a very, very strong pee smell (which I expected) that had no ammonia component whatsoever and smelled like people pee (which was definitely startling)?

I really hope that somebody out there has had this happen before. The alternatives are that either my sense of smell has gone sideways, or some unknown person (neither J nor I) used the cats' litterbox(es) to piss in rather than one of our three toilets in the house. Which... I don't want to think about.

I set up a daily to-do blog within MovableType. Right now, it's all in a folder that's just password protected via htpasswd/htaccess (via cPanel, not something I'd want to try by hand without SSH or telnet command level access, that would make it a lot harder). This is because I'm going to maintain personal and work lists (one separate entry each per day), and I don't want the work lists available to anyone but me. I really couldn't give a flying fuck about whether anyone can see the personal lists or not. So until I get some spare time to work that in (it won't be hard like it would be to privatize entries on my site would be by hand) it's all just for my eyes only and not linked from anywhere else.

So I already wrote up my first two lists. Work was over, so I just listed what we talked about being in the works for the team today, and duly crossed 'em all off. Whenever I go in and cross off one or more items I also add a comment (displayed as "work log") to the entry stating what I did. If I add an item I'll also add to the work log, etc. When the next morning comes around and I'm doing a new day's list (or doing them the night before and not doing anymore for that day), I'll turn off the work log (i.e. stop comments being accepted), which will mark the item as closed. Obviously, if I cross the last item off the list before that, and won't be doing anything else that "needs" to be done, I'll close it out early. Also, to make sure this thing is habit forming and actually helps me, I'm going to write a bullet for every day I can reach a computer for work and personal. On weekends and holidays the work bullet will be "yay, weekend off!" or whatever, and for personal if I have absolutely nothing that "needs" doing, which probably won't happen often, I'll just put one in that says "go forth and enjoy thy day!" or some shit. Just to stay in the rhythm. I also show the "added on" date, and if the last modified date isn't the same as the original date I show that. Archives are pretty simple. For now, the main page shows 7 days of lists; the list of all the archives links to weekly archives that show all lists for that week; the work log is viewable on the individual archive pages only. I can always add monthly archives later if I give a shit, but I probably won't. No point.

The only thing I want to add sooner rather than later is to make the use of the InlineEditor plugin to edit the actual entries straight from the work log. This will make it so I don't have to keep a separate MT window open, which will be quite useful. The password thing can wait, but this I can use right away. I don't know when it'll hit my personal to-do list though; perhaps tomorrow.

We'll see how well this helps me keep on track. So far I'm 3/6 for tonight's initial list (well, 2/5... one I crossed off 'cause it was a small laundry load and J said he'd do it tomorrow since he's off). I watered the plants before they got to looking like they were within an inch of their lives (I've been bad about that the last few months), and I scooped the litter boxes (which I've also been very bad about for some time; only reason it's gotten done is because J got sick of it and did it a few times as an act of self preservation). Not only that, but I swept up all the litter that had accumulated around them because of the cats (especially Zephyr) flinging it out over and over again, little by little. And, I opened the box with the little lidded trashcan we bought at Bed Bath & Beyond for this exact purpose. Rather than have just a plastic bag sitting on the floor twisted shut and added to each time, which likes to close itself just enough when I'm about to dump litter in from the scoop that half of it hits the outside of the bag and then the floor, it'll be easy to dump into since the bag will be held open, but the lid will keep it closed to keep away most of the smell. It even has a little thing to step on in the front that holds the lid open so I don't have to be all coordinated.

I'm wiped. The rest of the stuff on the list is going unaccomplished and added to tomorrow's list. Past bedtime for me.

The memory that any process on the server can use has been throttled, which is good. (The reason MT wasn't running turned out to be a missing zero from the Apache setting on that, which made it too tightly throttled by a factor of 10, hehe.) However, the MTPaginate plugin that I was using to do paging on category archives (holy shit some of those categories are really long!) was running afoul of that upper limit. Which isn't really bad because it makes me upset, so much as it's bad because that means that MTPaginate is memory efficient (I don't know if this is because it's not written for best efficiency, or if it's the nature of the beast). So I'll either have to build my own or leave it unpaged. It's staying unpaged in the meantime. So... if you hit the "life" category be aware that it will be really, really, really long right now. The only other option I can think of is to have it build only so many entries back, then have a link to the monthly archive page to find anything older (which wouldn't be by category, though).

I didn't get presents wrapped yet. I didn't get my little sewing project done yet.

I did get to play WoW a bunch. I knocked off some more Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes quests. I found a random quest neither J nor I'd ever seeen before in Steamwheedle Point, sending me off to Lost Rigger Cove to get pirate hats. I also fished enough to make 4 greater stoneshield potions to sell, almost a 5th, which also netted me some winter squid which is super awesome for a hunter. Went grinding in Tyr's Hand with a former guildie (he jumped 'cause our guild is dead, but would like to jump servers when Blizzard allows those). Not a single green or better dropped, but we each got ~2g apiece. Got raped a bunch by Lord Valdelmar. and his cronies after kicking the shit out of him, 'cause of inopportune respawns and a sudden rash of Dest getting silenced (he's a pally, quite an awesome one at that).

I still need to do a little Christmas gift shopping, but I'm basically done. It's coming down to me going out after work this afternoon or tomorrow. Probably tomorrow, because I'll have more time tomorrow than tonight.

Biggest thing right now: I just had my yearly performance eval at work, and it's become quite clear that my scatterbrainedness isn't just a funny quirk about me, but is a serious problem. No no, I'm not gonna be fired. It's just become apparent that my lack of focus and concentration are starting to really get in the way of my being an effective coder. I'm good, my skillset is a-OK, and I know my shit and all that jazz, but... yeah, let's just say my head bounces around enough that it makes me often unable to concentrate on any one thing and I either go off on programming tangents or I just shut down all useful stuff from being needlessly overwhelmed.

If anyone can link me any resources, be them online or books I can snag from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, etc., I'd really appreciate it. Based on those who have ADD problems and have described their trains of thought, that's not really me, so I'm not terribly concerned about that. But the problem is similar, and I figure some coping skills and tricks to improve concentration are probably the same, so I'm looking in that general direction for help. I'm also going to ask the good folks at F'opolis for resource help, since we have such a variety of good folks there, some of whom have had issues with concentration and ADD and such. None of this is anything I really noticed as being serious until it started affecting my ability to work, and I'm fortunate to have a manager who is willing to do anything she can to help me through it and who understands. I want to get over this hump, I just really don't know how.

Site updating via MovableType works once again. T'was indeed a memory thing, but all is working as it should.

I... have more to write, but I want it to be separate from this post where I celebrate the continued use of MT.

I just noticed that MovableType is only building two months for my "monthly archives" list instead of six. And the lastn variable, which is supposed to control that, is set to six. Grr. I hope that doesn't mean they changed a bunch of attributes my templates might be using, thus making me look at all my templates to make sure they're still working as desired.

Update: I changed lastn from 6 to 36, and that gives me a year's worth. ?? So evidently however many I want, I have to multiply by 3 for monthly archives. That just... really makes no sense whatsoever. I think I'm going to trot over to their support forums to see if I can find out what gives.

I do like that my guestbook works 100% as intended now though. For some inexplicable reason, my settings were set to allow TypeKey registration but not require it (with any non-registered comments set to be moderated), but for some reason the tag that checks for registration being required was stating that it was required. Now that I've rebuilt with 3.2 it now works as expected.

Ever since I saw these plush germs on ThinkGeek, I just *squee* every time I see them. I didn't realize they had their own site all to themselves where you could buy 'em. I just found out 'cause a fellow LJer pointed out a soap dispenser shaped like their common cold plush. Eeee. These are so awesome.

In other news, it snowed some time in the wee hours. Really. Wet. Snow. Super heavy stuff, this was. However, we hardly got any, and the roads and air were warm enough, at least at around 7am, that the roads were mostly just wet (a little bit slushy in things like the suicide lane from hardly anyone driving in it). It was so heavy that I used the blade side of my ice scraper/snow brush thingy on my car rather than the brush, because it was clogging up the brush. It was almost slush even on my car. Had we gotten a few inches of it, enough to close school, there would've been snowmen everywhere by lunch, hehe. Of course, that also means I'd be working from home, and not here in the office.

So... apparently a reseller with my my web host (Crosswinds) wasn't policing his clients' installs, and one installed b2evolution. After the big note that CW sent out to all customers stating that this software is riddled with security holes, and adamantly asking all customers not to install it. Something that all resellers should've forwarded to all the clients they had.

All hell broke loose yesterday afternoon from someone attacking that b2evolution installation. (Which is why yesterday's post timestamped at 3:50pm didn't go up until this morning.) So they had to work with the reseller to rip the installation out. Then, later last night they had to fix up the server. Some Perl modules were fubarred for a while (including ones critical to MovableType, like the database modules). One of my fellow volunteer Cadre members had extra databases she didn't put there, including five named the exact same as the five I have (well, I have four now; one was no longer needed and old so I blew it away this morning) and several that possibly mirrored ones another Cadre member had. My databases seem to be OK with nothing new. I also don't see anything untoward in my file structure though I only went through about a third to half of it, and I'm not going to bother with the rest until I can do it from home with a real FTP program rather than looking into each folder through cPanel's file manager.

*sigh*

Pursuant to that, I just went to CPAN.org's site and got me some Perl modules to stick in MT's extlib folder. I grabbed all the ones that temporarily went missing last night, plus one that I guess they don't install at all that mt-check said was optional. (mt-check is MT's program that makes sure all the requirements for MT are met, plus checks for optional Perl modules that make things run more smoothly, or that you need if you want to use some of MT's optional features, etc.) It took me some doing, but I uploaded all the necessary PM files and such to all the right places. In theory, if Perl is OK but any of those modules are borked, as last night (so far as I could tell), I should be able to at least run MT properly, since it'll find the modules still in its extlib folder. Plus I now have Crypt::DSA installed, which may be useful: according to mt-check "comment registration sign-ins will be accelerated." I assume that means people coming in through TypeKey will get in faster, but I don't actually know. Couldn't hurt, eh?

My elbow hurts. I whacked it really hard on the bathroom counter... yesterday? No, I think it was Saturday. Aaanyway, it was a somewhat funnybone whack, so... yeah, I can't touch that part of my elbow to anything at all without it bitching to me very loudly. It also twinges some just bending it all the way. Grr.

I also slept funny last night and my left shoulder muscle (top, next to my neck) is sore.

I'm almost all done with Christmas shopping, which is quite nice. And I'm even done mailing stuff to my aunt & uncle. For my aunt I ordered stuff for her via catalog so I shipped it straight to her with gift boxing and such. For my uncle we bought it in a store that has a CS department upstairs that will do wrapping and shipping for you. So nice not to do that stuff. Costs a bit more, but very nice nonetheless.

I'm going to be shipping out most of my secret santa gift tonight (today's the deadline, gonna have to express ship the last piece 'cause Amazon is being a doodyhead). Also plan on getting together another gifty to ship at the same time. I'm gonna go FedEx, 'cause they have a store really close. I just have to make sure I can have them box the stuff up too, 'cause I don't really have time to find properly sized, shipping-durable boxes around the house.

Probably gonna end up doing some OT tomorrow at work. And get paid for it, woo. Minimum required is 2 hours in one day, 4 hours for the week. So I'd have to do 2 more hours. I can do 2 hours at home on the couch Wed. or Thurs. night. Tomorrow will be extra time spent to make sure we do all our modelling shit together and it's when we can all stay, and hopefully after that it'll just be code writing or documentation writing (both will need doing) and that we can all do by ourselves so it's good work-from-home work. We got lots to get done by the end of the year, and there's a whole lot more leeway budgetwise for OT pay this year than trying to play catchup without it next year. I guess I'm not terribly upset, especially doing stuff at home... I'd be getting paid, which is good, and the novelty of being able to sit at a computer in bed or on the couch really hasn't worn off just yet. And it'd only be a couple hours, it's not like I'm suddenly starting to work 60+ hour weeks in the office.

I can't wait for our week+ off. Only this week and next week thru Thursday then off thru at least the 2nd of January. I have a smallish stitching project I want to finish by the end of the week and ship Friday. I think the worst of the OMGSOBUSY should be over by the end of the week barring any surprises.

I added a bunch of music to my iRiver last night. Only ended up being less than half a GB, so I still have like 7 or 8GB free. I added the Beekeeper tracks, then a bunch of stuff J has now that he's done organizing all his folders and stuff. I grabbed some more Moody Blues, a bunch of Weird All, some Three Dog Night, a couple Toni Braxton tracks, a bunch of En Vogue. Yeah, I'm all over the map: I already had, for example, both Sublime and Enya on it. I know I put more stuff on there than that, but that's off the top of my head. Yay, more music. It sheerly amazes me just how much music you can fit on 20GB of space, even when lots of it is at better than 128Kbps encoding. Mmmm.

I upgraded MovableType from 3.16 to 3.2 this weekend. I thought I'd made my commenting template have the right permissions, but either I remembered wrong or it didn't stick. (I renamed my commenting script so it wasn't the default constantly-attacked one. So I had to upload the new one, rename my old one, then rename the new one.)

So if you've been trying to comment and got internal server errors, that's why. Should be fixed now.

I'm noticing other... oddities in MT, but they all seem to be in the interface itself, so they shouldn't affect the site.

I couldn't even post this for the JS errors. I had to go and download the full install of MT (I only grabbed the "upgrade" version over the weekend) and reupload the static files (images, JS files, CSS... stuff that can't go in the cgi-bin folder). That seems to have fixed everything, so far.

Yesterday there was a box. Inside it was the first of two packages according to the card within. The second package came today, and is also quite nifty.

The sum total:

• Tori Amos' Beekeeper
• A mug and beer cozy in the green and white of my santa's company, Earth Tech
• Sci-Fi novel #1: We, by Yezgevny Zamyatin
• Sci Fi novel #2: Eon, by Greg Bear
• A really nifty and funny Christmas card (a gingerbread man cookie with an OMG look on his face with a hand reaching in; inside says "Surprisingly, not everyone looks forward to a visit from Santa. Mery Christmas") with a really cool handwritten note inside.

New reading material and music, along with means to keep hydrated whilst enjoying them, are awesome. Doubly awesome is to get Sci Fi: I've delved a bit into the genre but not very far, so getting more is super good. (My only real dive into Sci Fi specifically was the Ender series by Orson Scott Card. Enjoyed it immensely.)

So, much thanks go out to Colossal, my F'opopopopolis Secret Santa. Thanks, man!

Now to go post in F'opolis and PM ratliner peacefully (had 'em backwards) that I've received my swag.

In terms of implementing protected entries, this MT plugin just might help me do what I want, at least at first glance. Basically, I'd like to lock down entries to people either logging in via a password or via having been logged into TypeKey already.

I have to do some more reading. I want to be able to specify either "everyone who's signed in" or "specific people, not every single person who happens to have a TypeKey ID". I don't really want every person who happens to have a TypeKey ID, regardless of whether they are people I've ever met before, to be able to read protected stuff. Kind of like using TypeKey logins (or other) to be able to do LJ-style friends-only protected entries.

I haven't spent any time yet reading through the screenshots, interface, etc., but I plan on reading up on it to see if I can make it work. It's either that or roll my own PHP solution where I specify in the keywords field or something (some entry field in MT I'm not making use of) what TypeKey userids can read an item. That would require not just putting a TypeKey login link in the menus, but also having PHP check each entry that might be printed on the main page, then check for a TypeKey auth, then if there is an auth check to see if the user name is the same as what's defined in that entry field, and only then display the entry. Plus, both the monthly and category templates would have to use it, and individual entries would have to display a "nothing to see here" message if someone isn't logged in.

If I can automate all that with an MT plugin/hack, rather than writing it all myself, that'd definitely be a good thing.

I had a dream not too long before my alarm went off that was... weird. It was one of those where you feel like you're in a monster horror movie along with bunches of other people. I was in a gigantic library/bookstore/office type place and there was a monster thing and stuff. At one point I got to "see" what was going on elsewhere even though I'd mostly been actually there, as though my dreaming mind pulled me back for a few seconds so that I could "watch the movie" instead of being part of it. Normally I start out as watching a movie, then end up in it. I usually don't flip flop in the middle. Ah well, at least it didn't involve the whole "I'm running as hard as I can but my legs won't move and it's gonna get meeee!" thing.

I discovered right after I parked my car at work that I didn't manage to get my badge into my purse or laptop case, so I had to trek all the way down the side of the complex out in the really cold to get temp badges. One's an actual badge that'll swipe to get me into the building, the other is a paper thingy with my name and ID on it that doesn't do jack shit. That's what subs for my actual company badge. All our wings now have smart badge readers (i.e. wavy badges, where you just wave your badge at it and it reads it) to get into them. Paper doesn't work so good for this. So I had to wait a couple minutes for some guys who also wanted the same wing (there's a phone right outside the door but I dunno anyone's number up here, let alone the few people who come in at 7am). Then, I hadda hadda hadda use the bathroom, which of course is in the area outside the wings. Thankfully there was another person heading to the women's bathroom same time as I from the other wing, and I asked her to badge me in so I wouldn't have to wait or pound on the door. I really, really hate when I forget my badge, but at least before they made people badge into the wing there was only the trouble of getting the temp badges. *sigh*

Only good news is that today's Friday, and starting tomorrow and going at least through Tuesday they're predicting warmer weather with no precipitation. Near 40°F is much better than< 30°F. I'm gonna go out to my car tomorrow afternoon and wash the inside of my windshield so I can see through it properly again.

I just got Tori Amos' Beekeeper album as an early Christmas gift (secret santa) so I updated my wishlist not to have it anymore. If anybody who's using it was going to buy it... well, don't, and if you already did you want to find that receipt or gift it to someone else who you think might like it.

Safe at home. Lindbergh was shite around lunch time, no plowing (coworker who drives a Bonneville, nice & heavy, drove us as per usual on Thursdays... heavy car + golf clubs + 5 people = less slippy). So I asked de boss if it'd be alright if I worked an hour from home and left to avoid adding rush hour traffic to the mess that was the roads, and she said it was OK. Took a while to get logged in right (two ways to do it, one wouldn't connect for some reason). So I'm now on my laptop via our wireless router and secure remote connection, bangin' away at code. Took a while getting the car cleared off, ended up leaving right around 3. Took only 20 minutes to get home, which was a shocker, but it helped they'd finally plowed. Still went 30-35 home (limit's 40). Had to granny around the left turn onto Lindbergh from a side street and still had to do a controlled slide around the turn. After that it wasn't too bad. I could tell that even though people were mostly being good about keeping their distance, all the heavy trucks and SUVs and stuff were kinda irked that all us little guys can't go as fast as they can 'cause we slide more easily. *shrug* Whatcha gonna do?

Later, I'll be postin' about F'opolis Secret Santa goodies. I opened a mysterious package before I started my virtual office stuff... let's just say it's awesome.

If you ask for auth to add my ICQ #, type in a bloody custom reason, or have your own personal info filled out enough that I can tell who the hell you are. I get tons of auth requests a day while I'm on, all from 9-digit numbers starting with 12 as the first two. They all seem to be bogus, so I add 'em to my ignore list and decline. If you actually know me and don't want the same, make sure I can tell you're someone I've met somewhere on the 'net, or at least someone not wanting to spam me with bullshit. Otherwise your request will probably get shitcanned.

I think I may've gotten all that hair dye stain out. I finally gave up, with the biggest of the stains still visible, gave it a really good rinse to get all the Oxyclean out, squeezed it out, and hung it up over the shower rod for the night. When I looked this morning, the pants leg was still half wet, but I couldn't find the stain. I'll wait until the pants have dried (air drying doesn't set a stain, does it? just using the dryer does that?) when I get home this afternoon to be sure, but... I think I actually got it out. If not, I probably faded it enough that it doesn't stand out at all. Yay. After that, the jeans need washing in general anyway, so I'll throw 'em in the washer this evening. Since J got done with all the laundry last night (thanks, sweetie!!) they'll be by themselves, but that's probably a good idea anyway.

I woke up this morning an hour after I shut off my alarm. No lying there waking every few minutes, looking at the clock and thinking, "Oh, well I have a few more minutes." Just wham, right asleep again.

My alarm goes off at 5:30. I need to be at work at 7. It usually takes me 12 minutes to get there. I woke up at 6:30.

I'm proud of myself for only being 15 minutes late. It helps that I don't spend time sweating on a typical day (didn't go work out yesterday), and I'll be sweating up a storm later tonight anyway so I can just take a shower after that.

The best part? I'm still groggy as hell. I'm seriously needing sleep after sleeping like ass the night before.

Got up 15 minutes earlier than I normally do, which is good. Think about the extra things (check for car payment, couple Checkfree.com bills, etc.), figure no problem since I got up earlier. Then I just so happen to glance out the computer room window as I walk past that door to go to the bathroom, and... WTF? A closer look reveals that yes, we got a bit of snow. That's fine & dandy except for the fact that no one knew, so no one salted, and we only have a one car garage so I'd have to clear my car.

Hauling my ass outta bed 15 minutes early still resulted in me getting to work 15 minutes late. And I didn't get the plants watered, which I've been remiss on for a few days now and one looks like it's gonna die.

Didn't get a whole lot done at work either, but not bad.

Our one last female coworker's last day is Thursday (it'd be Friday but for accounting's Friday thru Thursday weeks *sigh*). We're taking her to lunch tomorrow at a Mexican restaurant she likes. We'll still see her regularly; she's just one aisle over from where we normally sit, on a team that is probably our biggest single source system for data.

I go to my chiropracter appointment... and find out it was last Tuesday, not this Tuesday. Mrrf! *headdesk* They said it was totally fine, and he was with his last appointment today anyway so no problem. I figured, since they never called, but... yeah, I still feel like a total heel. You just don't do that sorta thing, y'know? No charge for the missed appointment or anything. And I got home and realized that while they signed me up for an appointment two weeks from now (subject to change/cancellation depending on how I feel), she didn't ask me for my copay. ??? So, if I go in for the appointment as scheduled I'll give her both copay fees then; if I cancel I'll just go up and pay the $15 after work (they're really close to where I work anyway, but I would even if they weren't, or I'd ask for a mailing address to send it to them).

My hands feel like the skin is going to crack, die, and fall the fuck off. I've been trying to get that hair dye out of my jeans. There were two other little spots, but mostly I've been working the main one. I first did rubbing alcohol, which got out very precious little. Then I rinsed, and followed up with acetone (aka nail polish remover, of course) and at least that got out enough that the Q-tips I was using actually changed color slightly. After that I washed everything out well w/ Dr. Bronner's to make sure there was no acetone left. Then, with still lotsa stain, I whipped out the heretofore unused Oxyclean bucket. Damn those are hard to open. Anyway, I got a little Pyrex dish and some ex-cloth diapers that were on the little bucket, and mixed me up a little, and started in. It says to put it on the stain for "1-5 minutes", then blot it with a white towel (diaper's gonna have to do, any "real" towels I have are going to stay their original color thankyouverymuch). I've done that... I dunno, 8 times now? 12? I dunno. A lot. Including leaving it on extra long before dabbing, and dumping some out so I could make it hot water again and a little stronger (wasn't sure, since I dunno how much the dish holds except less than the mixing instructions). Twice.

I also found a pair of jean shorts that I'd evidently scratched my upper thigh open a bit while wearing (yay dry-skin zits that itch) and bled on. Didn't know it until I found them in The Pile. So I washed those out with icy cold water and Dr. Bronner's and almost all of it came out pretty easily. (Protip: castille soap binds with iron which makes it an incredibly good blood stain remover. Parents have been using Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap as liquid hand soap for years & years, and I learned that after it easily removed blood stains from a monthly surprise, and my dad told me the chemical "why". So now we have a big gallon jug of the stuff that we've had for a few years now, before J moved in with me, that I keep our liquid soap bottles filled with.)

Jean stain isn't out yet. I'm determined to get out enough that it might be safe to wash them with the other jeans. If not... well, I'll wash 'em by themselves a few times, call it done, and if the stain's still pronounced I'll sew some cute design over it.

Undifferentiated

You scored 36 masculinity and 46 femininity!

You scored low on both masculinity and femininity. Your personality includes characteristics of both traditional sex roles, but your gender is not strongly defined.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

	You scored higher than 4% on masculinity
	You scored higher than 13% on femininity

The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test written by weirdscience on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

I guess I'm not very gendersome. Also, I refuse to use the image they put in for "undifferentiated". Nonononono.

I got to go to my first ever end level instance on Saturday. I joined a pickup group via a surprise invite that was doing a 10 man strat. We totally owned it. It was awesome. I lost all the greed rolls on orbs and items and such, and nothing dropped that was good for hunters specifically. But it was still fun. I was worried about PUGs, but J said that 10 mans to strat (either side) are generally easy so even if a few people suck ass it still doesn't matter too much. The group said it was OK that I'd never been before, and I only made a minor messup once that didn't get anyone killed, and learned from it, so all in all it was a positive experience.

I also got to kill Blightcaller earlier that night by joining some guys that were putting together a group. Owned that bitch too, so now I have the tasty bow that is the quest reward for killing him.

Now I just have to find some time to convince J and maybe Destroyer if he's on, that they want to help me knock out some BRD quests. Yeah, right... that's one of the worst and longest places to go (outside of the "true" end game stuff, such as Ony, MC, ZG, etc.). So I'll probably never see those pre-character transfer. Ah well, I can dream eh?

You can't do a whole scan of your harddrive, of course, but if you're unsure of a specific file (perhaps your virus scanner flagged it) you can scan it at Jotti's. It scans the file using 14 different scanners and reports the results. As they say, don't assume this is still 100% failsafe, but for single files it sounds like a better option than installing all 14 on your own PC and doing the check yourself.

Pretty nifty link that is being added to my bookmarks.

Specifically, blue jeans?

I went and got my hair colored & cut & such tonight, and it went great, nice color, great cut, yadda yadda. However, the color was drippy. It dripped on my hand a bit and on my cheek, which both came off fine of course. I checked, and it didn't hit the bit of sweater sleeve sticking out from under the big smock, so yay.

However, it somehow managed to get on the bottom of my pants leg on the inside of my leg. No idea how. I didn't even know until after I'd come home, checked email and comics, gone back out with J to grab food, and we were sitting at the table at the end of the meal, some 2 and a half hours or more after I'd left the salon. There's a whole bunch, too! Thing is, those smocks are huge and long, and she was never standing between my feet or anything to do any of the color. I can't imagine how it dripped down and horizontally to get there in the first place. It's, like, Matrix haircolor or something, 'cause it defied gravity somehow.

Sooo... I want to wash it out. Obviously these jeans cannot enter the washer with any other thing until they've had all that's going to come out, washed out. Also, I'd rather not use the wrong thing and end up making it worse. I know next to nothing about this kind of dye, other than the fact that if it weren't capable of staining my jeans, it'd be a shitty hair dye and the people who made it wouldn't be able to sell it. Cold water? Hot water? Spray 'n wash? Oxyclean? Only thing I won't use is regular old chlorine bleach, because I want a big white splotch there about as much as I want the hair dye on there.

It's a dark red on the jeans, and is a mix of three different shades: a copper red shade, a not copper red shade, and a shade of auburn brown (mostly brown and not red). I know there's not much of the brown, not sure of the ratios.

I'd have called the salon, but by the time I found it, it was too late to call over and reach anyone. I can call tomorrow, but I wouldn't mind starting to work on it tonight while it's still fresh. If I can't find anything out by the time I hit the sack I'll call them tomorrow, of course.

Oh yeah, and website's still down, with still no word on why. I'm starting to get rather grumpy about it...