Also: it is, indeed, colder than a witch's titty outside. Just in case you didn't know.

I haven't played WoW since Thursday, my back is pinchy by my left shoulderblade again, I'm tired as hell, and my throat is threatening to be sore. Weh.

It isn't all bad. My phone was really, really quiet when hearing voice mail or hearing people speak, so I switched it out last night for another, and it's fabulous. I didn't get to play WoW last night, but I did get fully caught up on all the other stuff I needed to attend to, so I'll be playing this evening after my workout class. On to the saga story...

I hadn't even used my computer at all after Thursday early afternoon, till last night. Bought a desk from an O'Sullivan warehouse reseller (they don't sell their stuff direct, it either has to be bought from a regular retailer like Office Depot or a reseller). I got so far as designing my own computer desk because my setup sucked, and there was not a single desk to be found in Best Buy, Target, Office Max, etc., that was wide enough and had a hutch. Why wide enough? Need to accomodate 2 monitors. Why a hutch? Need all the storage space provided by a hutch. The only thing I could find that even approached being wide enough also would be a huge L-shaped monstrosity that would not ever work in such a room, and most of those still managed to make two monitors side by side impossible or highly difficult. So I spent several hours in PSP (after having finally found a grid I could paste in as the bottom layer) drawing up a to-scale plan of my ideal desk.

However, I figured it was worth a little time spent on Google before I set to the rather enormous trouble and/or expense of getting it built. I finally found a desk that appeared to be very close to what I was looking for. I found three different places online who had it. One, however, had it a couple hundred bucks cheaper: if you went to the desk-only page and ordered it there, there was a dropdown you could set to also order the hutch for $202, which is $175 or so cheaper than ordering the hutch separately. Plus they had free shipping, and no sales tax.

Little did I know this desk would be such a pain in the ass.

I had some questions on the desk. The website provided some dimensions in addition to the standard width, depth, and height, but not the ones I needed to know, and not enough information to calculate them. So I finally called, the Sunday evening after the new year. (I'd filled out their product question form with those questions and gotten no response.) She looked all the dimensions up and gave them to me, and the critical ones (monitor space inside the hutch, keyboard tray width—most aren't wide enough to usably accomodate a mouse, and height of the little shelf overhanging the monitor space) were fantastic. More than enough room for 2 monitors, keyboard tray widest I've ever seen (fucker's heavy, too!), and the overhanging shelf is tall enough to put my speakers in at the sides. Ideally, since the monitor space is more than enough, I would've made the shelf areas to the sides about 2" wider than they are, so the B&W printer would fit in one side and the scanner in the other side, but those aren't a big deal; the scanner fits on the now un-overlapped file cabinet and the B&W printer can go on top of the hutch with the color one.

So I hung up to consider this somewhat weighty purchase ($576.99 for desk + hutch). I talked it over a bit with J, and ended up calling back to place my order about 20 minutes later. Got the same person. I got an order number, got my order confirmation in the email almost immediately (system actually hiccupped and sent it twice), was told I'd get a tracking number once it shipped, all was well.

First weird thing: a couple days later I got an email saying my status was paid. No tracking number, not shipped yet. Ah well, some places like to charge before shipping, some don't until that point. Funny thing though, my CC hadn't been charged yet. Second weird thing: I'd been told it should ship from the warehouse some time that week, but by the Monday afternoon 8 days after I'd ordered (i.e. a full business week, plus all that day) I'd received no tracking number. Third weird thing: the site has a spot to enter your email address to look up current orders, yet mine turned up nothing at all. I used their contact form that night to inquire about my order, stating that I hadn't gotten a tracking number yet and couldn't look up my order in their system. Two full days later I got an email saying they couldn't track my order in the system once it'd gone to the warehouse (uh....?) but that he'd put in an "urgent" call to the warehouse to find out where it was, and that I'd get a tracking number in 24-48 hours.

The following Monday (now the 22nd), still no followup email, tracking number or not. I replied that morning to the email asking about it (all this has been polite, mind you). Wednesday afternoon J IMs me to let me know there was a message from UPS freight stating that they had a package for us and we needed to call them back to arrange a delivery time. ??? I got home, and it turns out I had some email that'd been delayed, one of which was a tracking number sent later the same day that I'd followed up about it. (I.e. they didn't send it before I asked; they waited till after I'd asked again—a few hours—to send it to me.)

OK. Well. I figure, there is a package waiting, and my CC wasn't charged till it shipped, so if this is a scam it's a shitty one. More than likely it's just bad communication and a severe lack of interlinked computer systems. The tracking email stated in all caps that if I wanted to return it as damaged, it must be done by refusing delivery, and that if I did that it had to be more than just the outer packaging damaged, i.e. I had to inspect the actual contents and only if they were damaged could I refuse it. So, I got a delivery time of Friday afternoon, arranged to be off for that afternoon (working late most of this week to cover it), and after I got home and had lunch started moving crap off of my old "desk" (indoor/outdoor heavyduty folding table, with an office cubby shelf thingy and a metal two-shelf unit sitting on top of it for storage) into the spare room in anticipation of tearing everything down in order to build it.

Delivery guy got there about 1:30, and I tell you right now he was awesome. Kudos galore to him for putting up with me. (He has two cats too, so it was totally normal for him when Pele came in cautiously checking stuff out. ) I explained about the email on OMG-DAMAGES-MUST-BE-CLAIMED-BY-REFUSING-PACKAGE thing, and he helped me get into it and check the stuff. I had thought all of my order had been shipped, but there was just the one box, and he helped me rip it open to find only the desk had shipped. ??? However, the desk box (there was the desk box with the item # on it, that was squeezed into a just-does-fit outer shipping box) was in good shape so I was fine signing for it. After I got it, I moved some more stuff out of the computer room, putzed around on the comp for a bit, then decided on a nap 'cause I was mega tired. Didn't even hear J come in the house, just woke up a bit when he joined me for his own nap.

So after we woke up & had dinner, I finished tearing stuff down and folding up the table, and then J helped me get all the pieces into the computer room. Right after they were in there, bobbo_the_great came by with a lady friend of his (not sure about the "official" status of friend vs. girlfriend, not my business) and she was nice enough to plop down and start helping. Came up with the idea of actually separating out and accounting for all the little pieces such as screws and cam bolts and dowels ("How much Tupperware do you have...") and that's when we found the first major suck: there were 3 different types of screws missing. Entirely not there. So... I'm impatient and didn't want to wait a week to RMA them, and screws are cheap. Problem? It was right about 10pm. We all three left J playing WoW and hit the hardware stores. The two big chains had closed at 9. So. I called my dad to see if he's likely to have 'em; whenever you get spares of stuff like that it's handy to keep them just in case, and he does. He said it'd be a scavenger hunt since they're not all in one place, and besides that the likelihood he'd have the kinds and number I needed was slim. However, he suggested looking through to see how much of those missing ones were critical enough that they couldn't be done after everything else was put together. I did so, and... no go. Unfortunately at least two of 'em were needed before final assembly.

Sunday I bought the dozen screws needed for a whopping $2, and set to work that evening. Got about 1/3 to 1/2 way through, then went to bed. Monday I spent forever and ever finishing it (gawds did those damn drawers take forever), but... damn. More missing parts. I discovered missing the cabinet door hinges (the mounting plates were there), plus the metal adjustable-shelf thingies and their rubber sleeves, and the felt doohickeys to keep the cabinet door from slamming. Sigh. So, I called the RMA number Tuesday (yesterday) morning and they mentioned an online form on the O'Sullivan website (which I'd written off as worthless, but apparently there is slight worth, as one can fill out an RMA on missing/damaged parts, check on the RMA order, and pull up instruction docs). I filled it out for everything missing, plus mentioned the three screw types missing that I'd bought. Got an email dated at 1am today that they'd shipped, so I'll probably have 'em by the end of the week since they've only to travel ~300 miles.

As for the missing hutch, immediately after the UPS guy left, I called up the place again and, using much honey and no vinegar, pursued the whereabouts of the rest of my order. It turns out that "due to a system error" it hadn't been sent to the warehouse. He said he did so, marking it as a rush so it'll in theory get priority at the warehouse, and that I'd get a tracking number once it shipped. So in the meantime I'm keeping an eye on my CC online to make sure I'm not double charged for it, and on my email looking for the tracking info. I'm hoping my email is no longer slow so that I actually receive it before UPS freight calls to schedule pickup, so instead I can call them the day before and schedule it. I'm also going to ask if they have a delivery window of 3pm to (5 or 6) so I don't have to work from home or flex a whole mess of time.

Since I about tore my hair out before I found this... if you find yourself requiring the use of the StringTokenizer class, rather than the much more useful and simple String.split() method, and you must preserve empty fields (i.e. not only must the data be in order but the order and number of fields is static and important), for the love of all that is holy make use of the constructor that allows you to preserve the tokens. Sure, this means you have to pay attention to whether your current token is a delimiter or is a "real" token; however this is much less effort (considering the effort to loop through all the damn tokens by hand anyway) than dealing with the fallout of having all your empty tokens not preserved and flat out ignored.

Ugh.

*mutters maniacally about why we can't move all our processing over to at least 1.4*

I just had MT post my previous entry without timing out. I'm excited. I'm sure I'm jynxing it, but uh... either my host relaxed some memory or CPU restrictions, or I dunno what. But I came back to this screen to check if it'd done its thing and timed out, and it was back to telling me my entry had been saved. It's been forever since I saw that. Eee!

This is mainly a self reminder to go actually read this article but I figured this could also be useful to spread around to others. According to the /. article the rootkit detectors reviewed are F-Secure Backlight, IceSword, RKDetector, RootkitBuster, RootkitRevealer, and Rootkit Unhooker.

In spite of the fact that we weren't going to have time to sit down and play WoW until yesterday afternoon, and in spite of the fact we'd preordered our copies and the shop would hold them for 48 hours, we were dumb and waited in the cold and wind for the Burning Crusade midnight release at our local GameStop. Other than the weather it wasn't particularly crazy. The whole process went pretty smoothly. They were the only shop in a line of 'em open, so they had the line for those who'd paid in full (much shorter) set up on the sidewalk on one side of the door, and the line for those who'd preordered and only put down $5 (or those who hadn't preordered but wanted to buy a copy) on the sidewalk on the other side. Then one of the employees (who went across the main driving aisle to the row of parked cars to take a picture of all of us waiting, haha) stayed on the door and let people in: 3 from the prepaid side, then 3 from the not-prepaid side, no more than 6 in the store at a time. (They did make an exception for the whole two couples, us on the long side, another on the short side, who'd preordered two copies and were paying on the same ticket.) Everyone chatted and such, a couple people asked if they could run to the gas station a block away to piss and she allowed it, requiring that they be allowed back to their original spots in line, and there weren't any conflicts. We were home at about 12:30, 12:45 or so.

I had to go through the whole four disc install twice, because right at the end it complained it couldn't rename the realm list file. ??? That kinda sucked. I reran the 2.0 to 2.0.3 patch I already had, then let it start downloading the 2.0.3-2.0.5 because I only had the 2nd half of it (for some reason the middle patch didn't save itself anywhere at all like all the others did). Then I went to bed. Next morning I OK'd out of the download and patch dialogues left over and that was that. J got patched first (got his started a few minutes sooner, only had to do it once, etc.) and had logged out right by the dark portal so he went in and explored a little. We didn't get to sleep till after 2am so of course after I shut off my alarm next thing I knew it was 10 minutes before I normally like to leave. My body will not allow me to get less than a certain amount of sleep, apparently.

J and I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening playing in Outland, getting quests done. I've already replaced my helm, my chest piece, and one of my daggers with quest rewards. (Not having gotten to gear myself up in full tier 2 or better, or even much tier 1 for that matter, they were already pretty decent upgrades.) I'm a little behind J because he'd done the "talk to this person, now talk to that person" quests the night before, plus he has his epic kitty to run to places faster, hehe. But, I'm only a few quests behind and we have a couple that neither of us have done because he didn't see 'em initially. He thinks at the rate he'll have time to play, he'll probably hit 70 in around 3 weeks. I'm hoping to keep up with him on that.

Of course, the 1000 person queue we faced when returned from errands and dinner was about a 45 minute deterrent...

Speaking of errands, we have our new phones. I was finally able to get a contract to the company Verizon rep late last week, and when J got home yeterday there was a "we missed you" FedEx doorhanger on the knob. We were already going to get dinner vaguely in that direction anyway (Sweet Tomatoes; J was viciously jonesing for veggies, and that's about as healthy and veggiefied restaurant as they get, least around here) so we stopped afterwards at their station to pick 'em up. We haven't activated 'em yet, but if I find out that while I'm still at work that we don't have to do so at the same time I'm gonna do so while I'm still here (brought the paperwork info I'd need with me). J got an LG chocolate and I got an LG VX8300, free! Technically his was $50 but we're supposed to get a mail-in rebate for it (it didn't come in the shipment, so I'll need to watch the mail or check the next bill for it). I can't wait to figure out all the bits on how to make mine work (and, if such information exists, how to hack mine to (a) allow me to put WMAs on that don't come direct from a CD and (b) allow me to put my own ringtones on instead of having to buy 'em with VCast).

So I got to sleep earlier last night than any other night this week, but then the phone rang at 4:30 in the goddamn morning. One of our jobs had failed with an error code that shouldn't be generally possible, but I just said to go ahead and mark it success and quit calling about it. Before we hung up he said another one of ours failed, this time with a "normal" error code. Of course, it was a job that I should've just said "mark success, I'll look at it in the morning". Instead my fogged mind decided I had to look at that one and I got up to look at it only to find that it was, indeed, a data issue, i.e. garbage in garbage out. I was up for an hour doing this, because of course the laptop has to boot, then I have to tunnel in, and after all was said and done I went ahead and emailed the other two who got the failure email our own processing sent to let 'em know what I found so they didn't have to duplicate my work, and had to call back the support folks to let 'em know what to do with that one.

Bleh, I say. Double bleh, because that meant I lay down and realized it was 15 minutes till my alarm. >.< So I gave myself another 15 minutes, but because my nose had started itching (dry air? mild cold? no idea) I fell asleep about 5 minutes or less before it went off. Of course, then I managed to turn "I'll just lie here dozing for 15 minutes" into dozing for 10, then falling asleep for real till 7am. Which is when I normally start. Uh, oops? I was only 40 minutes late though, and I did spend an hour in the wee hours working, so I'ma get out of here a little early anyway unless some unforeseen hell-breaks-loose event happens that dictates otherwise.

I'll just be over here, curled up under my cube, if anyone's *yawn* looking for me...

*zzzzzzz*

Take a looksee at this poor cute baby's name. At least there's a chance of the source of the name being somewhat obscure during that child's own generation... at least so long as Konami moves on to other things in the next 5-8 years. >.>

I had from Friday the 22nd thru yesterday off work, which was awesome. Friday was pretty gorgeous so I used the early afternoon to get all the mountain bell bulbs and remaining iris bulbs in the ground along the side of the house. After that we went to J's grandma's to visit with her, his mom & siblings, and his aunt, uncle, & cousins from WI. That was fun. We went back home that night, then Saturday afternoon we went out to his parents' and stayed there thru Christmas afternoon. Lots of food, fun, and family visiting was had. His parents put us up in a motel down the road (she reserved it so that either we could use it, or J's sis & bro-in-law & baby boy could use it, or split the nights; we ended up using it both nights), so they weren't quite so crowded. (Tried to give them some money for it, but of course nothing doing, hehe).

Saturday afternoon we came home, emptied the car of our suitcase and Christmas presents, then loaded the car with presents for my parents, J called up some friends to say "Merry Christmas", then we headed to my parents' for dinner with them & my grandfather. That was also fun; we of course spent some time (mostly me, J, and my dad) tossing balled up wrapping paper at each other. My aunt & uncle in NC called and we talked to them for a while. My dad put my back in, both my lower back (I was startled in front of the motel mirror Christmas morning to see that the vertical line of my body was most definitely not centered on the horizontal line of my hips O.o) and a spot between my shoulder blades that was out that I didn't know about. The second one was easy, but the lower back (connection of the rest of the back to the sacrum) was tetchy but he got it. I also asked for advice on what I might be doing wrong that it keeps going out, and now I finally know that (a) it's my fault, which (b) means I can do something about it. We weighed my purse, hehe, and it's bewteen 7 & 8 pounds. That I was carrying only on my left shoulder. So now I'm trying to carry it a lot more on my right shoulder, and I have suggestions for retraining my back muscles back to square, so they don't keep pushing my low back out of alignment. Yay!

A good chunk of the rest of the week has been spent pretty lazily. Tuesday my sister came in town, so we went over to my parents' after dinner to hang out with her as well as my parents and grandfather. That was fun. Then Wednesday J and I shopped at Office Depot for new desk chairs. We picked 'em (ended up picking the same ones) but they didn't have any so they scheduled (free!) delivery for Thursday. Thursday we went out with my dad and sister (mom didn't want to risk it, on account of not messing up her eyes due to some issues she's had recently) to Grand Prix Speedways for their "Fastest Lunch in Town" (lunch + a race for $20/person). That was so much fun, I'll definitely have to go back. Probably not for a while; while the cars say no more than 6'8" and... 280? pounds (can't remember) J is significantly below both limits and found it not entirely comfortable. It's an indoor top of the line asphalt track, and those things really move. It took me a while to figure out wtf I was doing, and I managed to come in dead last of the 9 of us that had that race time. No biggie though, I knew I probably would. I'll do better next time.

I've generally spent evenings in WoW going to battlegrounds and farting around farming bits of things in between. Aside from the horde premades that owned the crap out of us, and a few goddamn cheaters (protip: if the alliance has a hunter, and they see a humanoid blip on their minimap outside their flag room, when the gates haven't even opened yet, they know you're hacking to get out of the base before the gates open, and you will be reported) it was fun. Even ones where we didn't win were still fun, if it was reasonably close. I tell you what, I hate being piled on 3 or 4 to 1, but then I figure at least in WSG that's kinda good 'cause that means they aren't free to smack the flag carrier around. The GoG group late last Saturday night was ubar fun though, in spite of one of the groups we went against being cheating shits. One of those cheating shits (FYI name's Pwnsauce for any of you CCers out there who didn't already know) showed up again last night, so apparently he hasn't been banned yet. I reported the bitch though; hopefully he gets reported enough his account will be killed.

Oh, and our wonderful hunter class leader Zenyara said I could get to sign up for a BWL run before the expansion comes out (probably won't be doing any runs at all after that, at least not for a while, and I haven't been yet) if I get my hunter quest done. Eeeee! Of course, I hadn't started it yet. J (Bushi) did his best to help me with the one in Un'Goro last night. I almost had the dumb bitch after a few frustrating attempts, until some dick-for-brains level 50 tauren druid who either just crawled out from under a rock (seriously, how long has the quest been available and talked about?) or just had a malicious streak + a death wish intervened. Decided to "help" by attacking her. >.< Yeah. He took us to The Cleaners, literally. Or called them to deliver, at least. The "best" part? His attack fucking missed. Gee, a level 50 wouldn't be able to hit a level 60 elite? Who woulda thunk it? *facepalm* Totally not enough to assauge my anger simply that he got one-shot. So pissed. I'ma try again tonight I guess. Maybe snag me a priest buff beforehand if I can get such. I'm just as pissed that he wasted a greater nature protection potion (kinda pricy to make) as that I didn't get to kill her; at least had I not killed her I coulda feigned death and still had all ma buffs and tried again. I was so mad, and it was almost 1am, that I just said fuckit. Anywho, my goal is to kill all four demons by the end of the week, preferably sooner. Just depends on when I have time to get on. If I'm lucky I can go kill one (dunno which yet) right after Ony Wednesday night, since I'll be all superbuffed (lotta those buffs last 30-60 min, and even after loot distro we're done with her in like 15-20 minutes, tops).

Sunday we ended up hosting New Year's for the "UMSL crowd" (friends made thru J's time spent getting his teaching cert there). Heh, that was quite fun. Some of it, though not wild by most folks' standards, is kinda "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" enough I ain't tellin' here. No, no sexy sentual sex in public, blah blah blah, and no ER visits. Definitely a lotta fun. Blazing Saddles & Spaceballs provided the background noise; various wines, premade bottles of tasty fruity drinks, and a little beer & champagne provided the boozing. All in all it was a good night that lasted till, I dunno, 2am? 3am? I can't remember (didn't look at the clock when the last people left, not 'cause I was plastered ).

For the weekend leading up to Christmas I didn't have much internet access, since J and I spent most of it not at home (woo family ). Then I just kinda... mostly checked my web comics, played WoW, and didn't use it for much else except to check the weather.

The time off was much appreciated and of course too short (so jealous of J having off till next week, hehe). 2006 was, I suppose, a largely good year for J and I, rough on J's mom, rather less rough on my mom though not totally smooth, and largely OK for the rest of our family. Others, particularly on my friends list, had a far rockier year for themselves and their loved ones, and to all of you I'm wishing a much better 2007.

So there's that year-in-review LJ meme all the cool kids are doing, so I figured I'd do it too.

Two of 'em have the title in brackets 'cause it's a lead-in that makes the (rest of the) sentence make more sense.

• January: [So I didn't die or anything...] ... rather, I mostly fell off the internet, for lack of a better phrase.
• February: Why didn't I find these sooner?
• March: I'm starting not to need the scale to tell me I'm losing weight.
• April: Impreza Outback Sport. 173 horse power, manual transmission, more cargo space than the Impreza 2.5i sedan at the same length.
• May: Friday night was nice.
• June: [So I seem to have misplaced my brain] Or got too many neurons crossed (hehe, I only meant to cross a few forKas getting the job he interviewed for, not all of 'em ).
• July: They delivered our camera at about noon today!
• August: Meatloaf cake, with ketchup glaze and mashed potato frosting.
• September: Just haven't felt like writing.
• October: I dug up J's CTProfile for his druid on CC.
• November: Why is it so hard to understand, that we have a process for getting support for our system?
• December: What a way to start December.

As for the more... materialistic side of the holidays, gotta admit I got a decent haul. Besides the chocolatey noshes, there also was

• a bunch of books, two from J's parents, the rest from J; specifically: Going Postal, Night Watch, The Fifth Elephant, and The Truth, all by Terry Pratchett; Cell and Lisey's Story, by Stephen King; and American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
• navy blue long sleeve PJ set, navy blue vertical stripe short sleeve PJ set, and royal blue sleep shirt, all in satin from J
• Get Fuzzy desk calendar from J
• biscuit cutters from J's baby sis
• cute little boy-short + bratop PJs with binary all over the bottoms and "Byte Me" on the top from my sis
• a coffeemaker and small can o' Maxwell House from J's bro (I can no longer deny my near-daily mug o' coffee at work, haha; I can officially say that I believe Maxwell House to be far, far better than Folgers)
• wolf calendar from my parents
• a check from my grandfather for a sum large enough to make me glad I was sitting down when I opened the card (the twin of which J received) which we put in the bank, some of which to be spent on the amount we put on the CC for our two new desk chairs to relieve our backs and bad posture
• stemless wine glasses, two sets of four, with nifty etched glass patterns, from J's grandma
• The Space Tourist's Handbook and awesome black metal (wrought iron?) cat bookends from my FO secret santa

and more as I regain my brain from the 2 hours or so of sleep I got last night, or when I get home and can actually fill the rest in. I swear it isn't because any of it was "meh" or whatever, I just really am that clueless today. It amazes me to think I actually remembered the coffeemaker, filters, and coffee to bring to work today, and the only reason I "remembered" my badge was that it was in my purse already; didn't think of it once till I was getting stuff out of my car in the parking lot.

Time for us all to get lunch, so I'll write about my holiday doings at some point after that.