Random Rants: --... ---.. Don't expect others to convert it for you.

[Mouthwash]

I had a surgery to remove a cyst on my behind yesterday. Wasn't sure why I needed general anesthesia for it. Imagine my surprise this morning after pulling a five foot long bandage out of the area and seeing an inch-wide gaping hole, with the skin, muscle, and fat clearly visible (apparently because closing it up might have produced another infection). Now, my dad has to put bandages inside the hole several times a day until it heals. I'm also in constant terror with every number two that I take that stool is going to get inside, which has not been helped by me also developing constipation.

This is going to be a bad week. EDIT: Bit too explicit, sorry.

 

[AdamCrock]

Rant : I'm still at work

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

A former friend of mine is mad at me because...I showed a portion of an email where he was talking about a mutual friend to that mutual friend. Even though he's done the exact same thing in the past. And posted private chatlogs on a public website. And the main reason he dropped me as a friend is because I was "too depressing" following my diagnosis with YOPD. Yeah, I think I can find better friends than that.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I was supposed to do stuff today. The power of procrastination is overwhelming me. Energy levels critically low. Send help.

Go to the Cookies and Treats thread. Mary made a cake. It's chocolate.

 

[H4run]

A former friend of mine is mad at me because...

Dish him, if he tell that to you then he has a foul mouth, you dont need toxic people as friend, better get rid of him now than later, you save yourselves that way.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I slept maybe 3 hours total last night, about an hour between 1 and 2 am and then a couple hours between 4 and 6 am. Those were the lulls in some very loud thunderstorms. I was awakened the last time by a loud alert on my phone warning of possible tornadoes and flash floods.

I got a text message at 7:22 am saying that work with Habitat had been cancelled due to the weather. After making mom's breakfast I tried to go back to bed, but then got a call on my cell phone saying that a few volunteers had not gotten the cancellation message in time and were already at the site so I had to drive an hour in torrential rains to come supervise them painting inside.

My boss left early because a large pine tree from his yard fell down and was blocking one of the 2 roads leading out of his subdivision.

The weather was not actually so bad after 11am, but it was still wet enough outside that I slipped and fell 3 times.

One of those times I landed with my almost full weight on my cell phone. Its screen already had a few cracks from when I dropped it a couple months ago, but is now essentially unusable. About a third of the area is now black, with a few random lines and small boxes of random colors. Worse yet, the whole screen is unresponsive. Sometimes I can manage to get the number pad to show up for entering the pin number to unlock the phone, but in the rare instances where pushing those numbers does anything the numbers that it entered were nothing close to what I try to press.

I was able to receive a few calls because I had a Bluetooth headset paired with the device and could use the button on it to pick up, but I have no way to call out now.

On the way home traffic was terrible because half of the traffics lights in town had no power. A major utility pole had been knocked over by high winds. When I got home I learned that the electricity at our house had been out for hours, but was restored just in time for me to cook dinner. The landline phone/internet had also been out but was ok by the time I walked inside.


My current broken smartphone is a prepaid TracFone LG Fiesta 2. I bought a full year card for it last year, so I have 254.54 mb of data, 4298 texts, and 603 minutes remaining which should last through July without buying more . That can be transferred to a new phone if and only if I stick with TracFone.

I stopped at local Kroger to pick up mom's prescriptions on the way home and almost bought a TracFone LG Rebel 4 which is on sale for $50 there. However, it says it can only use a microSD card up to 32 gb. My only microSD is the 128 gb card currently inside my old phone, which contains almost 60 gb of data (some photos and app data, but mostly audiobooks and podcasts.)

It looks like the only TracFone that can use a 128+ gb SD card and which I could pick up at any stores near here is an $80 Samsung Galaxy J3 Orbit. Its specs are slightly worse than my old phone, basically the same as the Rebel 4 except for the SD card size limit. I'm not sure if I would rather settle for that or order one online and have to wait for it to be delivered.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

What a poopy day @MagisterCultuum .

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Speaking of poopy, my mom just woke me up because she was distraught that her TV had turned itself off in another power outage. Once I turned it back on she revealed she had filled up another diaper and gotten poop on her sheets. Most was on a top sheet that had gotten below her, but a little bit on the bottom sheet. We are all out of the protective pads we like to put below her. I put a towel under her for now.

 

[The_J]

Oh man, your life is really terrible .


My mattress is so bad now, that I regularly wake up with back pain. So today,but it's slowly going away. I'd totally buy a new one, but I'll leave the country in a few months, so I really don't feel like doing that

 

[hobbsyoyo]

My mattress is so bad now, that I regularly wake up with back pain. So today,but it's slowly going away. I'd totally buy a new one, but I'll leave the country in a few months, so I really don't feel like doing that

They sell relatively inexpensive mattress toppers made out of memory foam and various other materials. A few years back I got a ~$100 one that is around 13 cm thick to transform my terribly hard hand-me-down mattress into a soft mattress. If you don't like soft mattress then I guess you're out of luck but if you like that then you can 'repair' your crappy one with a topper that is cheap enough you can toss if you move and can't bring it along. They roll up somewhat compactly too.

I also don't know about the mattress market in the EU, but in the US there is a bit of a start up scene where mattress manufacturers are selling direct-mail mattresses relatively cheaply. They have generous return policies and are typically half to a third the cost of traditional companies.

 

[Synobun]

Obligatory Tuft & Needle shill here.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I went ahead and bought the TracFone Rebel 4 from BestBuy, where it was on sale for $40 instead of $50. The sales associate agreed with some things I read online that said that an SD card size limit of 32 GB is usually meaningless. I did have to reformat the card (after backing up the data) to make it work in the new phone, but it was instantly recognized and there seems to be no barrier to using the full space. (There was no need to make smaller partitions like recommended in posts from 5+ years ago.)

A few times today my old phone became responsive enough that barely touching the screen caused it to try to place emergency calls to random numbers. I took the SIM card out so it would not waste my minutes.

It was easy to activate the new phone and get all of my apps set up the way before. Really the only thing I lost was the notes written in my old phone's memo app. I guess those were all saved to the internal memory rather than the SD card or google cloud. (I set up the new notes app to sync to my google account so I can can have backups.) There were a lot of notes I wish I still had, but nothing I urgently need.

I'm still not used to how strong the haptic feedback is on the new phone. It vibrates a lot more strongly than the old one.

I had trouble getting my new phone to recognize my BlueTooth earbuds, because they were still paired with my old phone. I could not unpair them with the screen being unresponsive. When I search for advice online most post I found said to wait until the phone battery dies. Fortunately I found that I could also unpair them by going for a walk down our driveway while leaving the old phone at home so it would get out of range. (The old phone has a non-removable battery that lasts for almost 2 days even with heavy use and a lot longer when not in use. I suspect my biggest complaint about the new phone will be a shorter battery life, as it lost as much charge in 2 hours as my old phone would loose in 12 when it was new.)


The new phone said I had to restart it several times to try to install updates which did not seem to be working at first. After I told it to skip the first 2 updates and install the 3rd one first, then restarted and then installed the other two, it now seems to be fully up to date. (TracFone does not offer any OS updates and my old Samsung phones could never get them from the manufacturer either. One reason I liked my Fiesta 2 better is that LG does provide security patches for their TracFones. My new LG Rebel 4 now has the March 2019 security patch for Android 8.1.)

---

I thought we were planning to visit my sister and niece at their church for Easter tomorrow. Mom was very much looking forward to it. I called my sister on my new phone today, both to test it and to confirm our plans. She assumed that we would not be coming because their choir changed their plans and she would no longer be singing the solo she was supposed to when she first invited us a couple weeks ago. Mom really wanted to come anyway, but she said that she does not think her husband wants to spend any time around us and that he would prefer we only visit her during the week while he is away at work. (I still suspect that theirs is not a healthy relationship.)

Mom was very upset by that news and was crying on and off for the rest of the day.

A couple hours ago dad said that mom's legs went out under her. Dad was close enough to catch her and stop her from falling to the floor, but struggled a bit to hold her up until I could come downstairs to help. By the time I got there to help hold her she seemed strong enough that I think she could have managed to stand on her own, but her balance was worse than usual as we walked her back to the couch to sit down. I worried that she could be having another ministroke, although her vision seemed ok and her aphasia was no worse than the recent baseline. She insisted there was no reason to call a doctor or visit the ER for something so minor. I would have insisted we at least leave a message with her neurologist, were it not for the fact that he would not likely check it on a holiday weekend and that we have an appointment with him on Monday morning anyway.

She seemed completely back to normal when we put her to bed, but dad was concerned enough about the weakness that he is thinking she might be better off skipping church altogether tomorrow.

 

[Commodore]

@Commodore What industry are you in?

The company I work for is a global e-commerce company. They handle credit card transactions and stuff like that. The way it was explained to me is that every time you use your credit or debit card, they are the ones handling the transaction between you, the store, and your financial institution.

What I do for them though is manage their global physical security operations. Basically, I oversee all their facilities worldwide and make sure there is no unauthorized access to their facilities and that the security guards at those facilities respond appropriately when there is unauthorized access.

 

[Cutlass]

Since no one wanted to cook an Easter family dinner, but did want to get together, my sis decided that we should all go to a restaurant. Most of which will be closed for the holiday. So her idea is to go to this Jewish deli which also has sit down meals. Only this place is popular, and has a long wait all of the time. So on a day when most other places are closed I'm expecting more than an hour to get a table.

 

[Cutlass]

forum burp-dbl post

 

[cardgame]

The left cable to my headphones just... fell out

and by fell out, I mean it was cut into two pieces, it's flipping severed. It has been under zero pressure from me, I've taken good care of it. It was lying on the floor, where I very gently placed it the last time everything was in working order a few hours ago. Cut right underneath the socket where it plugs into the drivers. Flipping unbelievable.

 

[cardgame]

the aglet of the cord was cutting into it by sheer clamp pressure

Has to be the culprit. Excusable after enough age, perhaps, if it excusable at all, but these are still new... just under 6 months.

 

[Broken_Erika]

That's why i like my headphones, 1 oversized cord into the left side. Although the like 20 foot cord does get a little annoying at times....

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I have some Sony headphones where they replaced the physical buttons with touch controls. It's always been a pain in the ass to use but the rewind gesture stopped working entirely this week. I never would have thought about returning them had @Silurian not said suggested it. They are around a year old, I'll have to look up how long the warranty is good for

 

[The_J]

They sell relatively inexpensive mattress toppers made out of memory foam and various other materials. A few years back I got a ~$100 one that is around 13 cm thick to transform my terribly hard hand-me-down mattress into a soft mattress. If you don't like soft mattress then I guess you're out of luck but if you like that then you can 'repair' your crappy one with a topper that is cheap enough you can toss if you move and can't bring it along. They roll up somewhat compactly too.

Well... I actually have 2 hard matresses standing here. A topper might be able to fix it. Not sure if I want to spend 100€ for only 3 months though. On the other hand...my back is precious .

 

[Takhisis]

A few times today my old phone became responsive enough that barely touching the screen caused it to try to place emergency calls to random numbers. I took the SIM card out so it would not waste my minutes.

I sometimes feel that your life is almost a really dark piece of black comedy. And, in my view at least, being the protagonist of a comedy sucks.

The company I work for is a global e-commerce company. They handle credit card transactions and stuff like that. The way it was explained to me is that every time you use your credit or debit card, they are the ones handling the transaction between you, the store, and your financial institution.

What I do for them though is manage their global physical security operations. Basically, I oversee all their facilities worldwide and make sure there is no unauthorized access to their facilities and that the security guards at those facilities respond appropriately when there is unauthorized access.

Sounds like you've gone up in the world.