Just Like (a) Human

I don’t really feel like posting this, but I need to get back into the once-a-week or better habit of blogging my thoughts. So, I present to you a few tidbits of what’s going on in my life.

• I saw the doctor on Friday, missing a day of work. The doctor states that I have another throat infection, AND that I have Acid Reflux. No connection was noted between the two. I now take a prescription for the stomach acid I have. It makes sense, too — the food they feed us here isn’t all that healthy, as it is laden with calories.
• Speaking of calories, I’m steadily gaining weight. It’s a combination of being stressed out — which leads to me drinking sodas steadily again — and not smoking. I stopped smoking because I can’t find a cigarette that is as satisfying as my old brand of clove cigarettes (Sampoerna). Additionally, I don’t get enough exercise, and I know it.
• Moving on to exercise, I’d like to get some more of it. I really ought to go to the YMCA up the street from here and get a membership there. I should also replace my bicycle, since this one’s needing some repairs that are probably going to be expensive…
• Onto expensive things: I’m falling behind on my budget and plan to get out of here, simply by stopping to eliminate old debts. I’m working on getting rid of my student loan’s debt by just paying on it in lumps. I refuse to deal with this company in the way they ask, because I think they’re trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Why would I need to tell them the names, addresses, and phone numbers of three people that really know me, just to pay the debt?
• I made a comment via Twitter the other day, mentioning things afflicting me: “Acid reflux, Carpal tunnel, hypertension… What’s next? A thyroid disorder!?” — these are things listed not only in alphabetical order, but also in order of most recent afflicted by, to least recently. A thyroid disorder would be what I expect next, though it’s going to break the chronological order, most likely.
• Oh, and speaking of the thyroid, the Doctor took blood samples Friday, and asked me to come back in two weeks.
• The doctor also wanted to set me up to see a psychologist or psychiatrist, which I think might help with some of the depression I face. There, now it’s in the world’s eye, and I can’t deny it any more.

There… now that this is done, I’m going to go eat breakfast. Yes. At 4 pm.
Ciao, and Chow.

Just a quick post here before I call my taxi today.

I just found out that if I miss the 8 am bus to work, and try to catch the 8:30, I run the risk of really not getting there on time. Since the 8 am route causes me to catch two buses (#6, #37), and would get me there at about 8:45, it’d be fine. However, the 8:30 would require three buses (#6, #15, #37), and it is supposed to put me at the bus stop at 9:23 AM.

Any desync between the three buses could mean I won’t get there on time. The #37 is the one that likes to run at whatever time it feels like, it seems, so I’m just gonna call the taxi in a minute here, and head downstairs.

I must admit that I’ve sort of been avoiding HDTV for a while. It’s not that I didn’t want the high definition displays, but rather that I hadn’t seen any at affordable prices. I didn’t want to spend $1000, $2000, or more just for something I watch for a few hours a week!

I was sorely tempted by HDTV, though, after walking by an HDTV kiosk in a local mall several months back, and glimpsing one out of the corner of my eye. I stopped, turned, and walked up to this display, just marveling at the near-lifelike detail, my eyes opened to just how inferior SDTV (that’s Standard Definition TV) is to the new hardware.

While looking around this week to see what I can window shop for (I have a small list of things I would like to put in an apartment, once I get one), I ran across Second Act’s “Great Deal of the Day“. While the televisions shown on the Great Deal of the Day page are a bit pricey, which means it doesn’t meet my current budget need, the rest of the site has some really good prices and deep cuts on HDTVs.

One thing I noticed is that they do something I already do: They get open boxed, overstocked, closeouts, or refurbished televisions to resell to the public. I actually like refurbs, since they are generally retested by their manufacturer, so that the product meets their standards (and thusly doesn’t embarass the company by failing, I’d dare say).

Part of my head’s stuck in the 80’s and 90’s, so I’m comfortable with spending about $300 on a television that will last several years and isn’t a tiny 13″ box. That’s why I was surprised to see a Toshiba 26″ HDTV for a mere $289.99 plus shipping on their site. It gives me something to consider, and somewhere to watch for decent deals for later.

I’ve come to a conclusion: I need a few more things to read during the week.
On a typical weekday, I can open my newsreader, read everything there, comment on a few interesting things, and then do my job as expected. There’s usually not much in my newsreader, either.

I blame LiveJournal, and the few friends I had there, since they have since “stopped posting”. (For the uninitiated, to “stop posting” on LiveJournal is to set the journal to Friends Only, which basically turns your feed into a hundred bytes of useless mush. You’re still posting, but most web based newsreaders can’t see protected posts, as far as I can tell.)

So yeah, if there’s something that I should be reading, and it has a news feed, let me know, right?

(p.s.: on the weekend, I read on one or the other day, and get done just as fast. I just did that, actually.)

I got around to checking on my Google PageRank today, mostly at the prompting of an entry Deb made today.

Sure enough, Google has dinged me for the second time, knocking my decent five points of PageRank down into the can, leaving me with two points. I’m not entirely certain why I keep taking a ding here, but it’s fairly annoying to have built up the rank naturally, and then watch it plummet.

It might be that there are people still linking to this site as “ESL”, thereby diluting any potential earning of points there. For those who are reading and are just using “ESL” as a link to me… I kindly ask you to stop that, and please update with the (much easier to say) current name of this weblog: Just Like (a) Human.

Either way, I now have to wait until Google decides to reroll my pagerank.

On an aside, I stopped caring about Alexa, since that score just keeps plunging through the basement.

I spend a lot of time sending Tweets of thoughts I’d like to blog, and then when I get to a terminal, I forget to convert those thoughts to a full-fledged entry.

I’ve meant to emphasize what I mean about wanting a No Single Occupant Vehicle day here in Tampa, after seeing an article in the local TBT* about a No Vehicle Day overseas.

I mean to mention my arguably terrible sleeping schedule, where I’m awake for up to 21 hours a day, and limping along with three hours of sleep.

I’ve even meant to kvetch about this one stretch of Martin Luther King Blvd. here, and how I refuse to cycle it unless absolutely necessary, simply because of how wild the traffic is in that stretch, combined with the lack of a sidewalk to stay away from the traffic.

Maybe I’ll make some time to do that, eventually.

Since I started working with these Dell machines, I’ve come to a normal conclusion:
I want to build my own machine.

My biggest reason for wanting to do that is simple: I want the hands-on time with this new hardware that everyone’s using, since I’ve always lagged behind by several years on getting the up to date materials. The problem with that lag is, I’m not sure what’s on the market now, and if it’s any good. There’s a lot of choices, a lot of unsorted information, and a lot to sift through.

While reading my email, I ran across some processor reviews, though. It showed me a lot about some of the information floating on the ‘net, regarding new processors. The great part is, it pulls information from several sources, including popular online shopping sites like NewEgg and Amazon, and puts it right there for me to read.

The greatest part is, this formula is also followed for the motherboard reviews at the same site. I can now use a simple interface, drill down to what I’m looking for, and get the data I want with very little problems whatsoever.

Looks like this one’s getting added to my local bookmarks…