Blood pressure
Two weeks ago I got up and went to key desk. I worked all day, read some played a few video games and went to bed. I ate when I was hungry. I had some headaches, but nothing huge.
Now I’m in bed. When I got up earlier, I did something wrong. Not surE what. But I had a tiny TIA as a result.
Which, according to the hospital’s count, makes ten.
Apparently, I’m stressed.
After two cat-scans, an MRI, and about thirty vials of blood, they found that I am very healthy and it’s confusing because I’m so big. I should have all sorts of things wrong with me that I don’t.
What I do have is dangerously high blood pressure. Like, scary high. Because I’m stressed.
So now I’m blogging on my ipad, on my bed, because I’m afraid to sit at my desk. I did earlier and that turned out to be a very bad idea. Even typing this is giving me a headache.
It really is amazing how fast everything can just turn on it’s ear.
I was FINE two weeks ago.
Read MoreGaming Prejudice
OK, I get it. Easter and Christmas are big deals. You guys celebrate them loudly enough to make that very, very clear. And I get special events in all my facebook games for them, and for Valentine’s day and St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s and Fourth of July. Awesome, and I enjoy them.
Here’s the thing. We just passed a holiday with no gaming fanfare at all, and I’m so damned used to it that it didn’t even occur to me to complain.
Yesterday was Rosh Hashanna. The Jewish New Year. Where the FUCK was my little Jewish guy in Castleville with his yamaka and peyos, walking around with a Torah and giving me quests to do with apples and honey?!
Dude, you’d think I’d get that, considering the Chinese New Year gets events, too, with the dragons and the lanterns. Where’s my stereotyped event?!
I know, it’s a ridiculous question. But that’s what bothers me – it’s a ridiculous question. The very idea of folding the Jewish holidays in is absurd, and that in itself is a problem. If we hit Easter and Christmas, I want Rosh Hashanna and Passover. I don’t think this is too much to ask. Just a few matzos and some apples and honey aren’t exactly hard to pull together for a game. You could do it if you really tried.
Read MoreMY EMAIL IS CLOSED
No, I did not get the email you sent me this morning. If it was sent after 10am, I already checked my email for the morning and closed the tab.
No, I do not sit there with the tab open all day and perpetually check my email.
No, I do not use a program to alert me whenever a new email message comes in.
No, I do not check my email on my phone.
No, I do not check my email on my iPad. As a matter of fact, my iPad has an unrelated email address attached to it so I can send stuff easily without having to sift through my entire inbox every damned time I turn the tablet ON.
I’m going to say this once and I really need everyone to pay attention: I check my email a max of three times a day. Once at around 10am to get last night’s and first thing in the morning’s emails. Once at around 3-4pm to get the rest of the day’s emails. And once, MAYBE, late at night, and I stress the MAYBE, to see if anything interesting came in.
That’s. It. It’s not an instant message service. It’s not a phone. You cannot immediately get my attention with email, and I do not appreciate the FIFTEEN EMAILS in my “priority” section demanding to know why I didn’t respond now, now, now, now!
If you need me that badly, pick up the freakin’ phone or text me. Or hell, IM me. I’m on Gtalk pretty much all the time – if I’m at the computer, I’ll answer you. No, I don’t get my IMs on my phone either. I’m 30, not 60, but I do have this thing about getting stuff DONE, and constant connectivity doesn’t exactly help. Read Lifehacker sometime.
I will answer your email when I flippin’ get it, ok? No, that’ s not likely to be right when you send it. I swear to GOD, you won’t die if I don’t answer right this very second.
Otherwise, pretend it’s 1994, and you need something from me. There’s this cool invention called a telephone. Still works great, even in this modern age. Use it. Your fingers aren’t broken, you can dial.
Otherwise, how the hell’d you type so damned much?!
Read MoreOMG OMG OMG! A REAL POST!
I’ve been spammin’ links left and right because I’ve been bumming around my research crap for a while now. Eh. Don’t click the miscl category, you’ll never hafta see the stuff.
But it’s hot today, and I can’t look at another lawyer site. I just can’t. Not today. Not another stumble-upon link, not another…I can’t do it. Not today.
SOOOOOO…
I thought I’d babble about real stuff for a bit.
As some of you know, Tyger and I are starting to look at moving out of California. Financially speaking, we don’t really have much choice. It’s more expensive to live in this state than it is to live in NYC, even, looking at some of the apartment prices. But that said…
I love snow, I really do. But anywhere that’s really within my comfort and price range is too far from a city to not own a car. And owning a CAR where it snows is a pain in the ass. I’d really like to move to Boston ITSELF, and yes, there’s some nice apartments there, but moving twenty minutes outside the city lowers the rent by a ridiculous ammount.
Some would point out that the cost of gas and upkeep for a car balances that out, and yeah, they’d mostly be right. But I can choose to garage a car for a bit and not drive it when times are tight, and I kinda can’t go to a landlord and say “Sorry, can’t afford to pay that extra bit of rent this month.” They’re unlikely to accept that with an open mind.
Of course, even if I’m not driving the car, I need to have insurance and that costs a monthly bill. However, again if I’m not driving it right then, I CAN let the insurance lapse and pick it back up BEFORE I go back to driving the vehicle.
It’s a real dilemma. I’d really rather be in a city. I like being in a city. But Tyger kinda needs a bit more rural for that. There’s a nice halfway point up by Seattle, but…well, Seattle. It rains nine months of the year in Seattle. And again, car. Would need one. To get TO Seattle, as the place we’re looking at is not exactly within walking distance.
But then the other place we’re looking at is technically in Rhode Island, though it’s advertised as the Boston area…well, it’s a tightly packed area, so that makes sense. However, again, not close enough to not need a car.
*sighs*
So, either way, we’ll be taking some road trips to check out the different places we’re thinking of moving. At the moment our basic criteria are that we have some kind of coastline near us, be it ocean or Great Lake – because of course, always in the running is Skokie, Ill, where most of my family still lives. We’d have a HUGE support network there, and lots of my father’s friends have offered to help us find a place if we move there – one in particular offered us his TARDIS, but I’m pretty sure it’s non-functional at the moment. Plus, my great aunt and I are pretty close, and she adores Tyger – we stayed there during our trip last year – and would LOVE to have us close by.
So we’ll be lookin’ round.
Of course, anywhere we move has to also have a Jamba Juice. That’s just a given, right? And do NOT tell me there’s a “Juice it Up”. If you think that’s the same thing you have never been inside either one or the other. They are NOT the same. And also ew.
Bleh. This is going to be a long road.
Read MoreI read too fast.
Seriously. I got so used to reading three and four-hundred word files in a day or so that faced with a slightly-longer-than-average novel, I ate through it in a single day.
Here’s the thing: Ender’s Game was daunting to me in file form at one point, so I held off. I bought the ebook because everyone said it was a great book, but I never got around to reading it.
So when I pulled it up on a whim last night, I thought “I’ll read this over the next week” because I like to have something up in the background to read.
Except that lately, I’ve been reading through SERIES’ of files, and it didn’t occur to me that the fact that I had to change files two and three times a day meant I was reading faster and faster.
I started really READING at around two pm. At nine, I was done. This is with normal background reading while I did other stuff through the day.
I wanted to have something to read over the week.
I did not meet this goal.
Read MoreEh…hmmmmmm…
So I use Spotify free most of the time. I’ve paid for a month here and there, but mostly it’s just not in the budget right now, and that’s fine. I don’t mind the ads.
HOWEVER! That does mean that I get to see how hard Microsoft is pushing with their new ad campaign. Use IE! It’s SHINEY! NEW! Use Bing Search! It’s a social search!
…it’s the second one we’re talking about here today.
I use Google. I use a lot of Google products in fact. I have an Android phone, I use Chrome to browse, I use Google for search, Gmail, Gtalk, G+, Google Hangout, Google Calendar. Seriously, I loves me some Google. And therefore, I know something that Microsoft is apparently unaware of.
Google was doing the social search thing like six months ago, folks. The instant you signed up for Google Plus and agreed to the terms, your searches got “personal” results. You can turn ’em off at any time, though. Which is kinda the thing. You can’t with Bing.
Now, I did use Bing for a bit, because for a half second, they had the size-specific image searches and Google didn’t. I give ’em that. They were a step ahead there. But then Google picked that up and all was well again.
That said, there WAS a short stint during which I used the engine. I came away very happy to go back to Google. It’s not that there’s anything WRONG with Bing, but it felt clunky and rarely found the sites I was specifically looking for. The algorithms weren’t as clean, I guess.
Then again, it could just be that I’m USED to Google now.
However, I can’t help but notice that GOOGLE is not ADVERTISING their services. They just figure you’ll use ’em if you like ’em.
And that’s always been a big thing for me. It’s refreshing. Yes, they have ads ON their site, but they’re still, after all these years, unobtrusive, quiet, off to the side. The sponsored search results are actually often helpful. And I never have once had to sit through a Hulu or Spotify ad for them.
That pretty much does it for me.
Read More