I can’t believe I couldn’t get to sleep last night, but it was understandable. I was tired, it was late, but I was in the middle of trying to diagnose my network problems. I’ve started to rewire some things and my new intarweb provider is a cable company and not my phone company. So DSL degradation due to spectral interference is going to eliminate the viability of third-party providers so it was time to go to the cable company that I’ve been avoiding for years. I even had to cut my ties to my old ISP, a place I even worked at. It’s been TEN YEARS since I worked there, so that must mean that I’ve had the same ISP for longer than that. And I’m old and I don’t like change.

Well, onto the bright new world. My download speed is 10x faster so now I can fill my head with 10x more crap. And, if we’re lucky, my sister’s knitting (or whatever) blog should load faster as well. We’ll see.

I hate it when I’m sort of sick. I’m not sure how I ate myself sick when I didn’t even eat that much. I went to Ringside on Wednesday and Thursday I actually had to go home from work and take a nap. Well, I’m not sure it’s a nap when it was four hours long and didn’t affect my sleep later that night. I finally made it back to the gym on Saturday and afterwards I not only felt like I was run over by a truck (which is common) but I also was just dog tired. And today I felt worse, but that’s probably partially the brown bottle ‘flu. I still had to get out and clean the leaves out of the gutters, but that’s to be expected this time of year.

I suppose I did break out my new soldering iron yesterday and put some kits together, which made a lot more sense than earlier in the day when I was trying to figure out what to do with all the soap slivers I have from my shower. Surfing the internet for soapmaking wasn’t the most productive thing. At least now I have an iPhone charger and a SIM card reader, though I’ve only tried out the charger to see if it would make the iPhone think it was charging. Getting the SIM card reader working is going to take a bit more effort.

I’m not sure what the worst part of getting old is. Maybe becoming invisible to attractive women, but I’ve always been invisible to attractive women and now maybe they’re actually seeing me and thinking, “Hey, I wonder if he knows my dad?” But beyond all the aches and pains I experience, I had another unpleasant reminder of my age today during my annual physical when I got my oil checked. I’m not sure what age that’s supposed to start and I thought it was 50 but it’s begun.

Huh, I wonder if Google is silently dropping my emails. I don’t trust them either. In any case, I got my DSL back up and running and my not-nearly-as-fast-as-cable connection is back online.

Last year, the last run of the fall season was on a night that was about 41°F. Today, we had the same experience and my car said it was somewhere around 41°F. I complained bitterly last year but this year it wasn’t as bad. One of the reasons is probably because I was so tired by the time I had to run that I wasn’t feeling any pain, but really it’s because there was no wind today.

Beyond that, I have nothing that interesting going on in my life besides questions as to why I’m running my own email server, etc. I guess one of the reasons is because I can see what email comes in and does or doesn’t get delivered. me.com (the Apple email service of it anyway) silently drops some of my email. It’s not in my junk folder, it just never shows up. For example, it only delivers a certain subset of the email I get from OKCupid. Of course, I’ve been on OKCupid (a dating site) for probably close to five years and doing online dating for close to 20 and I think I’ve gone out with a half-dozen women in that time. And most of it went quite badly. So maybe Apple truly is my friend and is trying to protect me from myself. Time to play with my iPhone some more. Just why are those birds still so angry?

I wish I could tell you I had fun yesterday, but there was a lot of time spent transferring data from my brother-in-law’s old computer to his new computer. Now that I know how long it takes, I won’t have to sit around thinking it will be finished any sooner. Instead of telling you how much more time the whole thing would take, it told you how much time the very next step would take, over and over and over. It wasn’t all that interesting.

Even better, I think Qwest/Centurylink is “improving” my service by making my DSL modem obsolete and that meant my servers were off the intarwebs at about 9:15PM on Saturday. I called and talked to a guy with a slight Filipino accent who said he’d send over a new modem. My friend Joey the Unix Guru thinks that Qwest/Centurylink is going to upgrade everything to the point that DSL is dead and the next best option is a Comcast business account. I jury-rigged another connection so my servers are back up, but I’m not sure how long that will last.

Ah, well, it’s all progress, right?

I’m trying to track my mom’s flight from Japan. I have to get up at the same time I always do to drive out to PDX to pick her up tomorrow. It’ll be nice to see her home, but I wonder if she’ll like the cold wet weather. It looks like it was in the 60°F’s and sunny there.

I was surprised that I didn’t have that much hassle upgrading to my new iPhone 4S. I paid (in scientific terms) a metric shit-ton for an official, unlocked phone from Apple and all I had to do is pop out the SIM card from my iPhone 4 and pop it into m iPhone 4S. Then there was the requisite painful restore-from-backup but that’s because I have (in scientific terms) a buttload of crap on the phone. Compare this to the purchase of an AARP-approved phone for my mom. That took me a half-hour of waiting and then another 15 minutes of going through all the paperwork. To be clear, she used to have my old Blackberry with all the damn buttons when what she really wanted was a phone with speed dial for my sister and for me. Fortunately, AT&T still has those phones for sale!

I got my cell phone bill from Japan and it’s a bit expensive. I rent a Japanese phone for the convenience of having a Japanese number and using my US phone in Japan would be even more ridiculously expensive than this. The “Web” and “Adjustment for Web” are what really get me, since all I did was look at the “Maps” app. I also didn’t make that many phone calls, so I’m not sure why it cost me $70. But again, it’s still cheaper than using my US phone because the calls would have the cost of going from my phone in Japan, to the US, and back to a Japanese phone. Oh, and the US prices I have are an estimate, because I’m not sure what exchange rate they’re going to use.

And there you have it. For a guy who still has two separate wired phone lines to the house, I sure do have a bunch of cell phone drama.

The best part about my recent feelings of impending doom is that they’re usually nothing. Maybe doom is looming but it’s not here right now.

So I’m really too tired to think of much of anything. The workout at the gym was 5 pullups, 10 pushups, and 15 kettlebell swings over and over until 20 minutes were up. For some reason, seeing it up on the board didn’t frighten me as much as anything that involves running around the building. If I know we’re running around the building, I get nervous, and it’s probably because those workouts make me want to pass out at times. The pullup/pushup/swing one is quite tiring, but in an achy sort of way, not in a seeing-my-lunch-again sort of way. But it all has me fatigued to the point of inaction. It’s a cue to actually hit the hay, but somehow I’m tired without being sleepy. This may be the worst kind of tired. If I had any sense (and I usually don’t) I’d just force myself to lie down in a dark room anyway. Which, now, is my new plan.

I didn’t go to the gym this morning because my stomach felt funny. I wondered if I overdid it at Besaw’s last night, having two drinks with dinner plus dessert. As the morning continued, I realized that I was actually coming down with a cold rather than just being hung over. I just got over a Japanese cold, why am I getting an American one as well? I was so sick that watching football wasn’t that much fun. Weird. At least I finished my laundry.

I went to my sister’s and had Killer Burger. It wasn’t as good as I remember, but still quite tasty. It’s not my favorite, but it’s certainly worth going out of your way for it.

I’ve eaten a bunch of junk lately and after skipping dinner last night for a fasting blood test I’m loading up with all sorts of crap. There was a convenient Mickey D’s on the way from the clinic to work, so I got a couple of Egg McMuffins, OJ, and some free coffee. You can imagine how that made me feel this morning, first lightheaded and then sleepy. Lunch wasn’t much better and was a special at Buffalo Wild Wings. Which leads to dinner. I wanted a Big Mac but I knew it usually gives me a stomach ache so I went to Jack-In-The-Box instead. Where I waited, and waited some more, and waited some more, and finally left to drive to buy a Big Mac. Neither option was great, but it was late in the day and I was hungry.

I’m hoping this doesn’t lead to nightmares. This morning I woke up to dreams about eating and the knowledge that I shouldn’t be eating. It was pretty weird, going from dream to dream, where I’d be eating and then telling myself not to and then eating something else and telling myself not to. Even weirder, I had an earlier dream where I was talking to a traditional elderly Japanese man and I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. I knew he was speaking Japanese, but it was all gibberish to me. Then when I got to work this morning, I found a bunch of emails in Japanese. So far we don’t know how I got added to the email thread, but at least I was able to tell my co-worker what was happening (it was something he was working on and he wasn’t on the email thread). Weird.

Speaking of work, we’re heading into the year-end vacation times where most of my co-workers disappear and I’m not smart enough to join them. There’s usually weird customer problems that come up and no one else to look at them, so I get stuck with some interesting issues. I’m not looking forward to any of if.

I’m an old cranky guy who has a fairly set routine and I’m back to my old work and gym cycle. I’m not completely happy about it since I enjoyed my holiday more than being back at work, but that’s normal.

The gym I go to is no longer a Crossfit gym, but it can still be pretty painful to take a few weeks off and come back into the daily routine. I get sore on a regular week, but it’s much worse after a break. And all that effort late in the day usually invigorates me and keeps me from getting to sleep on time. Today it finally caught up to me and I overslept. It might just be that I’ve been back for a week and the rapid weather change because my sister overslept as well. I rushed around and realized that I also forgot to plug in the hot water pot last night so I couldn’t get my breakfast going right away, either. I still got out the door on time only to find that the rain had really backed up traffic for the commute. I was pretty late.

Fortunately, it wasn’t that bad a day. We took a long lunch to meet with old ham radio friends at Buster’s Texas Barbecue. It wasn’t the best barbecue, but I’ve been spoiled by Slabtown in my neighborhood. I’m a big geek and so we talked about all sorts of nerdy radio stuff.

My iPhone decided to think that the headphones are plugged in ALL THE TIME, but then it decided to start working on its own. I’m not sure what’s going on, but it’s surely out of warranty and taking it apart is probably a big pain in the neck. Not that I’m not going to take it apart if it happens again, but at least I don’t have to worry about that today.

And now it’s the end of the day and I can’t eat. Not by actual choice, but I realized that if I was going to do my fasting blood test, I’d have to forgo dinner completely tonight. Eating right before going to the gym is usually a bad idea for me, and the ideal 12-hour span would have put dinner during the time that I’m at the gym. I see an Egg McMuffin in my future after my blood test.

Well, I made it back to work and back to the gym. I had a feeling something bad was going to happen after all that and sure enough, I sneezed and my entire lower abdomen started to cramp. It was a uniquely painful experience that I would like to never happen again. I think I can do that if I pick one of the following:

1. Never go to the gym again.
2. Never take three weeks off from the gym again, but I’ve had something like this happen when I’ve been regularly exercising sp this may not be an effective option.
3. Never work on my abs again.
4. Never sneeze again.

I’m sure there are other options, but I can’t think of them right now. Stupid cramps anyhow.

I woke up Saturday feeling a bit like crap. The biggest effect of my jet lag so far is waking up at 2AM thinking I’ll never get back to sleep, and then finally waking up when the alarm goes off. I had a bit of a cold while I was in Japan and came back with a cough which is nearly gone now. It was all just as well since it’s nice to have some time to rest after vacationing.

Basically I just watched a bunch of football games and today I watched a bunch of teams I was rooting for lose. I guess that’s why they play the games. I also spent a bit of time trying to catch up on all the shows on my DVR. I think that’s going to take a while. It’s good to have goals.