There was supposed to be a hard part about wiring up my fire alarms, and an easy part. The hard part was getting into the tiny area just under the peak of the roof to run the wires between the alarms, and the easy part was supposed to be dropping the wire down to the basement in case I needed to hook up something there. So much for hard vs. easy. Turns out that the space I was using, the slot between the sewer pipe and the framing, was really just because of sloppy work and Jay the contractor “fixed it” so I can’t use it any longer. Time for plan B, which is going to require a bunch more work.

Ah, well. I need a hobby, right? No girlfriend to suck up my time. Wait, I have that reading resolution I need to avoid as well. Huh. If I just make it a remodeling resolution, maybe I can avoid it all.

I was going back into my various attic spaces today, but Megan was spending her last day in town before heading back to SF so I had two beers with her instead. Honestly, I doubt I’m going to lose the five pounds I’ve gained over the holidays. My guess is that I’m just hosed.

Other friends have suggested that I first send out warning text messages to various people before I go up into the attic so they can come looking for me if I don’t come back out. There’s a very small space up there and if I cramp up, I’m hosed.

In any case, that’s about all the excitement I have for today. A small obsessive desire to do some more home repair, but not enough to actually get it done.

Basically, I now have two more things that could be added to the resolutions to not be finished:

• Finishing the remodeling
• Losing some weight

I guess I could try to be introspective and think of all the things that happened last year, but all I can think of is how miserable it was to crawl around in the attic and how annoyed I am that my computer is acting up. I think I know what’s going on with the computer, though, the huge week-long data transfer is horking up my networking. Sheesh.

I was trying to get up into the attic so I could wire the fire alarms together, not that I need to wire the fire alarms together. There’s a space a few feet tall above the stairs that leads to the triangular space below the peak of the roof. It’s crammed full of heating ducts and wiring and it takes some contortions to get up there, but I went crawling up because, well, I had nothing better to do besides obsessing about how my computer was failing me. I wanted to run some bell wire up there, and I figured this was the easiest way to make sure the wire went the way I wanted it to.

I also had to slap some paint on the plaster that Jay the Contractor put up yesterday.

All this meant some frantic trips to Parr Lumber (the only place I could find open close by) and spilling of paint and primer.

This dead (-ish) computer did give me some more time to read, and I think I’ve come up with one New Years Resolution. But it’s boring. And it involves reading. I’ll have to think of something better.

Happy New Year to the three people who read this! You know who you are.

So I was up late on Tuesday trying to get a motion detection program working on a security camera for my sister’s front porch. Then I stayed up late last night trying to sort out all the pictures I have on my hard drive that don’t really seem all that organized. I’m not sure I have everything in there.

I also found out that my laptop hasn’t been backing up because if you encrypt your home directory with FileVault, it only backs up when you log off. No wonder it was taking so long to reboot my Mac, it was trying to back up my home directory. Well, I found a way to reenable backups and I set it on its merry way and so far, after fourteen hours, it’s backed up 12G out of 177G. So, lessee, does that mean it’s going to take eight-and-a-half more days to back up the hard drive using Time Machine? Sheesh. And I was giving a friend a hard time for a 48H backup.

So there you have it. That, plus my mental faculties appear to be slipping, or at least my concentration. At the gym we do warmups of things like 3 windmills per side. I’ll end up doing four on a side and then stand there wondering if three comes before or after four. I hope it’s not something permanent.

I am being tortured by my sister’s old Netbook and a program called “motion” that doesn’t work the way I want it to.

Often at night I get stuck doing something quite stupid that my brain won’t let me stop doing. Like fixing all the song titles in an iTunes playlist, or fixing broken links in my blog. It might make more sense just to avoid my computer at night, butbut then what would I do? Read? When I start reading, I can crank through two or three mysteries a week and I stay up even later than I do now. Plus, books get expensive and they take up all sorts of space. I suppose that’s one of the advantages to my Kindle; it doesn’t clutter up the house with books, especially when they’re throw-away mysteries that I don’t think I’ll re-read.

I’m still playing with getting a security camera set up for my sister, so she can check the front doorstep for packages without leaving her office. I’m not sure why I keep buying more video cameras, but they’re usually $20 or less and they’re kind of fun to play with. Most of them have some IR LEDs for night vision and that makes for some fun pictures. Either that or this lack of sleep is not just helping me get fatter (that and the cookies) but it’s turning me into some sort of undead creature.

Huh. I wonder if I look any better in the morning at work.

I didn’t do all that much today, not surprisingly. Watched a season of “Bored to Death” which was remarkably interesting, went down to Starbucks to get out of the house, but really did very little of anything until dinnertime. I think I had one of the tastiest beef dishes I’ve ever had at Red Onion, also known as “D4.” Beef tenderloin on spinach. I think if my buddy Sean ever breaks his vegan diet and decides to eat beef again, this is what he should have first.

But I think I wasn’t the only one bored today. I got a call from Jay the Contractor after I emailed him and he said, “What did you get for Xmas? A lump of coal?” Sure. Only without the coal.

I did finish my library book before the Dec 26 due date, so I did SOMETHING. Just not a whole lot.

I needed a day off and besides going to the gym and out to lunch with my mom, I spent most of the day just playing Plants vs. Zombies. The iPad version seems to have a different set of “achievements” than the iPhone, and I had one more to go today. And I did it!

Now I think I can focus on something else silly, like finishing my library book (one for “young adults”) before the due date. Unless I get sidetracked by comic books or something. Hooray for vacation weekends.

Time to play lots (too much) Plants vs Zombies.

So at 8:30PM, not too late, I got home from the gym (where they tried to kill me) and I noticed a car parked with the windows fogged up. Weird, right? No one in the front seat, so I thought it was empty. When I parked I noticed a foot in the window and the car rocking. AT 8:30PM NEXT TO AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. I called the police non-emergency number and asked if it was illegal to be screwing in a car in a city street and they said, “It is if it’s non-consensual.” Thanks a buttload.

I suppose I may be a prude, but Jeebus, “GET A ROOM.”

I think I’ve gained five pounds lately (measuring first thing in the morning like I usually do) and I think I blame Sean and his vegan ways. It’s causing so much stress that I’m putting on weight. Someone has to make up for all the meat he’s not eating (though he never did eat bacon, the tastiest of meats). It surely couldn’t be stress from work.

I was still feeling slightly off today. A few more people were out sick from work and I left early and took what turned into an hour-and-a-half nap. I still went to the gym. I even ended up staying late, trying to fix the computer. Not their fault, I get engrossed in things like that and am loath to let a computer get the best of me. But I learned something new doing it.

• To fsck Mac OS X, boot holding Command-S and you get into single-user mode. If you don’t understand that, I’m not telling you any more because it’s dangerous.
• To get a root certificate on to the iPhone (like the ones from CAcert) email it to yourself. Duh. I’ve been trying for WEEKS to get the root certificate onto the iPhone.
• Instead of reverse-engineering the driveway monitor for my sister’s front porch to try to get it to be less sensitive, just mount it ABOVE the doorway pointing down. (Duh again.)

I still haven’t learned to go to sleep on time. Still not Xmas, so Santa hasn’t not brought me my common sense.

Another joyous day at work where I reap the joys of globalization. I had several emails from foreign countries strongly suggesting that I find out the answers to questions from people who are on vacation. I politely pointed out the problems and the names of people who would be out for TWO MORE WEEKS. I should have pointed out that their countries also have vacations where no one is available for TWO WEEKS and that time would be coming next month. But that would make too much sense. Much easier to demand things from me that I can’t provide. At least it’s only a four day week.

I started to feel like doody on the way home, and I noticed I was getting aches and pains in my back. Pretty good signs that I’m coming down with something. Plus I didn’t sleep for crap either night this weekend because of overseas phone calls, late night FAX machine calls, and what I think is an overdose of chocolate Xmas cookies. I wasn’t, however, smart enough to avoid the gym. I did achieve DFL in the workout.

How to take longer (sorry we held you up Zach):

• pick the right partner (Sean heartily supports my attempts at getting DFL even with his new vegan sensibilities and poor Zach got dragged into our folly)
• do extra credit (when it says “Plank Row”, do a full “Renegade Row” – with dumbbells in the pushup position row right, pushup, row left, pushup)
• do extra weight (they told me to do 30# but Zach told me I should stick to what I usually do)
• feel puny on the way into the gym but remember to rest if you feel like you’ll see your lunch again

I think we were a full two minutes slower than the next slowest person, and over six and a half minutes slower than the fast women. Perhaps that isn’t the way I should put it. The ATHLETIC women.

Other than that, I got nothing. I’m going to take some Advil and ask Santa for some common sense.

I suppose I could say I’ve been busy with work and with non-work, but mostly I’ve been busy at work and that’s about it. I did spend most of the day trying to reverse-engineer the Harbor Freight alarm thing, but I’m pretty sure I’ve decided that it’s kind of silly. I’ve spent a bit of time on it and I’m not quite finished, but I’m not really sure why I’m doing it any more because it looks like there’s not much I can change on it. Ah well, live and learn.

The end of the year is nearing and I better get on the donations I always seem to put off until the end of the year. There’s probably some way of maximizing my tax benefit, but really my real goal is to assuage my liberal guilt. Besides, I always tell charities that I donate at the end of the year and I think it’s important that I’m not lying. I’ve tried in the past to see if I could actually donate 10% (like the god botherers and their tithing) but I can’t even do that much. Perhaps if I planned better, but I’m not exactly a planner.