I have several bank accounts and there’s nothing great I can say about my banks. Seriously, they keep my money and sometimes they charge me to get it back. Where’s the fairness in that? But still, I think I like the evil corporation that I use for banking better than the nice local credit union. I don’t expect all that much from the evil corporation, so I like it that I can access my accounts all the time and call customer service in the middle of the night. The nice credit union only answers the phones from 7AM to 7PM on weekdays and I do my banking at much odder hours than that. The web site for the evil bank works much better than the cheesetastic one from the credit union. I seem to forget the password at the credit union and their automatic password reset doesn’t work. I have to call them back DURING BUSINESS HOURS.

Today I called the credit union to ask why a money transfer hasn’t taken place and they just blamed the other bank. They didn’t offer to check, they didn’t tell me I should check later in the day. Useless. It was there later in the day, of course, but they still annoyed me. I was rude to them and ended my call, “Thanks for nothing,” and I feel a little bad about that but I’m not the best guy, either. Cranky is what I am.

Time for more TV.

I passed by the doughnut tray several times this morning but there were TWO with white frosting and sprinkles until very late. I had to eat one of them to stop them from taunting me. But what I was really referring to is watching Castle tonight. I also watched Warehouse 13 and Modern Family, but I still think Castle is my tv equivalent of candy or doughnuts.

I wonder how long I can keep this up, watching TV instead of sleeping.

The fall TV season has started and I think it’s time for me to it around and watch too much of it. The shows stack up deep enough that my DVR doesn’t catch them all. I still have more than a dozen books to read and some software to edit and programs to learn and RFID cards to read. Lots and lots of stuff. I’ve even given up reading my newsfeeds, Facebook, and twitter and I’m still not caught up on all my TV. But I think I might have to start putting more of a priority on sleep. Even though I still have to watch Hawaii Five-O, the show I’m currently most embarrassed about being excited about.

What to do, what to do?

I’m not too sure about what errands are supposed to be like, but I’m really not sure if it’s just supposed to be a guy making copies and scans and maybe transferring money back and forth between accounts so I can pay the contractor for his errands. It is a lot better to let Jason the Contractor to fix things; I can’t even get my mom’s shower extension attached without having it drip. I’m not sure what the secret is supposed to be other than lots of pipe tape, and I used lots of pipe tape. It must be practice, but someone did cross-thread the shower head and I had to fix it late one night.

I figure sooner or later it will all be fixed.

I’ve retaken my CPR class AGAIN and I just hope I never have to use it. I’m not a cowboy who needs to find himself in situations that prove his manliness. I leave that to firefighters and other people who don’t have back problems. I just want to be able to something to help if I have to. It’s the Boy Scout training. Plus, it was offered through the Portland Marathon.

I’m going to be back volunteering on the course again this year. I keep telling them, “If you don’t need me, great, but I’ve been at Mile 12 for the last several years.” They thank me for volunteering and there I am standing around for four or five hours again. Fortunately I’m there as a backup and they’re really never needed me for an emergency. Just to call for a van pickup for those who couldn’t make it any farther. Or is it further. I still don’t know.

Boy, I forgot how hard it is to read and write NTFS on the Mac. And how character encodings can confuse file transfers from one to another. Oh, well. We’ll see how this all works out in the end. I’m trying to help a friend transfer a bunch of files from a Mac iPod to a PC iPod. No good deed goes unpunished.

I was feeling especially cranky today, but I don’t think I was all that cranktastic to anyone. I’m tired and the weather was kind of dreary. My sister claims that I said the weather doesn’t affect me, but I think I was probably overstating things if I sadi that. The rain doesn’t make me that depressed, but it does make me want to take a lot of naps. And really, why shouldn’t it?

Plans are firming up and I think I need my geek time in Akihabara. And maybe I need to buy some weird stuff at Tokyu Hands, which I know is in Shinjuku. OK, so there’s one in Osaka, and one in Kobe that I’ve been to, but I need an excuse to go to Tokyo. Which is odd because all I ever do is follow my usual path from the Nishishinjuku hotel to Akihabara to Mos Burger and back. I’m not exactly Mr. Exciting, but it makes me happy. It’s easier when it’s easy.

So there’s some sort of HDMI cable scam going on. I can get them at a cable store very near work for $10-20 but I think Best Buy sells them for about $50. I checked to see how much it would cost to buy an HDMI splitter, so I could play video from my DVR on one or both of the TVs I have in my “office” but it was a lot more expensive than I first thought. $58 at the cable store, and $39 for the same unit (or so it seems) at the computer store that’s 200 yards away. And I was told that HDMI splitters didn’t always work very well.

They were right in one sense. The splitter quit working after about 20 minutes and I determined that the wall wart was dead. Time to see if I can exchange it for a working unit.

And I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to Tokyo or not. Sheesh.

Yesterday I spent some time at Storables getting some racks for the new laundry room, but the more unique thing I did was watch my next door neighbor testing for his black belt in Aikido. He did pretty darn well from my perspective and I heard the testers gave him pretty positive feedback as well.

I’m planning on going to Japan with my mom and my sister again this fall, and we’re trying to decide whether to skip Tokyo and stick to Western Japan. I was never a big fan of Tokyo, but it’s actually fun to visit as well. I guess if we fly into the Kansai International airport (which I’ve actually never been to) we can avoid a long train ride. But that also means we miss seeing some friends in Tokyo and I can’t make my yearly pilgrimage to Akihabara Electric Town. What to do…

OK, this will be short, but I went and bought TWO roller blinds today. First my mom measured wrong and it was too small, then I measured wrong and it seems like it’s just a little too big. Sheesh.

OK, it’s time to hit the hay.

It’s rainy and cold and it’s only September.September in Oregon is usually our best month. Our heater even started up a couple of days ago and I had to run around readjusting all the registers so the downstairs would heat and the upstairs wouldn’t. (I like it a little colder upstairs.)

I decided I should keep this short because I’m pretty tired and the stupid Plants vs Zombies game is calling to me. Curse my addictions.

Oh, and someone commented on my old post about an old grade school classmate Holly Reinhorn who was pretty and a little mean, but that’s how things are in grade school. I still have a poor opinion of her, and no one seems to have that much nice to say about her high school self, either. Now she’s married to Rainn Wilson, who I don’t find all that funny or interesting. Really, I still don’t see how people are finding my blog unless they “know” my sister. Maybe they’re googling for things I write about. I’m entitled to my opinion after all, and it’s not like anyone is forced to read what I write. I’d be a lot more careful if they were.