The long and winding post

Going stark, raving bonkers right now. Need a poker fix and need it bad and not talking about internet play but some real, live interaction with some people. Was just reading Jordan’s blog where he talks about a bus to AC and I’m about ready to hope one myself this weekend. Problem with that is getting to the pickup point. That and the fact that I don’t even know who runs the casino trips around here. Only time I’ve ever bussed it is when I went along on a someone else's charter. Bus trips usually aren’t conducive to my poker game. They run at the wrong hours and they aren’t long enough. To me it’s a waste of time if I don’t get to put in at least 8 hours at the table when I head to AC. Right now I’ll take what I can get. Doug, who some of you know from Al’s Bash, is planning a home game next Sat and even that will be better than nothing though his games sometimes degenerate into “who has got the bigger pair” contests. And I ain’t talking about the cards.

Speaking of Doug, he finally popped the question to the lovely Robyn. They’ve only been together for, oh, forever. Glad he doesn’t take that long when he decides whether to raise that 4-6 off. I half expect to see the K-Q of hearts atop the cake when it happens though given Doug’s love of Big Slick it may be A-K. Robyn might not mind being compared to an Ace. After all she does outrank Doug anyway. Congratulations Robyn and Doug.

Had my daughter down to visit last weekend thanks to the MLK holiday and my bi-monthly fill up of drugs. She had off from school and I take off from work to spend 5 or so hours at the doctor’s office so that allows me to make the drive to get her back to her mother at a reasonable hour so although Monday is shot we get some time Fri night and full days on Sat and Sun to be together rather than having to make the trip on Sun. Stopped for dinner on the way home Fri night, had to pay off my brother for driving right now, and he wanted lobster. There is a good seafood place in Scranton but he figured it would be too long a wait so we settled for Red Lobster. Another sign that my daughter is growing up. To hell with the mac and cheese or chicken fingers, she wants the crab legs. Could be worse though, at her age I was ordering lobster and giving my parents cardiac arrest.

We had a good weekend together. Since I’m not driving most of it was spent at home but since she only gets to play the Wii she found enough for us to do. It’s bad enough she trounces my arse in bowling, she now found out she loves the boxing option. Ok, boxing is a game requiring speed, stamina and, most of all, 2 hands. Given I’m 40 years older than my daughter, who as far as speed and stamina go, can make the Tasmanian Devil look like he’s having a bad day it doesn’t bode well to begin with. Add in the fact that my left arm, while rehabbing nicely and having some decent movement these days, still has all the usefulness of a limp dick and I can see an 11 year old dervish bouncing around and taunting the old geezer. Well, I tried my damnedest. Actually was able to get some punches in with the left, although they had the snap and power of a strand of spaghetti and my butt got toasted. When the arm got too sore to compete I persuaded her to switch to her Pokémon game, only 1 player in that one, or she actually took some quiet time to catch up on her reading. Was good just to have her around. Doesn’t happen nearly enough.

As for the rehab things seem to be moving along. I was starting to get frustrated awhile back because it seemed I was stalled, not improving at all. Last week or so though thing seem to be picking up. No great strides, like all of a sudden opening pickle jars, but noticing little things, things I might have struggled with a couple of weeks ago, are coming a bit easier. Still a long way to go but it’s always encouraging when you actually can notice the improvement. Really need to get it working because 1., I hate imposing on others for the necessary driving such as work or child pickups and 2., I can’t do a damned thing because of 1 I won’t ask for any unnecessary rides. One of my two toys came in, the serious one, the thing called the Web. Basically just a piece of rubber stretched over a frame with holes in it for your fingers but is much more versatile for exercising the hand than the squeeze ball. The hand usually feels much better and more limber after 10 or 15 minutes with it. Still waiting on my pegboard. One good thing is that I am now able to lie back in bed and read again. While I can’t quite get the hand turned properly to grip the book between the thumb and forefinger I can hold it between the first two fingers, which keeps the pages steady, and the arm is strong enough to support it this way for 15-20 pages before I have to shift to a one handed grip to give it a rest. By alternating the grips I can actually get an hour or so of reading in before I have to put it down totally to rest the arms. Hey, it’s better than nothing.

Right now, with all the books I have backlogged, I’m rereading one I had picked up while catching up on my cataloging the other night; David Drake’s Paying the Piper. Basically a combination of Sf and military fiction, part of his Hammer’s Slammers series. For those of you who don’t know Drake, he takes scenarios and stories from history and adapts them to whatever setting he decides to write about. Most of the stories in the Slammers series are based on actual military campaigns set in a futuristic universe. He also adapts myths and legends into both sf and fantasy novels. He served in Nam and his military stories contain the viewpoint of a man who has been there. No glorified noble armies fighting for truth and justice. Just plain old down and dirty fighting for whoever pays them regardless of whether those people are right or not. And for those who have certain preconceptions of the word gay, they should check out his character Major Joachim Steuben. Should make someone think twice about hassling the gays.

Work-wise have a real pain in the ass problem. Since you are viewing this on a computer I am going to assume most of you have had so occasion to tangle with a virus or spyware. Many of you probably have had experience with that piece of shit malware that infects your computer then goes on to inform you that your computer is infected and that you should download some product to get rid of the problem. Been dealing with this one for awhile now and they just keep making it smarter. At first I would look for processes running that shouldn’t be there, go into Safe mode and just delete them. Then I found a program to get rid of it, job became a snap. Then they improved it so that the original program no longer worked as the virus just rebuilt itself on reboot. Found another program that worked even better (for those of you who don’t already have it I recommend getting a copy of Malwarebytes Anti Malware and run it at least once a week on your system. It’s free though there is a paid version that has real time protection, which is better if you can afford it or do a lot of surfing. BTW, I have no association with Malwarebytes, just like their program). Just before I went down with the stroke I came across a version of the virus that was linked to Windows. The file couldn’t be deleted since it was “in use” and it couldn’t be deleted on reboot since as soon as Windows started it locked. It then rebuilt everything. Another way around the cleanup programs. Still not a big problem since Malwarebytes did the job of getting rid of everything else and once I ferreted out the offending file I just booted to DOS and deleted it. Well the virus makers are still at it. Got another infected computer the other day and this one has defenses against cleanup programs in it. It doesn’t allow them to install and if installed, doesn’t allow them to run. Just great. Well a bit of research and a bit of thinking and we’ve gotten around that problem so, though it’s been a tough 3 days we are getting close to licking this problem. Got Malwarebytes running, it’s gotten rid of most of the problems. Just waiting to see if I have to get the pick and shovel out to do the last bit of digging myself. Hope not. For some reason I look at these infections as a challenge. My IT partner was ready to do a wipe and rebuild two days ago. Me, I hate thinking the bastards beat me. Will let you know the outcome of this battle later.

Been writing this over the last 3 days as, since starting work, I don’t have all the time I used to keep up with this thing, and so it’s exceptionally long. As even those with great attention spans might have trouble with my boring messages I will finally take leave of this one. Tanks for bending an ear, or eyeball if you will, this way.