Ken's Blog

Contacts

2012-01-25T23:30:00.000-08:00

I got contacts today. It's my first time so they had me watch a video and then showed me how to take care of them and how to put them in and take them out. It's tough. It took me quite a while to take them out, maybe like 20-30 minutes, then even longer to put them back in.

Contraband

2012-01-22T23:30:00.000-08:00

We went to see Contraband this evening. We both enjoyed it.

Waffles!

2012-01-13T23:30:00.000-08:00

We had received a waffle maker for Christmas, so this morning for the first time ever I made waffles. Yes, actual waffles, not the pre-made frozen ones. It was pretty easy and they were so fluffy! I usually put jelly on my waffles, but these ones are way bigger than those frozen ones so after I had finished the first waffle I was done with the jelly. I just couldn't take anymore sweetness, so on the second waffle I put butter.

Christmas Lights Down

2012-01-12T23:30:00.000-08:00

Finally got around to taking down the Christmas lights.

Turtle Bay

2012-01-07T23:30:00.000-08:00

We went to Turtle Bay today along with Ray, Dawn, and Lisa. We all went to see the Bat exhibit which was kind of cool. They had a live bat exhibit there too, but that was just two ladies behind a table showing off these little brown bats they had. Later that evening we went over to Ray & Dawn's. Due to something Ray said about his computer while we were at Turtle Bay, I had gotten a suspicion that the reason the fan wasn't working in his computer was because the power supply was faulty, so I brought along a spare power supply I had. Once I installed it, the fan started working just fine. We watched The Mole People while we ate dinner.

Passing Out

2012-01-02T23:30:00.000-08:00

I went to the Blood Center to donate platelets today, and afterward in the snack area I felt lightheaded and passed out. I didn't even realize it, I was just sitting there at one of the tables and closed my eyes and next thing I know one I hear one of the ladies keep telling me to open my eyes, and when I did I saw that she was dabbing my face all over with a soaking wet paper towel. That was quite a surprise. I started feeling better laying one of their bed chairs, but every time I tried to sit up I started feeling bad again and apparently I would lose all color, so eventually they had to call an ambulance to get an IV in me. By the time we reached the ER, the IV bag was empty and the ER folks didn't hook up a new one, but I still had to wait there for hours for them to run tests and then have a doc clear me to go home. What a drag.

New Year's Eve

2011-12-31T23:30:00.000-08:00

We spent New Year's Eve over at our friend Jenn's place along with her other friends. It was fun, we watched the BBC show called Coupling until Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve came on.

Christmas

2011-12-26T23:30:00.000-08:00

We spent Christmas in Vallejo this year. I brought an old spare 20" TV that we had with us to hook up in my Dad's office, sine the TV in there would make a loud buzzing sound when there was a lot of white on the screen. On Saturday Mom, Treese, and I went to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and we all really enjoyed it. I wasn't a real big fan of the other ones, but this one was cool. Christmas was being hosted at my aunt's place, so we all headed over there for a delicious meal and the opening of presents. Auntie had me look at her computer since it had given the blue screen of death recently, along with some other popup notices. In the middle of updating their antivirus, the computer froze and I eventually just had to power it down. After that, it would constantly freeze within 10-20 seconds of booting into Windows, though booting into safe mode always seemed to work. What a pain! So I had to fix that, by completely removing the antivirus and cleaning the registry and then reinstalling the antivirus.

Motherboard

2011-12-21T23:30:00.000-08:00

The motherboard I ordered for Ray's computer arrived today, so I installed that and got the computer up and running. Later in the evening we went to see a recital that Misty's daughter, Natalie, was in. It was cute. After that we headed over to Ray and Dawn's so I could give Ray his computer before we left for Christmas. After I got it all hooked up I noticed the temperature readings were really hot, and that led me to discover that the main fan wasn't working. So I took the side off and we positioned a desk fan towards its innards, and that actually seemed to work. At least now we know why the last motherboard got fried.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

2011-12-17T23:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we went over to our friends, Ray and Dawn, for dinner. They made Bangers & Mash which was absolutely delicious. We watched an old Saturday Night Live episode which predicted (correctly!) that Jimmy Fallon would host the 2011 Christmas episode. This morning we went to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which we both really enjoyed. Treese's friend Jenn met us there, and then later that evening we went over to her place as she was having a little get together celebrating her end of school.

Bathroom Shelf

2011-12-10T23:30:00.000-08:00

Today we went to pick up a gray metal bathroom shelf that we found on Craigslist which we both really liked. Once we got it home I gave it a good cleaning and stuck it in the bathroom.

Real Hooks for Christmast Lights

2011-12-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

Our friend Dawn stopped by today to drop off some hooks to attach Christmas lights along the rain gutters of the house. I had previously used makeshift hooks from Chritmas Tree ornament hooks. Not the best choice, but they worked if it wasn't to windy. The real hooks work way better! We also had the Charter Cable guy come out today to fix a problem we were having with our cable card where HBO and Cinemax channels would display nothing but a cable card information screen. All he did when he got here is call someone up and read him some of the numbers off of the screen. Really? And I couldn't have just done that?

Surround Sound

2011-12-05T23:30:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to hooking up left and right surround speakers so that we could have 5.1 surround sound. I did it at night so haven't really gotten to experience it yet.

Darth Vader Blankets

2011-12-03T23:30:00.000-08:00

Treese was gone when I woke up this morning. She was out with her friend at the new Twilight movie. I called Charter and got our rates reduced. In addition to reduced rates, the promotion they gave me included free HBO and Cinemax for a year. I'll take them if they're free but I wouldn't spend money on them. Treese and her friend went shopping after the movie, and she bought two really cool Darth Vader blankets which are large and very soft.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-28T23:30:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday we headed off to Vallejo to visit family for Thanksgiving which was being hosted at my Mom's house. The next morning we headed to Sacramento to pick up my mother-in-law so she could take place in the celebration, and what a trip that turned out to be! The traffic was terrible so it took us a few hours to get there. Once there we used the computer to plot a course back that avoided as many of the accidents as possible, and that worked pretty well. There was hardly any traffic when we took her back to Sacramento late that night. We tried to fill up the tank at Safeway before heading back to Vallejo, but there were padlocks on all of the hoses. On Friday we didn't to much but hang around the house. We took a look at my Mom's record player to find out why the volume was so low, and a little research online told us that it needed a pre-amplifier, so we ordered one of those. Later that night my Mom taught me how to play cribbage. On Saturday I visited both of my grandparents with my Dad. This was also American Express' Small Business Saturday so we all went out and took advantage of that. We headed home after breakfast on Sunday. It was a nice trip. Today I hooked up the subwoofer that I got from Grant, and wow does it make a difference!

Visiting Friends in Red Bluff

2011-11-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

Today we went to Red Bluff to visit Treese's friend from work and her husband. They gave us a bunch of old computers he had from various projects that he was just going to throw away. Most of them were missing RAM and hard drives, but I'll see which ones I can put together in working condition. They also gave us an old subwoofer for the computer, a old computer chair, and a box of old SNES games. I'm already liking the computer chair, as my old one was pretty warn, and the arm rests on this chair are lower so I can scoot the chair closer to my desk.

Immortals 3D

2011-11-17T23:30:00.000-08:00

We went to see Immortals 3D in XD 3D, and thanks to my BloodHeroes certificate, we didn't have to pay those outrageous prices. Treese enjoyed it, while I just thought it was okay.

Subwoofer

2011-11-12T23:30:00.000-08:00

The 5 pack of fuses that I ordered for my subwoofer arrived today, so I installed one, put the subwoofer back together, and that got it working again. It's nice to be able to feel the rumbling of movie explosions.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

2011-11-11T23:30:00.000-08:00

We went to see A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas this evening with our friends, Ray and Dawn. We got in using my blood money (movie passes from donating blood). When I tried to actually get the tickets, the lady wouldn't sell them to me because she said everyone needed to be there to show their IDs since it was rated R. What? Isn't that the point of the NC-17 rating? That only people 17 and over were allowed in? I though for R-rated movies only one person in the group had to be of age.

New Power

2011-11-10T23:30:00.000-08:00

I bought a computer power supply off of Craigslist today so that I could put it in a computer which was giving me a problem coming out of sleep mode, and the new power supply fixed the problem. But the power supply is 650W gaming power supply which is a little overkill, so I think I'll just buy the 350W one that is supposed to come with this computer and then sell that 650W one.

Oil Change & TiVo Glitch

2011-11-08T23:30:00.000-08:00

Since I did my oil change yesterday, today I took Treese's car in. Doing them around the same time just makes it easier to remember when they both need to be done. On the way home I stopped by the eyeglass place to pick out some glasses. I don't really need a new pair, but insurance pays for them once every couple years so might as well take advantage of it. There were only a couple frames that insurance would cover completely, so I just went with the same style of frames I currently have. We had a weird TiVo glitch happen this evening. While watching a prerecorded show, all of a sudden the screen went black for a few seconds, then a video feed from the Redding channel came through for a couple seconds, and finally the video feed switched back to live TV of whatever channel the TiVo was currently on. It freaked us out the first time it happened, and yes, I said first time. Because it continued to happen all night. Eventually I noticed a pattern, that it was happening every hour at four minutes past the hour. Some testing revealed that the Redding channel video feed was coming through on both tuners, it would show up when I had live TV on and when I then when I pushed play on the program being recorded on the other tuner I saw that it had recorded one second of the Redding video feed at four minutes in. Talk about weird.

Oil Change

2011-11-07T23:30:00.000-08:00

Took my car in for an oil change today, but turns out it didn't need it. They said the oil had absolutely no discoloration so they just put it back. While I was in the waiting room, I started reading 1984 by George Orwell. I didn't make it very far into the book but already I'm finding it interesting.

In Time

2011-11-05T23:59:00.000-07:00

Treese bought me a blanket while she was out shopping with her friend this morning. It's for when we're on the couch, and it's really soft, lightweight, and warm... actually very similar to my current blanket, except this one is big enough to cover my whole body! Now I don't have to choose between covering my feet or my chest. Later on in the afternoon the three of us, plus another of Treese's friends who met us at the theater, went to see In Time. Not a masterpiece of a movie but we enjoyed it well enough.

No More Spirit

2011-11-03T23:59:00.000-07:00

When I woke up this morning I found that Treese had turned the heater on. I'm actually surprised we were able to wait this long, as it's already November! Treese stopped by the Spirit Halloween story afterword to see if she could find out their hours, but again they were closed, and apparently there was a missed delivery FedEx note on the door from around 1pm so I guess nobody had been there all day. Man, they sure close up shop fast after Halloween!

Puss In Boots

2011-11-02T23:59:00.000-07:00

I went to Radio Shack this afternoon to pick up some fuses for our subwoofer, but unfortunately they didn't have what I needed. No place in Redding seems to have the right fuse, so I just ended up ordering them online. We went to see Puss In Boots in 3D, and we both thought it was a great movie. Afterward we headed over to a friend's to pick up some Menudo. On the way home we drove by the Spirit Halloween store to see what their hours were because we wanted to get some great deals on their clearance items before they went away, but they were closed with no hours posted.