Tag: first world problems

Replaced

Today in first world problems, my XOne X died a few months ago. I figured I can rant about something tedious and boring for a change instead of the crisis crisises we are all facing right now. So grab your joe and let’s go!

The hard drive was failing and it finally crashed. I tried replacing it and everything went smoothly until the reinstallation. For whatever reason the damn OS would not reinstall no matter how hard I tried. I finally gave up and re-signed myself to wait for the Series X. That didn’t work out so well. Lol

Originally, I opted to drop it off for repair. Unfortunately, MS (Microsoft) repair was closed due to the pandemic so I couldn’t even offer to ship it in. Of course, the warranty was expired years prior. After MS was finally open and able to offer shipping, the cheapest estimate for repair was around $275 without shipping costs. Screw that! I was like, “I’ll just do it myself!“

I did all the troubleshooting. I read the sites, watched the videos, and consulted some of the gurus. They all said it would work. I got the instructions, the scripts, and the troubleshooting tips….and of course it failed. Lol And it is probably some minor thing MS did to the OS variant installation I had. It could also be I was a beta tester, dunno. Knowing my luck it was some minor glitch in codes matching up or whatever. Ain’t that how it always goes?

I was rather proud of myself actually. I consider myself a techie and know my way around hardware but it’s been a while. The familiarity had waned a bit. So I paid extra attention to the discussions on how to do it. I ordered a new drive that was the same as the existing one. The script I found to format the drive partitions worked perfectly. Taking the console apart was a bit of a bitch but once open swapping out the drives was painless. Then came the offline reinstallation of the OS. I followed MS’s guidelines to the letter. No matter how many variations I tried the damn OS wouldn’t reinstall so I finally gave up. Leave it to MS to f*CK up the easy part.

Fast forward a few months and I’m desperately missing it. [1]Like I said, first world problems. Perspective Playing on my PS4 is fine but my go-to console has been the Xbox since the 360. To me, games just play better on the Xbox and I love the elite controller. It fits my hands and the weight makes it comfortable. Anyway, I’d put out feelers for a used XOneX but everyone wanted $300+ even for a used one. We are fortunate to have decent finances, but I was hard set on not spending more than a couple hundred bucks tops for a console I’ll be replacing in just a few months anyway.

After exhausting Craigslist and other sites for used consoles I’d sort of given up on finding a used one. On a whim, I checked FB Marketplace. Lo and behold! I found a guy here in SF just over the hill from me. He clearly worked in tech. He had an XOne S. It’s a slight downgrade from the XOne X but close enough. He’d actually gotten it before he got married and afterwards never got to play it so decide to get rid of it. [2]He did not seemed amused about the lack of playing part. Lolol We exchanged info, met up, he booted it up to show me it worked fine. Sold! I venmo’ed him the money and split. And yes we did social distance. We all had masks on. I watched from a distance while he booted it up.

It’s setup now and running and I am tickled pink. It was money well spent. For such a small thing, it reminded me how blessed I am during this madness. I’m certainly appreciative. It is weird how such a tedious thing put me in better spirits. The whole day yesterday I just felt less depressed. And considering the shit show that is our daily news, that is saying something. I guess maybe having something to enjoy can ease the frustration.

So there ya have it. My boring story about getting a used Xbox. Hopefully, it was a tedious but pleasant distraction.

References

References
↑1 Like I said, first world problems. Perspective
↑2 He did not seemed amused about the lack of playing part. Lolol

Amazonian

I’ve become addicted to Amazon. Living in SF, without a car, is not a problem most of the time. However, there are times when not having a car is a royal pain in the ass. Grocery shopping and dropping off/picking up laundry can both be a huge hassle. Luckily, the laundry problem is solved by a short walk. We are just over a block from the place we take it. We have a fee based small washer/dryer in our garage but they are expensive and rarely dry a regular load of clothes in one cycle.

Grocery shopping comes with 3 options. Option 1 is to purchase a small enough amount you can trek on MUNI with them. Hell no.  Option 2, rent a car-share or Uber/Lyft home. Not a bad option but still a hassle. Option 3, order online and have them delivered. Here is where Amazon has really filled a niche. I had used Instacart for a while but their services is so hit & miss I got fed up and switched to Amazon Fresh. Being a prime member, I also get access to Prime Now, which does limited groceries as well. Between the two services, I find no reason to shop in person anymore. [1]I stopped by Safeway recently and I was annoyed I ended up just leaving with 2 items

Amazon originally only offered a yearly fee. I still use this option but they also offer a monthly fee now. The latter is in line with the several services out there that offer this service. The saving grace for Amazon is if you order an item, you always get it. There are a few very rare exceptions. With Instacart, you were always at the whim of what the store actually had and whether the shopper was diligent enough to actually care to get your order right. The only caveat for Fresh is the order has to be at least $50.00. [2]This has caused me some consternation as it started as $25.00 and has slowly gone up For Prime Now, the minimum delivery is $30.00. As long as you meet the minimum amount, there is no delivery fee and you can order as often as you like. And boy do I ever.

Between work and home, I order a lot. And best of all, I end up saving money! Instacart up-charges for many of the places I shopped. Amazon is pretty much on point with retail prices. And while I realize they are still over charging me since they don’t have the overhead a traditional store would have, I am saving money over the alternative options. I order food at least 2 times a week, usually more. I order for both work and home. The monthly (or yearly in my case) fee is easily worth it compared to what I would spend on Uber/Lyft or car-share.

Prime Now has the added benefit of being same day. And while they have now added all of Whole Foods to the options, WF is still quite a bit pricey. You also run into the problem I had with Instacart when ordering from your local WF. But for the staples, it is just lovely. I order from the app while I’m at work and it’s there when I get home. Fresh only offers next day service but that is still pretty damn convenient.

These are first world problems of course. I am fortunate enough to be able to use these services vs having to pinch every penny and trek my ass in person. If you are thinking of using it, especially if you are already a Prime member, it is worth it.

References

References
↑1 I stopped by Safeway recently and I was annoyed I ended up just leaving with 2 items
↑2 This has caused me some consternation as it started as $25.00 and has slowly gone up

Busted!

OHMERGERD! It’s busted!

image
Busted Moto

As you can see I had an unfortunate mishap with my phone. Arrrgh. Ironically, I had yet to get a single scratch, ding, or dent on it up until the fateful drop yesterday. I knocked it off the top of the Zipcar while unloading Costco. More astutely, I did a mad grab finger flip 3 or 4 times before it flipped, flew, and fell on the concrete cracking the screen and busting the camera as well.

Motorola appears to offer a warranty repair, which means I pay to have it fixed. They are shipping me a temporary replacement in the meantime. I finally find a phone I am happy with and I go and break it. *grumble grumble*

I guess it is good I didn’t sell the G4. I was gonna tough it out but the screen was barely usable. I had to connect it to Bluetooth keyboard just so I could clean off a few things. Points to Tmo for making the process to activate my old SIM super easy and quick It took literally just a few minutes.

Sadly, I find myself still hating the G4. [1]Please remind me to never ever buy a LG phone again. I had such a negative reaction when it came on I was a bit surprised. I don’t think I’ve ever been so annoyed by an Android variant before. The OEM version is just annoying. The only nice thing about the whole thing is the sense tap. Going back to it is such a contrast to the Moto X PE. The pure Android experience has spoiled me once again it seems.

Pray for my baby to be returned fast.

References

References
↑1 Please remind me to never ever buy a LG phone again.

Survived

I survived my first week on the new schedule. Well, sort of. I’m completely run down today. I’d planned to schedule a bunch of stuff to do but I just don’t have it in me right now. So today is gonna be a lot of down time and sitting in front of the tv watching movies and catching up on tivo.

The biggest struggle has just been my schedule. I fought all week long to get up in a timely fashion and be on time. This week was super important as the developer/training team from the company was there teaching us how to change, set, and read system metrics for the software. The next few weeks are just the local team doing work and review. And to give you an idea of the scope, this effects not only the dispatchers but all of the police, fire, and parking/traffic employees who use the system. That is thousands of people and thousands of vehicles and equipment. Anyway, I’m getting off topic, I’m hoping next week I’ll be a little better with the schedule. I’m hopeful as today, the one day I wanted and could sleep in, I promptly woke up at a little after 8am and couldn’t go back to sleep. There is hope I guess that I am and will adjust.

Some things have had to give to make it possible though. I’ve barely even touched Facebook, twitter, or google this week. lol To be honest, I don’t even miss it. I popped in a couple times in moments of down time but otherwise, the interwebs have had to go on w/o me this past week. Even emails and text messages suffered. I get up, go to work, come home an spend quality time with Cooper, gym, a little down time, bed, and repeat.

I can say I made it to the gym every day I was supposed to this week! Granted my intensity suffered a bit but I went and worked out. And it could be a part of why I’m so drained today but I need to keep on a schedule otherwise I’ll end up blowing it off too often. And we can’t have that now can we!? And having not blown off the week schedule, I can move today’s normal workout to tomorrow w/o skipping anything.

As to the project itself, now that I have an idea of the project workload I can tell ya I have my work cut out for me. There is a lot of data entry that will need to happen on top of all the system changes that have to be uncovered, vetted, and possibly enacted into policy for our dept(s). Beforehand, I was thinking there was no way this would take 5 months. Now I’m not sure if that is a long enough. lol Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited and enjoy the work. This will effect us for at least a decade an having a chance to mold our software in advance to fit our needs is awesome. On top of that, I just like having my fingers in the pie, so to speak. And of course, my inner geek is thrilled to learn about the inner workings of not only the software but all the pieces of hardware and other systems that integrate and/or connect to our system. I find it completely fascinating. So far, no complaints on the project itself.

Anyway, don’t be sad/mad if my blog posts become sparse for awhile. Lord knows I always have something to rant about. But until I adapt better to the schedule, I have to prioritize real life over cyber life.

Wish me luck.

Settling

Ok, I’m officially in my new hosting space. Apparently, I setup my account a bit wrong so they had to move everything around internally. I must say, while there were a few unexpected delays, the customer support team has been great. I opted for 1 month of managed shared hosting, which is a fancy way of saying I paid them to help me.  It comes with 24/7 tech support by phone, chat, email, and/or online.

I think I’m gonna be happier with them. I’m still discovering more and more how shitty 1and1 was in so many ways. I have direct access to chron jobs, apache, mysql [1]To be fair, 1and1 did give me mysql access, email filtering, IP blocking, etc. For basicaly a dollar more a month, I have so much more control over my domain and how it functions now. Some of these items are not for novices but it’s nice knowing I can use it, if and when I need it. I’ll definitely be using the chron jobs now.

In other news, I’m gonna attempt to import my old blog data into this one so I can do away with the duplicate setups. I figured since I’m moving all this stuff around, I might as well go for broke! lol I’m gonna try an XML import to avoid conflicting issues with API keys, blah blah blah. You shouldn’t notice anything significant. Well, if something goes horribly wrong you might see the domain go blank while I fix it again. lol

Another post coming today so sorry in advance for doube emails. I turned off subscribers so as to avoid bombarding everyone with emails.

References

References
↑1 To be fair, 1and1 did give me mysql access

Poke

No, not what you’re thinking. However, have you logged in here lately? Moving on.

Being in a multi-device, multi-OS household, am I the only one that sometimes forgets you can’t reach up and tap the screen on your laptop or computer to move the cursor? lolol

I catch myself doing this all the time now. I’ll be on the laptop and trying to move the cursor and without thinking I’ll tap the screen expecting it to jump to my finger. I seem to be doing it more and more lately. I’ve gotten so used to being on the phone or the iPad, I’m totally conditioned to just tapping.

*tap, tap, tap* Is this thing on?