Damn The Torpedoes!

A new year...
A new President Of The United States (or POTUS as we like to call him) in 13 days...
New and exciting ways to screw things up and have life blow up in your face...
FULL SPEED AHEAD!!! WOOOOOOH!!!
Herewith a random recap of the past few weeks...

Automotively-speaking, the F(n)ord (St)Ranger suffered from a badly corroded terminal, which was replaced.
This had to happen on a LUGOLA meeting Saturday, of course.
After getting jumpstarted by AAA, I rushed to the meeting in hope of catching people still there.
I was planning to sell a couple of Lego sets to raise money for the replacement of the terminal.
Several eBay buyers had not paid me yet, otherwise I could have gotten that thing fixed right away.
Thanks to a friend's help, I got the terminal replaced. It was a cheap fix too, at $25.
3 days later, the alternator failed and I found myself running on battery power only. Oh boy...
Thanks to eBay buyers finally paying for their stuff and my very cool boss, I got the alternator replaced.
The truck is now running like clockwork. Huzzah!

Christmas Day was spent at selenesue's House of Sci-Fi, watching DVDs and snacking on delicious things.
Unfortunately, I was under the weather, so I could only nibble on a few things. I was fine the day before,
but on Xmas Day itself? Blargh! And the next day, I was feeling better, of course. Stupid fate!!
I still managed to have some of Selene's awesome mac'n'cheese and Maria's tasty empenadas.
I brought some Pomegranate 7-Up (limited edition) and the general consensus was that it was "yummy".
The DVDs watched were "A Christmas Story" (already in progress), "A Wish For Wings That Work" (aka the Outland
Christmas Special starring Opus The Penguin and Bill The Cat, apparently recently released), "Ghostbusters II",
a vaguely Christmasy episode of "Supernatural" (which caused some revulsion on the part of the viewers),
and an amusing "Blackadder" reverse "Christmas Carol" in which Blackadder is generous to a fault and gets
taken advantage of by everyone. Also featuring Robbie Coltrane as the Ghost Of Christmas, looking almost exactly
like Hagrid, down to the clothing style and the enormous height, but with grey hair instead of black.
Despite the sicky-ness, I had a good time, and spent half of it dozing on the very comfy couch construct.
Thanks Auntie Selene! You rawk! (:hugs)

On the home computer front, it seems to be working okay. I started backing up stuff to CD-Rs, but that way lies
madness, as we're talking almost 2 CDs per gig, and I have 250 gigs to back up. If only I had a DVD burner...
So intead, I am trying to save up to buy an external USB drive. I did some extensive shopping around and I found
a Cavalry brand 400Gig drive on Amazon.com for $65 shipped. That's pretty awesome as everything else I looked at
costs a minimum of $80, and that's for 320Gig. So, let's hope the eBay auctions do well.
EDIT: I just double-checked the price on that drive and it has inexplicably shot up to $89.91! ASSHOLES!!!
Guess I'll have to keep searching.
In the meantime, I'm leaving my computer turned on for 3-4 days at a stretch (I used to turn it off daily).

So there was a screw-up at work with paychecks. Since the L.A. and Canada offices were closed on the week of
New Year's, payroll wanted to finish up ahead of time. Unfortunately, nobody told the QA deaprtment in L.A. where
I work and where the only hourly employees are to be found (just about everybody else is salaried).
So as a result, we didn't give our guesstimates for the hours we would work on Christmas Week, so this past paycheck
only contained one week of wages, plus Christmas Day off paid. Not very condusive to paying the rent, this.
So I had to write a nice letter to my landlord, explaining the situation. I've heard nothing back so far.
No news is good news, I hope.
Now, eventhough the office was officially closed for the week of New Year's, some people came in to work on our
main project, and they wanted testers to be there. So work was available. I jumped at the chance!!
Two of the testers didn't show up, so I wound up with even more hours, covering for them!
So next paycheck will be a bit weird, containing the 4 days of Christmas Week (Mon/Tue/Wed plus Friday 26th),
plus 4 days for New Year's week (3 days and New Year's Day paid), and a normal 40-hour week.
This will help a lot, but I'm still gonna do my taxes as soon as possible. :D

It's been pretty cold in L.A. for the past 3 weeks. Cold for L.A. means 40-50 temps. I know, big deal.
There was a brief upsurge of temperature last week for a couple of days, but the temps fell again.
Today, it's actually pretty nice, currently at 62, and the forecast indicates 65 for the next 2 days.
Yeah baby!! :D

I've reached an impasse with the SACEM, regarding the paperwork they want, so i'm going to go to the French
consulate to seek guidance. They should be able to help me out.

Please check out my eBay auctions. It's mostly Lego stuff, but I keep adding things.
Grey Kzin needs food (and gas and USB drive) badly! :)

Life goes on...