So we've had a family of five living in our house since Thursday. They were evacuated on Monday from the Lake Arrowhead area twice - once from the house they were renting, and once from the Rim of the World house they evacuated to. They decided to evacuate Monday to her mother's house. When we checked with them again on Wednesday, we found out that they weren't living in the best of conditions. The parents were in separate twin beds. One of the girls was sleeping on the floor, another on the couch, and one was sleeping on two chairs pushed together.

We have a spare room with a queen bed and two couches that pull out into beds.

We were rather insistent that they move into our house for a while. So Thursday night, our little house that normally had two adults and a cat had four adults, three girls, two dogs, and a cat. Chaos ensued. Now, please don't misunderstand -- I offered the house to this family and am very glad to help. But our quiet house turned into a madhouse. And did I mention that I'm really not a kid person? Yeah, I was just giddy to have all these ... little people ... all over the place.

Saturday, Jen and one of her friends were going to a Scrapbook Expo, so she had invited this friend to stay overnight and scap all day Friday. That plan was made early in the week. Jen made sure her friend knew what was going on, and she decided to go ahead and stay at our house anyway. So Friday, we actually had 5 adults, 3 kids, 2 dogs, and 1 cat. And because the scapping session ran late into the night, that was same situation Saturday.

Anyway, the family was able to get up to the Arrowhead house today, and all was fine. Their food was spoiled, but that was about it. Not even the smell of smoke in the house, which is pretty darned cool. So they called me to say that they are throwing out the food, will come back down to pick up their stuff from our house, have dinner, and go back up the hill. They are ansy to get back home, which I understand. To be honest, I'm ansy to get my quiet house back.

Ah, west and welaxation at wast. =)

It's surprising how quickly I can go from being okay to utterly pissed off.

So I'm in San Diego for three days of ITIL v3 training. The battery on my laptop just went boom. Now I'm tethered to the wall... gugh.

...and had a rock hit the windshield. Another brilliant start to another brilliant week.

I have been testing a few comic collector softwares, mainly to inventory my collection but also to possibly sell some things I no longer feel the need to keep. Fine. There are three bigs in this field from what I can tell -- the new Comic Collector Live, Collectorz Comic Collector, and ComicBase. So I've been playing with the evaluation versions.

Last night, I had ComicBase installed and decided it wasn't for me. I went through their uninstall and everything turned wonky on my machine. Seems ComicBase, upon uninstall, takes out *any* font it thinks it installed, whether the font was there already or not. So it ripped out Tahoma, which is the font Microsoft predominately uses in Windows XP for the system. Many other applications also rely on this system font, and this stupid stupid comic collecting database program went and unistalled it without a care in the world.

Thankfully, either XP or Office detected that the font was missing and reinstalled it on my system in a manner of minutes. But HELLO! This is version 11 of the software. While I realize that this started on Macs, you've been doing Windows versions for some time now. Don't you think you ought to figure out how a Microsoft Installer package works?

ComicBase -- off the list.

I have a group of sanctimonious pricks are tattling on me that I am not playing in their sandbox. Yeah, that's the way to get me to cooperate -- go running off crying like a baby complaining that I won't play with you.

Pricks.

(leaving this public in case bodams_locker wants to chime in, since he refuses to get a LJ...)

I had an optomotrist appointment today. The doctor was not pleased with what she saw, so much so that I will be going back next week after not wearing contact lenses for a week. Then, based on what she sees at that time, I may have to go to opthamology for a little eye dilation, and who the heck knows what's going to happen after that.

Ugh. I hate my eyes.

Target is quickly turning me into a Wal-Mart shopper. The attitude at the local store is going down quickly to the point of being rude. I can live with that if they still had the products that I want. But they decided to no longer carry the bar soap that I use (Safeguard Beige), but since I buy those 10 bars at a time, it's not that big of a deal to stop by somewhere when I'm near a place that has it. But now, they have dropped my hairspray (Consort for Men, Non Aerosol Unscented), and pretty much any hairspray. Not that I'd use it, but they even dropped Aqua Net. I mean, there are two brands of hair spray at this store, and they don't seem to think this is an issue. GUGH!

Helpful tip: When a customer asks you if you carry something, don't simply say "I don't know", shrug your shoulders, turn around and walk away. Grrrrr....

You don't tug on Superman's cape.
You don't spit into the wind.
You don't pull the mask off the ol' Lone Ranger
And you dont stand directly in front of the elevator door when that little light goes off, thereby preventing the passengers of the evelator from being able to leave the car. You especially don't continue to stand there as people are trying to get by you. And if you even THINK about trying to enter the elevator while the people are trying to exit, then don't act surprised when people knock into you, ya danged moron.

The same goes for people waiting for subways and trains too.

It's off! It's off! It's off!!!!!!!!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to take a nice long shower...

ah...

pettitte96, I know this is just a fraction of what you went/are going through, and you have a lot of respect in my book because of that.

~-~-~-~
Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice.... This journal will never have ads in it, though my friends list may because a couple of feeds have them embedded. Got to love permanent accounts...

We had a planned power outage in one of our data centers this weekend. The server administrators were supposed to shut down all of my servers, including the SMS server that has a SAN connection. The SAN itself was shut down. My SMS server, with it's database located on the SAN, was not. Thank goodness we have transaction logs locally located on the box. But this morning, SMS was so flaky we had to bounce the box after all.

If only people would do what they said they would...

Yes, something happened.

Yes, I'm back.

Yes, it may happen again.

Yes, I'm sorry if it caused you to be concerned.

I just went through VM hell trying to call Verizon Online. Their IVR is voice only, and it refused to recognize me saying "New". After FIVE TIMES, it finally offered me an agent, which then transferred me to a recording saying to call back between business hours of 8 am to 6 pm! Hello? It's 3:40 PM so I *AM* calling during business hours!

I was already looking at other DSL service, and this frankly may push me over the edge.

I'm having a day worthy of Jack Bauer.

That is all.

Pink eye update: Went back to the doctor today, because I don't seem to be getting better. Basically, most people that get pink eye get it due to a bacteria, which the eye drops take care of. Mine appears to be viral in nature, which is why the eyedrops aren't really doing anything. And, since it's a virus, there's nothing that can be done short of waiting it out.

Doc said that this typically lasts between 3-10 days. I mentioned to him that I had a head cold on last Tuesday, and he said that *may* be related to the same virus. Basically, he gave me some stronger eye drops (oh goody) and said "Your body will heal itself."

I am still considered contagious, so I'm going to work from home, probably the rest of this week. Doc also said that, if I'm not better by the weekend, come in again Monday and they'll see what they can do -- though it won't be much.

Man, this new year just bites so far!

Two words: Pink Eye.

Jen and I may have to use up our frequently flyer miles to go to a wedding in New York. In August. *sigh* Oh well. I guess any plans for our anniversary and Vegas in September can be postponed.

In other news, I'm feeling better, but not 100%.

I don't wanna get sick again! No! Stop it!

Jen's been sick the last couple of days, to the point that she stayed home from work yesterday. This morning, I woke up with a dry, scratchy, sore throat. Dangit.