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Dec. 30th, 2000 12:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ocelotOriginal: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2000/12/30/25056/150
Well, I survived the Christmas from Hell intact. Now I'm doing the family visit thing in Southern California. I swear I'm moving back here one of these days - the weather is just soooooo nice (if any of you are people from work who are hesitant about me because you're afraid I'm going to pick up and leave suddenly, "one of these days" ~= 10 years from now).
So I'm back in Southern California, wandering around in short sleeves perfectly comfortably during the day. I'd forgotten how nice warmth can be. Yes, yes. I know I said I liked cold. I do. But I like warm too.
I flew into San Diego last night (Thursday, for those of you elsewhere in the world). The flight was delayed for about an hour due to the amount of cargo they'd handled that day, or something. I ended up sitting next to a woman who had never flown before. Thankfully, it was an extremely peaceful flight.
Got home and exchanged presents with my brother. He loved the nose-face cd :) And my cats both remembered me, which was comforting.
After a very quick visit with my grandparents, I left again this morning (on the train) for my mom's place, which is in some town in the middle of the Mojave desert east of LA. I haven't been here before - last time I was down in Southern California was before she moved out. I have to admit, it's a nice area - surrounded by mountains, and pretty barren except for this town. Then we headed out on the road. I managed not to cause any accidents. I'm quite proud of myself. We didn't stay out for long - it was getting to be evening, and the sun was shining in our eyes (yes, we probably could have turned around and gone back in the other direction, but I was getting a headache anyways).
After that little adventure, we went to the store to get some food for dinner and breakfast. We stumbled across plantains (cooking bananas, basically), and decided to give them a try since neither of us had ever eaten them before. So we had chicken apple sausages, boiled potatos, homemade applesauce, salad, and fried plantains. The plantains turned out ok, considering we didn't really know how to prepare them. Didn't really go with the meal (combined with the potatos, it made for an awful lot of starch), but that's ok. The pieces that were cut a bit thicker turned out better - kinda like a potato or something inside, but with a vaguely sharp/sweet flavor. We decided that it would be interesting to try them baked.
After dinner we watched the video of Cats - not as intense as the stage production (and they left out Growltiger's Last Stand! :(), but it was still good.
Then I got to play tech support, and fixed a few of the problems that have been plaguing my mom's computer. She keeps getting disconnected within 5 minutes of dialing in to her ISP (usually within 30 seconds or so). I checked it out, didn't see any IRQ conflicts or anything obvious like that. So I tried switching phone numbers, and that did it. A problem on their end, apparently (which was actually the first thing I suggested, but she didn't believe me).
Once that was fixed, I discovered that the same old "DPAL Error" BSOD that led to the unceremonious powercycling of the computer approx. every 24 hours ever since they got it (about 2 years ago) still existed. A quick google search indicated that the fix was to update the modem drivers, which I did.
Why didn't I think to do that 2 years ago, or any time in between now and then? Would have saved everyone a whole lot of grief.
Anyways, these two idiot fixes make me a computer genius in her eyes, which I'm not going to argue about, since it keeps her off my case about the time I spend on the computer.
Tomorrow should be interesting. I'm meeting my mom's boyfriend (Mark) for the first time. Can't say I'm entirely looking forward to it, but I am relativly curious to find out who exactly this guy who's broken up my family is. We're having breakfast together, waiting around for the cable guy to show up and install my mom's cable so she can watch the Rose Parade on Jan. 1, possibly going out driving again (apparently Mark loves teaching people to drive), and then heading out to LA for our annual holiday family gathering. And then I'm going back to San Diego for the rest of the vacation.
We'll see how it goes.
Well, I survived the Christmas from Hell intact. Now I'm doing the family visit thing in Southern California. I swear I'm moving back here one of these days - the weather is just soooooo nice (if any of you are people from work who are hesitant about me because you're afraid I'm going to pick up and leave suddenly, "one of these days" ~= 10 years from now).
So I'm back in Southern California, wandering around in short sleeves perfectly comfortably during the day. I'd forgotten how nice warmth can be. Yes, yes. I know I said I liked cold. I do. But I like warm too.
I flew into San Diego last night (Thursday, for those of you elsewhere in the world). The flight was delayed for about an hour due to the amount of cargo they'd handled that day, or something. I ended up sitting next to a woman who had never flown before. Thankfully, it was an extremely peaceful flight.
Got home and exchanged presents with my brother. He loved the nose-face cd :) And my cats both remembered me, which was comforting.
After a very quick visit with my grandparents, I left again this morning (on the train) for my mom's place, which is in some town in the middle of the Mojave desert east of LA. I haven't been here before - last time I was down in Southern California was before she moved out. I have to admit, it's a nice area - surrounded by mountains, and pretty barren except for this town. Then we headed out on the road. I managed not to cause any accidents. I'm quite proud of myself. We didn't stay out for long - it was getting to be evening, and the sun was shining in our eyes (yes, we probably could have turned around and gone back in the other direction, but I was getting a headache anyways).
After that little adventure, we went to the store to get some food for dinner and breakfast. We stumbled across plantains (cooking bananas, basically), and decided to give them a try since neither of us had ever eaten them before. So we had chicken apple sausages, boiled potatos, homemade applesauce, salad, and fried plantains. The plantains turned out ok, considering we didn't really know how to prepare them. Didn't really go with the meal (combined with the potatos, it made for an awful lot of starch), but that's ok. The pieces that were cut a bit thicker turned out better - kinda like a potato or something inside, but with a vaguely sharp/sweet flavor. We decided that it would be interesting to try them baked.
After dinner we watched the video of Cats - not as intense as the stage production (and they left out Growltiger's Last Stand! :(), but it was still good.
Then I got to play tech support, and fixed a few of the problems that have been plaguing my mom's computer. She keeps getting disconnected within 5 minutes of dialing in to her ISP (usually within 30 seconds or so). I checked it out, didn't see any IRQ conflicts or anything obvious like that. So I tried switching phone numbers, and that did it. A problem on their end, apparently (which was actually the first thing I suggested, but she didn't believe me).
Once that was fixed, I discovered that the same old "DPAL Error" BSOD that led to the unceremonious powercycling of the computer approx. every 24 hours ever since they got it (about 2 years ago) still existed. A quick google search indicated that the fix was to update the modem drivers, which I did.
Why didn't I think to do that 2 years ago, or any time in between now and then? Would have saved everyone a whole lot of grief.
Anyways, these two idiot fixes make me a computer genius in her eyes, which I'm not going to argue about, since it keeps her off my case about the time I spend on the computer.
Tomorrow should be interesting. I'm meeting my mom's boyfriend (Mark) for the first time. Can't say I'm entirely looking forward to it, but I am relativly curious to find out who exactly this guy who's broken up my family is. We're having breakfast together, waiting around for the cable guy to show up and install my mom's cable so she can watch the Rose Parade on Jan. 1, possibly going out driving again (apparently Mark loves teaching people to drive), and then heading out to LA for our annual holiday family gathering. And then I'm going back to San Diego for the rest of the vacation.
We'll see how it goes.
