Figuring out what makes us tick is difficult enough.
Finding a way to live happily given those parameters is even more of a challenge.

So about two weeks ago I switched to using my mouse at work left-handed.

I'm actually pretty functional with it.  Not as good as with my right, but pretty close.

I'm still using the standard configuration, so I use my middle finger to left-click, index finger to right-click and scroll.

Seems to be helping relieve the tightness I was starting to feel in my right wrist.  I still mouse right-handed at home, but I have a nice cushion thing.

It's raining again in Portland area... but that's okay.  Rain is good.
Just makes me tired though.

On a lighter note, I got a personal email response from the inventor of the TofuXpress!  That makes me really excited!!  I love the TofuXpress!

I love tofu!  Hmmm, I wonder if I can do something mochi-ish with this?  It squeezes the water out... so what else can I squeeze the water out of?  Maybe I can make watermelon bricks?  Melon bricks...

Hmm...  Lots of interesting potential here.

Actually I kind of want to try pressing some fruit into the tofu.  Sounds weird?  Fruit and tofu...  I think it's worth a try!

(A response to a FB friend's question)
You accept that we're all not going to be around forever, so make the most of the time you do have.
Don't expect people to live for us - that's selfish. Instead, we must live for them.
Be with them, enjoy their company, listen to their stories, tell them your own. Laugh, smile, cry... Just spend quality time together. Not fighting, not frustrated, not yelling or demanding, just enjoying being together, like you would sitting on the beach with someone you love.

Okay, if bossy can cut out bacon, then I can cut out caffeine, at least for a while...

Here we go...

So I'm liking my LG Xenon phone.

Following the instructions on lg-phones.org, I even have Opera Mini running full-screen in landscape mode.

The only thing that annoyed me for a while was that the cursor keys don't match the direction.
In Landscape mode, Up arrow moves the cursor left, instead of up...  Why?  Because Opera Mini thinks the arrow keys are oriented correctly when the phone is in Portrait mode.  So when you switch to Landscape mode, it rotates the arrows too, so Up arrow moves Left, Right arrow moves Up, Down arrow moves Right and Left arrow moves

But I finally found a solution!  Instead of setting Opera Mini to natively Portrait, we set it to natively Landscape.  Then the arrow key orientation matches the default orientation and rotation works logically, albeit "Landscape mode" now engages Portrait orientation.

Add/change the following code in the JAD:

Sludge...
After trying Diet Sodamixes to begin with (see Soda Penguin), I finally got a non-Diet mix.  It's significantly thicker than the diet mix.   Of course this is to be expected as real sugar has more mass compared to a sucralose equivalent... but it still looks like sludge.  No better or worse than the sugar+Kool Aid syrup I made when Amy came to visit.  It just takes more mixing after adding the syrup.

Vacs...
Hoover sent me two screws for my steam vac - now I can properly attach the accessory holder.  Yay!

Everything But The Girl...
So I spent a good amount of time looking for my NeatReceipts sheetfed scanner while I was back in San Jose.  I eventually found it, and continued on to empty/consolidate 5 boxes of stuff, but guess what I forgot to pack and bring back with me?  Oops...  Oh well, next trip.

Need to go shopping... need two more liters of grapeseed oil if I'm going to deep-fry anything this weekend.
Also need distilled water for humidifier.
Must fight urge to go to McD's and get more glasses - I have 4, that's enough!

I'm not sure what I'm allergic to, but I'm definitely allergic to something around here... Never really had allergies (except to dust) before, but it gets bad now - puffy, watery eyes, runny nose and sneezing.  Been taking Benadryl, but it has a tendency to make me even sleepier than I normally am.

Got a new phone over the weekend - LG Xenon.  A few quirky things with it, but that's the case with most phones and so far I really like it.

Wow, I must have acclimated to the cold pretty fast, because it's only 90 outside and I'm melting!!

The sun is a welcome change though...

It was nice that it was sunny when Amy came to visit last weekend too.

Time for some Puzzle Quest...

Hooray!!  Amy came to visit me for the long weekend.

We had a wonderful weekend.  Visited Tillamook Creamery where there's the best ice cream I've ever had - so smooth and creamy!
We had Burgerville shakes (fresh strawberries) and I had fried asparagus there too.  Yum!  Oh, the burgers are good as well. ;-)

I also cooked us dinner to show that I'm taking care of myself.  Bacon, brown rice and eggs.  Amy even liked the brown rice.

And we discovered the Puzzle Quest is quite a fun game.  I'm still the winner!!

Lots of things dying around me, it seems... and I haven't been sleeping well since I returned from Las Vegas.
But I'm still alive.  Just a bit lethargic and struggling with a lot of things.

When I first got to Oregon at the end of February, I went to the Contianer Store - it's a bit far from here, but I also ended up at the Bed Bath and Beyond since there was one just down the road.

I bought a few things there and had a nice conversation with the checkout girl there about driver's licenses, nail filing (via Pedi-Paws), and blowing your nose with toilet paper (that was my contribution).  I couldn't quite remember her name, except that it started with an A.

Anyway, it's about 6 weeks later and I went back to the Container Store for an 18x24 InterMetro shelf for the top of my bedside unit, to even it out.

So I stopped by the Bed Bath and Beyond there again, and she was there again (so now I know her name is Ashleigh).  The nicest part was that she remembered me too!  It's nice to be remembered, and if I can brighten someone's day, then it's a good thing.


Which brings me to the next topic...  I was at the local Best Buy the other day and actually picked something off the shelf (normally I just do in-store pickup so I bypass the browsing), and there was a nice dark-haired girl at the register with freckles.  I remember seeing her before, but this time I really started thinking more - about my freckles, not hers...

I remember as a child I didn't much like my freckles, especially being an Asian kid...  Yes, I read the book Freckles, but the kid in that book had red hair, so it was a little difficult for me to relate.

So far I have met very few dark-haired folks with freckles, and even fewer Asians with freckles.  Lucy Liu doesn't count, only because I have never see her in-person.  Though I do have to say, she makes freckles look good!

So I'm coming to terms with my freckles.  They don't show up too profoundly anymore, probably  because I'm getting pale from lack of sun.


And finally for today, following instructions... seems I tend to be bad at that when  it comes to something I think I know.  I get into this "optimize on the fly" mode where I start skipping or combining steps, or worse, skimming the instructions.  Bad deal.  Much of the last week of time fighting with my desktop would have been saved had I bothered to actually read and follow the instructions word-for-word, even if they seemed strange or inefficient.  Sigh...  Next time, I'll follow the instructions.

Apparently I was overzealous and installed an update that rendered Vista x64 inoperable from the RAID...  I'll go another round of trying to reinstall this evening - and remember to store the initial drive image this time.

I think my power supply may either be inadequate or going on the fritz... system doesn't POST half the time and it seems to be getting worse.

Went to Fry's (in Wilsonville - ~20 miles away) to pick up a new power supply and a USB header cable (so I can use the other 2 USB ports - oops, more power - again why I got a bigger PSU).  In a Bay Area Fry's, I'd know where to look for the USB header cable.  In this one... no deal.
I asked for help.  The guy took me to three places and we couldn't find it.

In later browsing, I managed to find a Belkin one in the Belkin section of the cable aisle, as well as the Pacific Cable one I'm used to seeing in a different aisle.  Why USB products are split up between a section of USB cables with other types of cables, USB storage, USB random adapters, and USB random other stuff (PC lock, active extension, the bracket I was looking for), and USB adapters is a little beyond me.  Then again, if you put all things USB together you'd have webcams and printers in the same place too... *shrug*

Oh yeah, got a microwave steamer bowl and flashlight - two things I've been needing - and both were on sale

Aside from accidentally buying the wrong power supply (somehow I got confused and picked up the 550W instead of the 650W version) and having to go back in to do a return for store credit and buy the right one, succesful trip.  There's an Arby's there too, though I'm sure there's one closer (not that I can afford to eat out right now), and I just read that Arby's bought Wendy's last year.

Hope my sodamix arrives soon...

After two days of trying to get Vista 64-bit installed, I finally succeeded.

It kept not seeing the driver for my Highpoint RocketRAID 100 (HPT370/372) RAID card.  After lots of trying and some searching, I found out why - the Vista drivers aren't signed, and Vista won't use unsigned drivers for install.

Move the RAID array (I was going to wipe it anyway) to the on-board NVIDIA controller and it went... until it said Missing operating system.

Tried a Rebuild on the array, and that fixed it...

Performance seems slower than XP 64-bit, but that's probably due to the fact that I haven't optimized the visual settings yet.  Overall it's much more stable than my XP 64-bit install, though I suspect a lot of the instability was due to the old Highpoint card. *rolling eyes*

Anyway... Vista 64-bit has much more driver and installer support than XP 64-bit, so it was reason enough to make the move.  Now I don't have to hack the iTunes installer with Orca in order for it to install.

So yesterday I bought Papa John's pizza for dinner...  It was the toughest purchase decision I've made in a while.  It took me a good 45 minutes to decide whether I really wanted to spend the $13 for it.  Man...

Vista upgrade didn't go well.  Well, it didn't actually go.  Can't load mass storage driver for my RAID (system drive is mirrored - learned from past failure), will try again this evening.

At least my router's back to working, and I was smart enough to back up the working configuration.

Off to upgrade my machine from XP x64 to Vista x64...  Vista's much better supported and will hopefully be more stable.

Haven't been able to write much recently - been fighting my network and my fatigue.  Made some progress on the fatigue side, but my network is still being a punk.

On to good news, went to the DMV yesterday and got my Oregon license!  Yay!!  The knowledge test was pretty difficult.  There were 30 questions and some of them are pretty tricky.  Stuff like "Which of the following is the best answer?" things - the key is best there, because many of the answers applied!

Having my lunch of chili + brown rice... it's good to save money, especially since I have none!  Though I am going to spend $50 on an iPod cable for my car...  that's like 4 days of not spending money.  Eek!!

Ahh, finally good progress.  Seems I just have to tiptoe around configuring my router to get it to play nicely...  Hopefully I won't have to touch it for a while.

So, I'm back to being connected, though I'm still having problems with one of the powerline Ethernet boxes.  I think it's going bad as I intermittently had problems with it before I moved.  Probably best to get a replacement, or a faster similar device.  Not sure which way I'll go yet.

Found the Washington Square mall today.  Reminds me a lot of Valley Fair back at C-Home.  A lot of the same stores, plus a few others like JC Penny and Sears.  I'll have to be on guard when I go there or I might buy something.

Speaking of buying something, I bought a Soda Pengiun from Williams-Sonoma today, using gift cards so it was free, though I did buy an extra CO2 cartridge.  Haven't opened it yet, won't get to it until tomorrow... not sure what the first thing I try carbonating will be yet.  Maybe some juice or something... being that I don't have any non-carbonated beverages aside from water, I'm not sure yet!  Will need to pick up some flavor syrups or something.  Maybe some Torani flavor shots...

Been fighting technical problems since I got back.  So far, bricked two routers, resurrected two routers, but still in worse shape than when I started.

It's going to take some time to figure out exactly what's going on here.  The other things I had planned to do will have to wait.