Enemy of Entropy

Read it phonetically. When I’m really tired, I fall back into the Alabama accent.

Made it to my appointment this morning. Made it to Katie’s appointment on the other side of the world. Then the car wouldn’t crank. In fact, it wouldn’t do anything at all. Not even the automatic door locks were working. No reason at all for it—I didn’t leave the lights on or anything like that.¹

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Sam and I spent most of our date time looking at laptops. Yes, we’re finally replacing the one that died last summer. Yay!

I find it easier to put what I find online in context after having actually played with a bunch of machines tonight, so I’ll be doing a lot of research online.

Anybody have any strong recommendations or good/bad experiences to share? Knowledge of any places that give “educational discounts” that aren’t just “steer your students to us and we’ll give you a little lower price on your own machines” deals? Sure experience exorcising Vista from a “Vista-compatible” PC? Please speak up!

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This not-flu or whatever is exceedingly tiresome. I should think it would be enough to live with the day to day stuff, let alone put up with this. Then again, nobody has ever claimed in my hearing that the world is fair.

I haven’t succeeded in holding any thoughts in my head long, so you’re in for randomness again this entry.

I have no idea why the main article was linked from ZDNet, but doesn’t this cheddar and apple sandwich seem yummy? I wonder how it would be with ham? I used to have a really good recipe for a sausage and apples dish, but I know I haven’t cooked it in the last decade. Maybe I could dig it out of my ancient recipe box? There are few ways to go wrong with cooked apples, as far as I can tell.

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Over the last two years, Sam and I have talked about moving elsewhere. Georgia has almost no consumer protections for citizens, has a crappy support structure for humans in just about every way you can imagine, and has law enforcement who don’t care to enforce laws unless you’ve got enough money to get their attention. Essentially, we want to live in a blue state, which means leaving the Bible belt. Cooler weather would be nice, too. Less humid heat, at least, would be a relief.

We haven’t really made plans, not wanting to uproot Katie while she was in school and so on. There’s a lot of inertia, too, since I’ve been here all my life (except for the few years in Alabama before my parents moved us to Atlanta). Sam was born here, and wasn’t thrilled with New York or New Jersey when he lived there. Our families are here, which means something, even if we don’t see them that often.

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Our heat went out last night, so we woke up in a very, very cold house. I don’t care what you Yankees say, we had a hard freeze here, so it really was cold! There was snow on the car before we went to bed Tuesday night, and we had to get ice off the windshield to go see my pain specialist today. I felt like I’d never be warm again despite wearing the pretty gloves and scarf Sam bought for me a while back.¹

There was no response from the landlord to email or many phone calls until late in the day. I huddled under the covers most of the day, both to try to get warm and because my pain is always worse in cold weather. The landlord eventually got someone out to check the system late this evening.

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