Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

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  • How Many Fits of Cursing Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

    I am tired. I have grease smudges on my face. My hands hurt and two nails are broken. Not in that “eek I broke my nails” way, that isn’t really my style, but in that ripped down “fuck THAT hurts” way. However there are now two working headlights on the car. Unfortunately I didn’t finish the work early enough this morning, so my car is gone for the day again. Not a huge deal, but it is in need of an oil change so I’d rather it not make the longer commute. My commute down the hallway in my jammies is much easier on the car.

    The manual said to remove six clips, which I did. This allowed me to remove the “engine cover” some dumbass plastic piece of limited use. This I also did. The instructions up to that point were clear and things were okay. Next it points out that on the “right side” by which they mean the passenger side there are some extra steps. I was working on the driver’s side, so I skipped those steps. I removed the connector. Then came time to move the bulb cover, an annoying rubber thing. I tried and tried, but there was no way that I could. There was not enough room for my hand, and my hands are not huge.

    So I removed the fuse box cover, not a suggested step, but it gave me a little extra room to maneuver and messed with it and messed with it and messed with it until I got the outside ring of bulb cover. Yay? No. The cover refuses to come off. The rubber is still firmly attached to the bulb and it is putting pressure on the bulb and moving it instead of coming off.

    The manual just says to turn the cover counterclockwise and remove it and goes on to the next step. It makes it sound pie easy.

    I turn to the internet and discover other people complaining that the driver’s side is a real PITA. Okay, little manual writing monkeys. Here is an idea. Do not reserve your extra instructions for the side that is easier. While I found plenty of people complaining about it, they were complaining about the step before where they were trying to get the outside ring to detach. I resorted to posting on a forum requesting more details. Nobody responded. I could post a photo of a naked tit and get 100 comments in the first 5 minutes, but getting a useful response to a problem is a whole different story.

    Eventually I go back outside and channel my father and just decide I do not need to be careful about the fragile glass bulb and instead I should go ahead and force it. I force it, and it eventually gives. The rubber has threading on it to help it grip very tight. It is never going to come off breezily. I still have not won because there is a clip shown in the manual, except I cannot see the fucking thing, and it is difficult to feel and they just say to remove it and don’t give any more detail on how. I fiddle and fiddle and finally get it undone. It is at the clip stage that I rip the two nails.

    I replace the burnt out bulb with the new one. I reassemble the headlamp portion and test it out. It works.

    Next it is time to put the engine cover back on. This goes smoothly except for dropping one of the clips. Of course I cannot drop it in an area where it will fall easily through to the ground. I drop it where it is caught in something out of site and out of reach. The cover is now secured by five clips instead of six.

    I hope the neighbors enjoyed all the swearing.

    In other news, the move to the other computer has gone more poorly than I was even expecting and I am very slowed down on all my projects because of it. I am typing this as I try to get some other things copied that I did not expect to need to move in this particular fashion.

    Oh yeah, and the worst thing about doing car crap first thing in the morning, is that I have to put on pants.

  • Is it time for bed?

    Done

    • uploaded website
    • troubleshot wireless network, bought parts and repaired it
    • went to work on HE system, found problems, fixed things as best I could but they may need to get some warranty repair
    • bought a new bulb to replace the burnt out headlight, but cannot replace it in the dark
    • paid bills, many of them ones that made me angry
    • completed computer back up, on new computer, not settled on it yet
    • cleared a stuffed full small recycling bin worth of papers off my desk
    • fixed a problem on a website, even though somebody else made the error
    • drafted a “code of conduct” for a martial arts school
    • carved out some family time
    • carved out some couple time

    Failed

    • cleaning the kitchen
    • picking up fused glass project
    • installing headlamp
    • website design outline
    • getting the HE system done and off the plate
    • getting to bed at a reasonable time

    To Do Tuesday

    I don’t want to think about it right now.

  • Morning Assessment

    Kid – sick, refuses to get out of bed
    Husband – sick, refuses to stay home and rest
    Self – up and working, some sort of sinus unpleasantness which I will not describe in detail (but think gross)

    To Do Today
    Already forced to push several things to later in the week and cancel others completely due to illness annoyances.

    • upload website
    • do website design outline
    • go troubleshoot a wireless network for somebody (then likely go buy new bits and redo setup)
    • go tweak a home entertainment system setup for somebody
    • get new headlamp for car and replace it
    • clean kitchen
    • pay bills
    • complete computer backup and migration
    • try to pick up fused glass project

  • bored now

    Today I am migrating to my new computer. Overall this is a good thing. My current desktop is woefully underpowered for the workload I put on it.

    In the short term it means there will be a lot of swearing and fit throwing in my near to mid future as things on the new computer are “not right” yet and I won’t realize that something isn’t installed or that some default that I hate has been left in place until I am under deadline and completely behind.

    At the moment it means I have a lot of backing up to do. Which is what I am doing right now, and I am killing burn time by typing this. The computer I am leaving is a mirrored RAID setup, as is the one I am moving too. In theory I do not need to be burning these files to CD, nor backing them to an external drive. The plan is that these two drives will be yanked out of this machine and one will be stored away with all the data that is on it currently, and the other will be stuck in an external enclosure and connected to the new computer so that I can move my files onto it.

    However there is stuff on here that it would really really suck to lose, so I feel the need to play it safer and have quadruple copies of things. Unfortunately my computer is really not much better organized than my brain is, so it is a fair amount of effort to find all the important items that I want to make sure are saved.

    “69% Writing to disc” Nice display of the English language.

    Ooh, “100% Writing to disc” I believe that is my cue to do something. No, I was wrong. “9% Verifying the compilation”

    Xander is sitting next to the monitor taking turns between cleaning himself and knocking stuff off of my desk.

  • nightly news report

    I’ve made it home, but I feel awful. I would be in bed except that my gut is hurting too much to get comfortable, so here I am sitting at the computer and just feeling generally gross.

    In other news, outside it smells like… not rotten, but definitely not fresh, salmon. Since I can think of no reasonable explanation for why outside should smell like salmon, I am just figuring that it is a brain tumor. Maybe not, since I don’t smell it inside.

    Everybody else is asleep, or I would drag other people outside to ask if they smell it. “Hey come here, smell this. It is gross.”

    Yep.

    Outside stinks. I don’t feel well. And that’s the way it is.

  • another shitty day in paradise

    I am not a fan of Richard Dawkins. This is not to say that I dislike him, I haven’t familiarized myself enough with him to develop an opinion. I am aware of his name and have a general concept of who he is, but I have never read a single one of his books. I’ve never seen him interviewed. He is a shadow in my peripheral vision.

    I ran across this shortened transcript of an interview with him. One of the questions was “How do you explain its prevalence?” (it being the belief in a supernatural god). His response has been kicking around in my brain as vaguely interesting.

    When you ask a Darwinian like me, how we explain something, we usually take that to mean, “What is the Darwinian survival value of it?”

    Quite often, when you ask what is the survival value of “X”, it turns out that you shouldn’t be asking the question about “X” at all, but that “X” is a by-product of something else that does have survival value. In this case, the suggestion I put forward as only one of many possible suggestions, is that religious faith is a by-product of the childhood tendency to believe what your parents tell you.

    It’s a very good idea for children to believe what parents tell them. A child who dis-believes what his parents tell him would probably die, by not heeding the parent’s advice not to get into the fire, for example. So child brains, on this theory, are born with a rule of thumb, “believe what your parents tell you.” Now, the problem with that — where the by-product idea comes in — is that it’s not possible to design a brain that believes what its parents tell it, without believing bad things along with good things. Ideally we might like the child brain to filter good advice like, “Don’t jump in the fire,” from bad advice like, “Worship the tribal gods.” But the child-brain has no way of discriminating those two kinds of advice. So, inevitably, a child-brain that is pre-programmed to believe and obey what his parents tell it, is automatically vulnerable to bad advice like, “Worship the tribal juju.”

    I think that’s one part of the answer, but then, you need another part of the answer: Why do some kinds of bad advice, like, “Worship the tribal juju,” survive and others not?

    Beliefs like “life-after-death” spread because they are appealing. A lot of people don’t like the idea of dying and rather do like the idea that they’ll survive their own death. So the meme, if you like, spreads like a virus because people want to believe it.

    It brought to mind the whole Santa Claus thing.

    Of course, on days like today, it sure would be easier to pick my sobbing daughter up off the floor and try to cheer her up with an elaborate story of how her bird is now enjoying flying around in heaven and she’ll see it again one day. I don’t think it is just a matter of it sticking and spreading because people want to believe it, I imagine the telling of it is a comfort too, for the speaker. Even if the speaker does not firmly believe it themselves, it is an easier, and on the surface perhaps a seemingly kinder response than “That sucks.“

  • This is from an official sign that I saw at the doctor’s office today:

    Family Medicine Department
    Service Standards

    Flexibility to member needs the best way we can
    Accountability for patient care
    Maintain quality for ourselves and others
    Integrity and professionalism in everything we do
    Live with partnership by involving people in decision making
    Yield to best service

    Member satisfaction is our first priority
    Encourage innovation
    Diversity in individual care

    I fear that somebody was paid to write that.

  • Hell Froze Over

    There was frozen water falling out of the sky today in Southern California. I’ve heard rumors of such things, but in the decade I have been trying to survive in this area, I have never seen such a thing. Today, I did.

    Go figure.

    Other things that I said might happen once hell did indeed freeze over, such as my becoming a vegetarian Christian, did not.
    Was Supposed to be a Lime

    Very Cold Wild Strawberry

  • Pardon Me

    I am just obsessed with this flickr account.  

    (more…)

  • Eating Disorder

    I love Xander. He fits in well with the family. He has issues.