They Don’t Know

I have had, at least I think, generally above-average tech literacy for most of my life.   I make my career in being an, at least I think, high-priced tech consultant… and generally was good at helping people research problems.  I spent my latter years at college helping scrub and then harden student’s personal computers from all the Ills of the Internet as of 2002. Sure I do the same “How do I make computer/phone/car stop doing [un-nerving thing], Google?” thing as most folks, but for some reason I seemed to zero in on the issue and fix it quickest.  So I am comfortable with the idea that I have encountered and know how to fix a lot of random tech issues.

That being said, the most complicated and confusing and “unsolvable without some sort of large replacement purchase” issues are always courtesy of my Mother.  I mean, I have seen heisenburg upgrades of Internet Explorer (I can’t see it in the ‘windows features’ list to uninstall it, but when I try to install a new copy, it says it’s already installed!?), I have seen more toolbars than an auto shop… but this most recent thing makes me think my mother just got cursed by someone.

So, I’m printing out some documents for my mother to read, and the printer jammed… and as I was yanking out the crimped sheets from the printers every orifice,  I noticed that in the paper maelstrom there were some small strips of paper that were about 8 inches long and 3/8ths inch wide… and they were perfectly cut, not something torn off by something getting caught in the printer.  The end of one was also singed by getting caught close to the fusor.

There were a few more jams, a few more strips, and eventually the paper ran out, and in picking up the remnants of a plastic wrapped, reputable all-purpose paper, and STRIPS STARTED FALLING OUT OF IT.  I shook the rest of the ream from both angles until about 40 or 50 of the little suckers were littering the floor.  And this was not like, some local hand-me-down paper from the friendly mill down across town or something, this was Georgia Pacific, bought in Office Max/Office Despot/Staples Should-not-have-little-strips-n-shit paper.

This is the sort of thing I don’t see anywhere else that has reassured me of my mother’s status of an aggregator for strange tech problems.  I may soon be inquiring to the services of Young Priest & Old Priest LLC.

I believe it was the Life On The Shit List podcast (or LOTSL if you are looking in iTunes since they don’t like wirty dords) where I heard someone say that it was easier to make habits than set resolutions or goals.  The example given was a guy who had a gut who made it a habit of going to Yoga every night and, well, lost the gut after months and months of 7x a week bendy stretchy core exercise.  That pretty much sums up the approaches that have seemed to work for me, so I’ll frame my resolutions/goals/what-have-you for 2013 as habits that have been working, have not been working, and that I want to form over the next year.

• Habits to Keep or Ramp Up
  • Early to Bed, Early to Rise:  I have taken to falling asleep around 9:00 PM, and waking up around 5:00 AM.  It means I get out of the house at 6:15 and work by 7:00, and leave work by 3:00 or 4:00 and avoid some of the worst traffic.   It also means I work through most of the daylight.  This has helpfully been enforced by Cairo, the insane weenie beast who will pretty much start licking my face and kicking me in the stomach if she is not let out by 6:00 AM
  • Save up for expenses I know are coming:  I got a SmartyPig account, and set up monthly debits on things I know are coming that are going to be expensive (Insurance Payments, Car Tires, Vacations/Staycations, etc).  It has slowed the amount I contribute to loan over-payment and emergency savings… but it has also drastically reduced the need for me to dip into those emergency savings, and I consider that a good thing
  • Super-Budgeting in general:  I have a silly way of budgeting that involves both high tech tools like Mint and Google Calendar and  low tech tools like Index Cards… but it works for me and forces me to spot-check where money went.   I have actually had a few “No, I can’t buy that yet because I went to lunch with such and such for so and so” and made decisions about whether I wanted to go out to lunch next week or buy Whatever Thing I had my eye on.
  • Gym:  I was pretty good about going to the gym at least 3 times a week.  a bunch of weight moved up into my back, chest, and shoulders, and my knee stopped bothering me (or when it did bother me, it was because I had just done 50 step-ups on it and it stopped bitching as soon as I got home)
  • Eating better:  I was pretty good about making lunches, using sparkpeople to track calories and keep myself honest about how many times I had already had candy.  With this and the gym I had gone from oscillating between 225-235 lbs to oscillating between 215-225 lbs.  I hope this year to make it to oscillating between 195 and 205 lbs.
• Habits to fall back into
  • Social Planning:  For some reason, I stopped planning things as much as I used to.  Parties and cons and vacations sort of went on autopilot.  I stopped reaching out to people to make sure they could come or to see what they wanted to do.  I wasn’t as good about hitting up people to hang out and started not seeing them nearly as much.  I want to see those people, have a better idea of who might be making it to my parties, and be more excited about what I am doing for Con.  Also, if I take time off and don’t plan things to do… Eric starts to plan chores for me, and I don’t have nearly as good a time.
  • Active Listening:  I need to be better about remembering names, pulling more important nuggets from conversation, making eye contact, and picking up on things that people say.  This means turning away from the computer.  This means acknowledging something I missed instead of blaming the other person for something I “didn’t hear.”
  • Handwriting Cards:  I wrote a lot more thank you cards and Holiday cards than I did this year.  I want to write more cards because it’s fun and people seem to respond well to it… although I am going to try out a plan for Christmas cards of buying a bunch of them now (when they are on sale)  writing a generic message in a card appropriate to the recipient about once a week, and then mailing them all out the day after Thanksgiving day.  I can’t tell whether the idea is brilliant or disingenuous.  Probably a bit of both.
  • Podcasting:  I podcasted.  I need to fall back off the wagon.  I had fun visiting with a bunch of local podcasters the week before Christmas (and Big Fatty) and I need to keep up to stay in touch with so many of the wonderful people I have met through it.
• Habits to start
  • Analytic Shopping:  If I am buying something… ask what it’s replacing, and if it isn’t replacing something… where it will live in my already full house.   This also goes for asking for gifts.
  • Semi-daily cleaning:  We have a dog now.  The dog is made of hair which gets everywhere.  Instead of cleaning lazily once a month… I need to probably run the vacuum over everything once every two or three days… and need to be a lot better about mopping up after the dog tracks mud into the house as opposed to once every three weeks.
• Habits to Drop
  • Leaving both doors of the garage open:  so that Cairo can sneak out and run off… where she plays Gingerbread Dog (“Can’t catch me!” *sprint*)
  • Autopiloting my career:  I should at least give work the opportunity to block things I want to do and I think will be interesting before getting bitter about not doing them.
  • Replacing a meal with a tube of cookie dough:  Eating that much cookie dough (or even only half a tube) seems to be a way to make my brain hit the shiny red “abandon ship” button for my entire digestive tract

I just ordered new tires for Amelia (the 2010 Miata): Continental ExtremeContact DW 205/45ZR17 Because Reasons:

1. Every review seems to be one of three things:
a. “OH MY GOD THESE ARE THE BEST TIRES EVER”
b. “I really, really like these tires but they wore out after only 25,000 miles (15,000 miles if they were used on a track regularly)” <— Welcome to the world of “Max Performance Summer” tires. They are so grippy because they are a bit less soft than toothpaste.
c. “I replaced the Michelin Pilot Super Sports on my [insert expensive sporty car here] with these and while they rode more comfortably they performed a bit worse and were a little bit louder. This offended me and I went back to the Pilots. Not too bad a tire however…” <— Michelin Pilot Super Sports go for about $250 a tire on my car (and can reach upwards of $500-600 a tire on really fancy cars with wide, thin tires)…. You can apparently get them for $195 a tire from COSTCO occasionally. The tires I just got are more like $105 a tire. I’m more than okay with 98% performance for 50-10% of the cost.
2. They have a little “DW” stamped into one of the treads. When they are no longer safe for wet driving, the “W” wears away. When they are no longer even safe for Dry driving, the “D” wears away.
3. I already have Contental ExtremeContact DWS (the higher-treadwear all-season version… DWS is for Dry/Wet/Snow, hence the DW’s are Dry/Wet only) on Lina (the 2004 Mazda3) and was so impressed I talked Eric into getting them for his Fusion (“They slip a lot less!” he says).

I look forward to around 22,000 miles of gleeful driving on the shiny new shoes!

(Image ganked from http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/Continental/ExtremeContact-DW.htm)