After taking December off, it is with a sense of achievement and success that I have completed my gratitude blog posting goals for January. My goal is 21+ posts and this makes 22.
a month of gratitude
a new PC video card aka data loss
In the last three months, I have upgraded my PCs from being Intel duo core CPUs to an Intel 8- core and an AMD 4-core. The Intel chip is working more than twice as good as the AMD chip.
There are an overwhelming number of possibilities when it comes to buying motherboards and CPUs. I bought the Intel first. It worked great as my daily PC. I bought a new mobo and AMD chip for a PC I was going to use as a home theater PC (HTPC) which is a fancier way of saying playing videos from my PC to a big TV screen.
The AMD chip comes with a built-in mid-grade graphics (video) capability. That is AMDs claim to value when selling CPUs to home hobbyists. It never worked as well as desired. I ended up using the Intel as my HTPC which was a serious case of overkill and worked really well.
The AMD PC was sucking when it came to basic websurfing even with an added mid-grade video card. I splurged for an early birthday present buying something a lot closer to the sharp-end of the cutting edge of price/performance curve than I usually do. The graphics card came with two fans and was so big it did not even fit in the mid-size AMD PC case.
I had a really cool graphics card that needed a home. Time to put it in the Intel PC that has a bigger case (ATX vs mini-ATX). That immediately turned into a wrestling match of unexpected proportions. I had to move the harddrives around to make room for the graphics card. Once I got the graphics card installed, the PC would no longer boot.
It turned out that the test install of Windows 8 beta had messed up the boot record on my primary harddrive. The Windows 7 installation disk could not fix the problem on its own. I had to create a Windows 8 install setup on a USB drive to format the drive. I wiped out two partitions and was good to go with Windows 7.
The second partition I wiped out was my data partition. I lost ten days worth of emails, a few of these blog posts, a few other documents of minor importance and a lot of time spent working PCs that I had not planned on doing.
The good news is I bought a different graphics card at the local computer parts store yesterday and it is working much better than the old one on my AMD PC. I still have to complete my Outlook email settings and add a few other programs. Things are at least working in a bare-bones functional sort of way.
I am grateful that PC trouble-shooting issues were my biggest problems this weekend. It was a sort of enjoyable hobby puzzle that I was fortunate enough to have the money to buy a working graphics card and the time & skills to make it all happen.
a comedy trio in Kirkland with MJ
Went to the Kirkland Comedy Club tonight with MJ. We ate some snacks and split a chicken burger.
The comedians were sort of okay. Comedy is tough. Either it is really good, barely passable or it sucks. These guys were variations on barely passable that got a few laughs. The headliner was the best and was at least entertaining as he worked the crowd adding responses from audience members as he quizzed the crowd to make an entertaining semi-dialogue.
After having a tough Monday visiting my mother and staying home for a couple of days, I was in the mood to stay home and isolate some more. I did not want to cancel on MJ. It was good to get out, talk with others and see the world. I am still a bit twisted sideways in my head and need more meetings. For today, comedy was good enough.
functional independence
Most of the time when I start writing my gratitude blog I already have a topic or a title to help get me going. There was a minute of writer's block getting choosing a topic as I thought back through a couple of the good moments of my day and discarded them as insufficient for a post. After visiting my mother yesterday at a chronic care facility where she is rehabbing from her knee replacement surgery along with a few emails between my sister and the lawyer that is doing the Guardianship process for us, I came up with the topic of being grateful for my functional independence.
My mother has dementia, presumably from Alzheimer's, that has progressed considerably in the last year. IMHO, she is no longer able to make good decisions when it comes to making choices for health and financial care. Back in the day when I was using, there were predatory addicts that would consume, con or steal any possible resources in order to feed their habit.
The people helping my mother have to be a bit more restrained in their approach than predatory addicts, but in the end they would take everything she had under the guise of "helping" her.
I am grateful for my financial, emotional and housing independence that I have achieved as a result of my recovery and help from many others. I could not have done it on my own.
visiting my mother after knee replacement surgery
My had knee replacement surgery earlier this month. She was 84 on her birthday last week. I went to see her today and she did not know who I was until I explained my name and our relationship to her. She has dementia and was doped-up on an unknown quantity of pain medication. It was not immediately what condition was affecting her responses. I have learned from 12-step programs to not try to figure out how intoxicated others are. It is not my duck.
My mother could not remember my name, but she did remember that my sister and I have retained a lawyer to get her a court-appointed guardian ad litem. My mother does not trust my sister nor I to look out for her best interests in any way, shape or form. She thinks we are the kind of people that want to take all her money from her. I interpret that projection not as condemnation of us as being bad kids, but as her own considerable doubt in her parenting skills. Trying to reason with my mother in her demented condition would be a painfully counterproductive process.
I am incredibly grateful that we retained a family law attorney to do the guardian ad litem process on our behalf for our mother. I am also grateful that the GAL hearing is scheduled for next month.
two great football games and a trip out of the apartment
two great football games and a trip out of the apartment
After being home for 9 days straight with only one trip around time, I passed on a chance for a walk with Leslee and watched even more TV today. Even for me, that seemed like a strange choice.
I rarely watch broadcast TV choosing to instead watch commercial-free torrents of shows. Today I watched two great football games for the AFC & NFC championships to determine which teams play the Superbowl in two weeks.
Both games were decided by 3 points. New England won with a fieldgoal 2 seconds before the game ended and the NY Giants won in overtime with a fieldgoal. I don’t watch much football. The college bowl games three weeks ago were more football than I had watched in the previous four years. The professional players are so big, fast, talented and trained it is amazing. It seemed like there was a time warp going on while they were playing.
The New England quarterback, Tom Brady, would get the ball from the center, step back two quick steps, throw the ball to a reciever that quickly sprinted ten yards downfield and turned around to create 6 inches of space between himself and the defensive player. The announcers described the receiver as being "wide open". It was an incredibly fast game. Those big fat 320+ lb lineman could probably beat most high school sprinters. Amazingly athletic.
The second game was a tie with 5 minutes to go, but I knew that I needed a meeting a LOT more than I needed to watch the end of the game. I brushed a little slush off the roof of my car and went to the meeting. When going to a meeting after having not been for awhile (a week or more), it is like being a baseball sliding into home plate—safe!
A couple of ladies brought treats and we had a great meeting on the 4th step—writing a searching and fearless moral inventory. As noted by the meeting chair, that is the first tangible proof of our recovery where we take action.
After the meeting I came home with some delicious leftover cake. After dumping all the trash that had accumulated in the last 10 days, I reflected on old behavior. I was being funny (sarcastic) about Margie's vegan cookies. I need to not spend so much time home alone in the future.
I am grateful to have endured a week-long snow & ice storm having stayed warm and dry with no untoward consequences, for great football games and for a wonderful 12-step homegroup.
my first stock purchase — ARMH (ARM cpu chips) at $26.91
I have had some money in a savings account for the last year collecting slightly more than zero interest. A higher return is always desirable, but my cynical perception of most investment vehicles precluded my participation last year. In hindsight, it still looks like a good decision. The stock market barely increased in 2011 with the S&P being flat and the Dow growing by 5%.
The amount of money I have to invest is pretty much for entertainment purposes only. Any normal decent return will not be enough to change my lifestyle nor socio-economic status. My investment aspirations are limited to say the least.
Etrade had a deal where new accounts of $2000+ get $500 after 60 days. I am off to a roaring start with a 25% return in my first 60 days. M
y plan has been to invest in a product I am familiar with. The initial motivation to trade was to try to short the Groupon IPO. I have bought dozens of Groupon vouchers. A clever person with a webserver and a sales agents could reproduce what they have done. Shorting a stock turned out to have a higher learning curve that what I was willing to learn right away. I would have done well with that. Groupon opened at 26, swooned to 16 in 3 weeks and is bouncing around 20 now.
iGoogle news aggregation home page is my favorite website. I love my Amazon Prime service. Google has a huge market capitalization and is facing some stiff competition from Facebook, Bing and declining ad prices. I have a bias against paying $190/share for Amazon. AMZN might be worth it, but the few share I could afford would be lacking in entertainment value.
Today I took the plunge investing ARM Holdings at $26.91. ARM is a British company that designs the chips 75% of the worlds cell phone along with some software tools and a few other related products. ARM does not have a chip fab plant. I did not know the preceding until after making my investment in ARM. I hedged commitment by doing the transaction on a Friday night, it would not go through until early Monday morning. That was by design. It just so happened that I was struck by the idea to invest in ARM after reading umpteen hundred articles discussing cell phones with ARM chips and did it.
I don't have a smart phone and may not get one for months or years. I do plan on getting an Android tablet sometime in the first half of this year. The big stumbling block is price sensitivity, especially with the monthly data plans from the Telcos. US rates have been ridiculously higher than Europe and Asia for years. In the last couple of months, I have seen two startup companies offering (beta) unlimited data plans at $20/month. They depend upon tethering to mobile hotspots to minimize telco usage to get that low rate. That will work for me.
After nearly a week of being snowed in, I have picked up two new hobbies. Learning about ARM and researching the purchase of my own ARM powered product. Most likely I will simply go to Costco and buy whatever tablet they have on sale, but I won't know until I buy it!
I am grateful to have the resources to be able to invest in the stock market at 1 AM on a Saturday, for having made a decision and taking action, and looking forward to playing with my new tablet…someday soon.
not having a power outage after a snow/ice storm
When I was a kid, we were the last house on a rural power supply on power poles. This meant we had a power outage from nearly every large storm. Usually the power was back on in a couple of hours and almost always in a day or less. One year, a snow and ice storm knocked out the power for 5 days. That was a bit chilly but not too bad since we had a fireplace, a forest and a chainsaw along with a campstove and lanterns. Plus, we had a large indoor swimming pool connected to the house by a common wall and doorway that was like a giant heat source.
In my Bellevue apartment, electric power is my only source of heat and I would not do well in anything below 60 degrees. As I have already mentioned several times in my gratitude blog earlier this week, I am blessed to be on the Overlake Hospital power grid. My power has not gone out at all.
Around Puget Sound, hundreds of thousands of people have lost power. Many will be without power for a couple of days. It is a miserable time for the Puget Sound Energy (PSE) crews to be trying to restore power while trees are continually falling on the power cables due to being overburdened with frozen snow & ice on their branches. Bless their frozen little hands for working in such adverse conditions.
I am grateful to be warm and energized during this sub-freezing snow and ice storm. Now that I am done playing on my PC, it is time for more reading and movies.
the snowstorm that wasn’t all that
The biggest snowstorm to hit Seattle in 25 years was predicted for the last week. It fizzled out into 3 – 5 inches of snow for lowland Puget Sound. It was still incredibly slippery nasty driving around out there due to everything being right at the triple-point of 32 degrees F. Lots of car crashes, fender benders and trips to the ditch.
I have tickets to see Bob Sagat doing stand-up comedy at the Snoqualmie Casino tomorrow night. Hopefully, the snow will melt away enough for me feel safe driving to the Casino or the show will be re-scheduled.
unsolicited offers of assistance
Two friends called today to see if I needed any help or supplies during our week of snow. The roads were clear and did not need help, but it was nice of them to call with a thoughtful offer of help % support.
helping a friend with a snowy ride
My friend George locked his car keys in the trunk of his car when he got to work this morning. He called asking for a ride home to get a spare set of keys. I suggested having a mobile locksmith open his trunk knowing full well that he would not go for the practical idea of paying $75 while continuing to work at $300/hour instead preferring instead to drive around in the snow for two hours at $0/hour to get his spare key from home.
I am a better friend than I used to be. Knowing that he wanted a ride badly enough to ask me to drive him around on a day when snow blanketed the landscape, I agreed to give him a ride. The roads were wet with only one short patch of ice on the freeway and no ice/slush/snow on the steep hill leading up to George's house, the drive went well. It was kind of fun driving around in a winter wonderland. I have not driven in the snow in years. A big concern was coming up the driveway getting back to my apartment. Fortunately, the maintenance guys had spread rock salt on the tricky parts making for an easy drive up the hill. I am grateful for a safe trip to my snow-driving adventure.
It looks like I will be homebound for a few more days with a light snow predicted for today and the heaviest snow in years predicted for tomorrow.
I am grateful for the unlimited entertainment provided by my PCs, the web and tens of thousands of free books to read via my Kindle. It is also good to be on the local hospital power grid. My power has not gone out for an hour total since I moved here 9 years ago. Unlimited electricity in a storm is a wonderful sense of security and warmth.
the first snow of the season
Last winter (2010-11) was an La Nina winter. We had a foot of snow that lasted for much of the Thanksgiving weekend. This year is also a La Nina winter. We got our first snow today. I am very grateful for the extra two months with no snow.
I had wondered where the missing jetstream had gone to. It turns out the jetstream was 1500 miles NW of Seattle dumping a whopping 18 feet of snow on the small town of Cordova, Alaska along with the worst storm in decades that happened last November.
dinner with old friends
Went to dinner with Bob and George tonight. I have known Bob since I was 5 years old. We talked of mutual friends, current events, family and more.
I am not in contact regular contact with any other friends from childhood. It is good to have long-term relationships with friends.
leaving prison
On the second Thursday of the month, I go to a prison meeting at the WA State Reformatory in Monroe. Today marked 10 years at meetings at the WSR for me. When I started going, there were about 8 others going out to the same meeting with me. Two of those people died of natural cases. The rest moved on to different places in their lives. Now 4 other people go out there with me. Two of the inmates have been going to the meetings since long before I was going to the WSR.
Tonight was another excellent meeting. We talked about having to deal with the compulsion to gin-up a sense of loss for ourselves instead of living in the moment of the life we have. At the meetings, we learn from each other how to live in the moment of the life we have. If we do that, our lives are reasonably good. If we get stuck thinking about what we don’t have, our lives inevitably come out on the short end of the perception stick and suck.
meeting Charlie at Crossroads Mall
Charlie and I meet at Crossroads Mall every week to discuss current events and then read some thought provoking spiritual literature. I love melting pot of nationalities that occurs at Crossroads Mall.
There is a giant chessboard that you have to walk around to play. The players might have language barriers, but that is okay. Chess can easily be played without talking. There are Russians, Paki’s, Indians, Chinese, SE Asians, Americans and more all playing well together.
It is ironic watching the melting pot effect at the mall. Here, Pakistanians and Indians are perceived as being close cousins and neighbors. In their home country, they are mortal enemies ready to go to nuclear war over Kashmir.
I am grateful to leave a nice place where we can all get along that has a nice community meeting place to eat, chat and people watch.
A perfect football game—Alabama wins the 2012 BCS game
Tonight was the college football championship game featuring #1 LSU and #2 Alabama. LSU beat Alabama during the season 9-6 in overtime.
Much consternation was raised about having to replay a regular season game by those whose livelihood depends on others reading their articles. Few others got too excited about #1 playing #2. That is as it should be for the championship game.
Alabama won 21-0 in the first shutout in the BCS era (going back about 15 years). They played a near perfect game with only one penalty against them. Roll Tide!
just plain grateful
Stuck for a title topic, I will write about a few things I am grateful on Sundays.
I usually go for a walk with Leslee at Bellevue Square before my home group meeting. It has been 7 weeks since our last walk. Leslee spent 3 weeks with her mom in a hospice facility in December. Thanksgiving, Xmas and New Year’s, we did not go to the mall. It was good to get to spend time with Leslee.
After our walk, we go to our home group meeting a few block away in downtown Bellevue. The meeting used to be 15ish people for the last half-dozen years. Attendance for the last 6 months has one up to the low 20s. It used to be that we could all share briefly in a one hour meeting. That is no longer the case. It is good to see our meeting growing. We alcoholics often have difficulty with change—even it is good.
On the way to meet Leslee, it was good to see that there was a bit of twilight in the clear western sky at 5:30. The days are already starting to get a bit longer.
great pizza at Tommy’s in Northgate
Went out to lunch with my sister’s former step-son Dan today. We go out to lunch about once a month. I drive over to his place in Greenlake/N. Seattle from Bellevue, pick him up and we have lunch around 2 PM to avoid the lunch rush.
Last week they started a $3.50 toll each way on the 520 bridge between Bellevue and Seattle. $7 for the trip is a bit steeper than what I am used to. It is $10 for those without a pre-paid RFID pass. The good news is that traffic is really light—although one guy still had to drive across the bridge side-by-side with the slowest car on the road.
I had a Groupon voucher for $35 worth of pizza at Tommy’s in Northgate. We got there around 2:15. It turned out they did not officially open until 4. Took 45 minutes for our pizza and it was a take-out place with no indoor dining, so we ate outside at a table. It was sunny for most of our wait. The pizza was hot and delicious with lots of meat on it.
Tommy was in the process of selling the place to two young guys about 20 years old. He had bought it for a friend that promptly bailed out on the business. Tommy was stuck commuting from Bremerton to N. Seattle for 6 months before he found these two guys willing to take over the place. He was a nice guy and it is a great opportunity for the young men to get an early start on owning a restaurant. The pizza was excellent. I hope they make it work. Their chances seem good—they are the only pizza place around in the middle of a large well-established residential neighborhood.
I am grateful for sunshine, great pizza, light traffic, leftover pizza, chicken wings and cinnamon bread.
being able to pick-up where I left off
Prior to recovery, I would start tasks that were not completed. There would be a strong sense of embarrassment, shame and guilt that precluded my simply completing the task later.
Thanks to the miracle of becoming a much more mature and functional adult as a part of my recovery process, I am now able to continue projects from where I last left them. That is a lot more effective than how it used to be.
My gratitude blog is a great example. I worked on this diligently for eleven months last year and was accomplished my goal of 260 posts for 2011. Then I took a month off. The degradation in my attitude and self-esteem was readily detected yet that was not enough to get me to start writing again.
I had committed to starting again in 2012. It is a pleasant surprise to actually meet that commitment with this being my 4th post of the new year and it is only Wednesday night. All too often, my attitude towards a task would be manana (tomorrow).
My other goals for the year are eating a better diet with less red meat & sugar and to exercise 3x/week. Changing my diet is off to a good start. I was at the grocery store today and did not buy any red meat nor sugary snack. Progress. Still working on the exercise aspect, but I am comfortable with being able to make partial progress. That is much better than being stuck in an all-or-none mode that would lead to failure since I am not doing the exercise component perfectly.
I am grateful for the progress and maturity of being able to pick up where I left off from and to also be okay with partial perfection!
a glorious day of college football
I have not watched college football bowl games for several years as a result of giving up cable TV service and the games being shown on the ESPN cable network. Live sports events were the thing I missed most after giving up cable service.
The cheapest cable package at my apartment complex is now $60+ taxes+”fees”. I can afford the $60+/month, but am adamantly opposed to being treated luck a chump by a cable service, Ygnition, deliberately designed to gouge people living in apartment complexes.
I was able to access the games via a friends cable network online access to ESPN3. It was an incredibly weekend of college bowl games. A half-dozen of the ones I watched came down to the last play. One time never lead (had 4 ties) and won the game in overtime. There was a time when I had 3 games on my TV at once. There was room for a 4th game, but there were only 3 games to choose from. It was non-stop football with no commercials if I changed between audio channels between the 3 games whenever a commercial came on.
There are a three more bowl games to go. Hopefully they will be exciting games for the fans to watch. It can’t be as good as 6 bowl games in one day or 3 games at one time.
Pleasant weather for the end of 2011
This year is supposed to be a La Nina year in which the Jetstream blows all kinds of cold wet weather over Western Washington. So far, that is a non-starter. December was the 4th driest December on record in Seattle with most of the rain coming between Xmas and New Year’s Eve. I enjoy the dry sunny days with temperatures above freezing.
2012 -- A New Year
It has been over a month since my last gratitude blog. The good self-care method would be to never go that long again.
It was a quiet end to 2011 for me. Stayed home and watched college football bowl games on ESPN3 via the internet in realtime. That was a fascinating glimpse into the future of live entertainment. There were a lot less commercials and some fuzzy spots of low resolution. For a real sports nut, there was the possibility of having 4 feeds (games) going on at once. That was information overload at its best when I gave it a try for a few minutes.
My 2011 resolution to write 5x/week gratitude blogs worked really well. I will write 5x/week again this year and also add in a resolution for 2012 to exercise more and eat less. The exercise will start at 3x/week and I will cut back eating on red meat to no more than 2x/week.
I am grateful for a very good year in 2011 and look forward to a better year in 2012.
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