new music

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Amazon is having one day sale. I saw a couple of people tweet about it. Who can resist albums for $2.99?

I went over and checked out the albums. I went through several pages and opened new tabs of albums that looked interesting. There was a time when I knew what albums I owned without referring to my library. I cannot do that any longer. Age and too many albums are to blame.

A couple of albums I had already purchased from amazon. I love that amazon tells me at the top of the page. The rest I had to check against my iTunes library. I eliminated a few more until I had 8 albums left. 

I decided to eliminate some more and only purchased 5 albums. It seems like a lot but that was only $15 which is about the price of one album at retail. These are the albums I purchased:

Iron & Wine Around the Well

The Shins Chutes too Narrow

LCD Soundsystem

Sound of Silver

The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs Volume I

confessions of an addict

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Years ago I read Freaks, Geeks & Asperger Syndrome: A User Guide to Adolescence. The author talked about Specialty Subjects. People with AS have their specialty subjects and can talk about them on and on to the point of obsession. But specialty subjects are not fixed. They can change and they do change. I see it in Andy. He will obsess about computers for a few weeks, then switch to Thomas stories.

I seem to suffer from this as well. Lately, I am a hooked on watching TV episodes on my iPad. It all started with Doctor Who: The Complete First Series. For years, amazon.com recommended this series. I finally downloaded the first season. That led to downloading Torchwood: The Complete First Season and renewed interest in Eureka: Season One & The Office: Season One. Then I added The Big Bang Theory: The Complete First Season and Community: The Complete First Season. I tried watching others but found they didn't interest me. Finally, I added Fringe: The Complete First Season, Warehouse 13: Season One and Alphas.

What started as something to do during the weekend has become a daily ritual. As soon as lunch is over, I begin watching one episode of each of the programs. I have caught up watching Eureka! Torchwood, Alphas & Doctor Who.

So many years I did not watch TV. There just wasn't anything good. Now I am back to watching hours of shows a day. Nothing good can come of this.

02 november 2011

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Back pain and other excuses.

A couple of weeks back, I had a stomach ache during the night. It was mostly likely due to too many beans. Anyway, I usually sleep on my back. My ache was too uncomfortable so I switched to my side. The stomach ache was gone by morning but then my left hip started aching. I was thinking/hoping it would go away on its own. Instead it got worse. I started noticing a weakening in my left leg. My first thought was because I don't exercise. I started walking in the morning. My legs started feeling like jello. I thought it was because after month of no exercise, my legs were rebuilding muscle. The jello feeling in my left leg did not go away.

On Monday, I went to kick a ball and my left leg gave out. I was on my ass in the middle of the store and embarrassed. What the heck? Now I was thinking it was something worse. I have started watching House and think it must be some brain tumor. But since I am an ostrich type of person I am ignoring my fear in hopes that it will go away.

I went to the chiropractor yesterday. I told Doctor Burns about my legs. He asked about the weakness and knew what it was. Turns it out it is neurological but not the kind that requires surgery. He said it was sacral-iliac joint and described the pain and weakness exactly. I have had sciatic pain for years. That pain starts from the spine. This pain originates from the pelvis. It explains the other pains and symptoms. For now, ice and rest are required. And already my leg feels more stable. It is still weak and I read that this may take weeks or months. I hope not.

17 october 2011

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Don't sweat the small stuff.

Good advice. Last week, a lot of little stuff happened.

Monday started with a service man coming to change the zap cap on the house. (We didn't get the notice about it until Wednesday.) The change was fine but would not restart. The power brick had to be reset which I did but it still didn't work. I figured I needed a new one until I saw the second reset button. (Why does it have two reset buttons?) Then my back started hurting.

Tuesday my car had problems starting. I think the starter may be going. But sometimes the clock on the radio resets when I am trying to reset it.

Wednesday and Thursday saw no new issues except my back pain would not go away. I did not make any progress with decluttering the house.

Friday I got my new iPhone 4S. Before then, I upgraded iTunes and Safari. iTunes could not find my library and I had to recreate it. I do not know what happened. I spent the morning reimporting my media. I lost the all the playlists, play counts and ratings. I really wish iTunes was like Lightroom in that it has a separate catalog file which can stay on the computer and be backed up hourly. Because I have too much media, it is on an external hard drive. By default, the iTunes library files stay with the media. But they do not get backed up hourly with Time Machine. It is not obvious which files need to be saved.

I took it all in stride. Mostly.

The iPhone 4S is nice. I miss the curved shape of the 3Gs. It does seem to have a phone signal in the house which the 3Gs rarely had. I gave my 3Gs to my dad but he seems non-plussed. Oh well.

09 october 2011

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Since the garage sale is over for now, I am back to ditching the clutter. I have 5 boxes of books ready to donate as well as a large frame print. The print is in my car since I needed to get it out of the way for the sale.

Goals this week:

1 hour of scanning

1 hour of filing

1 hour of shredding

1 hour of making paper packs to sell

1 hour working in my office, general clean up/ditch/organize

Once I have have caught up with the scanning, I will start with Erin's book, Unclutter Your Life in Once Week.

Garage sale wrap up. It has been 2 years since my last sale, I thought more would show up. But then, like me, people have probably stopped scrap booking. Many people have to work and do not have time for their own hobbies. And as out kids get older, they aren't as fun to scrap book. How many soccer photos do you really need in a book? Only 5 shoppers. I was a little disappointed in how much I made but it was still good considering how few people were there.

I did like how it was contained to just people I knew and how I was basically done by 9 am. I did not get to cleaning the family room and people did move in there once they were done. Oops. I will do better next time.

In the part, Andy would ride his bike while I stayed in the garage. Since I wasn't in the garage, he missed this. So after I was done with my sale, I sat outside so he could ride his bike. If he does it once and enjoys it, it becomes a tradition.

I only sold a few books. It was probably not worth the effort to box them but now they are ready to go to the library as donations.

from gowalla back to foursquare

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Last December, Nung convinced me to try FourSquare. I had been using Yelp! to try and find places I was not familiar with. I admit, I did get hooked on FourSquare. I liked checking into places to keep track of where I had been. It was part of a daily diary especially when I used Momento to collect the data. And the competitive person in me really liked earning points and becoming "mayor."

Then I heard about Gowalla from a podcast. I decided to try it out. I liked it right away. The interface was nicer and no longer did I feel the need to log in just to earn a "mayorship." And I liked collecting thinks like found objects and special pins for visiting DisneyWorld. I do not go out much and socialize, I did not miss FourSquare's ability to help people connect. Gowalla also seemed to connect faster than FourSquare.

The Gowalla made a big change. No longer did you just check in, you now started "stories." Huh? I wasn't happy with the change but figured I would get used to it. Then I found that Momento was no longer registering my check-ins. I disconnected and when I tried to reconnect, I could no longer do it. I saw I wasn't the only one. I thought about waiting it out but decided to go back to FourSquare. Right away, I am back to checking my points. Ugh! I just want to keep track. I do not need to compete!

Gowalla, is listening to the complaints and we will see what they do with them. I may be back. Or not.