Darkoshi

The last few days were muggy and damp. Today it cleared up somewhat and got windy, enough for the ghosties on the porch to sway and the pinwheel to twirly twirl twirl. I had created a new support for it to be able to hang it from a hook, and it worked even better than expected.

The little dog, Serena, pulled a trick overnight, tearing apart a trashbag I'd inadvisably left on the kitchen floor last night rather than taking it out to the bin right away. It was all caught on video. She started on it less than two minutes after I turned the lights off to go to bed.

Heavy thunderstorms are forecast for 6 to 8pm.

The candy is ready, come what may.

I'm trying to get my work hours in for the day, but having a slow time of it. Cleaning up trash. Distractions. Headache.

I wanted to post a Halloween song video, but the song I thought of (Mad World) ends up having nothing to do with Halloween. Too much headache to think of another right now. Took Tylenol 2 hours ago but it's not helping yet.

Had a strong temptation to give the dogs a bath, but can't take the time for that as I need to work. Finally convinced myself they don't need the bath today.

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Edited to add (4:54pm):

Oh gosh, I should have raked the driveway and walkway. What if someone comes and slips on the pine needles? But no, I need to work. And anyway, it would feel embarrassing doing that now, making it look like I'm expecting trick-or-treaters when it's likely to storm. Even if anyone does come, they're more likely to cut straight across the grass than to go along the walkway.

If you have Halloween lights lit on your porch, do you still need to leave the porch light on to indicate you're giving out candy? Or do the Halloween lights suffice? (I'd have thought they would suffice, but Q always says the porch light should be on too. In which case I'd need to screw the bulb back in).

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Edited to add (5:59pm):
Because of comments on this page, I screwed the porch light back in. It's a yellow bug light so at least it's sort of decorative looking.

Oh yay. Tornado Warning in this area now, per my cell phone. "Take shelter now." Oh yay yay. Earlier today it was only an alert, not a warning.

Hmm. If the power goes out, the Halloween lights will go out too.

I still have at least 3 hours of work to work. You can do it, you can do it!

My mom was supposed to take my niece and grandniece out somewhere for Halloween today. But I haven't heard from them yet.

Sometimes, it's awfully hard simply to decide whether to use the 8x8 or the 13x9 pan.

{
+ If I use the big pan, it'll look like I have more brownies!
- But they'll be thinner and might over-bake and end up hard/tough.
- The big pan will take more space in the fridge.
+ If I use the small pan, the brownies will be nice and thick.
* Mom always made brownies in a 13x9 pan when I was a kid, and they were good and chewy even though they were thinner.
- But I was a kid; small things seemed bigger back then than they do now.
* Maybe I should make both boxes of brownies at once, in the big pan?
... 13x9=117. 8x8=64. 2x64=128. Using 2 boxes in the big pan would make even thicker brownies than using one box in the 8x8 pan. They might not get cooked enough in the center; I'd better not try that.
* Maybe I ought to do something with the yellow cake mix at the same time. Yellow cake + brownie swirly thingy? 1 package of cake mix requires the 13x9 pan. If I mix them, I'd have to use only half of the cake mix or it might overflow the pan. I suppose I should stick with just brownies for now.
... So, which pan should I use?
}

Yesterday I had to download ActiveMQ for work.

I'm somewhat familiar with verifying the hashes of downloaded files, and have used a few different tools for doing that. The ActiveMQ page indicates that MD5 signatures can be used to verify the downloaded files. That sounded like the hashes that my tool could verify. But nowhere on the page did I see the actual MD5 values that one would compare against.

The ActiveMQ page also indicates that PGP or GPG signatures could be used for verifying the files. Ok... I figured that maybe this was a good reason for me to finally try out PGP and see how it works.

I read about the differences between PGP and GPG, and decided to try GPG. So I went to the GnuPG download page. But found that it only has the source code. Apparently the binary packages are only available on the mirrors. There's no mirror in the U.S. The Canada mirror site wasn't responding. So I looked at a few of the other mirrors.

It seems the latest GnuPG 2.0 version is not available in a Windows version. Why not? I don't know, but after reading a bit, it sounded like the 1.4.* version should suffice for my needs.

Versions 1.4.0 and older are available as zip files, while new versions up to 1.4.9 are exe files. Why no zips for the later versions? I'd prefer not having to install anything... And how would I verify these downloads? Where are the checksums for them?

It was at this point that I decided to forgo verifying the downloaded ActiveMq files.
I had a fuzzy head type head-ache, by the way. Makes it harder to think.

Based on this experience, I'm not surprised that the use of PGP encryption hasn't caught on all that much. It seems you have to be a developer to even figure out how to get it. Heck, the first answer on this page to the question "Where can I find a command-line version of GPG for Windows?" is "You could download it and compile it yourself".

I subsequently found this Gpg4win download page which has a small 4MB version and also lists the SHA1 checksums. Whenever I feel up to it, I may try that one out.

After bad results with both a cake and a batch of brownies, I've discovered that I don't like the smell and taste of unrefined soybean oil. It tastes sickly sweet to me.

All I found on the subject is this statement on a few webpages: "Unrefined soy oil has a strong, distinctive flavor and aroma - some like it, some don't."

Next time, I should taste an oil before using it.

I do like the taste of extra virgin olive oil, but it doesn't seem like that flavor would go well in cakes and cookies. Have any of you tried baking with olive oil? Anyway, I now have some "naturally refined" safflower oil, which should be mild flavored. I used to buy Canola oil, but I began to notice it having an unpleasant stale smell and flavor, even when it wasn't particularly old.

.

After months of testing different deodorants, I finally found a suitable replacement for the one I used to use. (More details on that possibly forthcoming.) But last weekend, I found out that the store I bought it from no longer is selling it. I may have to buy it online (luckily it doesn't seem to be discontinued).

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I ended up doing 2 saliva hormone tests (as referenced here and here). I took the saliva samples for both tests on the same day at the same times. Each test was processed by a different lab. I figured that using 2 different labs would give me an indication of how reliable the results were - if the results agreed with each other, that would give them more credibility than otherwise.

But the results did not at all agree with each other. So much for that. I suppose I'd need to get a blood test done somewhere for (possibly) more trustworthy results.

.

I had headaches every day for 2 weeks, and then they stopped, even without me taking any meds. They must have been after-effects of the stomach bug virus. Now I'm occasionally getting headaches again, but these are more like my usual ones, and not every day.

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Qiao is now walking with only the aid of a cane. In fact, he is beginning to walk short distances even without a cane!

He recently bought himself a Sony Tap 20 portable PC. It's a giant tablet. It has a very nice screen.

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You know what would be useful? A website along the lines of "These are various sounds your car may make, along with an explanation of what part of the car may be making the noise and why". Well, actually, sort of like this, this, and this, but with actual car sound samples rather than human reproductions of them.

I ended up going to the CVS MinuteClinic. Their website listed prices, which I appreciated.

My diagnosis was a sinus infection and viral conjunctivitis. The prescription was antibiotic tablets and eyedrops. I'm not clear why they prescribed antibiotic eyedrops for a viral eye infection, but the nurse made reference to my having been sick a week already, and my still having fevers, and that a viral infection wouldn't last that long, and that therefore they would treat both (the sinus and eye infection) with antibiotics.

The eyedrops seem to have helped - the redness was reduced greatly by the next day.
The sinus infection was a surprise to me, since I haven't had much nasal discharge or congestion. But looking up my nostrils in the mirror with a flashlight, I could see yellow gunk, unlike the more usual white gunk. So I presume that the diagnosis was correct.

After the diagnosis, I debated whether or not to do neti again. I had done neti two times when I first got sick. Sometimes when I do neti, the water doesn't drain well out of my nostrils, and I end up having a runny nose for much of the day. That happened the 2nd time. I wondered if that might have even caused the sinus infection.

This morning, I had a very bad headache, but no fever. Does headache without fever indicate sinus pressure? Tylenol cured the headache in 45 minutes. I decided to do neti again. It went well today.

Qiao got sick 3 days before me, and he's still not completely over it. I think I'm doing better than he is. He didn't have the misfortune of an eye infection, but neither has he had the benefit of antibiotics.

*It startled me to see "flat affect" written in my examination notes after I left the clinic. Admittedly, due to feeling sick, I was probably even less facially expressive than usual.

Why is it that I often get headaches at work where it hurts to keep my eyes open (perhaps eye-strain), but by the time I get home, they've usually gone away? So then instead of going to bed early like I probably should, I end up staying up late again, giving my eyes less time to recover.

I went to my first drag-king show on Sunday. One of them had such a cute, laid-back, suave little smile. There were 2 young drunk guys at the bar too, who perhaps due to their inebriety, also seemed somehow cute, and ended up being the brunt of much of the "token" drag-queen's jokes during her performances.

I've always thought of drag-queens as men who dress up and perform in women's costumes, without having a female gender-identity. But this person had breasts and therefore looked more like a transsexual. I suppose that shouldn't seem odd to me, since it doesn't seem unusual to me that many FTMs would start out doing drag-king performances.