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No New Books Today… But Uptime Record Set to Over 91 Days Wednesday
Kept checking the status of the order of books I made at the end of February and yesterday I saw it had changed, saying it was to ready to be shipped. That seemed somewhat odd, since it’s not supposed to be shipped, as I selected to pick it up myself since it’s not eligible for free shipping, but assumed it was the standard status text stating that it had arrived, so expected them to notify me that I can pick it up today, probably by waking me up with a call in the morning. But that didn’t happen, the call only coming after I had given up on the idea, at 5:45 PM, too late for me to get there before they close, so now I’ll have to wait until next week. Apparently that’s because the shipment arrived late to them, which I guess means that status meant the books had arrived in the country and were ready to be shipped somewhere, whether to the client or to the store, as now the status was updated to say they’re at the store.
So back to a regular personal update, which is also a late first post of a week which will likely see two personal ones anyway, since I don’t feel like adding another protest update now, even though I showed up there Saturday, trying to stay around the few who were also there for the forests, and took part in Sunday’s march. Also took pictures, both times. Didn’t grab any of the koliva offered Saturday despite really liking that, because the whole idea behind it being offered then felt wrong to me, but did grab a hot tea each time from those who keep being there and offering it to everyone. Sunday they seemed somewhat in a hurry at the end of the march though, since that’s when I grabbed it, after spotting the spot they had picked in Constitution Square, and when I returned to that area after going around to take a few more pictures I didn’t see them again.
Before that, had a scare Thursday night, or around 2 AM on Friday if you want to be exact, when I was about to start eating in the kitchen and the power went out at a time when my computer’s uptime was at 85 days and about eight hours. So I rushed to my room, turned on the monitor hoping the UPS was still good enough not to have problems because of turning on a new device while on battery power, breathed a quick sigh of relief when I saw it was still fine, then took a screenshot of that uptime, saved it, checked that it had saved properly and was getting ready to turn the system off, disappointed that I couldn’t get to 90 days. However, just before I did that the power turned back on, the outage only lasting about one minute, so I breathed a bigger sigh of relief and, after checking things one more time, got back to the kitchen, from where I called to find out whether other problems had been reported in the area, the machine confirming that there was an outage affecting a nearby area, estimated to be fixed around 4 AM, so the brief outage that affected this area as well was probably the result of the grid needing a moment to stabilize.
As a result, I was able to stick to my plan and keep my computer on until the day after this month’s Patch Tuesday, when there were relevant Windows 7 patches to install for the first time since December. That means that the current uptime record is of 91 days, two hours and at least 41 minutes. The screenshot says 40 minutes, but close to two minutes passed between taking it and the computer actually restarting. Quite sure it wasn’t quite two minutes though, which is why I said at least 41. Either way, this has to be a feat for a computer running Windows, and I really don’t see how I could ever get even anywhere near it again.
As for the patches, I actually installed them separately, split in three, since I had a couple of older ones I hadn’t considered sufficiently relevant left as well, and as of this month those who don’t want the entire patch bundle have two security only patches to install, and I left the main one for yesterday. But everything seems fine, including that pending update for Emsisoft, which seems to have applied properly after the first reboot. And I can also report that it seems the issues with Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, which had gotten to the point of it not working at all anymore, are indeed caused by not having rebooted in a while, as it now runs properly, the animations being fluid as well. Still rather stick to Eschalon: Book I at the moment, but may alternate, and either way I want to see how long until the problems appear again, because if it’s not long enough, I may end up needing to mostly play it spurts, after each Patch Tuesday.
Unfortunately, one thing that’s not fine is my mouse, which got back to double clicking after having apparently recovered pretty much completely for quite some time. This didn’t happen after the reboots, but after starting to play Eschalon. At first the middle button seemed to start to have some issues, prompting me to use the alternate walk lock, the W key, instead of it, and that seemed to have allowed it to recover, as I didn’t notice other issues when using it normally, mainly to open links in new tabs and to close browser tabs, after that. However, the left button, which I think I hadn’t noticed double clicking again in a few months, started doing it again now and it’s quickly getting to be pretty bad. And now the warranty period is definitely over, so if it doesn’t recover again on its own I’ll have to look into how to try to fix it, since it should be possible and I definitely don’t want a different mouse even if money wouldn’t be a problem. And currently they are, a big one.
As for this week’s run, that was Tuesday, but I gave up on the plan to try running a half marathon distance due to the chilly weather, plus that I assumed it’ll still be wet after all the rain on Monday. For that same reason I also took the new shoes again, so not the running ones, but I shouldn’t have worried, since it was dry after all. I didn’t feel well enough for it though, so all I could manage for ten kilometers was 52:32 despite feeling that I was really pushing and even though, other than the temperature being lower than I’d have liked, the conditions should have allowed me to challenge for the record, not fall over three minutes behind it. Either way, sector times were 4:36, 5:28, 6:27, 4:56, 5:32, 6:30, 4:56, 5:42, 6:26 and 1:59, making for lap times of 16:31, 16:58 and 17:04.
Now the plan is to try that half marathon distance next week, since the tree planting definitely won’t take place on the 25th, the current plan being for April 1st. This other thing I volunteered for is going ahead tomorrow though, after the first weekend was canceled due to the weather, and I did sign up for tomorrow, out of the four remaining possible days, so it’s a good thing I could be relatively rested now and it shouldn’t be a problem if I’ll pretty much exhaust myself next week… As long as I won’t end up with another developing stress fracture or injure myself in some other way, of course, since something like that won’t just go away in a week and a half or so.