Cav's Place

There was a first small sign Monday evening, a few more Tuesday evening, and by the time I woke up Wednesday it was quite clear I was coming down with something bad, and the fact that I went out after maybe some two and a half hours of sleep sure didn’t help. By that evening, it was clear that it was really bad, and yesterday I was just crushed. I can barely get out of bed, until earlier today I hadn’t even crapped in three days, and it’s been four since I showered, though I plan to try to take a bath now. And the fact that I banged my head hard in the kitchen again last night sure didn’t help either, and trying not to fall asleep quickly after that failed, as about one hour later I just couldn’t even sit anymore and crawling in bed and hoping to lie down but remain awake didn’t work, as I just fell right asleep.
Really don’t feel like I can just pull through this one, so, bar one little thing I accepted from dad back when I had one that lasted for weeks and something I took just to calm my sore throat during last year’s massive protests, I’m quite sure it’s the first time since back when I was still living with Andra when I’m taking some medicine and not just tea and lemons and pepper and such. Not that much and nothing strong yet, but I had to give in because this was clearly flu and a really bad one, as this year’s seems to be.
Details, links, corrections and anything else later, right now I’m content I managed to post something here, since otherwise I hardly was on the computer yesterday and today, not catching up on anything and so on. The plan would have been to finish League of Dragons today and have the quick review for that be today’s post, but I decided not to read now, leave those final chapters for tomorrow, and throw this on here now instead. Wasn’t sure I’d have managed to write any passable quick review in this state anyway, so hoping I’ll have a better chance tomorrow, if not even Sunday.

After first poking at it back in November, then dropping it and only picking it back up earlier this month, I finally finished the sixth of that series of “Divine Empire” scenarios in Disciples earlier this evening. Since I did so on turn 259, I was actually worried that something may happen when reaching turn 256, thinking of variable types, but there was no problem and I could just get it done. Now let’s see about the next, since if I do intend to finish all of these before considering the game completed and moving on, there are 15 more to go…

Speaking of games, yesterday I got Epic Pinball: The Complete Collection as my prize for entering and supporting a team in the “GOG Games”. It seems that a little over half of those who entered got games, so the chances were good but nothing was guaranteed, and the list of games that were to be given out wasn’t made available anywhere, as in not even in the news post or the forum thread about the event, which were for some reason deleted now. At least this was one of the games in the competition, albeit the oldest and cheapest one, so it made sense to be on the list, but I also saw some say they received games that weren’t played by the streamers.
Either way, I actually installed it and confirmed that I definitely played some version of it way back, as I clearly recall the first table, Android, and seem to recall Excalibur quite well as well, with Pot of Gold and Crash and Burn also seeming at least somewhat familiar, making me even more certain than I was that I did play Pack 1 at some point when I was little, somehow. At the same time, this means I played two pinball games back then, because quickly checking some videos pretty much confirmed that I did indeed play the other one I was considering while trying to figure out which one it was, namely Pinball Fantasies… Or at least that I clearly remember the second and third tables there, and the first seems quite familiar as well, even if I can’t say that the fourth also does.
Back to Epic Pinball, I guess I’ll keep it installed and poke at it a bit, on and off, at times just to be able to say I played something when I can’t get myself to, well, seriously play something. I also see that tables have rules and stages, so while the whole point is to have the highest score, at least in most cases there is a way to “complete” a table by reaching the last listed stage, meaning that if I do achieve that at some point, I’ll actually be able to list the game as completed. Highly doubt I’ll manage, or even really try, that, however, so another idea would be to list it as completed if I’ll reach a certain score on each table, and was thinking of 100 times the default “high score”. But since it’s just a silly thing I happened to receive and remember I probably played when I was a little kid, I’ll most probably just give up on it well before that too.

Speaking of games received, after grabbing it when it was free on GOG.com earlier this month, I only actually downloaded Dungeons II two days ago, and pretty much right after the download completed, my computer appeared to briefly disconnect several times, the behavior only ending after I firmly pushed both ends the cable connecting it to the switch. The thing is that I did see that LED on the switch turning off then, so the connection was clearly lost, but I still can’t figure out whether that means the LAN chipset is turning itself off and back on or there’s something with the connection, and in this latter case whether it’s the cable or one of the ports, and if so which one. Do know that I’ve experienced this behavior before, but it was just happening once or twice and then settling down without me doing anything, so it is a reason for concern.
The thing is that it was also very cold in my room then, since I do keep the window open for 30 minutes per day even during these cold days and, while I had closed it some time before that happened that day, I hadn’t turned the heater on yet. And then yesterday it happened again, even sooner after closing the window, and interestingly also after downloading Epic Pinball. It happened fewer times then though, and it just stopped without me pushing the end of the cable that goes into the computer in again, so that was more like the behavior occasionally seen before. And all of it might have actually been caused by problems with the connection, likely due to the weather, since last evening I started losing Internet access, first very briefly, around 6:20 PM, then more and more until, some four hours later, the very brief moments, actually lasting mere seconds, where those when it worked. It got better after that though, and after 3 AM, when I got back here after eating, I didn’t notice any more problems of any kind, whether last night or today.
One possibility is that, whenever this happens, the LAN chipset is turning itself off and back on to try to see whether that fixes a problem it detects with the connection, whether it’s due to the cable not connecting properly here or caused by something farther down the line. But the odd thing is that, whether this happens on its own or I unplug the cable or turn off the switch, I get the same entry in event logs, and the first time it appears is on September 14, 2016, which is obviously not the first time I disconnected the computer. However, that’s when I noticed problems apparently caused by the LAN chipset as well, after installing those updates that had caused my computer to stop adjusting the fan speeds according to CPU temperature, and which led to me taking it to be checked and getting it back with just a BIOS update, though that did indeed seem to fix the obvious issues noticed then. But those updates quite certainly changed something, or likely broke something, and another reason why I’m saying this is that I just noticed one other odd entry in event logs, not seeming to be connected to this and also listed as just an information, but first appearing that day as well.

Otherwise, did run last week after all, Friday, and the time was 48:22, with sector times of 4:16, 5:12, 5:56, 4:31, 5:05, 5:58, 4:30, 5:12, 5:58 and 1:44, making for lap times of 15:24, 15:34 and 15:40. I again only meant to stay under 49 minutes, but after seeing that very fast first sector I thought it’d be too much of a pity to waste it, so I eventually pushed more and managed to stay under 48:30 again. This cold snap means I’m definitely skipping this week though, but since the week ends in March, it means I actually got through the calendar winter without my buffer reducing at all. Obviously, that’s mainly because we didn’t actually get a real winter here until now, but I also did go for 16 kilometers the one previous time when the conditions were too poor for a good time on ten.

Still about last Friday, since dad also got some bread for me that day, after running I just went to try to return the copy of Good Omens to the Library, since the last day was Monday and I definitely didn’t want to be going out again then. However, since I didn’t check the site before leaving, I didn’t see the message stating that the branch in question was going to close at 4 PM instead of 8 PM that day, so I got there around 7 PM and stopped in front of a closed gate. Fortunately I could return the book the next day, so didn’t have to go out so far this week after all, and that evening wasn’t a complete waste either because I made a detour on the way back and got the potatoes dad said he didn’t get himself, plus some discounted carrots. I was still unhappy about coming back with the book though, and also about dad spending way more on the cornmeal and mushrooms, and also a little more on the soap, that he got compared to the prices I had seen elsewhere.

Oh, I actually forgot to mention that I attended Sunday’s protest, but there’s the previous post for that and there’s little to say that wasn’t already included there. Could use the metro card, so left just before 6 PM and by 6:25 PM I was among those who had already gathered by then, and after that I pretty much wandered around, took some pictures and left at 8:15 PM, when it was clear that numbers were dropping even though some were only just arriving. So I was back well in time to watch the Romanian Eurovision final, and actually agreed with the winners, though there’s one other song, which didn’t even make it into the final, that I might have otherwise preferred.

Thursday evening, the Minister of Justice announced starting the procedure of removing Laura Codruta Kovesi, the chief prosecutor of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), from office. As a result, there was first a quick reaction that I heard gathered around 1000 people in Victory Square that evening, some known activists and groups also promoting it and attending. That protest ended relatively late and people obviously continued to gather in Victory Square over the next two days as well, but the “proper” protest regarding this issue was scheduled again for Sunday evening, despite it marking the start of a cold snap.
According to the information posted, people were supposed to start gathering at 6 PM, but numbers were, unsurprisingly, low around 6:25 PM, when I got there. People kept coming though, and the estimates I see, of around 4000 at the peak, seem fair, but the total was significantly higher, as people kept arriving as others were leaving. Even at 8:15 PM, when I left, I walked past sizable groups going the other way. But at that point they could no longer make up for those leaving, so the numbers were dropping, and I see that they dropped quite quickly not long after that, the protest pretty much ending around 9 PM. While not the only reason, the weather definitely played an important part in that, even if there were past protests that took place under even worse conditions. It was snowing, but not too much, and the reported temperature was around -5°C, though there was quite a bit of wind, which made it feel at least a few degrees colder.
The main demand of the protest was the resignation of the Minister of Justice, and otherwise it was supposed to be a show of support for Kovesi and DNA. However, and I won’t be making many friends by saying this, I didn’t particularly care for that and didn’t even want to list the event’s name, requesting said resignation, as the title of the album with the pictures I took. On the one hand it doesn’t seem to me that much actually happened, the President being the one who’ll have the final say and he openly stated his support for Kovesi, plus that accepting her removal would be political suicide for him, whatever supporters he still has generally being quite adamant in their support for Kovesi and the DNA and increasingly bothered by his lack of willingness to more openly and directly fight the ruling coalition, especially after he immediately accepted their latest proposed Prime Minister. And on the other hand, while others range from questionable to just wrong to plain laughable, a few of the 20 reasons given for Kovesi’s removal seem fair to me, and at the very least require some serious investigations. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that, I’d say quite unfortunately, she does seem to remain the flag bearer of the fight against PSD and their allies, which would make her removal without it at least being the result of a negotiation that’d also result in the removal of PSD’s president Liviu Dragnea, and maybe some other PSD and ALDE leaders as well, a victory for them and a loss for those of us fighting against them, but that doesn’t mean one has to turn a blind eye to the problems.
That said, the main reason why I wanted to go, other than simply to show up and see what will happen with my own eyes, getting a better feel of how things stand and where they may be heading, was to see whether there will be protesters bringing up what for me should be the main reason for protests these days. And I was pleased to see that the matter in question was actually on the very first signs I took note of. Not pleased to see that they had been brought by PER, with the party logo openly on those signs, but it wasn’t just them and, either way, at least they were very visible during that first part of the protest, before others got everything set up and drew more attention.

The issue I mention above actually appeared on Wednesday, so a day before the Minister of Justice’s statement, when the Senate approved a proposal allowing work for public utilities to take place in any forests, including those in protected areas or nature reserves, or cataloged as virgin or quasi-virgin. Yes, the Chamber of Deputies will actually decide, but this wasn’t just something waved through the Senate, but actually approved with a large majority, only USR and two PNL senators opposing and one PNL and one PSD senator abstaining, after also being approved by the Government and the Committees which reviewed it, and PSD members openly stated their support for it. So something definitely needs to be done about it, but if it initially seemed to prompt a strong reaction, the following day’s events sadly seem to have caused most activists to largely set the matter aside, at least for now.

While all of this was going on, USR Senator Mihai Gotiu posted a warning on Saturday, which was also shared by some groups and activists. In his post, he revealed that a proposal which would make obtaining benefits for someone other than yourself no longer count as corruption and also allow only material benefits to be taken into account for such charges had recently been submitted to the Senate. This proposal had been brought up before, but even PSD’s leaders seemed to realize that it was too much and stated that it was to be withdrawn. Now, however, it’s quite obvious that they weren’t actually thinking that it was too much, but only too soon, and mean to keep trying until they’ll slip it through, one way or another.

Another book picked up from the Library. Since the edition I got is British, from 1991, and has fewer pages than later British editions, I assume it doesn’t include what was added in the US edition, and probably also in later British editions. But I did see a part about Warlock there at the end and a few footnotes meant for a non-British audience, so I’m not entirely sure of that.
Either way, about the book itself, I could describe it as satire, if not quite a lampoon, using humor to tackle serious issues. And while it’s quite an achievement to be funny while tackling Armageddon, I’m not even referring to that, which in itself, along with all the Heaven and Hell and angels and demons business, is just another tool used for the same purpose. Or I guess each of these elements, along with others, can be seen as a tool used to enhance and flesh out each of the others.
In spite of all of that, and of the fact that it’s written well and I read it quickly and easily and agreed with plenty of the points made, even making a particular note about the alien encounter, and also about Adam’s initial reasons and the way things were developing at that moment… It just didn’t grab me. Maybe it was too funny to be taken as seriously as it seemed to want to be and too serious to be taken as humorously as it seemed to want to be, with each of these facets seeping too much into the other, or maybe it was that the style of humor didn’t work well enough for me to stand on its own, but in the end it’ll remain just another book read, unlikely to leave a lasting impression.

Rating: 3/5

Started Good Omens Sunday and if I’ll manage to read some 30 more pages this evening, after posting this, I should just be able to finish it tomorrow, though I’m not sure I’ll manage to post the quick review then too. So I should get this post over with as fast as I can and get back to it, and I actually hope it really will be a relatively short one this time, since I didn’t exactly do much else over the past few days, so there’s just the part about the new light fixture to write about. Didn’t even run so far this week and, while it’s still possible that I’ll try to run on Friday, I may actually take a break, and not only this week but the next one as well, when the forecast really doesn’t seem to offer many options.

Ordered the light fixture I had my eyes on last Tuesday evening. There would have been others that I’m sure would have been better choices, and I’m not even referring to anything significantly more expensive than the sale price of this one, but this was the one I had stopped at when I started looking, a few months ago, and the last thing I had money set aside for, so when I saw it on sale again, actually for just a little bit less than the price I had seen it at the first time, I decided to go ahead and order it before working myself into a panic again over having to decide and spend money. And did that despite the fact that I had to order it from the same chain I had ordered the first Kone AIMO from, and knowing the problems I was likely to have.
It was delivered on Friday, and at first I thought it was quite nice that I first got a call asking whether I’ll be at home to receive it some two hours later, with the caller saying he’ll call again when he’ll be on his way to my place. I even considered rushing out to buy the few things mentioned in the previous post before the delivery, to know I’ll have nothing to do later, but it’s a good thing I decided not to do that. Not such a good thing that I decided to not even tell dad to turn the intercom on right away when I talked to him a bit later though, and an even worse one that I decided to go to the toilet after said talk.
As I’m sure you already guessed, the doorbell rang as I was sitting on the toilet, about an hour, if not slightly less than that, after that call, and without any second call attempted since. Since the intercom was off, I guess somebody else opened the building’s door for the delivery man, so we got no warning that he was about to come but he could get in. Not that I thought it could be him when dad knocked on the bathroom door to tell me that the doorbell was ringing, and even said that I didn’t think it was for me, which was of course proven wrong when he opened the door and saw that it was indeed for me, resulting in him calling me over and me considering myself fortunate that I hadn’t actually started doing my business there and therefore didn’t need to wipe properly, so could get up, quickly wash my hands and go meet the guy.
First thing I said was that I had been told it’ll be about two hours, but the guy replied that I had talked to his driver, not to him. No idea how I was supposed to have known that, nor why it should have mattered, since I assume the driver knows and, well, drives the route, so his schedule should be the schedule of deliveries. But at least he waited while I quickly checked the contents of the package, after I told him I wanted to see that everything was in one piece, seeing as some parts are fragile. He even broke his pen while rushing to help me cut through the tape, though dad had given me a knife for that purpose. And then he not only made no gesture towards the money, which I had placed next to him from the beginning and which dad had pointed out to him as well, but wrote down the information from my ID card, had me sign for the delivery and handed me the receipt before asking for the money, and sounding quite shy or embarrassed as he did so. He only picked them up when I pointed them out to him again, and only took the bills, counting them carefully but leaving the 0.10 RON coin where it was, then even saying he didn’t want it when I tried to hand it to him.
Since I mentioned being handed the receipt, that was the only thing I was handed. So if, in case of the mouse, I had received the invoice, a copy of the delivery document and the receipt, now I saw no invoice and he didn’t seem to make any copy of the delivery document, just writing my information on and having me sign the one copy he took back with him. There is a document listing the manufacturer’s warranty in the box, and when I read that I also noticed that the manufacturer is a Romanian company, but said document says it must be filled out, which it obviously isn’t, and also lists a mere six months as technical warranty, specifying that the two years of commercial warranty required by law are the responsibility of the store the product was purchased from. But it’s a light fixture and as long as it works the first time, which it does, it should normally be fine… Or so I hope.

Since I needed dad to handle the wiring, taking the fixture I had down and replacing it with this one, at first I just put everything away and then gave him the box with the parts the next day, while I just took off some parts from the old one and washed them. The problem was that there were no instructions in the box, the only thing dad had to go on when trying to put the new fixture together being a pretty faint sketch that only displayed a few of the things you had to do, and even showed a way to connect the wires that required parts that were not provided. So he struggled with it for quite a while, working some things out but being confused by others, some of which I managed to work out when I had a look as well, others being left for later. Some of his wrong assumptions had been based on what he knew was the system used to hang my fixture from the ceiling, so the fact that I didn’t know about it allowed me to work out how certain parts were actually supposed to be put together, and he was quite stuck on a couple of parts that neither of us could find any use for, insisting to find where they were supposed to go until, with some difficulty, I managed to persuade him to just ignore them, put together what he could and leave the rest for when we’ll take the old one down, which was going to happen another day, since he had some other things to do first and then it got dark, which does tend to be a problem when you can’t turn the light on.

That other day turned out to be Monday. It might not have happened even then, but I told him that I wanted to at least check that it worked, as it’s the second working day after delivery and therefore if it’s broken I’ll need to return it then, can’t wait any longer. That didn’t mean actually putting it in its proper place, but just connecting the wires to something, which ended up being a cable he could just plug in, and testing that it turned on, but then he got to work on getting it all over with, even if he was taking breaks to do other things and ended up being at it for probably some three hours, after probably some two more on Saturday. Adding the hour or so I spent adding the glass parts after he was done makes for some six hours spent on it…
Either way, when he removed the old one, we were rather puzzled by the three wires we saw coming down from the ceiling, as he couldn’t remember how it should be connected either, but eventually he tested them and worked it out… Which led to what he seemed convinced was another problem, namely how to connect the new fixture that way, since it just came with two wires. But since those wires were long, that was simply a matter of cutting them in half and connecting two separately, one connected to a single one on the other end and the other to the other two, and the other two to the third one coming from the ceiling, with the other end connected to the three remaining wires. He did have to make those lower connections twice though, because we both forgot to fix the arms in place first, and the attempt to do that with the whole thing up there just resulted in one of the connections coming apart, which obviously meant the others had to be taken apart and redone as well, to be safe.
In between, there was the matter of how to hang it from the ceiling, since the new fixture is made to be screwed on to the ceiling directly while the old one was pretty much hanging from a hook, as there are no screws. He had an idea, which might have worked to some extent, but I just took away the part from the old fixture that was actually hanging from that hook and found that the new one fit through it, so we could actually use the hook system, albeit at the cost of leaving the old fixture without a way to be hooked up somewhere else. Then again, it actually won’t be that fixture that’ll be left without the hook, because it will replace the otherwise identical fixture in the other bedroom, since it seems that the cables going through one of the arms of that one broke at some point, and that one, which we won’t need here anymore, will be left without the hook instead. But to return to the ideas about hanging the new one up, I’d have preferred to use both mine and his, as that was likely to make it move around less, but he said, multiple times, he didn’t want to do that and then, when I asked why, that he just didn’t like how it made it look, which leads me to believe he didn’t quite understand what I was saying. But it works this way too, so it’s good enough for now.

So I now have a new light fixture and can also use the LED lights bought back in December in my room as well. I’m not entirely happy with how efficient the fixture is, referring to the fact that it seems to reduce the amount of light given by the bulbs to some extent, but 10W LEDs are clearly more powerful than the 10.5W CFLs I had before, or more exactly one of these is more powerful than one of those, since I only very rarely turn more than one on. And other than that I quite like how it looks, while the old one always bothered me. Not quite sure that all arms are level though, the one holding the light bulb I usually turn on seeming to hang just slightly lower. But I may be wrong about that.
On the other hand, doubt I’m wrong when I think that the arms are likely to slip a bit over time anyway, under the weight of the glass and the light bulbs, since they go in horizontally and are just fixed in place by screwing a nut tightly on the other side, which definitely is a bad design choice that’s very likely to require getting up there, aligning the arms properly and screwing those nuts tightly again at some point. Considering how it went the first time, that will require disconnecting one end of the wires and connecting them again as well, and if we were to do that again now, I’d also ask dad to switch those connections, since we didn’t check the first time and now the light switch works the other way around, so at first I was turning the two light bulbs on instead of the one. But I’m starting to get used to the change already, so there’s no reason to bother.