Cav's Place

Was looking through the other personal posts I wrote on my birthday over the years last night, recalling the events that led to the somewhat happy and hopeful one from 2007 and how that ended in early 2008 and there was nothing else since, those dreams and the character described in the one from 2008 and how that stopped happening after that period and I don’t recall her clearly showing up again since, and the people I kept in touch with for a longer time and felt at least somewhat close to listed in the one from 2009 and how badly things ended with those I was still in contact with at the time and also one that I briefly got back in touch with later and how I expect the same to happen with the couple of people I’ve been talking to for a longer time now. Then, after nothing in 2010, in 2011 there was that list of 27 things about me that I’ll probably always link to in profiles. After that, as the 2012 post states, it was all downhill, as you can see in those from 2014 and 2015. Not that it wasn’t always downhill at least after the start of 2008, or more exactly ever since she left with the exception of that period.
As for today, there was only a note from dad in the kitchen when I woke up saying he knows I don’t like the typical “la multi ani”, which translates literally to “many years to come”, so he’ll wish me good health, and then just now a “happy birthday” from Ada, to which I replied as you’d expect, since there’s no such thing. Unless I’ll see some others later, I guess it’s good enough, with just that one annoying typical wish. And I got cakes, though I didn’t even look in one package and the other two contained two “Penguins” each, which I hope parents will also eat from because I won’t be eating more than one per day and, even if I won’t touch the third package, four days is a bit much to keep them. Not so sure they will though, as this was obviously the result of me telling dad, when I asked if he could get me some after the blood tests, that the first time I bought a cake myself I jumped on those, from the only place I saw that had them, since I remembered I liked them when I was little. So now he sure overdid it, as is quite typical of him.

Otherwise, attended a protest this evening. As I wrote in the description of the album with the photos I took, it had to do with the bear cub shot in Sibiu, and since people were asked to do so I did bring a small teddy bear as well, noticing there that I could hook it on something and found a way to do so in order to have it on my chest, visible despite the small size and leaving my hands free. Didn’t leave it there to be donated to orphan children though, as those who wished could do, since I had picked it up from the pile of stuffed toys in my mother’s bedroom, even if I guess at least most of those were mine from when I was little.
One last thing I’ll mention about that is that somebody seemed to take some interest in me, apparently starting from noticing how I had tied the bear, and then asked for my e-mail to keep in touch. Since I typed it on her phone, using the touchscreen, I sure hope I typed it right, because while I looked a couple more times I still don’t feel quite sure, probably because the few times I tried to use touchscreens before I couldn’t even dial a phone number without needing to cancel several times and now I just had to delete a wrong character once. But then again, maybe it’ll be better if I did type it wrong, since I keep remembering how quickly and how badly things ended with the person I ended up talking to at one of the first protests I attended. I mean, she quickly told me I should be lynched for my ideas despite agreeing that the problem is real and the biggest one the world is facing and that the solutions she’d find acceptable could never be enough to solve it, so I’m expecting something similar now, since it’s highly unlikely that I’ll find actual friends, especially “real life” ones. The way things turned out with Ada is just further proof of that, even if we’re still talking for the time being.

Yes, I did what I said I meant to, making a sign and taking a spot right after the next to last bridge to show support for the Bucharest Marathon runners. Managed to get there just before the first ones were passing by the first time too, though it took me a while longer to place my sign on a pole so I won’t have to hold it myself. Then, with the exception of a few minutes when I crossed the road and wandered around the nearby park, I spent close to four hours there, getting a bit of a sunburn on the right side of my face. Unfortunately, with usually nobody else cheering there, I felt too awkward to do it myself until two people stopped for maybe ten or 15 minutes to do just that, and then a guy took up a spot right across the road from me after they left. By then, the first groups had passed even the second time around and more and more of those who continued to arrive were simply walking, but at least I did keep clapping for those I saw actually running.
In between, as the volunteers from the nearby refreshment point were cleaning up the area before the runners arrived the second time, I started helping, first by just bringing a few discarded bottles when a girl was gathering some in a box and then actually joining two older volunteers, so one was gathering the stuff in piles, the other was holding the bag and gathering the banana and orange peels and some of the gels, since she had gloves, and I was getting most bottles and cups. Felt increasingly uncomfortable about it when they started asking me questions and, after I refused to go take anything myself when they said nobody’ll mind if I’ll grab something from the refreshment point, they brought me things themselves, so I ended up with one large and one small bottle of water, several bananas and apples and a few oranges. Got the distinct feeling that they thought I was homeless or something. Either way, I refrained from helping again when trash appeared the second time around.

While I’m on the topic of running, this week’s run was yesterday and, though it was quite windy, I managed the third best time yet on the seven-kilometer route, 34:19. Intermediate times were 4:28, 5:10, 5:58, 4:35, 5:10, 5:58 and 3:00, making for lap times of 15:36 and 15:43. Yes, I managed the exact same times for the second and third sectors on both laps, and this also marks the very first time I managed to cover the second lap’s third sector in less than six minutes. I still have no idea how I managed those final sector times of 2:52 and 2:54 though, since I’m pushing as hard as I can to barely manage three minutes.

Otherwise, Monday I got the test results, with a few values marginally outside the normal range and three more quite clearly outside them, plus a positive for that bacterium that causes ulcer. Saw that one of those three results may also be normal though, and the doctor treated it as such when she saw it, and she didn’t seem concerned about the other two either, just telling me that there may be a very slight anemia, asking if I eat a balanced diet, and telling me to drink more water. However, that last result, that made her only tell me to drink more water, sure seemed concerning to me, as I read that a value above the 50 that’s the normal maximum already signifies a significant reduction of kidney function, and I had 56. And I rather expected kidney problems anyway, so uncertain about her dismissing it so easily, especially when she didn’t exactly strike me as paying much attention and I had to point out a few things to her myself.
One of the things I had to point out was the presence of that bacterium in my blood, and she was very surprised by this since she said it should be at a quite high concentration for this test to reveal it while the stool sample should even reveal low concentrations, and that came back negative, which was why she hadn’t even really looked at this new one. Either way, now I’m taking two kinds of antibiotics, one of them every six hours, plus something to help heal my stomach and some probiotics, which I asked for, remembering the times when I had certain issues even without taking antibiotics. And she also gave me something with two plant extracts and vitamin D for a possible slight urinary tract infection, saying something in the tests pointed to something of the sort, but I rather doubt that’s the case and, either way, I said I’ll take that after I’m done with all of this.

I was saying we’re in that part of the year with miserable weather now and the forecast says it’ll last for quite some time. Cold and no heating yet, very high humidity that chills you to the bones even inside, if it doesn’t rain it at least slightly drizzles…
Now I like cloudy days and rain, but definitely not this sort of rain and the temperatures I’m comfortable at are in the high 20s at least when I’m inside, maybe mid-20s when it’s sunny and I’m going out. Low 20s are only all right while running or otherwise making a fair amount of physical effort. With highs around 15°C and lows below 10°C, even down to around 5°C, these days I’m pretty much wearing what are my winter clothes around the house, there’s just one thing I can change to make them even warmer, and I just want to be curled in a tight ball under the blanket, and did just that for quite some time last evening, but the cold also makes me need to pee very often. So, as I was saying, just one more reason to feel utterly miserable, and this is the “perfect” weather to get colds as well, so there may be yet another reason added because of it soon enough.

Otherwise, the new computer issues mentioned in the previous post have to do with Emsisoft again, since as of Monday I started noticing a2service.exe errors in the event logs. No description or ID that Windows can make anything out of, just that it’s a matter of some access being denied, and so far they happened when plugging in and unplugging my camera, when turning on and a varying amount of minutes after turning off the TV tuner’s software, after the system completed boot optimization, and when the shadow copy service attempted something that didn’t quite work, once resulting in the pretty common error saying it hit the size limit and another time in the access denied error that seems to be the rule when I update Paint.NET. So far it doesn’t seem to happen when Defrag runs normally, on partitions, and I’m not sure whether it would happen if those shadow copy operations complete without errors, but I’m going to assume there are quite a number of other things that may trigger it which just haven’t happened yet.
The thing is that, while I hadn’t plugged in my camera or updated Paint.NET since July, so since well before that forced Emsisoft update, the other things happen regularly, and I had even used the tuner’s software Sunday evening, and I definitely didn’t change any settings or install or update anything in between, and I actually checked what Emsisoft’s automatic updates installed and there were only definition files. Also, regardless of the trigger, the same address was listed for all such errors between Monday and Thursday afternoon, at which point they changed slightly, and also changed from a denied attempt to read to a denied attempt to write. They remained the same since, again regardless of trigger.
I have no clue what’s going on, and what’s worse is that their customer support doesn’t seem to either. The guy I’ve been talking to really seems to be going above and beyond the call of duty, and has put in an unbelievable amount of time and attention in the conversation with me, be it about this issue or any others, but unfortunately there are pretty much no actual results to show for it, again whether we’re talking about this issue or about the logging problems noticed ever since that forced update or about anything else really. For a while the logging seemed to work fine after I reset it all, but now I noticed a missing update entry from last evening, so they seem to be appearing again after less than a week. And otherwise he says he’s sending reports and requests to the developers, but so far getting nothing back, and that everybody’s focused on releasing the next version so it may be a while yet.

But now there’s a match at 7 PM, and watching it will normally trigger more of those errors, and I want to make myself some popcorn before it starts, so let me finish this by saying I still didn’t decide what I’m going to do tomorrow. I’m definitely getting up early to watch the race, but the Bucharest Marathon is also tomorrow morning and now that I know just how badly the lack of support is felt on that part of the route I meant to make a sign saying “Next bridge: Turn left. Reach 15.5 / 40 km. Come on, you can do it!” in both Romanian and English and position myself with it just after the last bridge before the one where the route crosses the river. However, I’ll be very sleepy and leaving after the race will mean that I’ll likely get there after the first runners will pass that point the first time, and that’s assuming dad won’t need the metro card. But such support is needed by those who’re struggling far more than by the leading pack, so if I’ll be able to take the metro I may just do it. Will need to decide this evening though, as I’ll need to actually make the sign first, and then also shave. But at least the forecast for tomorrow seems quite decent at the moment, in the sense that it at least shouldn’t rain…

I’ll start directly with last week’s run, which was Wednesday and marked a second successful attempt to get back under 35 minutes after those four failures. Slightly slower than the week before, the time being 34:56, but can’t say it hurt again after I was done, so there was a definite improvement from that point of view. The intermediate times were 4:31, 5:13, 6:03, 4:40, 5:16, 6:14 and 2:59, making for lap times of 15:47 and 16:10.
After that, I took a shower and went back out, rushing to make it in time for the viewing of a documentary that was part of a festival of Romanian documentaries. It was something of an excuse to get myself out there a little, but I left rather late and after walking about as fast as I could for almost two thirds of the way I realized I wasn’t going to make it in time for the scheduled start time, so I started running where possible, dropping back to that quick walk when I had to or started feeling too awkward about running. This got me inside, all sweaty and wondering why did I bother to shower first, only a minute after the scheduled start time… Only to have to wait another 15 minutes before it actually started, meaning I hurried for nothing.

But if then I covered a good 20 kilometers, more than eight, maybe close to nine, of them while running, Monday I covered over 22. Once again started with the run, but at least there was no more running later, and I also didn’t shower before leaving again, not that I’d have had time to do so. Either way, I once again failed to stay under 35 minutes, the time being 35:05, with sector times of 4:33, 5:24, 6:03, 4:36, 5:18, 6:09 and 3:02, making for lap times of 16:00 and 16:03. Gave it everything on that final sector, but what I had left was obviously less than the previous two times, and either way I guess I had lost too much on the first lap’s second sector to recover when I’m feeling like I am. Not that I know why I was so slow in that sector.
Anyway, after that I attended the event organized here to support Polish women protesting against the proposed almost complete ban on abortions, which would have worsened what is already one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe by eliminating even the existing exceptions, leaving only one, in case the mother’s life will be in imminent danger, while adding other insane restrictions as well. I mean, if something like this wouldn’t have dragged me back out to such an event, and also made me have some public activity on Facebook once again, nothing would have.
Dad didn’t need a metro card that day, but hadn’t bought one since the previous one expired either, so he just gave me an old two-trip one that still had one trip on it and I planned to use it on the way back to also go buy some things and not need to go out again for that this week. So I walked all the way to the meeting point, leaving early enough so I still arrived a good ten minutes early even if I had to keep holding myself back and slow down the last part of the way, and then sort of stood around as others gathered and we started walking. Later, when we were in front of the Theater and the group split, most staying behind in order to stage or watch a performance that the Polish organizers were adamant about giving up on when the ten minutes allowed by the gendarmes expired without anything happening, I left with them and a few others, getting to the bar the event was initially supposed to continue in. Didn’t stay long there either though, and when the organizer thanked me for taking pictures, few as they were, I got even more uncomfortable and slowly made my way out and away, even if I met with some of those who had stayed behind, which obviously meant they were about to finally gather there as well.
However, that’s when things got strange and it’d have been better not to have that metro card, since a train was just arriving when I got to University station and it was the one I usually take to get back after a protest, so I rushed to catch it, only later realizing I had to go in the opposite direction then, since I meant to buy something. So I hopped off at the next stop, meaning to change lines, but that’s a weird station and instead of taking the stairs that’d have allowed me to switch, I took the escalator and found myself outside. Expected turnstiles before the exit, as there are pretty much everywhere else, so I was completely surprised, but after briefly considering trying to get back down the escalators and hope nobody’ll challenge me, I just walked back the same way I got there, therefore wasting that trip only to have to walk even farther. Also didn’t go to the hypermarket I meant to go to, but did pick up a few things from a supermarket on the way.

In between, last Thursday I got a message that I can pick my computer back up, so Friday I went with dad to do that… Only to feel even more uneasy about it, since apparently all they had done was update the BIOS, which admittedly does appear to have fixed the issue that had made the fans no longer change speed according to temperature. Or at least they still seemed to work all right when I checked yesterday, but now I’m noticing other issues and didn’t even dare look at that again today. Even though checks otherwise seem fine, my confidence in this system working properly and also being free of malware is pretty much negative at the moment and only getting worse as more and more problems seem to keep piling up for no apparent reason and with no apparent solution.
Yes, that means they said they didn’t do anything about the possible issue with the network chipset, didn’t replace the CPU, which at least I’m perfectly fine with, and also didn’t even fix that headphones connector on the case’s front panel, saying all of these tested fine, though at least that connector obviously is not fine, in fact seeming worse now than before. But what really is even worse is that whoever put the system back together was either clueless or made a mess of it on purpose. The side panels were reversed, the one with the vents ending up on the back. The side fan which obviously couldn’t be installed on the side anymore was installed in a top vent, and with screws instead of those silicone things it had, one of those screws being apparently forced through it and now I can’t seem to use its system again, which leads to the side panel vibrating. While those silicone things were at least handed back to me in a bag, the SATA cable which used to go to the DVD drive and which I hadn’t taken out because it was tied to others and too hard to remove is missing, the external HDD connector, which wasn’t connected before, being connected to the motherboard in its slot. Neither the rear nor the side, or top according to how they had installed it, fan were connected to the motherboard. The front fan was connected to the power fan slot instead of its chassis fan one. The front panel USB 2.0 connector was connected to the PC speaker one. The RAM modules were back on the first and third slots even though this motherboard recommends using the second and fourth first. And if that’s what I noticed, I’m wondering what else is there that I missed.
At least I put everything I did notice right again, added the HDDs back, the TV tuner, the PC speaker which is in fact from the old computer as this didn’t have one, the DVD player as well, and also took the sole remaining SATA cable from the old computer to use for it, but the system doesn’t see it, so I’m wondering whether there’s a problem or I simply forgot to connect it, as I definitely didn’t feel like opening it up again to check. One other thing I did notice is that now the CPU fan speed is only sometimes listed, as I rebooted four times and could only see it in Open Hardware Monitor two of those times, the decision apparently also being made on reboot. Was missing this last reboot, so not seeing it now, but the percentage is listed and it’s correct, so leaving it as it is for the moment and don’t plan to take it back to them for anything. I would take a SATA cable if they’ll offer one, but I sent an e-mail to their complaints department Friday evening, describing the entire situation, and still didn’t get a reply.

There are some other, newer, issues as well, but I’m not getting into that now, so let me just move on to yesterday, when I had to wake up at 7:15 AM, so after maybe an hour and a half of sleep at best, and a total of some 16 hours over the past four days, always split in little bits. That was because I had an appointment to get blood drawn for tests, after the paperwork will be dealt with, and these appointments seem to always be early in the morning, which won’t even allow me to respect the requirements. Couldn’t exactly respect those for the urine sample either, but got one to take there anyway, since that was also included in what was needed. Think I was about ten the last time I had blood tests done, but let’s see what the results will be now.
After we got out of there, I asked dad if we can get cakes and a pizza and he bought the cakes. Could have gone for the pizza too, but I knew the place I meant to go to opened at 11 AM and it was barely 9 AM. Later noticed that now they actually open at 9 AM, but didn’t know that then, so he drove me back and left, but also left me a new metro card, as he had bought one. With that, I then went out, also taking out the recyclables, and reached the pizza place only to find a man standing in front of the door and no waitress or anyone else inside. When I walked in, he greeted me in Italian and just stared at me as I glanced over a menu to make sure the prices hadn’t changed, then continued to stare when I said what I wanted. After I repeated myself, he seemed to understand I wanted a pizza, but simply told me “no”, responding to my surprise with some explanation in Italian from which I gathered something wasn’t working and they couldn’t make any at the moment. So we shrugged at each other and I left. I’m guessing that was the owner, as I know he’s Italian.
Still, I did want a pizza and had a metro card, so I weighed my options for a moment and decided to give another chance to the place with the dog that drove me away the first time, apparently getting there ten or so minutes after they opened, as they open at noon. But I got a pizza, which was decent and quite cheap, but not as good and full of stuff as what that other place makes. And this place is also quite far, so even with the metro it took a while to get back, but I had a pizza and I could settle down for the day… As much as possible under these circumstances.

Spent some five hours in bed last evening, but only slept the first two of them, or in fact a little less than that. Then got perhaps five or so more hours this morning, split in three or so. And now I’m hoping I’ll manage to take a shower, or maybe even a bath, to warm myself a little, since we’re definitely in that nasty part of the year, far too cold for me but also far from winter, and heating not on yet, so just one more reason to be utterly miserable. Will have to see if the water’s not still too dirty though, since a pipe was apparently changed in the building’s basement today and after having no hot water for some hours, it keeps being brown even if it’s left to run for quite some time.

Sure, it’s barely about half the minimum size of a book I’d normally look at, the events depicted are indeed rushed, the characters not particularly developed and the otherwise potentially very interesting world shown in just a few glimpses, plus that there are a few places where it could use more editing. However, this book actually was written in a hurry, insanely so, and while that isn’t in itself an excuse, what is contained in it is quite nicely put together, the action carrying the reader from one scene to the next, even if it may require some suspension of disbelief.
Would the above be enough to not consider myself cheated if I’d have paid for it, or to not consider it barely worth a second thought before being dismissed if it’d have been the whole of the story? Highly unlikely. Yet Free-Wrench is given away for free and marks the start of a series which may allow the world and characters to develop more. Plus, it includes some very obvious references to things that are awfully wrong in our world and a pretty clear call to fight against them. And all of this does make me somewhat interested in the rest of the series… Though the next books in it, which aren’t free, also seem too short for me to feel they may be worth paying for.

Rating: 3/5