Cav's Place

Checked a little test off the list today, running ten kilometers on the track during that free hour left, between 7 and 8 AM, after they resurfaced it. This meant waking up at 6:15 AM, so getting about half an hour of sleep, maybe up to 45 minutes at best, in the morning, after about an hour and a half split in two last evening and some four hours last morning, before the power drill and sledgehammer concert started. And on an apple and half a Snickers bar eaten before going out.
Target was to stay under 55 minutes, considering the 54:43 managed when I ran the same distance through the park, and I cut it about as close as possible, the stopwatch showing 54:59.96 at the end! Lap times were extremely constant though. Took me a few to settle, needing to make myself slow down a bit after covering the first in 1:59, then to speed up a little after seeing 2:15 and then 2:20 for the next two, but then I maintained an average of 2:12, give or take two seconds per lap, until the tenth, as I had 21:58 at that point, so two seconds faster than a 2:12 average, which two seconds come from those first three laps. After that, I don’t recall any under 2:12 anymore, but stayed between 2:12 and 2:14, the latter being the time in most cases, until lap 20, when I believe I had 44:11, though I’m not absolutely sure anymore.
Did get a little nasty towards the end, and I recall it was 46:26 after 21 laps and 50:56 after 23. Not sure if it was also 48:41 after 22, but either way, and assuming that 44:11 is correct, these three laps were covered in 2:15 each, maybe give or take a second. Each of them felt harder than the last though, especially knowing I couldn’t yet go into the reserves I was saving for the end, but that 50:56 meant I couldn’t afford another lap at that pace, so used as much as I dared on lap 24, covering it in 2:05, and then whipped myself during the last one, or at least on the straights, just managing the 1:58 I needed to achieve the goal. Which also meant I was out the gate at exactly 8:00 AM, as I started running at 7:05 AM. Not that anybody seemed about to drag people away from there, but just to be sure.

Otherwise, no, that review quite clearly isn’t coming this week, as I couldn’t even manage to persuade myself to open a file and try to start writing it so far. And for some reason I started playing Flight of the Amazon Queen yesterday despite having no interest in adventure games. Glancing at a guide when I get stuck, as I pretty much just want to be able to say I completed another game in a few days and feel better about probably taking the rest of the year to once again try to finish Hordes of the Underdark and keep trying to win a King of Dragon Pass long game, which will involve starting over, probably more than once.

Was still in bed today when I decided I wasn’t going to even attempt to write that review over the weekend, one of the reasons being that, on top of simply not feeling like I could manage it, my parents were about to leave for a while, so I was going to fix myself something to eat while alone instead of struggling to at least start the review soon after waking up. Instead, I decided to update Comodo Firewall and try to see whether BOINC is the cause of an issue I noticed a week ago, then write a post about what happened. So this is that post.

The issue I mentioned was that, on the 9th, after installing this month’s Windows updates, I finally bit the bullet and updated BOINC from 7.4.42 to 7.6.22, after having waited to clear all SETI@home work units and then detach from the project, to prevent any other issues that may appear when attempting to resume after updating the client. It was still installed as a service, but had turned off the client before updating and it didn’t ask for a reboot, so I only rebooted days later, when it was all still fine. However, the next time, when I actually shut down the computer, as well as the next time I rebooted after that, I was greeted by an error listed in event logs, stating that the previous shutdown had been unexpected, which was obviously incorrect.
At first I was completely confused, since I hadn’t installed, updated or modified anything that may affect shutting down between the last normal reboot and the first such error. However, then I realized that what started when the system booted up on the 9th was BOINC 7.4.42, so even though what shut down along with it that next time was 7.6.22, that wasn’t the version that logged on, so that was a difference I could test. Not that I particularly cared to, as after that last reboot everything seemed stable and I didn’t care to risk anything, but now that I had to reboot to update Comodo Firewall anyway, I turned off BOINC first and noticed that the error didn’t show up again, adding weight to that assumption. Now let’s see if they’ll say anything about it.

Actually rebooted twice today, turning off BOINC first both times and not seeing that error either time, but the reason why I rebooted twice was that once again Comodo Firewall lost all HIPS rules after rebooting to update itself. Granted, before it seemed to be quite random, simply booting up and noticing them gone, and I’m hardly the only one experiencing that, but it’s been a while since it last happened and it actually required me to import the settings three times before it actually worked. So that second reboot was after the first failed attempt, as I knew from previous experience that sometimes it simply won’t load HIPS settings until you reboot again, but then they didn’t show up after first importing after that second reboot either, though simply importing again seemed to have finally fixed the issue. Hope I hadn’t made any important changes in the month and a half since that most recent export…
Did trigger another issue now and it’d take another reboot to fix it, but I rather knew that would happen and you can in fact consider this as managing to reliably replicate it for the first time, after finally figuring out what seemed to be causing it a while back. So I think I’ll wait a while longer, especially since everything seems stable at the moment and something doesn’t usually like multiple reboots in the same day, much less in a row, so getting away with those two is already quite nice and I’d rather not push my luck. If something else will seem clearly out of place, I may reboot again earlier, of course, but otherwise I’d rather not until at least tomorrow evening, and possibly even longer if I’ll manage to make myself simply ignore something that probably only looks strange, without actually meaning much.

Otherwise, until yesterday I was actually quite sure that Romania’s friendly against Spain was this evening and not tomorrow, so was planning to just watch it and have another excuse for not doing much else, but I guess it’ll work as an excuse for not even starting that review tomorrow either, knowing there’s no way I’ll finish it. Not that there was much of a chance of finishing in one day anyway, but that was why it was a matter of either starting right after waking up today or not bothering with it at all this weekend, since I’ll probably run again Monday, so I won’t get to it early enough then either. May try to start Tuesday, but then again I may not, and of course may eventually decide to not write it at all.

I actually managed not to write any personal posts last week, so let me start with last Tuesday, when, shortly after I got back from buying a few other things, I was called by the shop I had ordered The Slow Regard of Silent Things and Sword of Destiny from, letting me know they had arrived. So I said I’ll get it all over with in one day and made my way there to pick them up, also being pleasantly surprised when they only asked for 87 RON, waving it away when I said there should be some change on top of that even though the receipt listed the price as 87.61.
Admittedly, that was the price of the order after I had reminded them that the previous time when I preordered something I was told the lowest price between the moment of the preorder and launch day applies in such cases and Sword of Destiny had dropped from 51.79 to 49.70 when I sent the message, but then it continued to drop after that, ending up at 49.12 a few days later, where it stayed until the release date. For a difference of 0.58 RON I didn’t bother to send another message and the price of the order wasn’t changed again, but having the change waved away meant I was actually charged 49.09 RON for it, seeing as the other book wasn’t a preorder and therefore its price should be fixed.
Somewhat frustrating is that a little while later I learned that they’ll attend the science fiction and fantasy fair that’ll take place next weekend and are almost certain to also have these books on offer, the cover of Sword of Destiny in fact being the image at the top of the post announcing their participation, so it’s likely that I could have gotten them at a discount if I’d have waited a little longer. But I didn’t know about the fair at the time and even if I would have known about it I wouldn’t have thought they’d be there, since I had a quick look last year and neither they nor any others that bring books from abroad were present.

Either way, since I had it and it’s so short, I started reading The Slow Regard of Silent Things the next day and finished it on Friday, when I also posted the quick review for it. Was actually a bit of a struggle not to finish it Thursday, but I stopped in time to leave something for one more day. Don’t plan to move on to Sword of Destiny too soon though, and may actually wait until May, depending on how something else works out.

Now this was supposed to be a quick personal post which should have been followed by a Sunday update detailing how planting trees went, since that was supposed to happen tomorrow. However, due to recent rains causing the area to be partially flooded, the action was postponed until next Saturday, when we hope the conditions will be better. This will inconvenience a number of people though, so now let’s see how many will still come and how that will affect any existing preparations, but a message posted today says there are more volunteers than they need for this event and some may want to bring others as well, so it should still be all right.
What worries me is that they insist on communicating by phone, and I had two calls, which I obviously ignored, before I saw the replies where they were telling people that’s how they’ll contact them. When I sent a message to complain, they said they don’t e-mail or post because many don’t reply to that, though at least they didn’t call again after that… But now they’re asking volunteers to send the coordinator an SMS to confirm, which I couldn’t even if I wanted to, since my credit expired long ago. Sure, I could charge it again and I do mean to do so before going there anyway, in case I’ll need to contact dad for some reason, but was planning to do so that day, so I won’t waste days for no reason, while they ask for this confirmation before March 30, so I’m not sure what will happen.

Moving on, finally managed to finish Tropico 4 yesterday, and I’m linking to that bundle because it’s the only one that includes everything as a single entry. If I’ll review it, I’ll need to file my review under it anyway, since it’ll cover the whole package even though Modern Times is an entirely separate thing that doesn’t add anything to the original campaign or, in fact, even to nine of the ten DLC missions, the only one that takes its presence into account being Megalopolis. Still, to return to the review issue, while at the moment it seems to be the only non-personal thing I may have as this week’s second post, I don’t find writing it over the weekend particularly likely and wonder if I’ll even write it at all.

As for running, last week’s was Friday, to give my knee time to recover after the week before, and the time was 21:26, with intermediate times of 4:45, 10:11 and 16:36, respectively. There was a, shall we say, unusual moment as I was coming back though, when I heard a woman call me from behind, just as I passed her. I quickly checked myself, realized there was nothing I could have dropped, but was worried, so stopped and looked around for a moment to give her a chance to call again if she’s serious. When she did, I turned and she asked if she could hold on to me to get home, since she was feeling ill. And since she lived only a little farther than me, that wasn’t a problem in itself, even if I was worried about missing ski jumping. The fact that I had some stranger right next to me and who also seemed to want to make a bit of conversation sure was a problem, however, and I sweated far more because of that than because of running…
Either way, this week’s run was Monday, as I wanted to make sure I’ll have time to recover before Saturday, when I thought I’ll be planting trees on pretty much no sleep, and the time was 21:00, with intermediate times of 4:36, 9:58 and 16:11, respectively. Now, for the same reason, I’m planning to run again this coming Monday as well, though I guess Tuesday may also be an option, depending on the weather, when I’ll wake up and how I’ll feel. The knee’s still a bit of a concern, however, as it actually hurt again towards the end of last week’s run and for some time after and wasn’t entirely fine at the end of this week’s run either, though it didn’t continue to hurt after I got a bit of rest. Something didn’t seem set quite right there, so had to step carefully in order not to let it slide around in ways it shouldn’t and that seems to be doing the trick now, though I’m not sure what it means in the long term.

Since the ski jumping season’s last competition took place today and I wrote a post mentioning the records set on Thursday, I just want to quickly follow up with the final numbers. Those are 502 Ski Jumping World Cup competition appearances for Noriaki Kasai and 15 wins, 22 podiums and 2303 points obtained during a Ski Jumping World Cup season for Peter Prevc. Something I didn’t mention in that previous post is that Prevc had actually tied the previous record for podium finishes during a season on Thursday, so he’s been holding it since Friday, when he finished second.
Guess there’s little more to say about Prevc, who dominated this season so completely, winning the Ski Jumping World Cup by a huge margin and adding to it the titles of Four-Hills Tournament winner, Ski Flying World Champion and Ski Flying World Cup winner. Definitely took his revenge for last year, when Severin Freund took the overall title by the slimmest margin, both of them earning 1729 points over the course of the season but Freund having more victories. Freund was second overall this year, but with a mere 1490 points compared to Prevc’s 2303.
As for Kasai, he once again proved that he’s still one of the best despite his age, not that he needs to do so. In fact, he was just short of adding some more days to the record for oldest podium finisher in a Ski Jumping World Cup competition, finishing the first round in third place but then ending up fourth at the end, 1.2 points, so exactly one meter if everything else would have been equal, behind Johann Andre Forfang, whose second jump was the day’s longest, at 245 meters. The overall results were somewhat worse than at the end of the previous two seasons, finishing eighth overall and fifth in the Ski Flying classification this time around while in 2015 he was sixth and fourth and in 2014 fifth and second, but then you have to go all the way back to 2004, when he was also eighth, to find him in the top ten overall again.

It’s true; you may not want to buy this book. It’s too short but the price doesn’t reflect it, the illustrations and at times even the writing style make it look like a children’s story despite being anything but, and it most definitely doesn’t do the things a story should. It doesn’t depict a series of extraordinary events, it features no real action to speak of and doesn’t even have an actual cast of characters. Instead, it depicts a few days of the mundane, daily life of a single character, all alone. An unusual character, spending most of her time alone with her own demons and her own mind. Which is, most definitely, well, different.
It may be said that this is a book about Auri and the Underthing, but that’d hardly be right. More accurately, it may be said that this is not a book for those who are or like to consider themselves “normal” in any way. Most of all, however, it must be said that this book is about, and for, those of us who are different. It is for those of us who are strange and broken, shattered and alone, but aware of it and still caring, still involved, seeking to understand and to be understood, and desperately hoping for someone whose demons play well with our own.
You are not alone.

Rating: 4/5