2022/11/05

Saturday, November 5, 2022 (#309)

Friday Saturday Sunday

Exact day: category (7) This month: category (37) / page Other years: category (9) This year: category (105) / page

It was ridiculously nice today; got up over 80°F

the sky over La Vaquita

Today is a housework day. I generally try to pay the bills by the 5th, so that's looking like today's top task.

Other things I could try to get to:

• check on Z's phone to see if the number transferred or what (before the transfer PIN expires, which I think is early next week)
• set up Coastal Credit Union account for Z (for a limited time, we can supposedly get $200 if I "refer" him)
• √ blow leaves out of (most of) the gutter by the upstairs window
  • not sure how much point there is in keeping up with this, since it's already rusted through and I'm not keeping up with the others
• try again to run the TootCat upgrade script; document what happens
• try again to get Nissa sold to scrapyard
• √ continue working on Mel's room
• work on cutting up the pine log some more (low priority)
• probably other tasks I've dissociated from; will add them as they come to me

A.M.

9:50

Bills paid except for BofA, where the billing cycle begins on the 5th or 6th (typically) so I pay it closer to the middle of the month. Explanation: It's very sneaky: payments are due on the 2nd -- but the billing cycle doesn't begin until several days later... so if you pay anything too soon (right after the previous due date), it somehow doesn't count towards your next-due minimum (and it's too late to count towards the previous one). This makes it easy to be "late" even if you are paying as soon as possible. (Ask me how I know.)

I wish I had an easy way to calculate {change in overall debt balance} less {non-monthly expenses}, so I can see if we're catching up with those expenses or getting further behind. As it is, the best I can do is keep track of balances and make sure the main bank balance agrees with my accounting (I have a spreadsheet for this).

We had a lot of non-monthly expenses last month, and I'm expecting one more next week ($400 for the dishwasher). From memory:

• me: dental cleaning
• me: fillings ($400+)
• auto insurance ($372 for 3 cars, including the non-functional Nissa whom I really need to try again to get sold/scrapped) [adding that to do-list]
• repair Daisy's engine leak (~$500)
• dishwasher diagnosis (~$130)
• I also foolishly paid a year ahead for Mint Mobile, for both me and Z, to get the $15/month price. If I can charge his phone to him (i.e. if it works, which it seems to except that I don't know if the number is transferred over yet, or can be transferred), then that's just ~$190 or so for mine -- but it does reduce the monthly Republic Wireless bill by $20+ (and another $20+ once his number is transferred).

In any case, the net balance is a lot lower than I'd like -- and that's even with (what amounts to) about $2500 of personal loans (no interest).

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Emoji picker not working at all, today. I wanted to insert a check emoji to check things off the list... and MediaWiki's only emoji extension is just a limited set of emoticons, where it replaces ASCII-style (like ":-)") with emoji, which is exactly not what I want.

Seems like the "special characters" drop-down ought to be able to access the emoji character page, but I'm not finding it.

11:15

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  11:15 that one gutter I can reach, before

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  11:24 that one gutter I can reach, after

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  one of the many things we can't currently afford to fix

11:46

I got the front walkway cleared off, and then most of a stretch of sidewalk (the stretch that needs it the most), and then the (fully-charged) battery died. I can see myself eventually (when I have more time and money) getting some higher-capacity batteries for the blower; the ones that came with it are 2 Amp-hours, but they're available in 4 and 6.

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P.M.

3:15

Cleaning off Mel's Legos (they're very dusty) before boxing them up to store or maybe transport down to him.

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Spent much of the late afternoon & evening trying to figure out what was going on with Outside Life (draz's webcomic) being down, and then discovering (while trying to check/repair databases) that the disk had abruptly become full again, and then trying to figure out what to move, and then starting the process of moving it -- the hard way, since FTM isn't quite ready yet. (I mean, it's kind of working? ...but I don't yet feel confident with it; there are tests and tweaks yet to be done.)

I was running a test on FTM when the disk-full thing happened, and somewhere along the line it crashed. It seems to have issues with other things trying to do file transfers at the same time. Maybe. More testing is needed, and maybe more diagnostics.