Dear Diary #85: Worn out index finger, Food regrets

Dear Diary,

Giving my index finger a break from mouse clicking lately. Been using my middle finger on my two-ish button Logitech G5 mouse and using my ring finger now with my new three-ish button mouse -- it's a Logitech G600 so there are many more buttons but only three-ish in the front section. The G-Shift malfunctioned for a couple minutes, so I did some googling and decided to just get rid of it since I was having trouble figuring out what keys to map to those G-shfted buttons anyway. Now, the G-shift is a second left-click -- wanted something relatively harmless since I found myself accidentally hitting it with my pinky finger often. Just hope the mouse doesn't go crazy with two left-clicks mapped to it. So far so good.

Had spicy chicken biryani for lunch. It was amazing, my nose was melting down the entire time I was eating it. Enjoyed it a lot. Then about 12 hours later something happened in the middle of the night and let's just say that I don't think I'm going to order the spicy version next time. I'll go to mild and spare some of that pain, hopefully.

Dear Diary #84: Ball Fell Out of Ballpoint Pen

Dear Diary,

Got desperate for Halls to alleviate some cold symptoms and I caved at a grocery store. It cost just under $2 for a single roll of Halls... I can usually get a bag of four rolls for $4 at pharmacies or big box stores, so that was a painful one to swallow. Even worse was the fact that I dropped one piece on the floor and had to chuck it.

Twas craving a salad with chicken and blew about $9 on one at a fast food joint. Couldn't believe how much I enjoyed it. Come to think of it, that's exactly what I've turned all of my sandwiches into given the way that I eat them -- with a fork and knife, cut off or taken apart because I don't eat with my hands anymore.

Still coughing but mostly only in one building where the air is dry as a desert. Outside and in other buildings, no problem. This one? Lung is about to come flying out.

Dear Diary #83: I hate Colds, BIOS key mashing

Dear Diary,

Oh man, went to sleep and forgot the clocks were changing forward. Expected to get up earlier than the day before and ended up awake an hour later. Not that I needed to be anywhere or to be awake at a particular time but that was annoying. But sweet, it's almost 7 pm and the sun is still kinda visible.

Great. Throat feeling like sandpaper once again, can't pinpoint where I got it from. My money's on all the people who coughed on me or very near me. Hoping it takes care of itself within a week like the last time. Ugh, and almost made it to spring too.

That cold is coming along great. Currently on day 4 or 5 and the nose has stopped clogging as badly -- the previous day was absolutely horrible. And I learned the previous day that sneezing destroys my chest muscles. They had never felt so terrible before, even after working out with weights and overdoing it. Sinuses are still messed up so it feels like I've been kicked in the head. Woke up wanting to look for a bottle of Tylenol -- I try to avoid unnecessary medication. Best of luck on tomorrow.

I don't understand how the cold I caught is essentially done -- nasal symptoms, nausea, and I've been kicked in the head feeling all gone -- yet the coughing just keeps getting worse and worse.

Dear Diary #82: Learning Revit, Revit with wine, 5 Mbps

Dear Diary,

This is weird... Bought me a textbook to learn some software but I bought the eBook version. There are no page numbers, just a progress bar that isn't as satisfying as actual page numbers. Finding myself going to Amazon and using their book preview to look at the paperback version's table of contents. Matching section title and table of contents yields me a page number. Come on, almost 30% done the book which is exactly what the eBook reader's progress bar says I'm at.

Well, I shocked myself. Turns out that I can still use Revit after a half bottle of wine. Didn't think I could make it either, but here we are.

Dear Diary #81: Bad Luck with 2.5" Hard Drives, Spicy Curry

Dear Diary,

Think it's time I swear to never use 2.5" hard disk drives again -- the old, platter type, not SSD. My external HDD may have just dropped dead after I plugged it in, let Windows install the drivers, and safely removed it. There was an out of the ordinary clicking sound but the drive was recognized so I didn't think too much of it. Well, I thought it safely removed after I clicked on the icon and gave it over 10 seconds. When I unplugged it, Windows said it couldn't safely remove it. I go to plug it in half an hour later and game over: the computer sees the drive and thinks it all works but no data shows up. In fact, it was so busted that I restarted my system and the BIOS stalled because it couldn't read the drive -- booted as normal right after the drive was unplugged. And it's a year out of warranty. The sad thing is that I barely ever used this drive, it was for backups and not even my primary, so I probably used it two dozen times over the past four years. That makes dead 2.5" HDD number two in the past year. Still haven't had a 3.5" HDD die on me in two decades.

Yep, hard drive died. Before I completely gave up on it, I got the idea to turn it upside down and that got it to work for almost a minute before it started making weird noises again. Seriously, note to self: never ever buy another 2.5" platter-based HDD again.

What's the Wrist Watch in "Interstellar"?

It took watching the movie "Interstellar" about five times until I started to get curious about the watch that's featured in the movie. Not Cooper's flashier metallic wrist watch but Murph's more toned down watch.

I'm not going to lie, I haven't really paid attention to watches or worn one since grade school and that was a while ago. It probably had to do with the fact that I kept taking them off all day when I still wore them and finally just stopped wearing one at all. Anyway, this ambivalence when it comes to time pieces is probably why I originally thought Murph's watch was a dollar store special. I didn't bother to read the name on the face of the watch, not that it would have been recognized by me, and it wasn't flashy on the surface. 

Dear Diary #80: Found a Reason for an Alexa, RAM is Expensive?

Dear Diary,

Couldn't think of any use for a voice-activated home assistant or any use for light bulbs connected to Wi-Fi until recently. Coming home to a pitch-black home sucks. Having to feel around for the light switches in complete darkness also sucks. If only there were some device I could yell at to turn on a light or set of lights for me...

That patch for CPUs apparently came out weeks ago -- I was still waiting for it. If true, the good thing is that I haven't really noticed it while doing basic stuff on my computers. The bad thing is that a virus scan makes my system chug now. Maybe it's just this specific scanning program? My CPU core temperatures have jumped about 10-ish Celsius from what I remember during virus scans. Oh, and RAM prices have exploded higher -- chugging computer makes me think about upgrading. I could find 8 GB of DDR3 RAM like mid-2017 for CA$ 80 regular and CA$ 70 on sale. Now it's $90 and up. DDR4 was about $10 more than DDR3. Now I can't find anything under CA$ 120. Good times...

Dear Diary #79: No Bass, Eye Infection Roulette

Dear Diary,

That feeling when the talk show people talk about how great the bass playing is but I can't hear anything coming out of the bass because I watch using my TV with built-in speakers -- I know it's there because I sometimes watch the clip on YouTube and my computer speakers can actually play bass.

Well, that sucks. The document I've been using has a bunch of bolded words to make certain things stand out. I printed to PDF cause I was reading something about PDFs and the bolded parts blend right in with the wall of text. Massive fail.

Dear Diary #78: Pineapples not on trees, Apps, USB Big-B

Dear Diary,

Watching the PBS and really missing commercials so that I can get up and do something. Could pause the TV but that just isn't the same.

Another credit card I got is being discontinued. This has to be my third or fourth now, twas one of those Bank + Store points partnerships. Note to self: never ever get another non-bank-only credit card unless you want to switch things around every few years.

Talk about brainwashing by the Microsoft... Ever since I upgraded to Windows 10, I've started calling all software and computer programs, apps. I don't really remember where it started, but something in the desktop referred to programs as apps and it has stuck. There goes 20 years of nomenclature.

Kolor Autopano Pro: Trial Versions Impressions

Short Summary: The Notes of Cliff
To make it clear, I wrote this after testing out the trial version of Kolor Autopano Pro, haven't purchased it yet, but there's a reasonably good chance I will. Anyway, went shopping for panorama stitching software and after an hour or more of googling, I narrowed it down to two options: Kolor Autopano Pro and another one I won't name. Both programs had trial versions available and I gave them a shot on my laptop. Autopano worked out really well and the other didn't.

How I used to Stitch Images Together
Stitching panoramas together isn't something I'm unfamiliar with. A few jobs ago, I spent hours stitching maps and other images together manually with stuff like Microsoft PowerPoint and Paint. It took a lot of time, but it worked and more importantly, I got paid for it -- thank you, tool that makes a color transparent when working with overlapping images. Having done that before, the idea of doing it manually again in large quantities as part of a regular workflow just didn't seem appealing. And I had heard about Adobe Photoshop having a built-in panorama feature, so it seemed like a good idea to look into it. A couple minutes into looking at Photoshop, it made no sense to pay for all the advanced features that I would never use. That made Photoshop a relatively quick "no."