Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 38

The Case of the Sinking Desk Chair

My desk chair started to sink. Hugely annoying to turn to make a note and find myself sitting on the floor. Not literally, of course, but it sure felt that way. An online search said this happened when the cylinder failed and the solution was to replace it.

They weren't too expensive, so I bought one and then went to YouTube to see how to install it. That's when I discovered that I needed a large pipe wrench. I don't have one of those.

I started searching for how to replace it without the large (and expensive) pipe wrench and I found this kit that used two split clamping collars and some screws to force the cylinder out of the chair seat. I ordered it because I figured I could use those collars with the other cylinder if it happened again.

So on a Saturday afternoon, my dad and I got to work on the chair. There was a snag. Of course. There wasn't enough room on the cylinder to use the Allen wrench with the short end in the screws. Which meant I had no leverage to tighten the screws and separate the cylinder from the chair seat.

After messing around with this forever, we conceded defeat.

But we decided to leave the collars on because at least they would stop the chair from sinking all the way down. Then I said, If I bought three more of these collars, the chair would stay up completely.

And that's where I left it. Until later in the week when I was so frustrated with the chair sinking and sinking and sinking, that I decided to see if I could buy some more of the split collar things. Keep in mind, that I have no familiarity with these things, and as far as I knew, they'd been made especially for the chair kit.

A quick search at Amazon, though, turned up a plethora of choices. I took one of the collars off that I had, measured the diameter of the bore, and ordered three of them.

As soon as they arrived, I laid that chair on it's side and started putting them on. I'd say my bore size is about an 1/8" of an inch too large, but it still works around the cylinder shaft. I ordered three of them and that turned out to be exactly the right number.

I don't adjust my chair height. Once I found the right position, I just want it to stay there and that's a good thing because the cylinder is locked in position now. That's fine because I'm no longer sinking and all the other features work.

Score another one for Handy Patti. Not quite the way I expected, but I'll take it.

Podcast Time Warp

I've mentioned about how behind I am on podcasts. I mostly turned off automatic updating on most of them and have also been ruthless on what I delete. It was necessary since the back up is bad. Really, really bad.

Right now, I have 87 episodes of Mysterious Universe and 49 episodes of Scriptnotes.

Mysterious Universe really needs to be listened to in order because they often make references back to previous episodes and I've made it to March 2021--a year into the pandemic. So I listened to their pandemic episodes a long time ago now.

However, Scriptnotes doesn't need to be listened to in order and I've been hopping around on that one, listening to whatever caught my interest. Frequently, it's been the latest episodes, rather than the earlier ones sitting on my phone.

Then I decided it was time to work through some of those early episodes. I actually was behind on this podcast before March 2020 and the pandemic, so I was listening to episodes that were taped and aired before anything happened. And then the other day, I hit March 2020 and it is extremely strange to travel back in time to when the pandemic was first starting to break in the US.

It was strange. Remembering how much we didn't know at the time. The assumption that it wouldn't last for all that long. It wasn't quite time traveling, but wow, talk about feeling vaguely discombobulated.

And to go off on a tangent, it's like a huge validation to me about not putting any COVID stuff in my books. I didn't want to anyway because who wants to focus on that? But this was a good reminder why it's not a good idea in general. Things have changed a lot in two years.

What behavior is going to stick into the future? Which behaviors will be a blip on the radar? For example, before we knew it was transmitted as an aerosol, we wiped down all our groceries with disinfecting wipes. We haven't done it in a long time and I hope to never have to that again. On the other hand, I've become zealous about washing my hands 1) after every trip outside the house and 2) for the full 20 seconds, which means I sing Happy Birthday every time. This looks as if it's going to stick.

So how dated are books with these abandoned behaviors going to look in a few years? Yeah. And like I said, I don't want to read books with the pandemic in them, let alone write books with it.

Oh, yeah, podcasts. Right. Anyway, so weird to mentally travel back to mid-March 2020 and think about how little we knew then and how scary everything was. I have more episodes (a lot more) from 2020, so I'm going to be doing a lot of time warps.

Virtual Races

As I'm writing this, I am closing in on the end of my virtual walk around Iceland. Thank God! It's been a long, long journey. 276 days worth of walking and using the elliptical and the weight machines and dumbbells, and...well, you get the picture.

I should finish when I input today's activity into the tracker.

This is my second Conqueror's Challenge. I really enjoyed the first one--a walk around Ireland--and I wanted something longer. So I went from 45 days to walk the Ring of Kerry to 276 days to circle Iceland. This one was a little bit too long. :-) I need quicker gratification than this.

Anyway, as I neared the finish, I tried to figure out which virtual race I was going to do next.

I'd been eyeing Pacer Adventure Virtual Challenge's Solar System series. The problem is that I want all the planets (and Pluto) and they expect you to do the entire race in one go. That's fine for the 3K and 5K planets, which gets me through Mars. Then the lengths jump to 10K (which is more than I want to do) and go up to half marathon distance for Neptune.

It's hugely annoying that they're insisting on one session per medal and not allowing multiples. What good is it to only have the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars? I want the other planets, too, damn it! I'm contemplating buying the medals and just not telling them I did the longer ones in multiple sessions.

But I did find one solar system medal that doesn't require one session--The Sun. It's 62 miles and I'll have two months to complete it. Since I did Ireland's Ring of Kerry in 45 days and that was 124ish miles, I should be okay.

It's a damn shame about Pacer Adventure Challenges wanting it done in one day because they had a lot of cool medals I would have been interested in, but aside from the Solar System Challenges, I'm going to stick with Conqueror because I like having time to complete anything longer than a 5K. Bummer, though. 

After the Sun, I'm going to do Conqueror's Cote d'Azur Challenge. That's 100 miles. I gave myself three months, but I'm hoping to be done much more quickly than that.

ETA: I hate the Pacer app. As far as I can tell, it's applied nothing I've entered against the Sun challenge.

Social Media ARGH!

Instagram has been showing me reels and images from pages/people that I'm not following. I actually don't mind, which surprises me. Maybe because a lot of it has ::SHOCK:: been things that I'm interested in. Usually, when sites do something like this, it's stuff I couldn't care less about.

So why the ARGH!? Let me explain.

Some of the reels have been sewing related. I'm all in for those since I've got so much to learn. So I'll watch the video a few times and scroll down to the words to see what they're making, what they're doing, why they're doing it. You know. An explanation.

And what do I see? A language that I don't speak.

That's right. Instagram is showing me reels from people who are posting in other languages other than mine. It's okay if I only need the pictures, but when I need more than that? I suppose I could copy and paste into an online translator, but I'm not going to take the time.

So far, I've seen reels for really cool sewing and knitting techniques. I've seen a woman wrapping gifts (this was before Christmas), and while I don't know how it ended up in my feed, I enjoyed watching her do this. There were people folding paper, cutting it, and creating cool snowflakes. And all if it in another language.

Another ARGH! is I'm getting a lot of artists in reels, too. The short video is enough here, but it's amazing to watch them just create beauty out of a blank page and some paint or ink. So why is this an ARGH? Because I'd love to be able to do that, too, and I can't. I used to periodically buy art supplies and try to draw, but it always ended up being discouraging. I never was good enough.

Although maybe this shouldn't fall into this category. I enjoy watching the real artists work and I stand in awe of their talents. I'm just kind of bummed that I got so little drawing ability.

Serendipity

I use OneNote along with an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my series. If you'll recall, I've blogged repeatedly about trying new ways to stay on top of my books, but I keep coming back to the same two. Maybe these are my tools? I reserve the right, though, to try the next best thing when I find it.

But for all that I use OneNote, there is a lot I don't know. I'm aware of this because I've accidentally created things like Subgroups without knowing how I did it, which means I can't do it again.

This is where serendipity comes in.

I have a headset with a microphone plugged into my docking station. I was working from home and in a Teams meeting when everything froze on my screen. I couldn't move the cursor or get the keyboard to work. I had to turn the docking station off and back on again to get things to work again, and when I did, my headphones were squealing.

Not cool. I made it through the meeting, but only because I realized the left ear wasn't as bad as the right one. I would have done some troubleshooting on my work computer, but there's only one USB port and my docking station is plugged in there.

After work, I plugged the headset directly into my laptop, but I needed something with sound. I headed to YouTube and found a video made by someone who's an expert in Microsoft products. I think it was recommended because of all the Excel searches I did as I tried to figure out a formula that I'd never seen before.

So I played her video and no squeal on my headphones. They weren't the problem. I closed YouTube and started to work on other things when I had a thought. What if it's the USB plug on my docking station that's causing the squeal?

I unplugged from my laptop, plugged back in to the docking station, and headed back to YouTube. They recommended another video from the same woman titled: How to Use OneNote Effectively.

She talked about the subgroups that I'd accidentally created. Now I can purposely create them. She talked about subpages and I was like, whoa! That might come in handy. So I can do that now, too. And in the sidebar, YouTube suggested other OneNote videos. I watched a couple more and realized there's a heck of a lot I could be doing that would help me stay organized.

I'm excited to try some of these new skills out.

Shocked and Surprised

Not that long ago I blogged about characters keeping secrets from me. I must be psychic because Kyle dropped a big surprise on me a couple of weeks after I wrote that. I was shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Yeah, not really. I knew there was something someone in this book wasn't telling me. I simply didn't know if it was Kyle or Mari or what that big something was. Experience, I guess. When both characters seem to have nothing but external issues going on, I'm learning that they're hiding something from me.

I'm not sure yet how this is going to color Kyle's response to what's going on in the book or how it will come up, but I know it's there and that makes a lot of difference when writing.

And sorry, but no. I'm not revealing Kyle's deep, dark secrets here. Pick up Wicked Deception and you can find out there.

The Old Normal is Dead

I never ceased to be amazed by corporate America. The latest and greatest is their determination that things are going to return to "normal" come hell or high water. (Normal being a relative term, of course.)

My specific gripe is the insistence on everyone coming to the office every day. Never mind that we successfully worked from home and got everything done for the first fifteen months of the pandemic. Never mind that a lot of people want to work from home or at least have a generous hybrid model.

No, none of that matters. Force them to commute, spewing CO2 into the atmosphere. Force them into the office when they don't want to be there. The executives want everything to go back to the way things were before COVID.

I know I'm not alone in this desire to work from home and that other companies besides mine are freaking insistent on making employees work in the office whether there's a reason for them to be there or not. It's frustrating nonetheless.

I don't know if there's a complete lack of trust by the executives or if they think that if they force us into the office long enough we'll think: Oh, yeah, I love commuting in to sit in a cheap, uncomfortable desk chair and be surrounded by noise and chaos because of the ridiculous open office concept.

Dudes (and almost all them are dudes), this is NOT happening. When I work in the office, I'm so exhausted by the time I get home, I can't do anything. When I work from home, I have energy. I have time to do things and time to write.

That's the big one. When I work from home I can write in the evenings. When I work in the office, I'm so zombified by the time I get home that I just stare at a screen--either the TV or the phone.

For the past month, we were able to work from home again and it was all that was awesome in the world. Literally the best month of my working career. The fifteen months previously where I got to work from home was pretty damn good, too, but anxiety about COVID hung over most of that time. But now that I'm fully vaccinated with the booster, I don't have the same level of fear. Concern, yes. I still have that.

I want to work from home forever. But we're forced in anyway. It doesn't matter what we want. The old normal is dead, dudes. Get over it and embrace the new normal.

I Can Make That: The Excel Story

I've reached this point where I see things and think, I can make that. I might have blogged about this in relationship with knitting and (now) sewing. Although, let's be honest here: When it comes to sewing, it's probably wishful thinking. Knitting is another story. As long as I have a pattern, I'm confident I can make it. Somewhere along the line, I became an intermediate knitter.

There's another area of my life where I always think, I can do that and it's computer related.

I already bought a planner for my day job, but I thought it would be nice to have it online, too. That way I could have it with me whether I was working from home or in the office. That would keep me from needing to put the spiral-bound version in my bag.

I don't want a digital planner. I've had one of those and it didn't work for me.

My first thought was maybe there was an online kind of thing available. Um, the closest I found to what I wanted was for students to plan classes, homework, papers, and exams. (Think college student.) I could probably make it work, but I didn't want to pay for it.

Then I thought about using the online kanban board service I bought a while back. I logged in, and yes, I could use it, but then I thought, Excel spreadsheet! Perfect!

I headed over to Etsy because I'd found some pretty impressive spreadsheets over there for personal use. There were a number of hits on my search, but they were either too simple, too complicated, too geared toward traditional project management, or they were in Google Sheets. I don't want Google Sheets, I want Excel. The two programs are not completely compatible.

And then I found one I was pretty sure would be close enough to what I wanted, but it was $20 and I was like, really? I already bought a 2022 planner, this would be like buying two of them.

I did some online searches to see if I could find something online that wasn't Etsy, but while I found other things that were cool and discovered that as an Office 365 subscriber, I could download premium templates, I didn't find what I was looking for.

This is when the light bulb went off in my head. I'm pretty good with Excel. I bet I could make one.

YouTube, here I come.

One of the first videos I found looked promising. I started watching it. I had to back up again and again and again. I slowed the speed down. And I had to back up again and again and again.

This guy knew his Excel backward, forward and upside down, but because he knew it so well, he was flying through everything. And I realized that while I'm competent at Excel, I am not good at Excel. And formulas? Yeah, go really slowly, please.

The image at the top of this blog post is the calendar I made. This was the simple part of the video. The planning part was barely covered and appeared far beyond my skill level.

Now I'm thinking I should just pay the $20 for the one I found on Etsy.

Backup Cam Back Up Again

For about ten months now, I've been dealing with my computer screen in my car going blank and staying blank. (I blogged about some of is on the It All Went Dark post.) But this problem wasn't one and done.

The screen is the only way to control or use a few things in my car: The backup camera, the seat warmers, the radio, being able to hook my phone up to the system and listen to my podcasts on the car's speakers, navigation (I mostly use my phone), and being able to use the phone hands free.

After the screen came back, it stayed on for a while and then it went blank. Repeat this a few times with the blank time becoming longer and longer. In May, I went dark for so long, I thought it was dead and then the system rebooted itself months later and stayed on for weeks.

Until it went out again.

It was still out when I went for my oil change at the beginning of December and I asked the Ford dealership to look at it. Luckily I came in on the right day of the week, because the guy who fixes the Sync system is only there one afternoon a week and I picked the right day. I still had to wait because I'd gotten there early in the morning, but at least I didn't have to come back another day to have him look at it.

So the Sync guy tried to reset it three times, but it kept going dark. I needed to replace the module. It was expensive, but I'd already priced out the part and it was right about what I expected. There was no doubt about replacing it. I like that backup camera and it's winter. I need the seat warmers. :-)

I went back the next week to get it fixed. I even took the day off from work since I had another appointment in the morning. They'd received the wrong part.

The following week, I called to see if the part was in, didn't receive a callback before I had to leave for my 2pm appointment and drove all the way out there to find out that the part hadn't come in. The following week, the Sync guy was off because it was the time between Christmas and New Year's Day. This was fine with me because I was on vacation, too and didn't want to spend a day waiting for the car.

First week in January and I called the day before. The part was there! So I went out there the next day and got my module replaced.

It's glorious!

Backup camera. Seat warmers. Radio. Navigation. And I discovered something new when I hooked my phone up to the new system. I can listen to my phone on my car stereo via Bluetooth!

This never worked on my old system because I looked for it. I figured maybe it was just too old to have it. Maybe it was, I don't know, but I do know I have it now. On the plus side, this is a nice alternative to plugging the phone in to use the speakers. On the other hand, I had been listening to a podcast at home, force quit the app I use to play my podcasts, got in the car, and my podcast started playing. O_O Um, no, thank you. I'll tell you if I want you to play.

It's silly, but I kind of feel as if I have a new car. And when I went to the grocery store, I was able to park wherever I wanted instead of pulling through because I had the backup camera. This is so awesome!

Adventures With FedEx...Again

At the end of December--Wednesday, Dec 29th, to be exact--FedEx dropped a package in my yard and drove off. This is their usual modus operandi. The difference this time is this was not my package.

The package belonged to a neighbor that we don't know and it was a heavy box, one beyond my capabilities to lift into the car and drive over.

Rain was threatening, so my dad rolled it to our front porch so it would be protected and I called FedEx to come and get it. The woman was pleasant and friendly and promised they'd come get it.

Two days later, on New Year's Eve, the package is still on my front porch. My office faces the street and I saw a FedEx Ground truck stop at a neighbor's house kitty corner from mine and I expected him to turn toward my house to come get this box, but no. He turned the other direction and left.

This time, my dad called FedEx. He went through three people and finally the third person promised that someone would be over that day to retrieve the package.

New Year's Day? Package is still sitting on my front porch.

I go to FedEx help on Twitter. Someone apologizes for the problem. Asks for my address and phone...and then doesn't respond. After waiting more than an hour to hear something, I ask if they're sending someone out to get the box. The reply? It's New Year's Day, no one is working. Well, no duh, I knew that. I meant were they ever going to send someone out? You know, seriously, I expected some kind of response, not just radio silence.

On Jan 2nd, I see the FedEx truck go by my house. Twice. One going into the neighborhood and one coming out. He doesn't stop.

Jan 3rd. Package remains on front porch. The sender was Chewy, so I contacted them and asked if they could get FedEx to pick it up. They told me I could just donate the item to a shelter, which was lovely of them, but I told the person that if I could lift the box into the car, I would have taken it to the person's house who should have received it. They put in a request to have FedEx pick it up on Jan 4th.

Jan 4th. FedEx truck drives past the house again. Doesn't stop. Package remains on porch. That evening I decide that I'm done calling. If no one picks it up by Friday, I'm going to donate it the way Chewy suggested and I'll figure out some way to get it in the car.

Jan 5th. One week from the day the box was delivered in error. Today, FedEx finally arrived and picked up the box. It's finally off my porch!

I don't actually know what the heck is going on at FedEx, but they are a hot mess and are honestly doing the worst job of any company that delivers. Even the post office is outperforming them by light years. I'm glad this ordeal is finally over with!