I've been meaning to post a quick update on a few things for awhile, but I just never got around to it. Before I get into the standard 'Update' format, let me say that I am extremely Thankful. I'm thankful for my family, I'm thankful for my friends, I'm thankful for the online community I'm a part of, I'm thankful for my job. Not everything is perfect. In fact very few things are great, let alone perfect, but I'm still Thankful for them. You see, my family situation isn't great but I'm Thankful that I have my mother, my brothers, my nephews, and my niece. I'll go over most of these below, but know that while it's easier to write about the bad, I'm still Thankful for all of these things.
Health
Four things to talk about here.
First is my diabetes treatment. I never heard back about the continuous glucose monitor. I'm getting back in the habit of taking my blood glucose every day flipping between morning and evening. I haven't had a 'bad' number for a long time. Well, that's not entirely true as I will sometimes have a bad number but it's after I eat really horrible food like McDonalds. Otherwise my numbers haven't really gone up even with the reduction in insulin. Anyway, I didn't hear back about the CGM but I also never called back myself. It would be nice to have but I can see why the insurance company wouldn't want to pay for it. I'm not in that bad of a spot. I'll talk it over with my endocrinologist at my next appointment, but I'm not jumping through dozens of hoops for this.
Next is the migraines. I finally got the approval for the Botox treatment. I went in and it involves about 30 shots around my head/face/neck/shoulders. Each individual shot hurt a bit as any shot does, but it wasn't bad at all. The rest of the day I had an ache that he said I might have, but motrin made it easily bearable. The next day there was nothing. Now, it's just been over a week since I got the injections and I've been off of work most of that time so I can't judge it fully but I honestly do feel that it's working. Several times in that period I've had the precursor signs of an oncoming migraine. Trouble sleeping, headache, loud ringing in my ears. But no migraines yet. I'll of course wait to judge the effectiveness of this treatment for a couple months.
The next ongoing issue is the colonoscopy. I first mentioned this in July and then nothing since. Well, I took the fecal occult blood test, which is gross, and it came back positive for blood. Being a registered nurse I know this likely means nothing, but it is an early sign of cancer. So the next step is to schedule a colonoscopy. Either late in July or early in August I scheduled the first available time slot for one. It was in late October. I scheduled it on a Monday because of the prep. In case you don't know, a colonoscopy is when they put a camera up your butt and look at your colon. To get a good view you have to be 'empty'. So, the day before a colonoscopy you do the prep and the prep is the worst part of a colonoscopy. And take a second to consider that... the worst part of a procedure that includes putting a mechanical snake with a camera on the end up your butt, is the prep. It turns out it's not all that easy to get 'empty' down there. Every doc has their own prep but most have a double laxative in addition to a clear liquid diet for a day. So the day before the procedure you can only eat clear liquids (mainly broth and jello). Then you start pooping and don't stop pooping. Seriously, don't get far away from a toilet as the urges will come furious and fast and frequently. Knowing what's involved with a prep is why I scheduled the procedure on a Monday as I'd need he previous day off as well. If it's on a Monday, I can prep Sunday without using a sick day and then take a sick day for the procedure itself.
Well, a week or so before the procedure they canceled it. The doc wasn't available. It was rescheduled until this past Friday. I accepted it on a Friday as I'm now growing concerned. It's looking for cancer after all. It look suspicious as all hell at work as taking this particular Thursday and Friday off backs right into my week long vacation. Yeah, it looks like I just added a couple days of vacation. More on that in the work section. Anyway, a couple days before the procedure and they call to cancel it again. Doc won't be available. So we move it to mid December. Then a few days later, it's canceled again. This time I'm insisting on a Monday appointment. If they don't believe it's important enough, then I won't either. It turns out the next available Monday appointment is in March. Jeez, if I actually have some colon or rectal cancer that this would find early, I would have had it for eight months. Enough to move from 'early detection' to 'oh shit' territory.
Whatever. Somethings going to take me out eventually anyway.
And finally, oddly enough I'm having trouble with my right arm. I had that trouble with my left arm/shoulder a few years ago. It ended up physical therapy fixed it and this feels similar so I'm not nearly as worried, but it's still problematic. This is also lower than my shoulder. When I lift my arm higher than parallel to the ground or try to reach around behind me, it not only hurts like a son-of-a-bitch, it makes my whole arm weak. It's not limiting me yet, just making it a little harder than normal to wash my back and to sleep on my arm (which is my normal sleeping position). I'm not going to let the doc know until it becomes a worse problem.
Finances
Finances are good? I nearly maxed out the credit card to get the new computer but I rarely use that one for anything other than large purchases. It simply means I won't make another large purchase until its paid down.
Years and years and years and years ago I got a Sears credit card. I remember it clearly as it was my first credit card and it had a $500 limit. I bought a sub-woofer for my computer and then promptly never made payments. It was part of the early destruction of my credit. They later sold my delinquent account to a credit agency who hounded me for years and years. I eventually agreed to pay the original amount but none of the interest or fees. They'd already trashed my credit rating (No complaint about that as I deserved it!), so I wasn't going to give them some huge profit. Anyway, a couple decades later we needed a new fridge. I told mom I'd pay for it. I could have put it on my credit card but they were offering no interest if paid off in two years. Hell, why not at least try. I figured I'd either get denied and just put it on my card or get it and show that my credit really has returned to good condition.
I got it. Approved for $4000. Not a huge limit, but enough to show me that my credit really had been restored. My credit has been right on the cusp of 'great' ever since I became a nurse and rebuilt it. I'd long since paid off the old debts and had been making payments on my low limit credit union credit card for years at that point. It quickly went from okay, to good, to very good. The main thing stopping it from going to great was that I kept buying cars. I bought Focus, then Mom's Calibur, then my Fusion, then R's Grand Cherokee, then my other Fusion (lease), then my Mustang, then B's Buick, then my Lincoln. That's a lot of rotating debt and a lot of hits on my credit in a 9 year timeframe.
In the same timeframe my credit union credit card has gone up and up and up in available credit. $10,000 now. They've told me outright that I could easily more than double that, but I like having the hard limit. It keeps me from filling it up. I've also had a Home Depot card (again a good 'no interest' deal when we got the snow blower) that eventually got canceled for disuse. Now managing your credit is like reading through a spell book. A lot of things make your credit better while an equal amount of things make it worse. Some things that make it worse eventually will make it better later. Some things that make it better eventually will make it worse. One thing that looks bad is closing credit accounts as it reduces your total amount of credit and closes and old account. Getting the Home Depot card was a hit to my credit initially but it built it up higher because I had more available credit and every month the average age of my credit got older. When it was canceled it hit my credit again... but not as much as the increase it had given me over time.
Well, a couple years ago Sears sent me a letter saying if I didn't use my card they were going to reduce my credit. Oddly enough, after looking it up, that's one of the worst things that can happen (besides obvious bad things like not paying or being late). So I went on to the Sears website and bought a $100 pillow. I paid it off the next month (by the way, the pillow sucked) and didn't think about it. I honestly didn't care if I had a Sears account, I just didn't want to get rid of it as it was an older account and was doing me good. Then they did the same thing. Buy something or they'll reduce my line of credit. Fuck you Sears. I canceled the card. Yes, that hit my credit but I wouldn't be held hostage by them every few years to buy something that I didn't want.
Fast forward a couple weeks to buying my nephews computer (more on that below) at Best Buy and they of course hit you up for their card. This time the offer was no interest for two years or $150 back in best buy credit. I was ready with my 'no thank you' standard response but I thought about it and figured it would make a good replacement for my Sears card. A way to expand my total available credit and with a company that I regularly do business with. There wouldn't be any threat of reducing the credit as I often buy stuff from Best Buy and can just put it on this card. Plus, as my regular card was still almost full, I was going to put this on my Amazon card. Yeah, I'd get some Amazon credit (1% I think) but I'd also pay a huge interest fee until its paid off. So I 'applied' and got an immediate approval for $4000 line of credit. They even allowed me to get it as a Best Buy Visa card that I can use elsewhere. My plan will be to only use it as Best Buy kind of like my gas station card that's also a Visa. I'm not getting it to be a part of my credit usage, just as a way to increase my total available credit and as another 'emergency' card.
I haven't really thought about it before, but let's add this up. My credit union card has a $10,000 limit. My Amazon card has a $5,000 limit. The Best Buy card has a $4000 limit and the gas station card has a $2,900 limit. I never thought I'd have $21,900 in available credit card credit. Especially without any of it being a store specific card. Oh, and I expect the gas station limit to go up soon as they asked for updated financial information and had just recently changed underlying banks. I'm sure they'll want to 'entice' me to use the card more.
Anyway, finances are good. No major purchases except for the computers which I'll discuss below.
Family/Friends
I'm disappointed as A, E, and myself never got together for another vacation. We'd been honing on on this week since I have it off but A's life is a little hectic and he uses his vacation time from work for family stuff so he's not exactly flush with time off to use. I guess we'll just plan on next year sometime. And maybe sometime in January I'll make another trip down to Dallas. I love driving that!
On the family side Mom is improved since the last update. She got over the cold and never tested positive for COVID. She finally accepted her pulmonologists suggestion of pulmonary rehab which is supposed to increase her lung capacity and give her a better quality of life. She did it for a couple months and quit. To be honest, I can't really blame her. She was absolutely beat every day she went to rehab (it was twice a week) and was feeling no improvement whatsoever. I think she should have had an increase if she was going to get improvement from it. I supported her decision and told her to just let her doctor's know then move on from there. R got an exercise bike and is trying to get Mom to use it, but we'll see. More on that in the R section.
My brother B is doing well. His son J is really improving as they get his meds dialed in. He's not nearly as violent, doesn't lose control as much, and as far as I know isn't having as many hallucinations. Both he and his brother Z are going for their high school diplomas. He dropped out of high school a couple years ago and Z failed out in his last semester. I'm really proud of both of them as its easy to have education come as easily as it did to me and my brothers. It's FAR harder to have it be difficult, to fail, and to still get up off the mat and try again. That's why the computers came up (not to continually tease it, but more on that later).
And then there's R. I was thinking about it and I believe one of the reasons I'm noticing such a bad attitude from him is that he's stopped his meds. Like me, his doctor suggested he try Welbutrin to quit smoking. Like me, it didn't work. And like me, he noticed he just felt better... happier... while on it. Then he quit his job. He continued to take his 'important' meds (two blood pressure meds and a GI med he needs) but opted to not continue to take the Wellbutrin as all of his medical expenses were now out of pocket. And that's about the time that his attitude went back to the 'asshole' ways of old.
I just don't know how to bring this up to him. He's obviously in a bad place mentally, so mentioning to him that he's in a bad place mentally will surely just result in him getting pissed off. And he still over extends himself without following through. Like the exercise bike. He wants to exercise... great! I'm all for it. As soon as he realized Mom can also do it he can now say he's doing it for her too. Unfortunately our house just isn't all that big. We don't have an 'extra' room to put an exercise bike in. So, it's going into the basement. He set up a TV with a Roku so Mom (and he) can watch TV or listen to music while exercising.
The problem is that getting down into the basement and walking to the back of it is difficult for Mom. She's going to do it as it will make R happy, but I honestly believe that's WHY she's doing it. It's not for herself, it's to make R happy. Again though, how do I bring that up?
Things like this are building up and up and up. I'm seriously on my last straw with R and am getting snippy about it. Petty? Yes. But its still there. A quick example; we had just finished lunch and were watching The Price Is Right. When it went to commercial I tried to start up a conversation with R. I talked about a game I was playing that I figured he'd like. I swear to the Goddess, in the middle of a sentence he got up to go let the dog out. It's like he was just a bystander while I was talking to someone else, but I was sitting at the table looking at him. Mom was there, but we don't really talk about games to her as she doesn't play them. He damned well knew I was talking to him and he had so little concern for me and what I was saying that he felt it fine to just get up in the middle of it and perform a task that didn't need performing. The dog could have at least waited a few moments until I finished with the story I was telling.
Damn, I'm getting bitter over this.
Work
I think I'm done at work. I mentioned the rescheduling of the colonoscopy for the couple days before my vacation. When it got scheduled again to later the obvious thing to do was to cancel those sick days and just go into work. I obviously have a job to do and there's no need to take extra days off. Except I didn't. I just played it up at work that I was getting ready for my colonoscopy even on the last day before it. I knew full well that I wasn't getting it done, but I let them all believe it just so I could have a couple extra days off.
I don't believe I'd have ever done that at the Prison. Yes, going to work was stressful and difficult and a pain, but I felt I needed to go in and I did it. Here? Well, I doubt there was anything bad resulting from me not being there. I doubt anybody, outside of my fellow nurse managers, even knew I was gone. Hell, one of the assistant directors of nursing sent me an email (yes, I still check my work email from home while on vacation) sent me an email notifying me that I was now responsible for seven FSA's payroll. But... I'm not there! It was due on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and I wasn't there starting on the Thursday before that! Seriously, she just didn't recognize that I wasn't there.
So what does "I'm done at work" mean. Well, I don't want to leave the state service. I like my retirement, I like my pay, I like my insurance, I like my days off, I like my sick days... I like all the external things about my job except for my actual job. And if its just that, well, I liked my job at the prison outside of the soul crushing stress. Hell, the soul crushing stress was far more to my liking as opposed to the soul crushing LACK of stress at my current job.
So, I think I'm going to go back to the prison system. I'll look into going back to my old facility but they recently had one whole half of the facility closed so they don't have a need for another supervisor. There are four other facilities in my hometown. Two I would like to work at. One I would accept working at although it's not a great working environment. And one I won't work at. So now I just need to keep my head up and look for one of those jobs to open. They will open. They will.
Entertainment
Not much going on here. Some new good music, but nothing great. Some new good TV, but nothing great. Some new good Movies (and some old movies), but nothing great. I did watch Black Adam the other day and it was surprisingly good. I also started Wednesday on Netflix and it's surprisingly good too.
The Computer(s)
Yes, this is plural. Lemme go over these in order. Mine, J's, and Z's.
The last post here covers my big mamma jamma of a computer. It's just as fast gaming as you'd think. It looked at Hitman III and just laughed and laughed. Sadly, I'm not as interested in the game, but it handled it with ease. I'm still waiting on the remake of Portal (with Ray Tracing!!!) and the update for Cyberpunk with DLSS 3.0.
A few issues have come up. Nothing big, but still things to keep an eye on. First is the boot time. I've mentioned before how fast my computers boot ever since moving to the SSDs. That was even faster when I moved to the M.2 drive on my last system. I think the boot time was about 9 seconds from hitting the power button to the windows login screen. Well, there's something plaguing these new processor/mother-board/memory combinations. They take FOREEVER to boot. I just updated my bios to the latest version and did some more research this morning, but found that nothing has changed. They're slow across the board.
We're not talking slow like a spinning hard drive slow... but from hitting the power button to the windows logon screen is about 45 seconds. 5 times SLOWER than my previous computer. Almost ALL of that is waiting for the BIOS to post. Once it posts and I see the motherboard logo, it only takes about 5 seconds to get to the windows login screen. Everybody seems to be hoping for the same thing... that this is a bug of a new processor family, a new motherboard chipset, and a new memory type and that it will eventually be taken care via a bios update.
The other issues are minor in comparison. Lights. My computer has the three lit fans behind the front glass panel. It as the two lit fans on the top of the interior connected to the radiator. It has the AIO pump on the processor. It has the two ram sticks. It has the video card. The fans and the pump are all controlled by the NZXT software called CAM. They work great. They're white upon being turned on and once the software boots will turn into the Blue and Maize color scheme I currently use. They do it consistently and easily.
The RAM sticks use GSkills software. It's the same software I used on my old sticks (same brand, different chipsets) and it workED fine. They boot up in unicorn vomit mode (rainbow colors) but when the software boots they go to the color and style I'd set up (blue and maize in comet formation). And then there's the video card. It boots up in a blue/purple fading affect that looks nice.
If everything was fine, I'd just use the installed software to change the colors. But if you remember, I don't have the software pre-installed since my first act with the computer was changing the boot drive. Installing NZXT Cam was easy. Installing G.Skill Lightning was easy. But the Gigabyte was a whole different beast.
First, when I got to the video card's specific support page and look for software to download, it lists like 8 pieces of software. I read through them quickly and grab the video card software figuring it would have the control software (overclocking, fan control...) as well as the lighting software. It didn't work. I found out later that the software I downloaded was eight years old and designed for an entirely different line of cards. In fact NONE of the software was specifically for this video card. It took a bunch of research to figure out which one to get, but I finally got the software that should have come with the video card. Uninstall the bad one, install the good one and.... they conflict.
Yes, you read that correctly. AFTER uninstalling the old software and installing the new software, they still conflict. Evidently the older software wasn't even designed for windows 10/11 and therefore didn't uninstall correctly. There's no work around. Oh, and around that time the G.Skill Lighting software for the RAM stopped working. So it fucked both systems. I did find some open source software that can do basic colors on both the RAM and the video card, but it's flakey as all get out and won't remember settings. I'd have to set it up on every boot.
I think to fix it, I'll need to format the drive and install windows cleanly. Then ONLY install the new Gigabyte video card software instead of the old software that shouldn't have even been listed on that page. I bet that would work. But I'm not going to do that. I did a backup/restore on my old system in late August, then the backup/transfer to the new system last month. Doing another backup/restore can wait until well into the new year!
With the new computer humming along, I was left with my perfectly fine old computer. And by fine, I actually mean high end computer that's barely out of date. As a reminder it was a Ryzen 5800x with 32 Gigs of fast memory, 2 1TB M.2 drives, and an RTX 3080 video card. I looked through current part lists (at the time that I purchased my new computer) and it could have easily gone for $1800. As in the parts were worth MORE than $1800 and I'd just sell it for less as they were used and I'd want a fast sale. But selling sucks. Seriously, getting photos, writing out a description, going from facebook friends, to facebook marketplace, to craigs list, dealing with those that want to offer pennies on the dollar, finally getting someone to bite, meeting them up at some public place, taking the cash (no checks or credit cards!) and then hoping that I'd never hear from them again. Bah.
I tried to give it to either of my brothers, but R has a better system and B doesn't use computers any longer. I thought about giving to my nephews, but they're of the age that sharing a computer is quite the pain. And then it hit me... make it a Christmas gift for one of them! Here me out. I normally give my nephews and niece Amazon gift cards and they've been getting more expensive each year. I'm well over $1000 each year (combined for all three of them, not individually). Anyway, I can make a great gift to each of them and spend only a little more. 1st, I give one of the boys this computer. I give the other a computer shopping spree with about $1400. Finally I give my niece my iPad pro. Initially it sounds like I'm shorting my niece, but she also got the Macbook Pro at a SIGNIFICANT discount earlier and she really does like iPads.
After making sure my brother is good with me giving his kids such gifts, I do a little shopping and see that if we get parts we can get a similar system so the boys will have nearly equal computers. One will be better parts but it will be a year and a half old. The other will get more choice on exact parts that will end up being a bit slower, but will be brand new. I even found all the parts at a nearby computer store that I'd love to go to but never had the need to (it's an hour and a half drive so it's not like I would ever just stop by).
I give the computer to J and he's over the moon ecstatic. I believe he thanked me and hugged me at least ten times that night. Z loved the idea of 'making' his own computer. I originally figured we could take some parts out of his old system, but it turns out his system was REALLY budget. A low wattage power supply that wouldn't power on a modern video card, a processor years out of date, a video card that's beyond laughable and into pity range, a spinning hard drive (no SSD whatsoever), and RAM that's honestly too slow for a new processor. We could pull the processor cooler off and re-use that, but we'd even need a new case.
So, he and I sat down and looked at what was available. Here's what we settled on:
- AMD Ryzen 5600X and an appropriate motherboard
- That felt like the minimum we'd go as any lower and the cache dropped quick.
- RTX 3080
- 16 Gigs of 3600 DDR4 RAM
- 1 TB M.2 SSD
- 850 watt modular power supply
- NZXT Case
- He gets to use it that day
- It comes with a warranty
- And since this is from Best Buy and I'm a TotalTech member, it comes with a two year warranty!
- It surprisingly costs LESS than the parts we priced out and was in some ways BETTER parts
- Like the NZXT though, it had a lesser video card
- Less video card
- Some more of the parts would be less as well as they weren't exactly listing everything exactly.
- No chance to really play with it. Before, building it was a big part of the experience he wanted.
- Ryzen 7 5700X with 8 cores and 16 threads
- upgraded from the 5 5600X with 6 cores and 12 threads.
- 16 Gigs of DDR 4 memory
- No speed was listed, so likely a slight downgrade
- 1 TB SSD
- No word on what brand it was. We'd priced his out with a Samsung 980 Pro as it was on a monster of a sale. Likely a significant downgrade but not one with a noticeable real world experience difference.
- 800 Watt power supply
- Not modular and had ketchup and mustard cableing
- CyberPowerPC Case that included 3 RGB fans
- It also had a matching AIO processor cooler with matching RGB
- RTX 3070 video card
- It ended up being an MSI brand, but we didn't know that until it was opened. It could have been Gigabyte, ASUS, EVGA, or any other brand.
- Obviously this was the biggest savings.
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