Found 4 super cool books in 3 different street libraries! Did I need those books? No because I have 12 in my room that are just living on my desk unread! But I took em anyway because they're older than me and its less stressful than all the choices at a real library. When I read through them I'll either return them or put in some of my own (or dad's!) books :D

Well, today's forecast calls for another storm.

I can only hope in positivity that it's a 2 out of 3 chance that it won't try to rip up our area, especially after last Thursday.

I really can't afford to let my food rot in the freezer when the power company doesn't get it fixed to be considered a blip like yesterday.

I lost a bag of Alaskan Pollock Filets and Potstickers dumplings in the freezer and milk in the fridge from the Thursday storm.

Either way, I will attempt keeping you guys posted. They were right about summer being hot and stormy.

I don't know if this will be useful to anybody, but if it saves a person a couple of hours of headache, then it will be worth it.

My POS, off-the-shelf, Dell laptop I bought 5 or so years ago is crapping out. It died on me three times this morning. These issues have been going on for 6 or so months, so I decided to replace it with the cash I've been saving via doing a no spend month and the penny challenge I've been doing.

This morning we went to Best Buy for a new laptop. I didn't buy anything expensive as I don't use my laptop for much. I use it to watch Youtube, check the weather if for whatever reason we don't have power, ect. If and when I play my game, I play it on a desktop. I found what I wanted, paid, laughed at the dude trying to get me to sign up for a Best Buy credit card and left.

It took about a half hour for the laptop to update. After that I thought I was good. It would have been another hour to install Waterfox, the extensions I wanted, blah, blah, blah then go about my day. I spent 2 hours trying to get the stupid thing out of S-Mode. I tried every tutorial I could find as this is a well-known problem with Windoze 11. I stopped short of playing around with the registry. I just bought the f-ing thing a couple hours prior, why should I have to mess around with the registry. Then I called Best Buy. I got stuck talking to somebody that spoke broken English who put me on hold for technical support. Yeah, no. I packed up the laptop in the box it came out of and brought it back to Best Buy.

Long story short: They've been busy all day re-installing Windows 11 on various systems that have been purchased recently because of this bug that Microsoft has yet to fix. Geek Squad is known for poking around in people's computers, but since there is nothing to poke around in as there is nothing on it sans that crap it came installed with, they can have fun trying to find anything interesting. Whatever this new bug is has happened not all that long ago. I haven't had this problem with other Windoze 11 or Windoze 10 systems.

If anyone buys a off-shelf Windoze 11 system and can't shut off S-Mode, bring it back to wherever it came from. I don't know what the advice would be for anybody that has a system shipped. I don't trust Fed Ex, UPS and so on with anything these days, so trusting them with a computer wouldn't be something I'd be okay with.

EDIT: The new Windoze 11 install worked. However, when I turned the laptop on this morning, I got a warning that I was out of space. I installed Waterfox, FireFox, Revo Uninstaller and Bleach Bit ( I use this to clean out the junk files left behind) none of which use 86 gigs of RAM / space.

Geek Squad did the install, but didn't remove all the files left behind from the factory install of Windoze. All of those are now removed, then I spent over a hour trying to figure out how to delete or permanently shut off widgets a those act like a vampire for RAM usage. After trying several things which failed, I ended up downloading a tool / file that took care of that.

Another vampire of space is One Drive which was also removed along with any other bloatware I came across. I understand Microsoft tries to make their systems idiot proof, but ugh. Locking people out of completely disabling widgets because they are a resource hog is ridiculous IMO. Windoze 10 is nothing to write home about, but Windoze 11 is the worst. The only good thing I can say is the system didn't come with apps for games ridden with micotransactions, ect...

Moral of the edit: If you bring a system in because of S-Mode and have Windoze 11 re-installed via Geek Squad, be prepared to do some clean up. I went from having no space to bringing the system down to using 30 gigs which isn't great, but I cut the RAM usage by more than half, so I'll take it.

I'm tutoring a friend in a computer science class. For some reason, my Visual Studio Code can't run the debugger without bugging me (heh) to place a random string of text somewhere to make it happy - I can't bother.

I installed CLion which is free if you're a student. Wanted to see if I had WSL version 1 or 2 installed, for performance reasons... - the Windows Terminal app doesn't start. Just crashes straight away. Well, half an hour went into figuring out that I just had to uninstall Windows Terminal because it has this bug related to self-elevation? Whatever.

Back to CLion - as soon as I started it and opened my friend's code - the program highlighted the (quite convoluted) logical mistake in the code. What a relief!

The tree is suspected to have hit the roof. Where my room is. So I have to inspect my room for possible water damage tonight.

My house is falling apart due to outside forces.

Fan-frigging-tastic...

Lucky that my grandfather can set up an insurance agent for this emergency.

A day filled with a LOT of waiting and a LOT of nagging. For the most part both simultaneously....
Last hour of waiting more or less saved my sanity, though (no nagging).

We didn't have a storm in my town last night, but going North, they got the brunt of it. We got that from the repair people from what happened yesterday in an emergency call.

Only half the job is done repairing the house.

The tree is gone and roof has a temporary patch so the roofer can get a better estimate to my family.

The plumbing and HVAC are still in need. They didn't show up today, unfortunately. I guess I will be using my parents' bathroom at night and have to be careful not to overheat until further notice and update.

So, my allowance came early, spent it mostly if not the majority of it on food, drinks and healthcare.

I also did scheduling of two doctor appointments and received a bike from United Way, whom I have been seeing since I came back to New Jersey about 8 years ago.

I have placed my orders, got the prescription refill processing started and received my bike after much time had passed since I became eligible.

I should see my emails for any shipping updates.

MAIL BAG DAY! YAY!

So, one of my shipments was accidentally routed to Ohio. I know, right? Anyway, I got my first package of the shipment of chips, gummies and the soda last night. (Low calorie, low sugar, low sodium versions of the big names.)

Today, Amazon should be sending me my organizers (I go by the mantra "organization will set me free!") a box set with Australian cartoons with 103 shorts and alternate versions, and a hand truck dolly cart (expecting something heavy in the mail later on in the month.)

Either way...The delivery is rather expected to be a great one.

Got my organizers (one for cards and a set of colorful binder pencil cases for my cash and coin), my shorts (it's a sweet little series with a universal theme of family and childhood memories made daily while dealing with life in an easy to understand way) and the hand truck dolly cart (it was light to pick up)

Companies have the balls of a brass monkey sometimes. I don't know if this is just a US thing or if it's universal.

We had to go out this morning to get oatmeal, laundry detergent, ect... Those non-exciting things in life. Before going to the store, we stopped by the bank and pulled out cash as one of the stores we had to go to was the store where our credit card was ripped off a couple of weeks ago.

The store was quiet, we got everything we needed. Because it is a big box store that requires a membership, a person needs to have their membership card scanned before a purchase can be made. The card was scanned, then a message popped up on the credit card machine. The message stated something along the lines that the card holder would accept any and all charges placed on their card. Then there was a "agree" or "disagree" button. Said message wasn't there this past Wednesday, so this is new thing. The nonsense was greeted with a "Hell No!" and the disagree button being mashed.

The cashier was a tad confused by my reaction. I mentioned that our card had already been ripped off once so there was no way I'm going to agree to further fraud and that we're on a cash only basis now. We paid for our stuff and left.

I'm sure there will be plenty of people that will "agree" to the above nonsense; I wish them the best of luck with that.

@Gargoyle Cat

Yeah, I don't think anyone likes getting ripped off.

But still, I admit, from experience, the way life is, it's probably not your first and may not be your last when it comes to major inconveniencing events.

Then again, people are not immune to such fates.

I learned a few things, but I think the most important thing in an inconvenience is to be persistent in getting to the person\people who can help you.

You're right Panda, this isn't the first time I've dealt with credit card fraud. However, that doesn't make what they are trying to do okay, nor was it acceptable how they handled the situation. When a customer calls a company and complains about their credit card being used illegally, the wrong answer is "We'll get back to you in a week." With a few keystrokes it was easily proven that I did not make said purchase. Since we're members, they have our entire purchase history.

It is similar situation to the last time I used my debit card online.

I was with a different bank at the time. Somebody decided to spend $100.00 at the Apple store on my debit card. I've never had a account with the Apple store and my spending history would have shown that. When I went to the bank about it, they told me I would have to wait a month to get my money back. I made a stink, managed to get my money back a few days later, then promptly closed all accounts with said bank and paid bills with money orders until I found a new bank. In this situation, the person I spoke with didn't feel like filling out the fraudulent charges paperwork. It needs to be noted here that under US law, any debit card that has a Visa or Mastercard logo has the same protection as a regular Visa or Mastercard.

5 or so years later, that bank is no longer in business. Perhaps they should have been doing their job rather than thumbing their noses at the 'inconvenience' they were causing their customers.

I've haven't used my debit card online ( or anywhere else for that matter) since then even though my current bank is really good about staying on top of things. I don't keep more than $100.00 in my checking account, nor is any savings accounts linked to my checking. When I pay bills, I log into my account and move money around.

I've discovered that the more time you think you have at the start of the day, the less time you have at the end of the day (especially workdays). Workday started calm and "I'm not even sure what to do because there's hardly anything to do now", and ended "too many things going on at once". But at least it's a bit less than what I'm used to (maybe 2 things happening at a time, and manageable within a decent timeframe - instead of at least 4-5 things demanding rapid attention, at least 2 of which are of the type "should've been dealt with 3+ hours ago, but preferably yesterday before there was even a demand for it" ).

Received my organizers, cartoon shorts, handcart and my two missing bags of chips (craving salt lately.)

(Note to self: No shopping while under the influence of a craving. Just as bad as shopping while hungry.)

My water will be here between the 5th and the 10th.

My dental care products will be here as soon as they finish passing through customs in Jamaica, New York (I am aware of that particular office).

As for today, I have put away about 20% of my amiibo card collection into a smaller, compact binder.

I probably could sell my vinyl page protector sheets (I have some strange purchase that leave me speechless because I now wonder why I first bought them.) I am still cleaning up my mess of a bedroom.

I think the weirdest thing is that some schools allowed for Pokémon cards to be used in a classroom setting, possibly math\linguistics

(haven't really stay in touch with the franchise beyond games, animation and financial data, which Pokémon brings in nearly $1 trillion annually for worldwide sales (there a slight margin of inflation for the materials and licensing fees will vary) so I may be out of the loop).

When I was in school, the teachers would confiscate them and not return them, even if there was any appeal.

I may consider selling anything I no longer have a use for to finance my future.

If I should hold a garage sale, I probably would sell my Pokémon cards for pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters or a dollar per card, depending on publication factors (this, coming from an intern at a publications office) and\or by rarity levels.

I still have tons of things to toss, recycle, donate or sell. What I keep is what I deem important.

As for asking prices, every little bit counts, and I am being reasonable. I just want them out of my room and life because I need to keep my room clear and easy to maneuver.

I don't plan on scalping or gouging the cards. Penny for common ones to a dollar for legendary rare status cards is more than fair enough when I see it...

Looking at the boring stuff of politics and financial data is why I don't like being the only functioning adult in the house, especially on weekdays.

But lately, I am keeping an eye out for toothpaste that has a mint chocolate chip ice cream flavor. The toothpaste I recently unboxed is flying off shelves in Australia, but it's a coincidence.

I'm awake, listening to Moldovan saxophonist (Sunstroke Project) Sergey Stepanov's jazzy riffs mixed with a backbeat by Cruzo of Sweden and I am in something of a meditative thought.

I may have been an adult legally half my life, but I wish I could relax. Lately, I have started to, in my mannerisms, become one of those elders who reads newspapers and does early bird specials at shopping centers and restaurants.

Maybe I am too hard on myself since the plumber didn't come yesterday due to someone else having an emergency. I am stinky, flakey and just unhappy I let myself go with my appearance while helping with the technical supervision of the house repairs after that EF0 storm. Gaw!... I really want to get cleaned up. I also had laundry done yesterday. But I don't know if I flipped the load from washer to dryer.

Got workout done. The time flies by when listening to music instead of a audio book.

Walked dogs before thunderstorms roll in.

Stuffing my face with massive salad while listening my favorite hoarder. I have no clue what she's talking about. It started with being chatty about how Alexa is her boyfriend, then it was on to a meltdown over nail glue, something about blood pathogens, making adult 'beverages'... blah, blah, blah. None of this has anything to do with her Temu order, but ya know.

I'm learning to stop paying too close attention because...

Still waiting on a package lately. Just something I ordered to test out.

Of course, today, I have been resting because I haven't been feeling good. I feel like I got run over.

Had ice cream while sitting on bench in the sun looking at the sea

Went grocery shopping and got nearly all frozen food. It was a day that required me to head out in the heat.

Mom just bought a new dryer. The old one we had was a very durable dryer: we've had it since 2005 I think, and not once did it require repairing. All we did was clean the condenser regularly. The only thing that has aged would probably be the moisture sensors. It was a pretty simple dryer: modes were cotton, synthetics or timed dry. Cotton options were high-temperature, while synthetics and timed were low-temperature. You could set it to extra dry, storage dry, mildly damp, iron damp, machine iron damp. (The sensors, as I said, did age, so anything not set to "extra dry" felt too damp to even consider taking out of the machine, while the extra dry was sometimes overdried.)

It seems that the thermostat or the heater went out, and mom gave it a thought and realized that it's best to invest in a new one than to try to find a repairman who knows where to find the spare parts for this one. She bought a €350 Gorenje one (the old one was Gorenje too) and while the towels feel so fluffy and not fried, it's maybe as loud – if not louder – than the old one. For some reason the noise part really surprised us, as we were convinced that the newer dryers are much quieter than the first-ever models on the European market... turns out, not by much. Well, at least the clearance ones aren't.

We're headed into the middle of the month. My no-spend June is blowing chunks. I'm not even buying anything good, it's stupid stuff. I ran out of shampoo, so I got some. Jingle has developed allergies to pollen, so she gets half of a Benedryl every day. Because she's such a pain in the ass about taking it and I'm afraid I'm going to hurt her jaw, I got her some Pill Pockets.

Speaking of pet-related things, I had to buy a baby gate. Sterling and Chica have a toxic relationship.

Sterling is protective of her cage, at least as far as the dogs are concerned. Chica being a Boston Terrier doesn't like the idea that there is a rodent in the house. Chica starts sniffing around Sterling's cage, Sterling gets mad. She bounces to the bottom level of her cage, gets into her sand / bath box ( a small litterbox) and starts kicking sand at Chica to make her go away. Chica starts barking, Sterling kicks more sand. Rinse, wash, repeat until a human declares enough is enough.

What does this have to do with a baby gate? The gate is to force Chica to keep her distance from Sterling's cage. It doesn't keep her from barking and Sterling still gets into her bath box in preparation for creating a sand storm, but at least there is no longer chinchilla bath sand all over my office.

I love all of my pets, but sometimes I do wonder what I was thinking when I decided to be a multi-pet household.

Older electronics usually lasted a whole lot longer than newer electronics tend to do.

My phone from the early 2010s still works (in airplane mode). I had to replace it because of network issues, and it's a bit slow/has some minor "error bugs" when loading in stuff, but it still works fine as an alarm clock (I prefer the music I already had on it, and I'm too lazy to shift it over to the new phone). It's also very durable, and only has a few minor scrapes (fallen onto asphalt a few times, screen-down. Could potentially withstand getting run over by a car, but I haven't tested the theory... the thing has some proper early Nokia energy, despite not being one...)

Our dishwasher probably lasted at least 20+ years. In the end the tubes started leaking, and I'm not even sure the model name existed any longer, so we replaced it. The new one seems to have less space (the spacers have wider areas between the "sticks", so there's less room for stuff, and every time finding space for everything is like playing tetris)

We had to replace an oven a while back. A door broke once, and one of the heating elements (or fans) broke at least a couple times, but after repairing it was fine. It lasted us a good long while. Fast forward to the next oven, I don't think it took more than 2 years before the heating element (or fan or whatever it was) broke. And since the shop didn't do repairs any longer (after the repairman probably retired or some such) plus within the guarantee time, they sent us a new oven. I'd preferred repairs. It's wild that they can just throw away an oven that likely would've worked fine if it had gotten some new parts.

Back when I studied, our landlord kept having to replace the washing machine and dryer. I have a feeling it's because the new ones were either used or dirt cheap/low quality, but still... Oh, and because several of the ones I lived with at the time had no idea how to wash clothes properly (I swear, the things I sometimes saw, like those who kept putting powdered detergent in the space for (liquid) fabric softener so it formed a yucky sludge - no wonder the machines eventually gave up )

We've been though at least 5 washing machines since buying the house. The biggest problem is our well water was causing the mechanisms in the machines to corrode. The same thing happened to all the copper piping that was installed when the house was built. Since having the house re-plumbed and having a water conditioner installed, the corrosion problem has stopped, but that didn't keep other things breaking after a couple of years of use.

The old adage of things are not made like they use to be holds true for other stuff as well.

I love my Instant Pot. I've been through 3 of them with regular, normal use in 2 years.

I've had to buy a couple of keyboards as they wear out in a year or so. So far the Corsair I bought last year is holding up.

I've lost count of how many fish tank filters I've had to replace. Every time there is a power surge, at least one filter dies even though they are on a surge protector. I suppose it is reasonable to think the surge protector is also broken. We're down to one fish. He's going on 9 or 10 years old. Once he's gone, I'm done with the fish keeping hobby. Lugging around 5 gallon buckets of water on water change days is not fun.

2 years ago we bought new window air conditioners. Even though I clean them regularly when in use and before storing them for the winter, one is on it's way out. The fan of one of them sounds like a airplane preparing for take off.

Around the same time, we bought new air purifiers. The sensor on of them died within a few months so using auto mode is useless because according to the sensor, the air is never cleaned even though it has a new filter. I know it is doing it's job as I check the filter regularly.

We've had to replace 3 refrigerators. The last one we had started pissing water everywhere. I don't know where the water was coming from as the ice maker wasn't attached to the water line.

Constantly having to replace stuff is so much fun. Nope!

I'm actually surprised how our appliances last this long with all the minerals in our water. We have to configure our dishwasher to the highest setting of salt usage before starting it, otherwise the dishes are all musty after a few washes. But the internal components somehow have made it. The only thing that got broken in our dishwasher was, well, the heater as well. The reason we bought a new one instead of repairing the heater is because the racks got completely rusty and degenerated up to the point where the rust would transfer onto the dishes (and for some reason, finding racks for this model costs as much as getting a new dishwasher).

Though, our previous washing machine failed because the bearings got used up. The new one, which has extended warranty of like, 6 years or so total, also had its bearings fail around 2 years in (which is the standard warranty; you usually get an additional 2-4 years if you register your device with the manufacturer online). Luckily, that got repaired successfully and at no cost.

Today, I relaxed.

I bought Katamari Damacy REROLL on Sunday evening through the Nintendo eShop for $8 (it was on sale and I felt it was a decent price for a revamped and ported version) and practiced making a few stars in the sky on the Switch.

I also met a random villager character in the campsite of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It was Snooty the Anteater. It was a weird day talking to Snooty and Cyrano, two anteaters. I even got a summer shell.

I had some delicious French fries from McDonald's. For what it's worth, the food at McDonald's may be bad for your bodily health, but it certainly feeds the soul (provided you didn't sell yours in desperation.)

The fries will vary between each burger and chicken joint. Sometimes they're balanced in blistering, oilyness, saltiness, fluffiness that you can't seem to stop. And the fact that potatoes, like most starches, taste best with your preference of toppings.

I also got my last package from that giant shipment I started when I got my money in.

I slept in today, but after my mother is done with her errands, she'll help me with groceries as I am running low on certain foods and I promised to replace my parents' food.

It's more like "I'm sorry for what I ate while I was hungry". I have been just craving like crazy all kinds of foods. I still have to go over to Target (which is right across the highway from Walmart and for some reason, I always find the weirdest rivals being separated by highways.)

When it came to Microsoft and Nintendo, they definitely had a HUMONGOUS highway splitting the rival corporate headquarters.