Yet Another Journal

Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans,
cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of.

Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net
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» Saturday, June 25, 2022

Repairs and All That

Well, the truck A/C is finally fixed! It turned out there was no power going to the compressor, so while we were getting some cool air, without that power the A/C couldn't keep up in the heat.

That was done on Monday, and on Tuesday Robert came back and installed a new thermostat, and I discovered my Lennox account was never deleted at all. It was the iComfort account that was deleted. Apparently they're two different things; who knew?

On Thursday morning we brought Butch to Kia to have all the recalls done. I also asked them to look into the problem of the stalling. I think it's worth the diagnostic fee, but am hoping it's something Mike can fix, as I'd rather give him the money than Kia.

That was really all the big news at home. We did the usual shopping. The car was not ready by Saturday as Kia promised, but, again, I really didn't care.

I was still boggled by the fact that it cost James $50 to half-fill the truck tank! Prices are ridiculous. The ground turkey that was $2.89 in 2020 at Lidl is now $4.39! My favorite "dinner rolls" have gone from 59 cents to 99 cents. The only thing still cheap is the milk at the Mableton Kroger, and I know they use that as a loss leader.

This week, after being a member for six (honestly!) years, I finally started uploading my fanfiction to Archive of Our Own. I thought I joined a lot later, like 2020, but it turned out I never did anything with my membership because of James' heart attack. Kinda nervous because this is the first really public place I'm posting my Law & Order: Criminal Intent post-series stories, even though they're available on my website.

Labels: cars, fanfiction, money, repairs

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:34:00 PM

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» Saturday, June 18, 2022

Temperature's Rising, and I'm Not Just Talking Outside

It's been...a week.

Some positive things did happen. The most important is that we have found our old mechanic! James' truck needs work on the A/C; it either needs a shot of freon or the fan needs fixing. We didn't want to call True Automotive (what our old place turned into) since I'm pretty sure they overcharged me last time. We did get a coupon from an Advantage Auto Center on Cobb Parkway to have a free check of a car's A/C, so James called them up and heard a familiar name on the voice mail: it was Mike! So we have arranged to have the truck seen on Monday the 20th. I also made an appointment with the local KIA dealership to get Butch checked out; he has at least three recalls on him, including one to "update the software." So, my car needs Windows updates? I am wondering if this is what made the car lose power while I was driving it on May tenth. If not, I'm not sure if I want KIA to look at the car or just take it to Mike.

And James went to the urologist on Thursday and the NP pulled out the catheter. Hopefully the infection has gone away. I am less sanguine about the state of his prostate. I think it might be blocking his urethra again. This would mean more surgery. I hope this isn't the case.

On Saturday he had an MRI of his back. Orthopedics is trying to determine if there are some type of shots he can take as well as physiotherapy to help him walk a little better, so he (a) won't be in such pain and (b) will be able to exercise more. We were almost late because we were two-thirds of the way there and ran into a roadblock because a car had driven off Paper Mill Road. We were forced to backtrack and take another route and got stuck behind a moving van doing 25mph. How frustrating! But we did get there on time and it only took about thirty minutes, and James said the techs were very nice.

Our big problem started on Tuesday. Now, we got new HVAC in 2016, the day James had his first heart attack. We also got the maintenance plan; they do a checkup twice a year for a monthly fee. Well, less than two years ago they turn up with this new wifi programmable thermostat, as opposed to the old non-wifi programmable thermostat. I think the model number is a Lennox E30. Anyway, I did create an online account and it's nifty—like if we forget to turn on the eco-programming if we go away for a weekend, I can turn it on with the phone and not waste energy.

Well, the E30 is a finicky beast. The original they installed messed up less than a year into our owning it. It just quit working. This was when it was cold—maybe six months ago? They put in a new one. This one's been a little flaky—for instance, I have it in power save mode, which means the screen is supposed to stay off unless I wave my hand in front of it, but it turns off and on indiscriminately—but it's always held to the various programmed schedules fine. Until today. I walked past it and it came on...and what the hell? Instead of being on "summer" schedule, with temp set at 74, it was on "heat only" and already 77 in the house. Went to turn it back to summer schedule. Guess what. Touch screen has completely quit working.

Well, that's okay—we've got the app on both my phone and through my web browser, so I go into the phone app and reset it back to summer schedule. That worked fine. Me being me, I went into the app in the browser and tried to figure out what might have switched the scheduling off. Then I made the fatal mistake of going into "my account." I didn't see anything in "my account" that would make any difference, so I clicked the button that I though "closed" the "my account" box.

This is where I was really, really stupid. It wasn't a "close" button, it was the delete account button. Not designated in a bright color, or otherwise made so you could see it, but the same color as the border around the "my account" popup box. To add insult to injury, I didn't even get a nice friendly reminder that I was being stupid—you know, the "Are you sure you want to delete this account?" message that usually pops up. And...just like that! Gone!

I ran to the laptop and was still logged on there. Then I thought—I've got Firefox set up to sync between computers! What if they sync and I get logged off? So I closed Firefox so they didn't sync. But, you guessed it—when I reopened Firefox I couldn't get back in.

So basically now the only way I've got to control the stupid thermostat is that the app still works on my phone for no discernible reason (and—for some amazing reason—the app still works on my old phone, too) even though I deleted the account, and God knows how long that will last, and what the hell can I do if the phone fails and this stupid thing switches itself off again? So there I was, not able to use my phone for fear of closing that window, the HVAC people couldn't send someone until Thursday morning, and Lennox (the inventor of the app and manufacturer of this stupid E30 thermostat) couldn't do a thing for me because to set up a new account I have to be able to use the thermostat to get a pin number. Basically I screwed up everything with one click of the mouse.

To add insult to injury, our HVAC guy never showed up on Thursday. This was understandable—we're having a virulent heat wave, with temps up in the mid-90s, and I know there are people out there who have non-working units and they need to go first. We had him scheduled ten to twelve, but he was so far behind he could not have arrived until 1:30, when we had to leave for Kaiser. So we rescheduled for 6 to 8 at night, but no one ever showed up. I didn't even mind that, except that no one called. I called them back, as well as texted them, plus talked to someone on Facebook Messenger, and they said our case was still in the system and someone would call us Friday.

Friday I had to call them; I finally got them scheduled to come on Sunday.

I'm exhausted from riding herd on the thermostat and worrying about James, and basically spent a lot of Saturday in tears. So, good weekend? No.

[Sun, June 19:

A/C tech was here this morning and was downright surprised. Apparently he's never had one of these thermostats quit responding to touch. He did a whole bunch of tests including rebooting the thermostat, and, yeah, it's still non-responsive. He said since the unit's still working, he didn't want to just slap a regular thermostat on it, because it's not capable of coping with our two-stage system. He's just going to order a new one and come back when it comes in (why don't they keep these things in stock, I wonder?)—unless the system goes off. So we have a thermostat with a "unique problem." yay...

Plus, after holding to the schedule rigidly since it flaked out on Tuesday, the thermostat has flaked out twice today. I looked up at one point after I finished folding towels and the wall thermostat was saying it was set at 76℉. We keep it set at 74 so the temp in the main part of the house stays at 78. I had to reset it on the phone. A little later out of nowhere it reset itself to the "away" temp, which is 78℉. I had to cancel the "away," which I still don't know how it managed to set itself.

And before you ask, not even James knows the password to the thermostat. I set up the system, and I'm the only one who knows the password, and it's not a common word. Nor does anyone have our wifi password, which was totally randomly set by Earthlink. And there have been no power fluctuations today.]

Labels: cars, electronics, events, health, traffic

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:52:00 PM

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» Saturday, June 11, 2022

List Your Frustration Here: Weather, Banks, or Walmart

"Summer is icumen..." Eh.

Yeah, the big news here is that it's going to be 90s, presumably from now on, starting out with 90s and high humidity (thanks a lot, Florida), which makes the heat index on Monday the 13th a nice jolly 100 plus.

At least things got done this week: the bushes got trimmed and the dog was drowned...uh, bathed. (He only believes he's drowned.) And he's so happy afterward, but he doesn't want to admit it.

James did have a frustrating work day on Wednesday. Somewhere after eleven o'clock he couldn't receive any phone calls, although he could make them. So, between trying to resolve the problem all afternoon, he could only follow up on cases. It turned out to be a server problem and it was okay when he checked again on Friday.

Thursday we didn't do much besides the grocery shopping, but we did go to the Smyrna post office to see if the HOA bank had mailed the checks for the HOA account. They told us they wouldn't mail to a post office box, so we had expected them delivered to our address on June 6. Well, they never arrived. And they weren't at the post office, so James had to call the bank again. It turned out the original order got cancelled "because they couldn't find your address," so the order was only put in two weeks ago when James called the first time and the person we talked to ("Amanda") assured him they would be delivered on the 6th. We found out when he called that "Amanda" had left the company! So on Wednesday I had to pay the lawn guy out of my account because the stupid bank can't get this shit right. Anyway, the lady at the bank he talked to this time said they would put a rush on the checks, so maybe someday I will get paid back.

Friday we had lunch at O'Charley's with Alice and Ken and John along with a nice long chat (John is currently fixing his own deck, which makes my back hurt to hear about), then waited in line for what seemed like hours for gasoline at Sam's Club in Hiram (there were lines of seven or eight cars at all ten pumps) due to it being at the "low price" of $4.24 a gallon. Finally we went to Walmart because James needed new mats for the truck. We also got sugar-free candy, more slippers for him, a new floodlight for outside, and a few other things.

Saturday we had nowhere to go and didn't want to spend any money, so we went nowhere. I did send a note to a friend, but mainly just did junk around the house, like putting the new mats in James' trunk and trying to make some order of all the wires on his dashboard (he have the GPS that plugs in, as well as the radar detector, plus the charge cord for when we use the phone for navigation, so it's rather a tangle up front). I finally taped everything down with duct tape and replaced the reflector on the wheelchair lift that got knocked off when I loaded the chair about a dozen times ago. Because MMR car repair went out of business a couple of years back and I thought the new place, True Automotive, overcharged me when Butch needed fixing in February 2020, we don't know where to take the truck to get the A/C repaired (we think all it needs is a freon or whatever-they-use-now charge, but it might be the fan). Plus I need to get Butch to the Kia dealer for the five, count 'em, five recalls on the stupid car and I really can't trust to driving the dumb car after it lost power on me in the middle of the road over a month ago, but I really don't care about the stupid car, either, and wish I could just avoid the whole thing.

Instead of thinking will spend time watching more episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent...

Labels: annoyances, cars, chores, shopping, television, weather, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:40:00 PM

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» Saturday, June 04, 2022

And Yet More Books...

Well, summer has officially arrived. Yeah, I know, it's not the solstice yet. Actually, meteorological summer started June 1, and on Thursday, June 2, it was 93℉. That, folks, is summer.

We braved it anyway after doing a morning of grocery shopping; we ate a sandwich each and then went to Barnes & Noble. I gave in and renewed my discount card; I mean, someone has to keep them in business. I ended up buying five books (including a birthday gift for James), four of them at "buy one, get the second for half price," including the one about forensics in Agatha Christie novels, plus both of the Jurassic World magazines that have just come out. The "Hollywood Spotlight" version has a killer pic of Sam Neill. Yum.

Something else was put in motion on Thursday, but...let it simmer for now. Hoping things will be happier when...it's done.

The rest of the week was quiet as we really didn't have anywhere else to go. On Friday we just decided to get takeout from Dragon168. This gave me a chance to duck into Publix and pick up the ramen noodles we forgot, and they also had unsalted vegetable broth; neither of the Publix we shop at carry it any longer. I spent Friday afternoon blogging, finished my latest L&O: CI story, and, in the best news, The Orville is back! The first episode dealt with the aftermath of Isaac's treachery, and introduced a new character, Charly Burke, the Orville's navigator. She's very good, and the score of the episode was spectacular.

James went off to his club meeting on Saturday afternoon, and I was going to watch Emerald City, but my lower GI decided to rebel. Instead I washed the winter jackets and did the weekly vacuuming and watched Law & Order: Criminal Intent on Peacock instead.