Daily Report: Oh Solo Me-O

Mom and Paul and Gracie left for New York today, leaving me alone here until next September or October. (I'll be flying up to New York for a week during the summer, and when Epril gets here, I want to drive north with her to see the fall foliage.)

The first thing I did after Mom and Paul left was to turn off that infernal air conditioning and throw open all the windows and sliding glass doors, and get back to the proper Jungle conditions to which I am accustomed.

I have a unique challenge in the coming weeks: Mom and Paul have left me a house full of food, especially in the freezer and refrigerator. My challenge is to not go grocery shopping until all the food I have now is gone (or spoiled, though I hope to avoid that). I'm sure towards the end, I'll be eating some weird combinations of disparate food items mixed in spaghetti sauce and served on crackers in order to achieve my goal.

The refurbished computer that I bought for $400 stopped working. That computer guy I found really kind of sucks: first my uncle was unhappy with the service (I referred him there because his laptop had a virus), and now I as well. One of the memory sticks was bad, so I took it out and now the computer is working again, but with only 1 gigabyte of memory. (I ordered 4 gigabytes of memory from BestBuy.com for $80, and that should be here next week.)

Surprisingly (and not the computer guy's fault) my game, Civilization V, absolutely murders the 512 megabyte video card that the computer has. The video card was barely keeping up with one monitor running at 1024 x 768; when I tried to run the 2 monitors together at 3860 x 1080, the game wouldn't even show up on screen; at the lowest dual-monitor resolution setting I could find, Civilization V ran for about 30 minutes and then went graphically kerplooey. So I ordered an $80, 1 gigabyte video card from BestBuy.com while I was at it. I hope that works.

On Amazon.com, I ordered a used wireless Microsoft keyboard and wireless mouse combination. (I'm attempting to do away with as many wires as I can on my desk.) That was a good deal at $25, compared to $50 new.