Monday at work, I got a new PC. This is a good thing, ‘cuz the old one was from 2009, was running the soon to be EOL’d Windows XP, had a crappy Core Duo CPU, and a measly 2GB of RAM. So now I’ve stepped up to an eight core CPU with 8 GB of RAM. It’s also a bad thing because I have to get everything I use restored and working again (a chore made more difficult by trying to find 64-bit equivalents for everything). I’m still struggling to get things working even today.

The other thing that was bad was having to repeatedly crawl under my desk to plug and unplug things. It must have stressed my foot a lot, because I woke up in horrible pain Monday night, and around midnight had to get up, go outside, and get a block of snow/ice to throw in my soaking bucket. I kept the sucker on ice for about a half hour, and between that and 800 mg of ibuprofen, I was able to hobble back to bed and if not sleep, and least not writhe around in pain. I think I did finally get an hour or so more of sleep after that.

Things seem a bit better this morning. I did wake up at about eleven last night and had to take a fistful of ibuprofen (I was prepared, though – I made sure to put water and my bottle of bills next to my bed so I wouldn’t have to walk far), and we’ll see how it goes today. If I could just stay at home and keep my foot on ice, it wouldn’t be so bad. But not only do I have to go sit at my crappy desk, it’s my late day, too.

Oh well, at least the big nor’easter that had everybody on the East Coast all worked up isn’t going to do much to us here, as they say it’ll stay well east of us. Instead, it’s merely only going to be “bitterly cold” with snow showers.

It was an emotional day (sort of) yesterday, as I bid adieu to my van, which I sold to my friend. It’s a 1998 Chevy Astro (AWD) that I bought in 1999 for the purpose of driving out to Minneapolis for my stepdaughter’s high school graduation. Mostly I got it so we could bring little Siggy (who was only six months old at the time, though not really all that little by then) with us.

We got back from that trip only to find that my mother was in the hospital – turned out she didn’t leave there alive, but at least I got to say goodbye. From there I went on to quit my job and take a similar one at SU so I could finish up my degree, and within about five months, I left my greasemonkey days behind and got a job as the Web Guy at the College of Law. And the rest, as they say is history. I went from being a young, healthy, active working man to a fat old cripple in what seems like a matter of days.

So, anyway, that van has a lot of sentimental value to me, but it mostly sat where it was because I hardly ever use it (in fact, I don’t think I’ve driven it since August or September). So now it will go to a good home and a good owner who will take better care of it than I ever did. Plus I can go visit it once in a while.

But today, it’s out in the cold and off to work.