(no subject)

[miko2]

We had some salvage this week -- small containers of a sort of chicken soup stock paste. I took one, and decided to make some chicken soup. I used the paste, a chicken breast, some frozen veggies, a can of mushrooms, 1/4 of a yellow onion, and some whole wheat pasta and a little wild rice. I added salt, pepper, and some other spices and cooked on low heat for several hours.

As far as I can tell the chicken paste added nothing to the soup that a bullion cube wouldn't have also added, but the soup came out pretty good overall and I have something for lunch today (and for Monday too I guess). Next time maybe I won't be lazy and I'll use fresh veggies and cook the meat before adding everything else -- and I think I'll forget the pasta and go for more rice.

This is just one example of the things that wind up as salvage at work. Some of this stuff is so weird and unappealing that you ave to wonder how it ever gets sold, let alone for a profit.

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Until a month ago I had never had a lot of use for a USB storage device. I owned one or two, and I knew they could be useful in certain situations, but usually that was when I wanted to transfer data between my computer and a friend's computer, and usually my friends have one handy. But when I started working on my NaNoWriMo novel I decided to carry it on one of my USB devices so that I could work on the story while at work, rather than just jotting down notes on a piece of paper.

I used a device that Gene gave to me for Christmas, a year ago I think. It worked perfectly, although I was always a bit worried in that I would work on the story at work and save directly to the USB device -- I didn't keep a copy of anything on my work computer (nor should I, to be honest). But it made me nervous knowing that if the USB device failed, everything I'd written that day would be lost. Granted, at home my story was on one computer hard drive and I wasn't backing it up to a second drive every day, but the possibility of the USB device failing seemed much more likely than a sudden hard drive failure.

However, I made it through the month with no problems. Then, on Tuesday, I went to back up my computer files onto the USB device before bringing them to work (after having not used the device for several days) and I was surprised to find that my folder on the drive containing all of my stories was empty. Where had the stories gone?

I had two small files also stored on the USB device -- two Christmas list files -- that were stored nowhere else. I backed them up to my computer, and I copied over three of my story files. I didn't do anything with them that day. The next day -- yesterday -- I decided to pull up one of the files, but I couldn't. Every file on the USB device was corrupted.

Well. Guess my device is dead.

So after work I stopped at Office Depot and bought a cheap $9.99 512mb device. I really thought that these devices were all pretty cheap, but I was surprised to find that many run in the $50-$100 range. Erf. For that kind of money I hope they don't die easily. Some are as many as 4 or even 8 gigabytes, but I really don't anticipate any need to back up my entire iPod onto a USB device (for example). For the few story files I want to move around, 512mb is more than enough.

I saw some Disney USB flash drives at Fred Meyers -- Pirates of the Carribean, Hanna Montana, High School Musical. Not my thing, but if they'd had something like that for, say, Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny or whatever, I figured I might be interested. I decided that things like that probably existed somewhere, and looked online for them. They have Hello Kitty USB storage drives -- 256mb for $68.00, a 512mb one for $105.00. I'm sorry, Hello Kitty is not worth that kind of money.

I found some very cute Disney USB drives for Mickey Mouse, Daisy Duck, Stitch, and those cute three-eyed aliens from the Toy Story movie. Unfortunately these aren't sold in the U.S. -- they're sold in Japan. You can buy them on Ebay for about $30.00, but again, they're really not worth that kind of money (they're only 256mb if I remember correctly, or maybe 512mb).

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I've been very lax in my walking/exercise schedule. When I started in August 2006 I walked an hour every day. I lost weight. When the weather got bad I slacked off a bit, but I still tried to exercise every day, even if it was only half an hour of exercise in my apartment. I almost never used the gym that my apartment complex provided. I stopped losing weight, and more recently I've been slowly regaining some of the weight I'd lost a year ago.

I only walked once last week, and I knew that I was failing badly to keep up with the exercise half of my diet and exercise regimen. I could even feel it -- I felt fat and just generally blah. So on Monday I went to the exercise room and walked on the treadmill for an hour. I set it on an incline and on a really fast pace, and this provided a much more strenuous workout than I normally get just walking to the park and back. It also provided me with an opportunity to listen to one of the hour-long NPR podcast shows that have been collecting on my iPod. I felt really good, so I did the same thing on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I vowed to keep doing it every day for the whole month.

On Thursday there was a sign on the gym door. They're renovating and the place is closed until next Tuesday.

Bleah. I didn't exercise at all last night. I didn't write much of anything. I ate too much (having gone shopping the day before payday). I failed at all of my goals, aside from making the soup for today's lunch.

I did write about a dozen lines on my fan fiction story Girls School, after doing some research -- I located the story where Konatsu first shows up and read it, and figured out how to rewrite his entrance into my story. As it turns out, it won't be as difficult as I had thought. But I feel like I'm getting nowhere -- after writing about 1650 words a day for a month, my story is now advancing so slowly that it feels like I'm standing still.

I did accomplish one other thing last night -- I got Shinobu Valentine, my illusion/radiation controller, halfway to level 48. ^_^

I must do better tonight!