Bits of Dragon*Con were enjoyable, but I spent most of it in my head, and you can imagine what that’s like.

It was good to see some Cookeville- and Atlanta-friends again.

And then I crashed.

I felt lousy the rest of the day at work, then went home and straight to bed. I was better when I woke up–a soft-reset usually helps–but still not great. The prior week’s worth of relative steadiness was blown.

It wasn’t even about Donna. It was everything.

Now I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t want to be here, but I can’t think of anywhere better to be.

Around and around and around.

Why am I excited about Dragon*Con? When I get back, nothing will have changed. I’m still going to hate this job. I’ll still believe the things I believe.

I feel like a fool.

It gives me something to look forward to, which changes just about everything while I’m doing so. Self-loathing might be held at bay for a bit, given adequate distraction.

Trying not to pin all hopes for future sanity on the convention like I may or may not have done in the past.

It doesn’t always mean I have the time or words I need to do so.

I take that back; I’ve had plenty of time. Just not right now. Early meeting tomorrow. Gotta go to bed.

This is one of three channels I watch, and it’s been replaced by “Sports South.”

I contacted their tech support in a vain attempt to get some sort of satisfaction, and was told they sent mail out to everyone announcing that they’d upgraded and enhanced their system in such-and-such a way that blah blah blah, etc.

Monday I ordered a cable box. It was free, ’cause I was only going to hook it up to one TV (actually mercury [my MythTV box]).

I get it in the mail Thursday, the same day I get the letter from Comcast explaining that they’d upgraded and enhanced their system in blah blah blah. Great timing.

Since I’m now using a cable box (technology I was glad that we got rid of with the advent of “cable-ready” televisions), I can’t use MythTV to change channels on the tuner. Well, not directly. There are a few options.

One is the IR Blaster that came with my Hauppauge capture card; I can’t get this to work. There are a baker’s dozen tutorials and howtos, but they’re all different, and none of them seem to work for me.

The digital receiver has a serial port! I can control it through that, but discovered (after 20 minutes of digging through boxes for a serial cable) that mercury doesn’t have a serial port.

I believe mercury has Firewire, and could (in theory) use that — but the receiver doesn’t have it.

So now I’m boned. I can use the MythTV box for viewing live TV and pause it, but I can no longer use it to schedule recordings.

It’s all very frustrating. Things were working just fine until Comcast decided we all needed to be on digital. How the hell is this better? The first digital show I watched on it was King of the Hill, and the display got corrupted three times in twenty minutes.

I now have far too many damned wires in my living room.

I blew my four-day caffeine-free spree today; lots of tea, lots of Coke.

Canada Dry and Sailor Jerry, now.

I’m blogging on the PC because the Mac is playing The Fourth Kind, borrowed from cute-and-way-too-young waitress at Sal’s.

Going to drop off The Thing for her tomorrow.

The PC screen is very bright; ruins the mood of the movie with the rest of the lights off. The Mac has a shortcut — something like control-option-command-8 — that inverts the screen colors. I’ve done something similar with the NVidia settings, but it’s a pain to get to and there’s no shortcut for it.

Might be neat to play Team Fortress 2 this way.

I’ve been meaning to learn how to use Java and Eclipse and the Android SDK and the whole shebang, but it’s a hell of an initial cliff. It’s easier to just go to bed.

Didn’t go to work yesterday. Slept through it.

That’s sort of a lie. I slept through most of it. Woke up periodically, checked my email, went back to bed.

The Chicken Parmesan sub at Sal’s is really good.

Shada’s in stealth mode. She’s been a bit of a terror lately. I’m glad, actually; it means she’s getting more exercise than I am.

I keep meaning to go back to the stationary bike, but as with Eclipse, it’s easier to sleep.

This movie’s starting to get into the ancient-astronaut vein.

Maybe I’ll get something done this weekend.

I think I’ve coded Life in every programming language I’ve ever learned.

Feels good, but I wish I’d done something useful with my high-productivity dinner-time.

Had dinner with Chad on Wednesday. Him, me, I don’t know. Something’s weird. I think I pissed him off.

Didn’t go to work Thursday.

Did twenty minutes on the stationary bike this afternoon.

Two steps forward, two steps back, and one step sideways.

I feel like I should write something but my head hurts and I’m going to bed.

I’m like a blog-tease.

It was neat. They have drive-through daiquiri places. And a huge park. And bars! And restaurants!

Most of all, I liked the houses. Beautiful old houses. Curves and arches and sweeping stairs everywhere. There was a lot of construction still going on, but they have a ways to go, yet.

Met several of Kevin’s friends down there, and they all seemed like pretty sharp people. He drove Trey and I all over the place, telling us how things had changed since Katrina. Kevin made a great tour guide, even though we didn’t do touristy things.

It’s been almost five years, though, and large chunks of the place haven’t recovered or rebuilt. (Sounds familiar.)

On a more personal note, I didn’t crash while I was there. I got drunk and whiny, but not to excess. It was hot and humid, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Oddly, I slept noticeably better there than I do up here. Allergies, maybe? Too much cattus-interruptus from Shada to get enough sleep at home?

The vegetation and low horizon and daily thunderstorms reminded me a whole lot of Florida, and I loved every minute of it.

(Except maybe the roads in Alabama and Mississippi. I didn’t realize Tennessee put so much effort into ours.)