Christmas Lights and Fragmented Mind

Up late again… I’ve been staying awake past midnight almost every night since I had started this working at home as a consultant/telecommuter. Its not so bad, except that on some mornings, after I wake up around nine o’clock, I feel like taking a nap an hour later. I’m not sure if it’s the breakfast I eat or if it’s the Celebrex and the Metoprolol (for my high blood pressure) that makes me sleepy. Personally I think that it could be that I don’t sleep well or long enough, although I seem to sleep more soundly, especially since I’ve been taking Seroquel.

My interest keep changing on me. One minute I am extremely interested in reading about Neural Networks, and the next its symbolic logic. And then I’m off reading about ways of representing graphs in software. At times I work on my web site putting up my writings or creating a new page or playing around with .NET and C#. I discovered that there is a free version of SQL Server (a personal version, if you like) that comes with the .NET framework. Actually I downloaded it from MSDN not knowing this. But still, its really cool.

Some time back I installed MySQL because I wanted to have a database engine to play with and so that I could write applications which, anymore, require some kind of database. I created, in fact, a guestbook application that I host on my site. So far only a few of my friends and Sherri have signed it. I cannot seem to draw traffic to my site, but that’s okay. I’m still hosting it locally over dynamic DNS with very narrow upload bandwidth. I’m trying to talk my wife into letting me get the professional cable modem service with five static IP addresses.

Spent the day with Sherri putting up lights outside around the porch, the front door and the banister. Then attempted once again to get the seventh row of our Christmas tree, which has the lights built into the damned thing, working. Its interesting . There are eight branches. Four are lit and four aren’t. There is a fuse within the plug, but the fuses are fine. I replaced every bulb on the dark branches with perfectly good lights, but couldn’t get it to work. So my last thought is that there is a short in one of the sockets. I haven’t gone back yet to examine the sockets. I might do that tomorrow. Our backup plan is to string a small set of white lights around the four branches and thread an extension chord up through the tree. This should work just fine until I can figure out how to fix the damned thing.

Sherri and I also drove to the mall tonight to use her gift certificate that she and the other employees won for their house coming in second for the gardening and decorating competition they have each year. She also bought me the expansion game to Dungeon Siege for Christmas. She also wants to buy me a graphics tablet, something I’ve been saying I’ve been wanting. But I keep telling her that I don’t want it for Christmas. I just want us to save money so that we can finish paying the bills. I think its for the best, personally. All I want, really, are some books and that game she bought me and that would be just fine with me.

I’ve been wearing a light Fall jacket instead of my heavy winter coat, even in the current weather which has been cold and snowy, and now I think I have a cold. I’ve taken some cold medicine and some Tylenol for my headache, but Sherri yelled at me when I told her. Earlier while we were out putting up the lights she kept yelling at me to go get a heavier coat lest I catch a cold. Did I listen? Hell no. And yes, I am a friggen idiot.