Journal, Day 1642

Monday, 16 September 2024

Ukraine War: Day 937

Hamas-Israel War: Day 344

Mass shootings in the USA in 2024: 394

Days until the 2024 Election: 50

It was very much a Monday. I’m having the usual side effects from yesterday’s COVID vaccine. I started feeling flushed and feverish last night, and the vertigo hit at about 2:30 this morning and woke me up. I didn’t sleep much after that. My left ear turned bright red and was hot, but my right ear was normal. My left cheek was flicked, but not my right. My arm started aching and when I got up this morning, the injection site was hard and swollen like a baseball.

After logging in to work, it quickly became evident that something was very much not right with my work email. I checked the activity monitor, and it was trying to re-download all 105.000+ work emails spanning back over the last four years. The search function wasn’t working.

I ended up deleting that email account entirely from my work laptop and re-installing it, which deleted all of my custom folders and signatures. Fortunately, I had set it up so that everything was saved on the Exchange servers rather than locally, so even if the folders are gone, the emails are all still there. I left the work laptop on and connected, so hopefully the massive re-indexing will finish overnight, and all will be back in the morning, so I can re-create my folders.

While I waited for this immense undertaking, I emptied another four boxes of storage stuff in the home office space. Another trash bag was filled to the brim. I unearthed a hard drive that was a gift from a former colleague that contains about 300–400 movies and TV series. Everything from “Lawrence of Arabia” to the Pixar films (up until 2018) were there, as well as the entire 14-episode “Firefly” TV series and movie, as well as several obscure horror films that are no longer available on DVD or streaming. I threw out a lot of old business cards, but kept one for posterity.

I assembled some plastic storage units with doors that fit perfectly under the window and started arranging the “keep” items according to use. Office supplies, computer components, and cables, stationery, craft supplies, costume pieces, exercise gear — everything gets its own cubby.

They’re cheesy looking, but a sight better than cardboard boxes. It’s a temporary solution until we can come up with a more permanent storage arrangement for that room. I will need to find a low file cabinet for paperwork. That remained in the file boxes, for the time being.

I’ll check the laptop one more time before bedtime, just to check how the re-indexing process is coming along.