Jerzei Collie's journal

I'm not sure exactly what caused my computer to have blue-screen problems, but whatever Best Buy did cleared them up. The employee said there were no viruses, but some of the drivers were missing or needed to be updated.

The family friend from Pittsburgh is visiting Dad for a month. She had me help her with some yard work like pulling weeds and uprooting an old, dead plant.

My laptop is at Best Buy now. I'm scheduled to pick it up on Monday, meaning Sunday's Rabbit Hole will need to be a rerun.

I hope I don't need to get a new computer. Last night was the second time my laptop blue-screened during Doggy Radio. I'm not sure if my laptop will be compatible with Windows 11 since the prompts to download it don't give me an actual link to do so.

If I do need a new laptop, I'll try to find one with at least a 1 terabyte hard drive. My current laptop (bought in 2013) has about 450 gigabytes and is mostly full.

I had a small glitch during my show last night. I accidentally unplugged one of the USB devices I use which caused the audio to stop completely. Restarting Mixxx after plugging the device back in fixed the issue.

I have almost everything I need for my upcoming cruise. Only 20 more days! I'm just waiting for some mini bottles of distilled water for my APAP machine.

While using Google and Google Maps, I noticed balloons and confetti floating around my avatar similar to how Twitter marks a birthday. Also, the Street View person icon has a pointy hat and balloons.

I recalculated my budget for Furry Fiesta (59 days away!) The budget had figures from when gas was more expensive. I originally budgeted $45-50 per tank of gas. I lowered that to $35-40.

I missed the first half of a support group meeting tonight. I got online at 5:15 and meant to sign into the Zoom meeting at 5:30, but I got distracted by doing other things. I didn't join the meeting until 6:00.

I think I might just uninstall Facebook Messenger from my cell phone. I've gotten two messages from people on my friends list trying to sign me up for assistance programs (which are likely scams.) I do communicate via Messenger with some of the people going on next October's cruise. I guess I'll just have to chat with them on my laptop whenever I'm on Facebook.

Just as a reminder, I'm unable to attend DenFur this year due to financial reasons.

While reading a Telegram chat for furry fans of game shows, I remembered that Rocky Mountain Fur Con 2015 had a game show theme. I responded to another fur who wanted to do The Price Is Right at RMFC. Back then, I didn't know there were computerized versions of the TPIR games available (Neither did the other fur, apparently.) My old-school mind had been searching the internet for sites to buy things to build the games from scratch like large dice, LED displays and materials for a "Big Wheel." I even downloaded music like the opening theme and the Cliffhangers' yodeling song. The fur later canceled his plans for the show.

I've dreamed about going on real game shows since I was a teenager. Unfortunately, I think I'm too old for what most shows are looking for now. I also don't have as much energy as I used to, so I'd probably seem boring to the producers and talent scouts.

Mixxx indicated it had connected to my port, but I didn't hear it on either the "dj-collie" page or the 9450 port. Since I was recording my stream from the beginning, I continued on as if I had been connected.

Boomer told me the stream connected about an hour into the show. I repeated the live AC performance I had played in the first hour during the second hour so people on the stream could hear all three performances. Cosmik was in two of the performances, then Beeton Raccoon performed "Vesti la giubba" (Put on the costume) from the opera "Pagliacci." I took a few sound bites of Uncle Kage from the closing ceremonies for the furry news segment, as well as a clip of him cursing about a cardboard cutout of himself that was put on the stage.

During Doggy Radio, I had some of my cinnamon whiskey from Pittsburgh's Wigle Whiskey distillery.

I'm wondering if I need to get a new modem. My current modem is around 8 years old; I had my previous modem for about 5 years before it stopped working. My Ethernet connection dropped a few times during my show last night, but I was able to reconnect fairly quickly. The Wifi connection was steady, but it has also disconnected when I used it for shows.

Dairy Queen has a new Peanut Butter Puppy Chow Blizzard. I got one over the weekend and loved it!

(UPDATE 8:40 PM): I performed a speed test on my current modem. Its speeds are 13.4 Mbps download and 0.84 Mbps upload. My modem doesn't handle speeds above 40 Mbps, so I upgraded my service and will receive a new modem in about 8 days.

My Ethernet connection had disconnected when I tested it a few hours before my show. After looking up troubleshooting tips, I found the Device Manager screen and disabled the "shut down connection to save power" option. I reconnected around 8:30 and it appeared to stay connected all night.

I did really great at Blather Round during Steelwoulfe's game night last week. For one answer, I originally thought of roller coasters with the clues "It's a mini happy course," "It transports the machine," "Talk about thrilling!" and "It vrooms around the track." I got the answer right a bit later by guessing "Go-Karts." Shout out to JaSonic for talking about go-karting recently! For another answer, it took a while for me to remember a movie title ("Happy Feet.") I kept thinking "It's the penguin movie, but what's it called?"