Diary of a Wolfeman

That’s right, kids! I have survived a whole two weeks now without smoking. Well, not quite – I cheated on Monday of last week. I got called just as I was getting out of the shower to go deal with a kerplooied server, and rushed out of the house without grabbing a patch. By the time I got home, I was pretty frazzled, but didn’t want to waste a patch for just a few hours, so I had a smoke instead. Then I had another before bed to quiet down the monkey.

The good news part of that is that smoking tasted bad.

This is strange for me, because smoking hasn’t tasted bad to me in all these years. Maybe it was because I grew up in a smoker household, or maybe it was because that pack had been out and open in the garage for over a week and nearly frozen a couple of times… I don’t know. The point is, it was good for it to taste bad. I now have a memory of smoking being a bad thing.

There is still, however, the psychological addiction to break. It’s time to change the subject, because writing about it is making me want one.

I got bored the other day and decided to do a full version upgrade on my laptop from Kubuntu Hardy to Intrepid Ibex. The process was simple enough, and didn’t take too long. The results, however, were mildly annoying and just not what I wanted.

Now, not all of the problems I experienced were the result of Kubuntu alone, some of it stems from KDE 4.1 – but then again, the Kubuntu team didn’t bother to implement the modifications that other distros have made to KDE.

When the upgrade was finished, Read the rest of this entry »

…and still kickin’.

Thanks to all of the folks who have expressed their support for me in this endeavor of mine to kick the habit, your wrods have been very much appreciated. And you’re right, Beth, I am a tough old S.O.B. – just don’t tell my mother I said that about her, she’ll kick my ass :)

To Tolerant, I apologise for my driving. Hopefully I’ll calm down a bit before I scare you completely out of my car.

To the dark-haired waitress at My Father’s Place this morning: that’s right, I tipped you a measly $2 this morning. When you take 30 minutes to even get us menus and take our order, and then don’t bother to deliver my coffee until the food gets there (20 minutes later) and can’t manage to find our orange juice until we are done eating… yeah. Get your ass in gear woman. I realize the Place is a dive bar, but c’mon. I’ve never had service that bad there. Honestly, the guy who came in ten minutes after us and sat down at the table next door had his food delivered before you could bother to take our order. Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?

To the cooks: I’m guessing you were having a bad day, but here’s a critique: the Hollandaise sauce was too thick, the eggs were poached too long and the hash browns were almost burned. Since the hash browns usually come almost raw, this may actually have been an improvement. How ’bout we find a happy medium?

Okay, that’s enough bitching for now. The next post will have some more upbeat content, I promise.

Funny that day two is actually the last day  – of the year, anyway. Sitting here watching the news, and they’re running a spot on the bars throwing out the ashtrays at midnight.

Today was better than yesterday, less anxiety. Plus my body is adjusting to the slow but constant influx of nicotiene instead of the usual sporadic dosing. Still fighting the psychological effects. I keep standing up and reaching for my jacket, and then remember. So many physical habits to break.

I smoked a cigarette at 6:20 this morning, and I haven’t had one since. I put the patch on at 7:10am.

I had some second-hand smoke while waiting for my dinner to cook. I went to a local Chinese restaraunt for takeout – hadn’t been to this one before, and I thought trying something new and treating myself a little for not smoking all day would be a good thing. Good and bad, actually – good to treat myself, bad for going to that restaraunt. The lemon chicken was barely edible. Anyway, the waiting area is pretty close to the Lotto section where some ancient Asian man was smoking away while plugging quarters into a poker machine.

They have non-smoking areas in the casinos in ‘Vegas. Only tourists go there. The locals all smoke.

There has been a sense of anxiety for me all day today – like I was forgetting something important and couldn’t figure out what it was. Only I knew what it was, of course. That empty spot in my jacket pocket.

So the patch seems to be dealing with the physical withdrawl symptoms, at least so far, but the psychologocal symptoms are something else entirely.

Tough times for me to get past:
First thing in the morning.
In the car on the way to work.
Meals.
After work, or after completing any extended task.
Just before bed.

I can do this.

There we were, having a pretty good Holiday – Tolerant and I had exchanged gifts in the morning, then slushed our way over to Pookie’s for breakfast and more gifts, and then back to Tolerant’s to drop her off. When we got to Tolerant’s, my car threw a chain off in the process of parking, but I managed to get it back on.

When I got home a while later, I noticed that I had thrown that same chain off again, and asked Tolerant to go look at the end of the street, and sure enough she found it. On the way back to her apartment, some asshole tried to grab it out of her hands, claiming she had stolen it. He even went so far as to follow her back to her apartment and start calling 911 when she called me. I told her it wasn’t worth dealing with that kind of asshole, and to let him have the damn thing.

The whole situation pissed her off so much that she had to hang up the phone so she could scream.

So to you Sir, I say thanks for ruining an otherwise Happy Holiday. Go fuck yourself with a chainsaw.

For those of you that may be thinking about it, Winter is definitely the time of year to consider quitting smoking: one less reason to go outside in the freezing is a good thing. Definitely an incentive for me right now.

I may be furry, but I’m not THAT furry, and I’ve always hated the cold.

Today was an epic day of firsts and lasts:

First time in something like two years that I have bought gas for less than $2 a gallon.

Last carton of cigarettes I will ever purchase.

That’s right kids, Da Wolfie is jumping off the bandwagon. On Jan 1 2009, all Oregon bars and pubs go permanent non-smoking, so the only place I will legally be able to smoke indoors is in my car. (My lease prohibits it, and I agree, my house used to smell terrible when I smoked inside.) So I have purchased my last carton and will nurse it throughout the month. If I haven’t managed to kick the nicotein addiction by the first, it will be Nicorette or the Patch, no more smokes no matter what.

Deity help you all.

I’ve really been trying to come up with post-able goodness lately, but I’m drawing a blank. Instead of just letting my two loyal readers languish in the darkness of my absence, I will link up some cheerful demotivators for you…

Read the rest of this entry »

Since Da Roomie reminded me…

We were driving home Thursday and an ad came on the radio for the new dollar coins, and my first thought was “another?”

We’ve had a lot of designs for dollar coins just in my lifetime. From the old Eisenhower Dollars (‘cartwheels’ in casino slang) to the Susan B. Anthony Dollar, (“Carter Quarters” due to the devaluation of the dollar during Carter’s Presidency and the fact that they were almost the same size and weight of the regular quarter) all the way to the Sacagewea Dollar (Sackies).

Now, the Sackies were going to be important because the Mint was supposed to cease production of the $1 Bill when they released them as a long-term money saving scheme. Coins may cost more to initially produce, but their durability means you can keep them in circulation for 20 years instead of about 18 months for paper money. Which is cool, except for one thing:

It’s hard to tuck a dollar coin into a G-string.

So, what are the strip clubs supposed to do when they run out of $1 bills in circulation? I’d make my own scrip – funny money printed right there in the back room of the house and sold to the punters at face value for the sole purpose of tucking it between the buns of your favorite stripper.

It’s worked out pretty well for the casinos for the past century or so even if they are using chips instead of paper. On a psychological level, chips and scrip aren’t real money, so the player (or punter in this case) is more likely to be incautious with their money and spread it around more freely.

Of course, the really funny thing here is that the Mint is even bothering with new types of money. The government spends tons of money in an effort to make the money un-counterfeit-able, and everyone in the private sector is doing their damndest to build credit-card machines into everything. (Portland parking meters take plastic, for instance.) It seems to me the Gov could save billions by simply shutting down the mints and officially making credit and debit cards the only legal tender around.

Which would be a huge stroke of luck for the policing agencies, considering it would make it that much harder for thieves and lawbreakers to do their deals without leaving a paper trail. Drug dealers could be more easily traced because of the large amount of barterable goods they would have to turn to as a replacement for their voided cash.

For the history buffs, this brings us full-circle. Minted coins became popular because wealthy men weren’t able to carry their wealth easily. Coins gave way to paper money because it was cheaper to mint (no precious metals involved, early coins were always gold silver and copper) and easier to carry even larger sums. Precious coins were used as change, and eventually reformulated to be devoid of precious metals so that they in turn could replace the ever-more-expensive ‘smart’ bills that were harder and harder to counterfeit, leading to the nefarious returning to a precious exchange to hide the flow of money.

Just my 2 cents.