We had our first rain today. It was nice and it kept things quieter around here, the motorcycles in particular. Despite the rain, Tom managed to trim some trees on the property line.

Since I’m going Helen Keller we downsized me to an old 24” monitor. I’m going to miss the giant 32” monitor, but it’s too big to see from a distance and too big to pull closer to me. My 13” laptop is a bit too small, though. The only problem is that it’s too high for me, so we’re going to print a new stand on the 3D printer to lower it so I don’t have to tip my head back in order to see out of the lower part of my bifocals.

Since I’ve wanted to learn a language that uses a different lettering system, I enrolled in Duolingo’s Russian course yesterday. Whoa! I’m glad I’m not sleeping now with the boom of thunder I just heard. Anyway, some of the letters are like ours and some make the same sounds. Others make simple sounds, but what you see isn’t what you get, as is sometimes the case with German. Then there are sounds that are tougher to pronounce. I’ve noticed so far in just the few lessons I’ve taken that many words sound similar to English while they look different written out.

I think I can learn it, though I’m not going to take the language all that seriously. I think that just learning the basics would be enough for me. That way I can have a basic idea of what’s being said if I stumble across anything in Russian, but I have no desire to learn it well. Right now the only languages I want to get as good as I can in are Spanish, Italian and German. Just a general idea of Portuguese, French, Dutch, Esperanto and Russian is sufficient enough.

It was a toss-up between Russian and Greek. I chose Russian because it’s more common than Greek.

A popular scam is going around where people will hack servers for people’s contact info and make it look like their friends are asking them for money or to buy whatever. Norma let me know that she got several spam emails appearing to be from me. I changed passwords on Facebook and a couple of email accounts as well.

Watched the latest Amanda Knox documentary and didn’t really learn anything new. I always thought she was as innocent as Casey Anthony is guilty. Italian laws are more screwed up than the US, though I’m sure part of the reason she got screwed is that she’s American and female. Based on what forensics they did have, it’s obvious that the black guy from the Ivory Coast did it. Is Italy like the US in that they’d rather pin shit on the white guy so that the black guy (guilty or not) doesn’t go crying racism, an accusation most judges prefer not to have to deal with?

Went to cash some checks at Raley’s and then to the dollar store. It’s fun to browse around there every now and then. I got some incense (the stuff is awful), lipstick and candy.

Just stopped to go over my eyeglass prescription. I already miss my big monitor AND my desk space. I have one of those deep corner desks, and having to pull the smaller monitor closer to me means I lose a lot of desk space behind it. Gonna order a pair of mid-range single visions and a pair of standard bifocal transitions. I thought round bifocals were standard, but apparently, they’re not. Transitions also can’t be put in round ones, and I’m very sensitive to light, so those are a must.

Aly deleted or changed her Twit handle. Gee, what a surprise, huh? Fucking lying coward. Again, on with my life… without her.