Punkie's Online Diary
The Ongoing Saga of Punkie into the 21st Century

[Home Page]
[Go Straight to Blog Archives]
[Technical (Livejournal) Journal]
[Enable Frames]

[ Previous entry: "Writing [hides head in cowl]" ] [Main Index] [ Next entry: "Weekend on Call: The pages keep a'comin..." ]

12/03/2004 Entry: "Random goings-on"

I used to say about one of my friends, "If you haven't heard from her in a while, that means her life is doing good." That's kind of like this blog. There have only been three things that have happened in the past few days worth writing about.

One is that, due to an error in a Paypal transaction, our bank account has fallen dangerously short on cash. This was not Paypal's fault, really, but ours, although be careful when you do a Paypal auction - sometimes people don't want you to use your credit card. Luckily, someone paid us back in cash recently, and so we should have enough cash to get by until the 15th (next payday). On top of that, almost all transactions we have done for the past few years have been through credit card. I do this to get airline miles, which is how I can afford to fly to Sweden next year (and hopefully, I'll have enough money for hotel and food).

Next, I am worried about layoffs. Nothing's changed since I last mentioned it, except I have gotten a few rumors that our department won't be hit very hard at all, and then I got told my status in the employee files was "questionable" because my former boss (El Korbo) didn't file a lot of his annual assessments correctly (I don't actually blame him -0 long story). It's just aggravating because we can't do any Christmas shopping until I am sure I can pay for it. They haven't told us the date, but I am assuming it will fall around the 6th, 7th, or 13th, 14th. I dread those days, because every time, there's always someone I know who gets creamed, and I always hope it's not me. Twice, now, I have been told I got the axe, only to be saved at the last moment. Several times I have been "re-assigned" to a different department/division. And other times I have quit and started with another team because the team I was on was sinking fast. But the last few layoffs have been so... unsettling. This new company really makes moves that are hard to predict. It used to be, for any company I have worked for, you could tell you were going to get axed because you had no work to do. When I worked for wardialing, it was actually a big surprise, because I was crammed with work; work I was led to believe was important. So now I think it's totally random.

Lastly, we're being haunted. Not in some horrible way, but we're definitely having a mild prankster poltergeist/ghost issue. We have weird events in our house, and most of the time, they can be explained, or they are such isolated incidents, they are hardly worth mentioning. But here's a few things that have happened just in the last two weeks, most of them concentrated in the downstairs:

- Widget aggressively barking and growling at the hallway to our bedroom, acting as if he sees something, and is protecting Christine. Cats have been ruled out.
- In the guest room/laundry area, something is opening doors. We have those doors closed to keep the pets out of them. Even when I have been alone in the house, the doors to the guest shower, bathroom, and both in the laundry room have been opened, usually all at once. Same with the dryer door, but not as much. The pets are afraid to go past the laundry room, and this is new, because they usually zip right in.
- Sounds of people walking around upstairs, even though I am alone or I know Christine and CR are asleep. In my den, I have heard odd scissor-like "clicking" noises that seem to have no position in the room. I thought it was some fan on one of my computers, but when I shut them all off, I still heard it, only louder. The sound has no parallax, but always seems to be coming from right behind my head. This might be something with our AC system, or related to my nerve deafness, but I am not sure.
- Strange dark "areas" appear at night. I have poor night vision, but recently, I have noticed that when my eyes have adjusted to the dark, strange dark spots stay in the middle of the living room and hallways (not in corners, as you'd usually see darker areas). They have no form, reach like a soft column from floor to ceiling, and when I walk through them, they have little to no temperature difference or "creep factor." I do not sense they are "bad" in any way. These are new as of 2 weeks ago, and they have only happened a few times.
- Cold spots in the kitchen, usually in front of the oven and sink. They are not always there, and when you are in them, you feel no breeze, but they "feel creepy."
- The downstairs TV turns on randomly to no channel (black screen).
- The doorbell rings randomly in the late evening, even though the battery to the button outside is dead, and has been for some time.
- Things vanish, only to turn up in unexpected places. They are usually cutting tools, like scissors and knives, but recently the checkbook ended up in the guest room fridge.
- A sense, occasionally, that someone else is in the room with you. This happens in my den a lot normally, but now it happens in larger rooms. This might be psychosomatic.
- Speaking of my den, when I was testing my new Web Cam, I was testing the motion sensing software. The motion sensing software "picked up something" for a few days, about 2-3 times a day when I wasn't in the room. But the films, which only last about 20 seconds (the timeout for the software), show nothing. I have scrutinized them for small objects like flies, evidence of drafts, ghosts, whatever... nothing. I have not ruled out the software "just does that occasionally," or perhaps just random vibrations, but when I kept my camera lens covered, it stopped happening.

None of these things seem "evil" and we have had certain things like this before, only not as compact a time period. Recently, in the last few days, it has seemed to wane, and the last time a clump of these happened, it was around this time. Maybe they all have great scientific explanations, and my imagination is filling in the gaps, but I tried to be as objective as possible here. Think what you will.

Powered By Greymatter


[ Home ] [ What's New ] [ About Me ] [ My Writings ] [ Web Links ] [ Post Office ]