sashagee and I went out to an event!


Ever since Murasaki closed last year, I've been glad that I got a chance to take sashagee there to see Van Paugam spin one of his sets before the end, and I've been on the lookout for more chances to see him. The people at the Anime Club mentioned this event, hosted by the Japanese Cultural Center in Kamehachi, the first sushi bar in Chicago, so I got tickets, yesterday morning sashagee drove Laila out to spend some time at the grandparents--not a problem, Laila has been clamoring to see grandma and grandpa basically all week--and in the evening we got on the L and headed down to Kamehachi. The hostess saw how we were dressed and immediately asked us if we were there for the event and then ushered us upstairs.

The music schedule was Japanese vinyl from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and we arrived during the 70s section, took our bentō and out complimentary drinks, and sat down on one of the high tables.

It was a lot of fun! sashagee, inveterate gacha fan that she is, bought a mystery box and then when Van Paugam offered another mystery box to the couple with the best dancing, we went out on to the dance floor and won the box! We got a lot of dancing in--though not as much as one guy, who spent basically the entire evening on the dance floor even when he was the only one there--sashagee got to hear her favorite city pop song, Mayonaka no Door -stay with me, when the Hits section came on at the very end, and we chatted with people and had a lovely time. They even promised to do another event, though since we were in the slightly closed-in upstairs of Kamehachi and it was kind of hot, Van Paugam mentioned it would probably not be until next year to avoid the heat from causing any more problems.

I need to keep better tabs on his sets. The only problem is that they're mostly only announced a short time beforehand, and having Laila means we can't exactly drop anything and head out on a moment's notice. But right now we almost never get a date night, and that's definitely not helping things. It'll be better when Laila's speech is better, because right now sashagee is worried that if we got a babysitter and something happened, Laila wouldn't be able to tell us what was wrong. So we need to wait a few months and see if her speech improves, and then we can re-evaluate.

Annoyance the First:

I wrote a bit ago about how my computer is acting up, and having looked into it, it seems to just be a problem endemic to the Ryzen 5800 processor series--which is what I have, of course. There's a ton of threads about it with people's problems and solutions and so far I have two problems:

1. Screen turns back and the fans spin up: The one person I found with an actual diagnosis said this is related to the graphics card overvolting, so I downloaded MSI Afterburner and limited it to 90% of normal maximum voltage since it's not like I play Crysis on max on this machine anyway. It hasn't happened since but it only happens once every few weeks so no way to tell if it's actually fixed.
2. Spontaneous restarts during idle: Everyone seems to agree this is a problem with one or more of the cores undervolting, hence why it only happens during idle periods. There are a ton of solutions posted out there and I did try one that worked for a while (setting the power plan to high performance--I have a desktop, it's always plugged in anyway), but recently it started happening again. While investigating possible solutions, I saw people mentioning their BIOS version and thought, huh, I should look into that too and it turned out that the BIOS I have is version 303 and dated to 2021 (a year before I bought this computer). We're now up to 307 released this year. Well, the BIOS is partially responsible for controlling core voltage so updating certainly isn't going to make it worse, so I updated. It's been a couple days and I haven't had any spontaneous restarts yet, but we'll see if I need to keep looking. Everything I found online seemed to indicate this is a problem that gets solved different ways for different people because computers are notoriously finicky, so I might be back to the well.

All I can really say is, though, I have never previously had this degree of difficulty with a computer. I took a chance on AMD and boy have I had nothing but problems. Never again.

Annoyance the Second:

So yesterday I went into to buy Laila's medicine for the month as I do when she runs out and it came to this princely sum of three-hundred and twenty US American dollars, of which one single medication was $300. I asked the person at the counter what was going on, and she said that the manufacturer has coupons but I need to call my insurance. So I call my insurance and they tell me I need to call the manufacturer, and also that the insurance has a different price scale based on supply (a 43-day supply, like we got, is more than twice as expensive as a 30-day supply). So I call the manufacturer and can't get a hold of them since it's after 9 p.m., so I try again this morning. The main number you're ""supposed"" to call sends me in circles until the machine hangs up (and later, I learn, does exactly the same thing to the pharmacist when she calls them), so I call a different number and actually get a hold of someone and they tell me that they don't deal with customers at all, the entire thing is handled between pharmacists and the manufacturer. So I go into the pharmacist again, and she has also been on the phone, and the only thing she can say is that maybe the coupon was already applied but it ran out, citing the transaction in June where we were only charged $167 on a $300 expense, and that may be possible--I went back and checked and we were previously charged $55.03 for a for a $159 expense. Which is all well and good I guess, since we're almost at the spending limit for Laila's health insurance for the year, but still.

Well, the doctor wants to take her off two of those medications, and if she responds well, that will vastly reduce our monthly bill. I can only hope, becuase I'd rather not spend $300 a month for one medication on top of the other medical expenses we have. And this is with good insurance!

(That's a lie, America does not have good health insurance, only health insurance that is less bad ).