John Perkins

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Sunday, March 16, 2008

Today's deep, dark secret...I may like caturday.  I saw a few of the 'very funny cats' videos on Youtube.  Most of the individual spots within each video were 'meh,' but there were some that made me laugh.

Katamari Wikipedia (Kwiki?*)

The idea is to start with 1 article on Wikipedia an follow whatever links to other Wikipedia articles interest me.  I started with the Sea Shadow because it looked neat.  I originally intended to follow this clump of articles until I reached a buffer of topics that didn't interest me.  It didn't turn out that way though.  It's kept going and going, with no sign of a boundary at any reasonable point.  I know Wikipedia has a finite number of articles (around 2.28 million), but it's functionally infinite for this project.  So i'll probably stick with the Sea Shadow clump.

How do I choose which topics to list, which path to follow?  I think what i'll do is go through the entire starting topic and list all of the 1st's that interest me even remotely, then go back and follow individual chains in whatever order I feel like at the time.  I'm curious as to how long it will take me to tire of a particular session, or if i'll just keep following the first session for weeks, months, years.  I'm also curious to see how wide the connecting topic will range.  How quickly (let's say, either with trying or without trying) can I get from, say, the Sea Shadow to Strawberry Shortcake?  Ah, the Kevin Bacon game.  I wonder if i'm imagining it or if someone actually wrote a program that will play the Kevin Bacon game, but with Wikipedia articles instead of actors?  The 'what links here' feature makes this a great deal easier to keep track of.

I kept adding to the list, keeping track of how many degrees each topic was removed from the Sea Shadow.  It quickly became apparent that keeping track of the changing degrees would be too hard.  I started out just noting the degree next to a link of each topic in Frontpage.  The problem was that I would occasionally encounter a topic (at a much earlier point in the tree) that would link to a topic much further down.  It's easy enough to change the degree for a single topic, but when that happens all of the topics near (both above and below) the later topic have a chance of moving to a higher point (fewer degrees) in the tree.  I needed a way to easily assign, remove, and re-assign parent / child connections.

Parent / child >> genealogy >> Family Tree Maker (FTM).  I use FTM to work on my family tree from time to time.  It's easy to attach and detach children.  I started a new 'family' and entered 292 of the 293 topics I had up to that point.  I had a topic called 'Scientist Joke' on my list, but when I went to check Wikipedia I found no article.  My best guess is that either I copied a link that pointed to a non-existent topic or the topic was deleted some time between starting the list and entering data in FTM.  I also found that, while I had noted how many degrees each topic was from the Sea Shadow, I had not kept track of which topic linked to which other topic.  As I entered data in FTM, I connected the topics as best I could, but I was unable to connect everything without adding additional topics.  I don't know whether I made mistakes in noting the original 292 topics or the articles changed, leaving topics that had been connected, unconnected.  I ended up adding a total of 42 new topics.

Here's the original 292 topics:

Here's the 42 additional topics:

Original Topics (292) Only:

New Topics (42) Only:

All Topics (334) Together:

** Without refinement:  The original 292 topics, with the degrees as noted when I bookmarked each topic.  With refinement:  The original 292 topics, with the degrees updated to reflect the connections to the new topics.

Yes, it is possible to go from the Sea Shadow to Strawberry Shortcake, 15 steps in the path I found.  Sea Shadow >> Lockheed >> Lockheed Martin >> F-22 Raptor >> 4th Generation Jet Fighter >> YF-23 >> Edwards Air Force Base >> Murphys Law >> Finagles Law >> Larry Niven >> Man Kzin Wars >> Relativistic Kill Vehicle >> Schlock Mercenary >> Webcomic >> Penny Arcade >> Strawberry Shortcake.  That seemed a bit unwieldy, so I looked for a shorter route.  Got it down to 6 steps:  Sea Shadow >> F-117 >> Candice Bergen >> Muppet Show >> Muppet Babies >> Star Comics >> Strawberry Shortcake.

I want to export the chart from FTM, but FTM's export function (to PDF) doesn't seem to work in Vista.  When I start FTM, Vista gives me a message about 'known compatibility issues' and offers to check for a solution online.  I let Vista do so, and it tells me to update FTM.  I went to FTM's web site and looked for a patch for my version (2006) of FTM.  There is no patch to download, only a page that says to start FTM, then Help >> Check For Update.  I did that.  FTM says there's an update and would I like to download it?  Yes, I would.  FTM then tells me the update will be applied the next time I start FTM.  I close FTM, then start FTM, and...no change.  No 'your update has been applied,' no 'applying update,' and when I do Help >> Check For Update again, the process repeats.  We still have a computer running XP, but I don't know if i've installed FTM on that one.  Yes, I realize that, to be legal, I would have to buy a 2nd copy of FTM to run it on the other computer at the same time.  I don't know whether or not it would be legal to install the one copy of FTM I do own on the other computer, provided I had only one instance of FTM running at any one time.  Anyway, it frustrates me- both FTM and Vista.  I know there's probably a way to get this to work on my Vista system, but I don't like it being this difficult.  This is the kind of thing that makes me think about Linux (for an OS) and Legacy (for genealogy).

What I want to end up with is a PDF, either a 'fan tree' or an 'all in one tree,' generated by FTM, with links to each topic in each topic's box.

What's the point of all this?  Who knows?  Since when does a nerd need a reason to count stuff?

*  With you, never a quickie.  Always a longie.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

The material below appears to identify me as a Christian. Without saying I am or am not a Christian, the logic of the material below flows better if we assume that I am a Christian.

I was reading about the Danish cartoons about Mohammed and the violent protests that followed. I realized something that bothers me- maybe about Christians, Muslims, and how they (as a whole) seem to react to offensive material. For example, on the one hand we have the Danish cartoons about Mohammed and the violent protests. I understand the Koran forbids images of Mohammed and I understand that the particular content of the cartoons could be seen as offensive. On the other hand, I see Jesus portrayed in ways that could be seen as offensive (sometimes on Southpark, for example) and I see stuff like the news group 'f- the skull of Jesus,' but I don't see riots and protests in the streets over this material. The part that bugs me so much is seeing the Muslim world get so angry over anything that they find offensive, but here in the United States we have to accept pretty much any offensive, anti-Christian material that anyone puts out. They say things like 'death to the unbelievers' and we're stuck with things like 'that's nice, everyone's entitled to their opinion.' Why is that? Why is it apparently ok for everyone in the Muslim world to get so excited over offensive material, but I have to put up with all this anti-Christian stuff? Is it a result of the fundamental nature of the United States- free speech and all that? Is it because folks in the Muslim world get ticked off a lot easier? Maybe i'm proceeding under a false assumption- that there's more reaction to offensive material in the Muslim world than in the Christian. I suppose it could be that there is a vocal minority in the Muslim world (their angry people are louder), compared to the angry Christians who are drowned out by the much larger population of not-angry Christians.

One perception that I find myself leaning strongly towards is that the fundamental difference is how much power the angry people have in each world. Is it that the Christians are the good guys and the Muslims are the bad guys? No, I don't think so. From a religious standpoint, I would think that God would be happy with whatever path people take, so long as they end up being closer to him. So it's not 'we're good and they're bad.' I think it's an issue of tolerance. Could it be a matter of strength vs weakness for our respective societies? Is a society that is more tightly bound to a particular set of beliefs weaker because it is less able to cope with new or different ideas? Is it insecurity? Is a more tightly bound society afraid of new or different ideas?

I think what defines the good guys vs the bad guys for me is which group lets people live their lives the way they want to the greatest extent. It is not ok to hang someone just because they disagree with you. It is probably ok to hang someone who has, without some sort of reasonable justification (ex: self defense), killed someone else. In the United States we let people live the way they want to live, so long as they don't infringe on other people exercising those same rights. That, I think, is what makes us the good guys. Christians, let's say in the time of the Spanish Inquisition (which no one expected), were quite capable of being the bad guys. Muslims are equally capable of being the good guys. What matters ends up being less about one's choice of religion and more about one's society. Then things like freedom of speech come into play, affecting how much or little one can effect change in society.

Enough with the big ideas. I want something that doesn't give me headaches.

I've heard the radio commercials for Lifelock, a service that's supposed to protect you from identity theft. It sounds good, provided their service lives up to its claims. From what i've read online, they file a continual stream of credit alerts in your name with the 3 major credit bureaus. If you have reason to believe you might be the victim of identity theft, you can file this kind of alert yourself, for free. Lifelock file such an alert, then files another alert before the first one expires. From the credit bureau's perspective you're in a continual state of emergency. This creates an enormous amount of extra work for the credit bureaus. It's extra work they don't want to do. The way I see it, there's a certain amount of 'Boy Who Cried Wolf' here. If the credit bureaus are inundated with hundreds or thousands of time as many alerts, they might be less likely to take individual alerts seriously. I like the idea that Lifelock is protecting its customers from risk, but I don't like the idea that i'm having to lie (through Lifelock) in order to get that protection. Morally, I suppose the right thing to do is not do business with Lifelock. On the practical side of things, if it's going to prevent people from screwing with my credit rating, maybe I do want to do business with Lifelock.

I really should write an epistle to Walmart at some point. I've got quite a lot to say to them, both good and bad (mostly good). Today it's good stuff.

Carol and I do most of our grocery shopping at Walmart. The Crystal Light and Vita Splash stuff below is in the 'drink mix' section. As i've done several times in the past, I stopped drinking caffeine (mainly Diet Coke). I like having something to drink that's low enough in calories that, for the most part, I don't have to worry about gaining weight from it. Carol's been drinking bottled water with these little Crystal Light flavor packets added. It's sort of like single serving, sugar free cool aid. I tried a few, and they're pretty decent as far as taste. I tried them and continued to enjoy them long enough to decide on water (tap, in my case) plus flavor packets as a replacement for soda. I tried several different flavors and brands (not just Crystal Light). The one i've ended up liking best is Vita Splash Multi Vitamin Tangerine Strawberry. The flavor's good. It's not that I have a thing for tangerines or strawberries. This particular version (Multi Vitamin) of Vita Splash gives me 50% of my daily requirements on a total of 16 vitamins. I typically drink 2 or more of these per day, so I get a minimum of 100% of 16 vitamins without having to do anything extra (remember to take a pill, remember to eat something I wouldn't normally eat, etc.). There's another variety of Vita Splash that has 100% of a few vitamins, but Multi Vitamin has a greater number of vitamins at 50% or more than the other varieties of Vita Splash.

Monday, March 3, 2008

And now for something completely different.  I finally got around to watching John Cleese in the 1968 show How To Irritate People.  He makes some good points, especially about building tension but not to the point of allowing it to boil over.  The point being to allow the tension to fester inside of the person without it boiling over, which releases much of the tension.  It reminds me of the mocking game.

The Mocking Game. I've only played this a couple of times, and never with complete strangers, as i'd like to avoid having my hinder kicked, or trying this with people who are exercising their 2nd Amendment rights. The mocking game is played in a room with at least 2 other people. There isn't really an upper limit on the number of people in the room, but these 2 people are essential to the game. These 2 people must be talking to each other. You stand within the field of vision of one person (A), but as near to directly behind the other person (B) as possible. As you watch them converse you'll see the person facing you gesture in some manner or other. If they're not using any kind of physical gesture at all you might want to find a different mark. Even if they're just making normal little waving gestures with their hands this works. As A gestures, you mimic A's gestures. That's it. If you keep doing this, A will eventually notice you. This is when the game really begins. You want to try to avoid looking directly at A. It works better and it gives A a better chance to do a slow burn. If you make eye contact, you're giving them a direct line to you, giving them a chance to release their anger. If A notices you and stops gesturing, you stop gesturing too. If A directs B's attention toward you, stop mimicking A and do something else, something you can transition to quickly and plausibly. If A stops talking to B and approaches you, you're in a tight spot. If A is going to kick your A, then running is an option, but you look guilty. If A approaches you to 'have words' with you and B is observing, then deny everything. The key here is keeping a straight face. If you can manage this, responding with things like 'is something wrong,' 'are you ok,' or (directed to B) 'is your friend here ok,' then you place A in the position of acting increasingly strangely in front of B. If you make A mad enough to fight, to boil over, then you're allowing A to release his/her anger. If, on the other hand, you can get A good and worked up, but not quite into rage territory, then A will still have some sense of the increasing strangeness of his/her own actions in front of B. A will not want to look crazy in front of B and so will have tension from the 2 competing forces of releasing his/her anger at you and maintaining some appearance of sanity in the presence of B. It simply can not be overstated- know your mark. The more you know about A and the less B knows about you, the better.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

I wrote to someone about the 2nd Amendment (keep and bear arms) the other day:

It all started with a nice, simple question that I know many, many people have asked before. I really didn't set out to write more than a paragraph or two. Here's what I ended up with:

The 2nd Amendment: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I've heard 2 general interpretations of the 2nd Amendment. One is that this grants a well regulated militia (state guards or private militias, I wonder?) the right to bear arms. The other is that this grants the people the right to bear arms in order to be able to form a well regulated militia. Gun control folks would argue the former, because that gives them a way to keep guns out of the hands of individuals. Gun advocates would argue the latter, because that gives them a way to put guns in the hands of individuals. What i'd like to know is whether or not my understanding of the amendment makes sense and is correct?

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. That says the people have the right to have guns. The part about a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state appears to give us the reason for having the right to keep and bear arms, but it doesn't appear to modify who the right applies to. Therefore I have the right to keep and bear arms, period.

The amendment doesn't mention, in any way, what sort of arms (say, hand gun vs M16) and it doesn't mention where those arms can be born (at home, walking down the street, in a store, etc.). Saying I can have only certain kinds of guns is an infringement. Saying I can only have guns in certain places is an infringement. This would appear to give me the right, barring another amendment, to own and carry around a fully automatic M16 in my daily life. While I realize this would not be a popular idea, it appears to be so obvious that I don't see how there could be any reasonable question of the founders' intent in the matter.

So, what's the deal?

One argument I could see is that we already have a well regulated and well equipped militia. The people don't need guns because a well regulated militia exists and it has plenty of guns already. But the amendment doesn't say 'unless a well regulated militia has already been established' and it doesn't say 'unless there's no need for it.'

Pause...Reading (at guncite.com/gc2ndsup.html) about Supreme Court cases involving the 2nd Amendment...And...Resume.

US v Cruikshank (1876). This case appears to be frequently misunderstood in that it says, specifically, that the right to bear arms for a lawful purpose is not a right granted by the Constitution. The misunderstanding appears to be that this doesn't mean that the right doesn't exist; rather, that it existed prior to the Constitution. However, the case also says that '...no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress' and 'has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government.' Does that mean the supreme court's opinion in US v Cruikshank (1876) is that the 2nd amendment says the federal government can not restrict the bearing of arms, but that the amendment does not apply to state governments? Does that mean the 2nd amendment doesn't apply to state governments? So the federal government has to let me have my guns, but the state government is bound by that same requirement?

Presser v People of Illinois (1886). This case appears to say that states do have the right to control and regulate military bodies, and it re-affirms that the 2nd Amendment applies only as a limitation to the federal government. However, in a side opinion (doesn't count as precedent...?) the court ruled that 'the States cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question [the Second Amendment] out of view prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms.' But it's a side opinion, so i don't know how much (if any) meaning or importance it has.

Miller v Texas (1894). The supreme court refused to consider whether or not Miller's 2nd Amendment rights had been violated because this charge was added to Miller's case on appeal, but wasn't part of the original case.

US v Miller (1939). In this case the supreme court indicated that there needed to be evidence that a shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length 'has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.' An easily concealable weapon would seem to have any number of obvious uses in a time of war. The 2nd Amendment doesn't make any statement about such a (potential) use needing to be proved, just that the people have this (keep and bear arms) particular right. The court also talked about a shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length not being part of ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense. I don't understand why this isn't also very obvious: If it's not part of ordinary military equipment, then that means the opponent isn't expecting it, which means it (the shotgun) is unexpected, more of a surprise, and therefore useful. The court said 'the Second Amendment must be interpreted and applied with a view to its purpose of rendering effective the Militia.' The 2nd Amendment says, in effect, 'for <this reason>, people have <this right>.' The 2nd Amendment does not say 'people have <this right>, but only if they use it for <this reason>.'

Lewis v US (1980). This case talks about the rights of convicted felons. It also re-asserts the argument in US v Miller (1939) that the 2nd Amendment does not apply to arms that do not have 'some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.' I understand that i'm just an average citizen and that I don't have decades of experience in constitutional law, but the text of the 2nd Amendment just doesn't speak, at all, about particular kinds of arms. It speaks of arms, period. I guess what I disagree with court about is the question of what makes a 'reasonable relationship,' and who gets to decide what makes up such a relationship? I thought one of the fundamental tenants of our society- one of the basic republican ideals- was that the best decisions for an individual are made by that individual. In other words, if I myself can think of a use for a particular kind of arm, then there's a use.

Burton v Sills (1985). In this case the court expressed fears of political assassinations, killings of law enforcement officers, and sniping during riots. The 2nd Amendment says 'the people have <this right>,' not 'the people have <this right>, provided no one could misuse it.'

US v Verdugo-Urquidez (1990). The main issue in this case was whether or not 'the people' include individuals who are not citizens of the United States and do not reside in the United States. The court's opinion was that 'the people' 'refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community.' The interpretation of the 2nd Amendment I end up with is this: There needs to be a well regulated militia. The individual has the right to keep and bear arms. There are no requirements- either as to the type of arms or what actions the individual must take in order for this right to apply to that individual- only that the individual has the right to keep and bear arms. There is no requirement that an individual who does keep and bear arms belong to a militia. The limitation of any particular kind of arm would be an infringement, therefore this amendment applies to all arms. Therefore the individual has the right to keep and bear any arm, whether or not the subject is a member of a militia. Bad things may happen as a result of an individual's exercise of this right, but this in no way affects another individual's exercise of that same right. If the Supreme Court were to rule that individuals do, in fact, have the right to keep and bear arms, such a ruling might be unpopular or might result in an increase in shootings- people who, though lawfully exercising their right to keep and bear arms, unlawfully discharge those arms. The popularity of such a ruling and the results of such a ruling are irrelevant. The Supreme Court's job is to interpret the Constitution according to what the court understands to have been the intention of the founders. If the people don't like the ruling, or the results of the ruling, it is the job of the people to ratify an amendment to the Constitution.

Israel. They have a problem there with suicide bombers. I understand that, many years ago, they used to have a problem with the same variety of bad guys (from their point of view), but instead of suicide bombers, the bad guys were gunmen who would walk into a crowded area and start shooting as many Israelis as possible, before the police / security / military arrived and stopped them. A concerted effort was launched to arm all Israeli citizens. After this, when a bad guy would start shooting, pretty much everyone around would draw their own weapons and make short work of the gunman. The bad guys then transitioned from using lone gunmen to suicide bombers. Does that mean that bad guys here would switch from guns to suicide bombing? I don't think so. I just don't see a guy robbing a convenience store with the threat of blowing himself up. Yes, I know some crazy people would try it and I might be making the mistake of attributing intelligence to people who rob convenience stores, but the expected payoff just doesn't work. Bad guy: 'Give me your money or i'll blow us both up.' Store clerk: 'If you blow us both up, you'll be dead, so you won't have the money anyway.' I think what would happen more often is that people who want to rob stores will find other ways of robbing stores. A decrease in armed robberies traded for an increase in shoplifting? I can live with that.

What is the purpose of having the right to keep and bear arms? Why did the founders want to guarantee that right? Side question- the Bill of Rights was written by whom and roughly when? Is it correct to say that it was written by the founders? I want to say it was written in the late 1700's, but i'm not sure. So, why the right to keep and bear arms? Why the need to be able to form an organized militia? I know one of the main reasons is to be able to defend ourselves in the invent of civil insurrection- a breakdown in the government. We might say that our current government is strong and that such a thing could not happen in this day and age, but I remember the LA riots in the 1990s, so it could happen. Another reason someone reminded me of- a reason people do not like to talk about for the most part- is a limitation on the government's power. Our government is based in part on checks and balances. Each branch of the government exists to prevent the other branches from becoming too powerful. The right to keep and bear arms exists, in part, to give the people a way of preventing the government from becoming too powerful or oppressive.  Essentially it's a self-destruct mechanism in case we turn into the bad guys.  We're a long way from that point and I don't think we're ever going to reach that point, but that's part of the system in case we do.  Other checks and balances should kick in long beforehand.

What is the purpose of having the right to keep and bear arms? Why did the founders want to guarantee that right? Side question- the Bill of Rights was written by whom and roughly when? Is it correct to say that it was written by the founders? I want to say it was written in the late 1700's, but i'm not sure. So, why the right to keep and bear arms? Why the need to be able to form an organized militia? I know one of the main reasons is to be able to defend ourselves in the invent of civil insurrection- a breakdown in the government. We might say that our current government is strong and that such a thing could not happen in this day and age, but I remember the LA riots in the 1990s, so it could happen. Another reason someone reminded me of- a reason people do not like to talk about for the most part- is a limitation on the government's power. Our government is based in part on checks and balances. Each branch of the government exists to prevent the other branches from becoming too powerful. The right to keep and bear arms exists, in part, to give the people a way of preventing the government from becoming too powerful or oppressive.  Essentially it's a self-destruct mechanism in case we turn into the bad guys.  We're a long way from that point and I don't think we're ever going to reach that point, but that's part of the system in case we do.  Other checks and balances should kick in long beforehand.

Hitting the history refresher button and...Bill of Rights, first 10 amendments to the Constitution, introduced 1789 by James Madison, ratified 1791.  Late 1700s, still the founders.  Hah.

I think i'll look forward to some lighter topics tomorrow.

Monday, February 18, 2008

It's been a while since the last entry.  My computer died in September, so I had to get a replacement.  Someone thought I should see the I Robot movie (which I had avoided) and they bought me the DVD, so I finally saw the movie.  Updated my data archive.  Put Corrine on the family's phone plan.  Played through Postal 2 a few times.  Played through Puzzle Quest.  A couple of things at Walmart (mismarked product and new cat litter boxes).  More fun with Best Buy and the receipt thing.  Got a Wii.  Still playing Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) with the guys.  Learned about provisional voting.  Signed up with XM.  Finally followed through with my threat to buy Karaoke Revolution Country.  Signed up with Where's George.  Thunder died, but her daughter survived.  Polar Express.  Watched the new Knight Rider last night.

My old computer was a Pentium 4 at 2.4 gHz.  One day, on boot, it started giving a certain number / pattern of beeps and wouldn't boot.  I looked online for the sequence of beeps and the answer was that it was either a dead mother board or graphics card.  I had just bought a new graphics card, so I exchanged the card for another of the same type.  Same beep sequence on boot.  So everything indicated a dead mother board.  I stopped at Fry's Electronics in Anaheim, CA to get a replacement computer.  The old computer was a bit older than I thought, because the replacement computer (Core 2 Duo, 1.8 gHz) was somewhere in the $350 to $450 range.  Much faster CPU (dual core), bus, and a SATA hard drive.  Vista for the OS.  I saved a bit by taking their demo computer- the one out on the shelf for customers to look at.

Part of the receipt thing (refusing to show a receipt on exiting a store) are the circumstances when I will show my receipt.  If I make the security sensors at the door beep, then i'll show my receipt.  I don't if now showing the receipt in that setting gives the store or the police probable cause or changes the situation in some other way.  I try to avoid adding confounding variables to the game- ala Mr Rigghi challenging Circuit City's receipt policy and whether or not he had to provide the police with identification on demand.  So, if I go beep at the door, I show my receipt.  Because I bought the demo computer from Fry's, the salesman just unplugged the computer and put it, along with a keyboard, mouse, and envelope of manuals in my cart.  No box.  I paid for the computer at the front of the store and, because I had a loose, unpackaged computer in my basket, showed my receipt at the door.  I don't suppose there's any difference for a shoplifter- what would they care that they made off with a product inside or outside of its packaging?  It didn't feel right though- leaving the store with a loose computer in my cart.  I felt that I looked suspicious enough, that what I had in my cart was unusual enough, that I would have introduced a new, confounding variable.

The reactions I get when I refuse to show my receipt change depending on which store i'm at and the time of year.  Stores in higher crime areas seem to be a bit more aggressive about asking for the receipt.  Walmart and Kmart have asked me for the receipt occasionally, but they haven't done so (to me at least) within the last year or two.  Best Buy is a bit more interesting in this regard.  It would be an interesting to project to study the different characters (management, customer relations, store policies, etc.) of different stores, especially different Best Buy stores.  The Best Buys in San Bernardino, Mira Loma, and Palm Desert don't typically ask me for my receipt.  It would not be correct for me to say that none of those stores has ever asked me for a receipt, but it would be correct to say that I don't recall them ever having done so.  The Best Buy in Moreno Valley is another story.  Sometimes they ask for the receipt and sometimes they don't, but they always have when i've shopped there on black friday (the friday after Thanksgiving).  The Moreno Valley Best Buy is, by far in my experience, the most aggressive Best Buy with regard to receipt-at-the-door policies.

On Black Friday of 2005 (I think), at the Moreno Valley Best Buy, they asked me for my receipt at the door.  I refused.  The yellow shirt (management) guy at the door said he was calling the police and, while he carefully danced around actually saying so, made it clear that the two blue shirts at the outer door would detain me if I attempted to leave.  While I talked with the yellow shirt, another blue shirt had gone back to the register I checked out at and verified with the cashier that I had paid for my items.  Yellow shirt basically said to have a nice day and off I went.  So that was that.  Looking back on it, given what I didn't know at the time, things probably played out ok.

Black Friday 2006 was spent out of town with relatives.  I did not shop at Best Buy that year.

Black Friday 2007, also at the Moreno Valley Best Buy, was fun.  Yellow shirt at the door (different guy) asked to see my receipt, I declined, and I kept walking.  By the time I was a few yards away from the door, yellow shirt and Blade caught up with me.  Blade was a security guard, a black guy, with a black leather outfit and dark glasses.  I don't know that he actually looked like Wesley Snipes, but with the outfit and the glasses, that was the first thing that came to mind.  I had the same conversation with yellow shirt and Blade that I have every time someone challenges my refusal to show my receipt- I explained how I saw it as a privacy issue and that, once money has changed hands, the items are mine and I no longer have to prove it, and yellow shirt explained that it was a matter of security for the store.  I continued to refuse.  Yellow shirt said he was calling the police and went back in the store.  I told Blade that he was welcome to follow me to my car and get my license plate number, but that I didn't feel like waiting at the store.  Blade and I walked to my car and Blade took down my license plate.  I asked Blade how long the police would take to respond.  He said about 5 minutes.  We waited for 10 to 15 minutes or so, but no police showed up.  During this time several other yellow shirts walked out to my car and tried the 'you're the only person today who has refused to comply' bit.  One of them even told me that I was an idiot.  I indicated to Blade that this was taking too long and that I was thinking of leaving.  Blade indicated that he would consider the products I had (which he had seen me place in my trunk) to be stolen and that he would report it as such to the police if I left.  On the one hand I wanted to leave because I figured yellow shirt and Blade were either bluffing or just wrong, but on the other hand I didn't want to get arrested.  I called the Moreno Valley Police Department on my cell phone, but whoever answered the phone said the Riverside Police Department would be responsible for that location.  I called Riverside Police Department and spoke to a dispatcher.  I explained the situation to the dispatcher and that, if RPD was looking for me, I wanted to make sure they could find me (cell phone, current address, etc.).  The dispatcher verified that, yes, RPD was responsible for that location (Moreno Valley Best Buy, just west of Day St).  I asked if they had received any calls or were looking for me.  The dispatcher said no, RPD had received no calls in the last hour from the Moreno Valley Best Buy.  I asked the dispatcher if there was any criminal code that I could be charged under as a result of not showing my receipt at the door.  The dispatcher said there was no such code and that it was a civil matter, not a criminal one.  The dispatcher and I ended our conversation.  I told Blade that I had called RPD and that they (RPD) had said there's no law that says I have to show my receipt.  I got in my car and left.

A few days before Black Friday 2007 I had emailed Best Buy (through their web site) explaining my previous (2005) experience and why I felt that I didn't have to show my receipt at the door.  I didn't hear back from Best Buy until after Black Friday 2007.  A few days later I received an email from customer relations indicating that, while Best Buy does ask to see receipts when customers leave the store, Best Buy's policy is that customers are not required to show their receipts at the door.  The day after I received the email, I printed a copy of the email and went to drop it off at the Moreno Valley Best Buy.  Lo and behold, the yellow shirt (a male) working the door was the same yellow shirt working the door on Black Friday 2007.  I was wearing my suit (normal attire for me on weekdays) and, as I presented the printout of the email, another yellow shirt (this one was female) indicated that she would field this.  She read the email, said something to the effect of 'oh, okay,' and that was that.  She took the printout, which I had indicated was for the store, and walked away.  Took the wind right out of my sails.  I didn't say anything to the male yellow shirt.  I proceeded into the store, browsed, then left without buying anything that day.

The current status of the receipt thing (at Best Buy), as I understand it, is this:  There is nothing in the California criminal code that requires me to show my receipt at the door.  Best Buy's written policy is that I do not have to show my receipt at the door.  I am, to say the least, looking forward to Black Friday 2008.

To Best Buy's credit, they did eventually provide me with a check to cover the repair of my odometer's illuminator.  So we're cool on that.

A footnote to the receipt thing, specifically at the Anaheim Fry's.  Pop knows how highly motivated I am about this and he can tell i'm looking forward to a challenge on exiting a store.  The last 3 or 4 times we've been to the Anaheim Fry's, the employees at the door have not asked for my receipt, with Pop getting a great deal of entertainment- almost doubling over in a fit of laughter on one occasion- they haven't asked to see my receipt.  I was alone when I bought the new computer.  Pop (joking) speculated that Fry's might have a picture of me in the back of the store with a caption saying to not ask me for my receipt.

The new computer runs Vista (Home Premium) for its OS.  I turned off Aero because, while Aero is pretty and all, it does slow the system down.  The main problem I had with Vista, until 2.1.08, was connecting to the net.  There's no DSL, no FIOS, no cable where I live.  Satellite internet service is out because they have a bandwidth cap of 500 mb per month.  The only way I can reasonably get anything faster than dialup is through Verizon's wireless broadband (EVDO) service.  To access this system, Verizon requires the use of VZ Access Manager, which monitors your connection time and bandwidth usage.  From the time I got the new computer (September) until 2.1.08, there was no version of VZ Access Manager for Vista, so I couldn't connect to the net with the new computer.  When a Vista version did finally come out, I found just over 100 mb of updates waiting for me.  Woof.  Part of the downside of buying the demo computer from Fry's was that I didn't get a Vista disk.  However, there's a restore partition on the hard drive and there appears to be a restore option built into the bios to make use of that partition.  As long as I don't screw around with the partitions, I should have a pretty decent reset button there.  I've thought about writing to Microsoft and seeing if, with me reading off whatever product keys or serial numbers they need from my system, they might send me a free or very cheap Vista disk.  Anyway, the new computer's pretty good so far.

The I Robot movie, starring Will Smith.  I avoided this movie because the previews showed a an action movie with explosions, car chases, and so on.  Not the way I remember Asimov's stories.  It's been a while since i've read the robot novels.  I've read the Foundation series more recently and more often.  I remember the 4 laws of robotics, that Asimov's robots have positronic brains, and so on.  I've seen movies that were done right (The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe, the Lord Of The Rings movies, etc.) and movies that were done wrong (the Rankenbass animated Lord Of The Rings movies, the Star Trek I, etc.).  The previews for I Robot looked like it would fall in the latter category.  Pop saw I Robot and, while he said there were a number of differences from Asimov's stories, he did like the movie.  After talking about it one day, he decided I should see it and had Amazon send me the DVD.  I watched it and...i'm not too sure how I feel about it.  I have a real problem with the 'robots as a threat' theme.  Yes, Asimov did write a few stories where the robots were the bad guys in some way, but the overarching theme of Asimov's stories was the (near) absolute certainty of the 3 (or 4, post-Giskard) laws.  The moment, for me, that best exemplified this in the I Robot movie was Will Smith's boss dressing him down about how many robots had ever stolen a purse.  The central problem, at least on the first viewing of the movie, is that a software update can override the 3 laws.  My reaction to such an easy change of the laws was that no way, no how can the laws just be overwritten like that.  I thought the law were hard-coded into the robots' positronic brains, and unchangeable aspect of the positronic pathways in each brain.  When I talked to Pop after watching the movie, he suggested that Asimov wouldn't have understood hardware vs software, software updates, etc. when he started writing the robot novels.  That...is a possibility I have to acknowledge.  The founders of our Constitution couldn't have foreseen the internet, nuclear weapons, and so on.  So Asimov (along with most everyone else at the time) might not have thought of software vs hardware.  If Asimov didn't mean the 3 laws to be coded in hardware and not software vs that's the way he described it because there was no other way for him to conceive of programming at the time, then what does that tell us?  Should the movie have held true to the source material or was it right to adapt parts of Asimov's stories to the way we understand computers to work today?  I lean toward being true to the material, but Pop's take on it was that if the movie didn't have a certain amount of popular appeal, the movie wouldn't have been made and future adaptations of Asimov's stories would be less likely to occur.  Movies get made because they are expected to make money.  Money is made by the movie being popular.  I realize that's the way the world works, but I don't like it.  The cherished stories of my childhood- Narnia, Superman, the Man Kzin Wars, and Asimov's stories- should never be messed with.  Superman is special because he's the pure, unchanging, white-hat-no-matter-what hero.  The robots in Asimov's stories are the way they are.  They should not be blithely toyed with.  So, for I Robot, I don't know that I would relegate it to complete junk, but I wouldn't place it in the done-right category with the Narnia and Lord Of The Rings movies.  Pop suggested that I watch I Robot at least one more time.  I probably will.  We'll see.  It might end up being one of those things where the amount of complaining I do is an indicator of how much I like the material.  Carol has Bicentennial Man (starring Robin Williams) on DVD, so I have that to watch as well.

The data archive.  Back in the days of the Commodore 64 I accumulated about 480 floppy disks of data (around 150 mb I think).  Over the lifetime of my first PC, a Tandy Sensation I, I accumulated about 800 floppies (about 1.1 gb) of data.  With the advent of CD burners (spanning the lifetimes of several of my PCs) the archive got to about 2,300 CDs (1.5 to 1.6 tb).  Currently, with DVD burners, i'm at about 500 disks, or about 2.3 tb.  Hard drives eventually got cheap enough ($100 for a 500gb drive) for me to afford putting the entire archive on hard disk.  With the elimination of duplicate files and data compression, I got it down to about 1.8 tb, just barely fitting on to four 500 gb drives, which are really 465 gb drives.  I still have the DVD archives and 2 or 3 DVD burners, along with the archive on hard disk, so I got rid of the CD archive.  Turned out to be an interesting project- how, most efficiently, to destroy 2,000 CDs?  I kept about 300 CDs because they were original program disks.  I didn't want to just throw 2,000 CDs in the trash.  Who knows who might have found them?  I didn't want to have to go through each individual disk to figure out which disks I had to pay more or less attention to.  I thought about buying a shredder that could shred disks, but I didn't want to have to feed disks one by one.  In the shed we had a metal bar, an extra tension bar for one of Carol's dog pens.  The bar just barely fit through the hole in a CD.  I ended up with a really long spindle (3 spindles by the time all was down) of disks.  Wasn't sure how running a circular saw blade along one side of each spindle would work, so I bought a sort of plastic or carbon grinding blade for the saw.  With a heavy helping of protective clothing (think younger brother from Christmas Story) and eye protection, I tried the grinding disk.  No luck.  The grinding disk built up heat quickly enough that, after just a few inches along the spindle, it started melting the disks around it instead of cutting them.  The problem was that a region of melted plastic built up ahead of the grinding disk, eventually providing enough resistance to stop the grinding disk from moving forward.  I switched the grinding disk out for the regular saw blade.  I tried it with the regular saw blade and, while the disks were easy enough to cut through that way, I started getting kickback from the saw and enough deviation in the cutting path that the blade wouldn't proceed more than a few inches into the spindle.  So that didn't work either.  The disks were tightly packed along the axis of the spindle.  I tried a 3 lb hand sledge, moving along the edge of the spindle.  It worked.  The shock of each hammer strike traveled in the plane of each disk, causing the disk to shatter.  Whap, whap, whap, and eventually I had a very large pile of bits of CD, but no whole disks.  I suppose it might be possible to sort and match enough pieces to recover a file, but it looked sufficiently difficult, enough so that I could sleep soundly.  I've got the complete archive in 2 forms (DVD and hard disk), one magnetic, one non-magnetic.  The next step, a few year down the line, is to get the entire archive onto fewer disks (blue ray, about 100 to 200 disks) or onto a single hard drive.

Corrine's on the family phone plan now.  She had a pre-paid phone, but it turned out to cost about 2/3 of what she was paying to add her to the plan with Carol and I.  Corrine's main interest was unlimited text messaging to anyone (including non-Verizon customers), but Verizon didn't have a plan that would let us add that to her phone but not my phone or Carol's phone.  So the whole family now has free unlimited texting.  Yippee.  Roflmao, even.  As I told  Corrine, parental texting equals minus a million coolness points for texting.  Chinpokomon, yes?

Postal 2.  Ooooh.  I played through the entire game, twice, attempting to get the 'wannabe Jesus' award at the end of the game for not killing anyone through the whole game.  I'm certain I didn't shoot or do anything anti-social.  Both times the endgame report showed me as having exactly 1 kill.  Grr.  The third time I played through the game I was...mean.  Throughout the game you are presented with choices about how to deal with anything from normal, every day situations such as waiting in line at the bank or buying some milk at the convenience store, to weird things like escaping from the rednecks while wearing a gimp suit.  Many of the people in the game are very mean to you, even if you're playing nice the whole time, so much of the game is spent trying to not die.  Playing mean is a different kind of satisfaction.  If I play nice, and I manage to survive the bank hold-up without getting shot, then fine.  If I play mean, and I have to shoot every last person between me and the bank because every last one of them (on the hardest difficulty setting) will shoot at me if I don't, then fine.  I find a sniper rifle and I notice a single speck half way across town and realize that's a terrorist on top of a building, with a rocket launcher.  2 or 3 sniper rounds to drop him, but by the time i've fired the last round, he's fired off 2 or 3 guided rockets.  Then I have to either find a place to hide and listen to the rockets bonk-bonk-bonking along the walls, trying to find a way in to get me, or I have to play dodgeball with the rockets until they run out of fuel and detonate.  The game was pretty easy on average, playing mean.  Once you've played through the game a couple of times, you'll know what to do, where to go, where stuff is hidden, and how people will react.  I finished the game on 'they hate me' mode, the hardest difficulty setting, playing mean.  It wasn't too much harder; just more and better armed people shooting at me.  I suppose I should try going through the game on the hardest setting, playing nice, but I started playing Titan Quest again, so Postal 2 will have to wait.  I may have to order the full game (Postal 2) with all of the expansions though.

Bought Corrine a DS for Christmas.  Bought her 3 or 4 games, including Puzzle Quest, which is sort of a combat Bejeweled rpg.  I picked it up for the PC so I didn't have to wait for Corrine to be around and not playing her DS.  I played the druid and spent all of my level up points on air and water mastery.  I was heavily focused on healing magic. allowing me to chip away at my opponent until they died most, most of the time.  The main strategy I failed to figure out until about 1/3 of the way through the game was mana denial- pick whichever color of mana the opponent requires the most of to cast his/her strongest spell and do everything you can to deny him that color of mana.  It slowed most of the bad guys down enough to make all but the bosses a relative breeze.  I beat the game, but there was a good 1/3 of the world map that wasn't used.  I went online to see a complete world map and, with a few minor exceptions, I did see everything.  Room left over for an expansion perhaps?  Character levels do cap at 50 though.

Walmart, the first thing: This is what I submitted to Walmart's web site: (submission begins) The Short Version: Sunbeam heated blankets marked at $29.86, regardless of size. Manager refused to sell queen sized blanket at marked price, saying price on shelf was for twin sized blankets only. I think Walmart owes me the sale of one Sunbeam queen sized, heated blanket at the price of $29.86. If I remember right, California law says Walmart has to sell me the item at the shelf price, even if the shelf price is incorrect.

The Long Version: Walmart, I think the one in Palm Desert, CA, had a variety of heated blankets for sale in the week before Christmas (2007). Ok, fine. There were 2 end caps' worth of blankets. The 2 end caps were next to each other. There were no prices on the blankets themselves. On one end cap were larger blankets (including queen size). On the other end cap were smaller blankets (including twin size). There were no shelf prices on either end cap. There was no big price (above the end cap, in large letters) on the end cap with the larger blankets. There was a big price on the end cap with the smaller blankets. There did not appear to be any of the smaller blankets on the end cap with the larger blankets. There were a few of the larger blankets on the end cap with the smaller blankets. I concluded, because there was only one price between the two end caps, that that was the price for any of the blankets, regardless of size. I placed one of the queen sized blankets in my cart and, after doing the rest of my shopping, proceeded to the checkout counter in, I think, gardening. When the cashier scanned the blanket, it rang up at about $80 to $90, not the $29.86 that appeared on the shelf. I had the cashier cancel the transaction. I think what I did at this point was return the blanket to the shelf, then I went through the checkout at the front of the store with whatever else I was buying that day, then to customer service to talk to someone about the blanket. I don't remember the gentleman's name, but I do remember asking him if he was the top of the chain of command on-site. He said he was. We went and looked at the end caps. He refused to sell me the queen sized blanket, indicating that he was not going to price match it because the price difference was too large. His main reasoning was that, because the end caps were separate, the big price on one end cap was not making any sort of pricing statement about the adjacent end cap. I responded that any normal person would think, since there was only one price and they were the same kind of blankets, that the one listed price covered both end caps. At some point in all of this, while I was waiting alone by the end caps, I realized that my cell phone could take video as well as still pictures. I took a video, about 4 seconds in length, a quick pan from one end cap to the other. I hadn't set out to make a video, but I think the tone of the conversation was that the (manager?) employee sounded like he wasn't going to do the price match, but got called away for some reason. I knew Walmart's policy was probably not to allow pictures or video in the store, but I figured that, if I didn't have some sort of record of how the end caps were set up, I would be out of luck once I left the store. A couple of days later I was at another Walmart, I think in Banning, CA, when I noticed the same brand (Sunbeam) of heated blankets, only this time they were on a regular aisle instead of an end cap. I don't think the individual blankets were priced, but there were plenty of shelf prices, with different amounts for different blanket sizes, $29.86 for twins, $80 to $90 or so for queens. I had my cell phone with me, and it occurred to me that I should have some video of the same product, but with correct labeling. I took 3 seconds of video, continued shopping, then left the store as normal. I called Walmart's corporate number either that night or the following day and made a complaint, but I never heard back from anyone, one way or the other. I haven't written until now because I forgot. I remembered when I noticed the videos on my cell phone. I posted the videos at http://www.johnperkins.com/blanket01.3g2 and http://www.johnperkins.com/blanket02.3g2. The 3g2 video format (mainly used by cell phones) is viewable by Quicktime and VLC Media Player. I figured i'd try Walmart's web site then, if I still haven't heard from anyone within a week or two, maybe an actual, paper letter.

Thank you for reading and responding. (submission ends)

Walmart's web site keeps telling me 'we're having temporary difficulties arriving at the destination you requested' after I hit the 'send' button and enter my birth year, so I don't know if it's going through or not. We'll see, we'll see.

Walmart, the second thing: I have cats. Lots of cats. Now that I think of it, that would be a neat scene from the Matrix, but with a rack of cats instead of guns. My cats go through a lot of cat litter. Over about 8 years i've accumulated around 70 to 80 empty Tidy Cats boxes, the plastic 27 pound yellow boxes with red / blue / green hinged lids. That doesn't mean 10 per year because I used to buy the cardboard orange boxed stuff. I use the empty (of cat litter) plastic boxes for storage. They're air tight, water tight, and even if they're packed solid with books, they're still moveable with a convenient built-in handle. The problem is Tidy Cats has started using a slightly different sized box with a different bottom and (now unhinged) lid shape that doesn't stack with the old lids. I wrote to Tidy Cats' web site about liking the old box type, but not the new one. I have this old childhood memory of Pop having a Dave Barry book with weird ads in it, including one for macaroni. I think the deal was 'if you don't like it, we'll send you 2 boxes for free.' Sure enough, Tidy Cats sent me a handful of coupons, including one for a free box of cat litter. Thanks guys (really, thanks), but what I really want is the old box shape to return.

Carol got me a Wii. I don't remember which now, but it was either for my birthday or our anniversary. Carol had been planning to get me a PS3. She took me to the store and said we were getting a PS3 and she was buying. It was one of those rare moments when a Wii was also in stock. With a fixed amount of money to spend, it worked out that we could get a PS3 and 2 games or a Wii and 7 games. I bet wrong when I had to choose between the Sega Genesis and the PS1. The Genesis was good and i'm thankful for getting it as a gift, but there ended up being more varied and just more content for the PS1. I seem to have bet right with the PS2 vs Xbox generation. I bought a PS2 at launch, then picked up an Xbox after several price drops. So, for the current generation, I was looking at a PS3, Xbox 360, or Wii. There didn't smell like there were any must-have games for the PS3 at the time, and 7 games vs 2 seemed like greater odds of fun. There would be less of a chance of 7 stinkers than 2 stinkers. Part of buying a PS2 was for the DVD player and with Toshiba and Microsoft bowing out of the HDDVD format, it looks like i'll want a PS3 at some point. I'll probably wait for one or more price drops though. On a side note, I don't see why anyone would buy a stand alone Bluray player- it sounds like nothing more than a PS3 that can't play games. The best choice at the time (now, too) was a Wii. Got Resident Evil 4, Big Brain Academy, Legend Of Zelda, Metroid Prime 3, Super Monkey Ball, SSX, and Sonic.

I know the graphics on the Wii aren't as good as the PS3 or Xbox 360, but the content is good so far. Big Brain Academy has been fun- actual mental exercise instead of just running around, collecting gold coins. Resident Evil 4's been good too. I can't stand normal controller / game pad based aiming in first person games (say, Halo), but the 2 piece wireless controller with the Wii allows aiming in Resident Evil that's not quite as good as a mouse, but far, far better than a regular controller. I've played a bit of each of the other games, but most of my Wii time has been spent with Big Brain Academy and Resident Evil 4.

I haven't spent as much time with the Wii as I should- as the level of gift would warrant. For example, I got some miniature sharpies in my stocking this Christmas. I was thankful and, when I got home, I put them in with my other office supplies. I don't go out of my way to spend my free time using them- it's the weekend, oh boy, it's sharpie time. The Wii cost a great deal more than the sharpies, so it warrants a great deal more of my time and attention. The difficulty is, especially with my computer in the same room as the Wii, I have a large number of competing games on the computer. Back when I had the Atari 2600, we didn't have a computer, so there wasn't anything to compete with the 2600 for game time. I think what i'm going to do right now is wrap up Titan Quest (with the expansion), then focus on Resident Evil 4 or maybe Zelda.

Dungeons And Dragons! Yeah, yeah, i'm a nerd. Playing D&D didn't get me any dates in high school, but my wife seems to appreciate that my hobby doesn't involve something likely to cause injury or death. That means, when I tell her D&D weekend is coming up, she tells me 'yeah, fine, go have fun.'

Right now i'm playing a druid, having just made 9th level. I picked up my first 5th level spell, which is great because now that I can designate areas as holy, I have to travel for several days back to the lady who's the central part of or current campain and who the vampires have been chewing on. I figure if I designate her home as holy, it might help keep the vampires (or at least, whatever's been biting her neck) at bay. Then it's a treck back to the ruins we're at now. Tree Stride is also a 5th level spell, and with Wild Shape I have a couple of faster options (eagle, cheetah) for travel forms. The other nice thing is, with 9th level, I can Wild Shape 3 times per day with up to 9 hours' duration per time. That exceeds 24 hours, which means I can stay in a non-human (well, non-Asimar) form the whole time. I was going to take Augmented Summoning as my new feat, but I took Natural Spell instead. Augmented Summoning would have buffed my summoned creatures a bit, but Natural Spell gives me a completely new ability- being able to cast spells without having to shift back to my natural form. If the lady is already evil due to the bites (2, last we checked), then 5th level also gives me access to Atonement, which appears to more or less let me give her a quest to intentionally become good again. Hrm... As far as experience grinding, it might be more efficient to just start whacking monsters at the ruins, but roleplaying-wise the right thing to do (in character) would be to go help the lady. Once our DM quits being semi-blind due to his elective eye surgery.

Anyway, D&D is good stuff. It's not evil, it's not anti-christian, it's not anti-anything really. All it is is a complicated version of pretend, with lots of rules. If you want to be good, you can play a good character in D&D just like you can pretend to be a good guy. If you want to be evil, you can play a bad character in D&D, just like you can pretend to be a bad guy. Playing D&D does not define the color (black or white) of the hat you wear.

Provisional voting. When I moved in with my wife, I expected to look up my new polling place on election day, go there, and vote. I did not realize until election day (Super Tuesday here in California) that I now live in a district that votes by absentee ballot only. Oops. I called the state election commission and they told me I could go to any local polling place and ask to vote provisionally. This meant they had to take a bit of extra information from me and that my vote would be counted after everyone who didn't vote provisionally. So I voted at my old polling place.

The voting machine was a touch-screen system and had a terribly frustrating, apparently pointless part that I had never seen before. Inside the machine, where you couldn't get to it, was what appeared to be something like a receipt printer, the kind stores have. When I got to the end of making my choices and chose to cast my vote, the touchscreen system asked if I wanted to see a printed record of my vote. I told it yes. The receipt mechanism rolled, from a sending roll to a receiving roll, printing my votes and scrolling the votes up to where I could see my choices through a clear panel. I then had to click on the touchscreen that I had seen my votes, and the receipt mechanism rolled my votes away, onto the receiving roll. I'm not sure if it was entirely pointless, but it felt no more than a hair's breadth away from it. Having a printed record of my vote is fine, but what's the point if I don't get a print of the receipt for myself? Very frustrating.

I finally signed up with XM radio. I don't like the idea of paying for radio, especially since radio has always been free. I do a large amount of driving (over 1,500 miles per month), much of which takes me through hills where I lose stations. About the only station that continues almost everywhere is KFI 640, but then I can't stand that Rush Limbaugh idiot / demagogue, so I don't listen to KFI 640. With XM I have a large number of choices and rarely lose reception- usually only for tunnels or when I drive near a steep mountain. As with satellite TV, most of what XM brings me is crap. I don't mean that what I think is crap is or should be what another person thinks is crap. It's just that most of it is stuff I don't care for. I stick with CNN or one of the 4 or 5 comedy channels, with an occasional sprinkling of 1940s music, bluegrass, or Cinemagic (the movie soundtrack channel). These channels stick with me wherever I drive, so the reception alone is worth the roughly $13 per month. I suppose that might change if I didn't have to spend so many miles or so much time in the car, but for now it feels like money well spent.

Karaoke Revolution Country. 'A robot would have to be crazy to want to be a folk singer.' Ah confess, ah do sing mahself the occasional Kenny Rogers or Charlie Daniels song. I finally followed through with the threat to buy this game, but the only one I could find didn't have the microphone, so I had to buy a microphone. The microphone by itself at Best Buy was the exact same price as Karaoke Revolution American Idol, so even though I detest the idea of manufactured talent, it seemed a wasted to buy just the microphone instead of the microphone and a game, regardless of how crappy the game might be. The song list for the American Idol version included Stand By Me, so I figured it couldn't be all bad. The trouble is, at this point, I have to wait until both Carol and Corrine are gone to be comfortable playing either Karaoke game. I'm trying to get Corrine to play the American Idol version, so we'll see how that turns out. Weeble, wobble, one of us, one of us.

Where's George? I've seen a few where's George bills over the years, but it wasn't until a few months ago that I finally looked at the web site, wheresgeorge dot com. At this site you can enter the serial number for each bill ($1 to $100) you have. You write the web site on the bill or use a stamp to mark the bill, identifying it as being in the where's George database. If you enter a bill for the first time, you can see where that bill goes and when. If it's already in the system, you can see the bill's past history too. I've entered a bunch of bills. No hits yet, but we'll see over time. One weird thing is there's a reverse copyright on where's George stamps for the web site. Anyone can make and sell where's George stamps, accept the web site itself. While the Secret Service appears to be fairly tollerant of the whole where's George activity, they do have a problem with stamps being sold by the web site because the owners of the web site would be profiting by encouragingbthe defacement of US currency.

On another note, I found out what the story is for the apparent conflict between where it says on bills that 'this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private' vs store that, for example, refuse to accept any bill over $20. Any business can refuse to accept any kind of bill if the product or service has not already been provided, but must accept any bill if the product or service has been provided. What I think this means is this: If I got to a sit-down restaurant, eat, then want to pay my bill with, say, a $100 bill, the restaurant has to accept it because i've already eaten the food. But, if it's a fast food place and i'm at the drive through window, they can refuse to accept my bill because I haven't yet received my food.

Thunder died while I was away for work travel. I never had my parents move and not tell me while I was at summer camp, but having the dog die while I was away for work is almost as much fun. She died in puppybirth, but 1 of her 3 puppies survived and is now a healthy adolescent Belgian Sheepdog...and needs to be separated from our adult male Belgian. Woof.

I was doing blog stuff on my desktop, where I can type much faster than here on my phone (Palm Treo 700), but I started finding occasions when i'd feel bored, but i'd be away from my computer and unable to type. Now as an example, I have about 15 min between bits of work. It's not enough time to go anywhere or do much of anything else. Instead of typing my blog entry directly into Frontpage, I add the entry as a memo on my phone, then add to it whenever I have the time and inclination. I do of course dock myself the time spent not working, while i'm doing this, so I don't cheat my employer.

Polar Express. I thought I had already written about that experience, but I don't see it in any of the entries below. Ah- I might have posted it as an entry on the anime club's board. ...and they changed hosts for the board a couple of times, losing the entire post archive each time. That would explain why I remember writing about my Polar Express experience but can't find what I wrote. I'll see if I can find it, maybe the wayback machine. In the mean time, here it is again:

When Polar Express came out, Pop and I went to see it at a theater in Ontario, California. Stand in line, buy tickets, stand in line again, buy popcorn and soda, stand in line a third time to enter the (theater, room, screening room, what?) room. The line goes down a hall just for the room that's showing Polar Express, then turns left (90 degrees), with the door into the room at the end. As we make the left turn, we see a uniformed security person checking purses and using a wand-type metal detector to scan each customer. We decide we don't like the idea, but I turn out to like the idea a bit less than Pop. When we got to the security guard, I refused to allow her to wand me. She asks, and I explain that I refuse to allow her to perform what I feel is an illegal search. She says she has to, I refuse. She gets a theater employee, with whom I have the same conversation, they explain the theater's position and I explain my position, then they get the theater employee who is the next higher person on the food chain. The process repeats through about 4 theater employees (not counting the guard), ending with the head manager of the theater. That guys offers to refund our money, first without, then with the popcorn and soda cost included. I decline, indicating that, no, I would rather see the movie we paid for, minus the illegal search. The security guard, who was a private guard hired by whoever distributed the movie (Warner Brothers I think), tried to get her supervisor on the guard's cell phone, but it was a saturday and the supervisor was off shift. The guard eventually got another supervisor on the phone. That supervisor instructed the guard that, yes, customers are perfectly free to refuse the search, and to let us proceed in to the movie. After a couple of minutes of debating with the guard, we offered to allow the rest of the people in line to proceed ahead of us into the room, and they did. I think most of the guard/employees we talked to tried the 'everyone else is complying, why can't you?' bit at some point. Pop sort of stood as backup, in case I did manage to get myself arrested. It was a strange experience, where I was challenging the system in a way that had a real chance of ending in my arrest, but that I had a good sense that Pop had my back. He wasn't egging me on by any means, but we were both clear that this was a violation of our (4th?) ammendment rights to avoid an unlawful search. The other thing we overheard the guard's alternate supervisor say was not to worry about it, that the guard had her night vision equipment and would easily see if anyone tried to record the movie. We went in, watched the movie (minus the first 10 min) and that was that. I've never seen that happen anywhere else. I don't know how often that (with the searching and the wanding and the whatsis) happens, but it's wrong and I intend to stand up against it if I ever see it happen again. I could view this on the bad end of things as a giant corporation trying to assert its desires over my rights. On the good end of things I could see it as a breakdown in training / instruction for the private guard company. I guess the final word on the story is that I don't bear the theater chain or Warner Brothers any ill will, but please don't let it happen again.

Knight Rider! I grew up with the original series. I wish someone would do something with the idea of the original KITT somehow being a recovered Cylon, what with the red back-and-forth light. But KITT was a good guy...then there was the bad guy KARR...How about this: Cylon ship crashed, 1 or 2 centurions recovered. Attempted revival of the first centurion fails, or adequate moral codes are not in place, hence the evil KARR. Then either the 2nd centurion or a newly-built centurion AI, but with tweaked code so its a good guy, hence KITT. The new KITT...maybe he's a recovered higher ranked centurion (one of the ones with the lower voices) or completely newly-coded AI, the first a human coded from scratch. Hey...a walk-on by Fred Ward at some point, who thinks thenew KITT sounds like Val from Tremors. KITT denies this, then, when Ward gets out to walk away, as KITT drives away, KITT yells 'stampede, Earl, stampede!,' with a startled look and a wtf expression from Earl as KITT drives off.

Watched the new Knight Rider tv movie / series pilot. Not bad. KITT wasn't to full of himself. I'm not sure if I like KITT being hacked with such relative ease. I would expect, the moment he felt himself to be under attack, he could shut down his connection to the net without shutting his entire AI down. If I remember the dialogue correctly, KITT's AI is supposed to be the same AI as the one used to run, what, all US defense systems? Was the defense AI the prototype for KITT's AI, or was it the other way around? In either case it would seem to be very dangerous to have a version of the entire US defense system running around in a single, mobile package the the bad guys could get ahold of. Hack KITT so his AI shuts down, snipe Michael, take the car, done. The car itself was nice enough. What I definitely didn't like at all was all the Ford commercials using KITT and Michael during the show. The problem was the advertisers kept hitting us ovef the head with it, over and over and over, to the point where I started feeling, during the show itself, that I was watching an extension of the commercials. I felt dirty somehow. It marred, but didn't kill, my enthusiasm for the show. If they keep up this sort of advertising though, the show will go from being something I make sure i'm home to watch to something in the 'meh, if it's on and i'm bored i'll watch it, maybe' range. I do hope the network picks up the series though.

With the receipt thing and the theater thing, I wonder sometimes about why I feel the need to challenge things and the risk I may be placing myself in. It's a matter of relative cost I suppose. What am I risking compared to what do I hope to gain? Let's see...i'm too far away from my math background...expected cost is the total of the probability of each outcome times the effects of that outcome. But the things i'm callenging (receipts, theaters) aren't easily quantifiable. I'm not tilting against these particular windmills because I expect to profit in any fashion. I'm tilting at them because I see a wrong and i'm attempting to right. I certainly get the Don Quixote reference. That analogy raises the question of whether or not the wrongs I see are only wrongs in my perception or wrongs in the perception of other normal people. It also makes me think of the Houghnynyms (sic?)- the horse people from the 4th part of Gulliver's travels. The gist of it was the Houghnynyms had a very strict sense of right and wrong. Gulliver stayed with them for a while, assuming their moral code for himself. When Gulliver finallt went home to his family, he found himself completely unable to function within everyday English society, or even within his own family. Gulliver ended up locking himself in his room for the rest of his life. The message there is to have a bit of perspective when you choose your cause and how (or how much) you're willing to fight for that cause. Let's say I disagree with animal testing used to develop a product. It might be reasonable for me to boycott the product or stores carrying the product, but it would not be reasonable for me to try to shoot employees of any store selling the product. If I did the latter, I would be shot by the police or in jail for the rest of my life. Either way I would be unable to provide for my family, everyone involved would suffer, the animal testing would continue, and not a single animal would have been saved. This would be fighting for the cause to an unreasonable degree. For the particular cause (illegal searches, whether receipts or theaters) I seem to have taken on the question is then whether or not it is reasonable to risk getting arrested. Obviously, if an employee pulled a gun on me and then asked for my receipt, I would show him my receipt. But would it be worth risking an arrest, or being fired from my job due to the arrest? I don't know. At least, the answer is not so clear that I can be certain of it under most conditions. On the one hand, I might be arrested and suffer all of the associated bad stuff from that. On the other hand, when I find myself addressing the idea of someone very clearly violating my (4th?) ammendment rights, I sometimes find myself more concerned with the right vs wrong aspect than with the self preservation aspect.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

I've been thinking about black holes and the nature of what lies at their center.  First, I should clarify that, while I have a master's degree, I am not a physicist, but a lay person.  I understand the idea that quarks, in various combinations, make up things like baryons (protons, neutrons, and other particles), but I don't necessarily understand what quarks actually are.  I understand the idea that stars use up their hydrogen fuel, then either collapse or ignite helium fusion.  Hydrogen, then helium, etc., to iron, which won't work because fusing iron atoms requires more energy than is liberated and so is not self-sustaining.  Gravitational collapse occurs, and a black hole is born.  Black holes have been described as having a singularity at their center- gravity wins out and matter collapses to a single point.  I'm writing this not because I think i've figured anything out, but because I want to play with it as a though experiment.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle tells us that we can't know momentum and position with absolute certainty (the more we know about the one, the less we know about the other), so it doesn't make sense (to me at least) that there should be a point of infinite mass, infinite density (a singularity) at the center of a black hole.  As the collapsing matter occupies a smaller and smaller volume we know less and less about the momentum of each bit of matter...or do we? Question:  Once an event horizon has formed, does the Uncertainty Principle still apply, given than nothing can observe what's going on inside?  Let's say for the moment that it does still apply.  As the volume shrinks, uncertainty tells us that the individual particles must be moving faster and faster.  Neutron degeneracy pressure fails when the speed at which the neutrons would have to be moving exceeds the speed of light.

Let's suppose there is a singularity, a point, at the center.  Now let's drop a single neutron into the black hole.  As the neutron fall toward the singularity, the neutron's momentum becomes more and more important if it is to strike and somehow become part of the singularity.  Uncertainty tells us we can never know the position of the neutron with infinite position, which would seem to be required to make the neutron hit a infinitely precise point (the singularity).  It seems like the neutron ought to buzz around the singularity without ever actually hitting the singularity.  Uncertainty should cause the neutron's position to be very close (due to gravity) to the singularity, but sort of buzzing around the singularity in a region of uncertainty.  Question:  Is this akin to how an electron is thought of as an electron cloud instead of an actual particle orbiting a nucleus?

Now let's suppose there's no singularity.  A star has just collapsed, neutron degeneracy pressure has failed, and gravity is causing a bunch of neutrons to fall inward.  Move pressure due to gravity compressing everything into a smaller volume, but we can't give up momentum due to the limitation of the speed of light.  So we lose position...If gravity won't let anything move outward due to that speed limit, what does that say for what uncertainty can do to the position of the neutron.  Question:  Can uncertainty place the neutron further away from the center even though the neutron would otherwise have to exceed the speed of light?  Question:  If it is possible for the neutron, through the Uncertainty Principle, to appear further away from the center than it was in the past, doesn't that mean it's possible (though more unlikely) for that same neutron to again appear yet further away from the center?  Question:  If the neutron could, through uncertainty, move an arbitrarily large number of steps away from the center, doesn't that mean, however improbable it may be, that that neutron could escape from the black hole?  Question:  In what way is this similar to or distinct from Hawking Radiation (1 part of a virtual particle/antiparticle pair appearing outside an event horizon and escaping)?

Right.  Bunch of neutrons.  Gravity.  In with the falling, got it.  Do we end up with some sort of cloud or ball of neutrons buzzing around itself like a hornet's nest, unable to collapse further because uncertainty won't let it all appear in a single point?  Or is there enough temperature/pressure to overcome confinement and we get something like a quark matter?  QGP perhaps?

Friday, June 15, 2007 - Sunday, June 17, 2007

The Short Version

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.  Read this article on the New York Times and this article on PC World about scams and online photography equipment.  Have a look at Don Wiss to see the kinds of places we're talking about.  Before you buy anything- photography or otherwise- online, check pricegrabber's merchant ratings, resellerratings', well, reseller ratings, and (for photographic stuff only for now) sheddingsomelight.  B And H Photo are good people and seem to be trustworthy, but a bit expensive.  You'll do pretty well to stick with Amazon, better still if you make sure whatever you order is shipped by Amazon itself.  tNew Egg for memory cards and computer stuff.

If you're going to do business with anyone that you haven't already done business with or that you don't already know are good people, check the list at the bottom of this article/blog entry/rant for the company name or web site.  If the people you're considering doing business with are on that list, you'll do well to avoid them like the plague.

Don't worry about me- I didn't get screwed because I looked, thoroughly, before I leaped.  I suggest you do the same.

The Long Version

No 30D for me apparently.  I can afford the camera itself, but I would not have enough left over for the accessories I want to get along with it.  Looks like i'll get a Rebel XTi instead.  The XTi is 10.2mp instead of the 30D's 8.2mp.  Aside from descriptions of the 30D being more solidly built, I don't know what exactly is supposed to be better about the 30D.  Something about focusing zones and I think the 30D does 8 fps when you hold the shutter down, whereas the XTi only does 5 fps.  On the other hand, the XTi has slightly better resolution and a self-cleaning feature that's supposed to remove dust from the mirror (or the CMOS sensor itself).

Now for a bit of time with the serious hat.  I set out to buy a digital SLR (changeable lenses) instead of the regular point-and-shoot (no changeable lenses) I already have.  I have a regular (think 75-90mm) auto-focus zoom lens, and a 200mm zoom lens, from my deceased Canon 35mm.  I also have a 2000mm or 4000mm (forget which) spotting scope (manual focus) with the 2 adapters necessary to attach it to a Canon camera.  So I planned to stick with Canon.  In rough order of cost, my choices for Canon digital SLRs are:  Rebel XT (6mp or 8mp, around $500), Rebel XTi (10.2mp, around $650), 30D (8.2mp, around $800), 5d (12mp, around $1500), and 1D (16.7mp, around $4000).  The 5D is too expensive (at least, no accessories if I got it), and the 30D appears to have...now i'm not sure what, other than a higher fps than the XTi.  Anyway, was aiming for the 30D.

Now to look around online for 30D prices.  I know I can find one at a local store, but there's too much of a price difference.  There appear to be a range of prices for the 30D, from around $800 on up to $3000, depending on whether you get the 30D body and lenses, etc. or just the body.  I've got lenses and i'm getting accessories elsewhere, so i'm just looking for the body.  Below the $800 range there appear to be a few choices, some of which are quite a bit below $800.  Okay, let's look for one of those.

I know refurbished = bad.  Just like pre-owned car = used car = bad.  I don't care how wonderful anyone makes the camera, car, whatever out to be, it's used, therefore it's been returned, therefore something was wrong with it that might still be wrong with it when it gets to me.

For the most part i've been looking in Google's Products section (formerly named Froogle).  Found a 30D body for $540.  Better than the rest, let's bookmark that and go to bed.  The next day, I try to go back to the site and all I get is "500 Internal Server Error."  Okay, fine, maybe they're having server troubles or something.  Next day after that?  Nothing.  A week or 2 later?  Nothing.  Weird.  Okay, let's google for the main domain for that bookmark.  Prefad.com.  2 hits total on Google...1 from prefad.com itself and 1 from kruaklaibaan.com.  Eh?  Google for kruaklaibaan...bunch o pages in arabic...okay, no, I think we're done with prefad then.  Back to froogle.

The next sub-$800 price I find is on expresscameras.com, and it's $600 I think.  Fine, bookmark it, bedtime.  Next day, go back to check and it's $299.  Eh?  I thought it was $600 yesterday, not $300.  That's...a little too good for an otherwise $800 camera.  Let's google for expresscameras.com, see if we can find some info on them...  And so, the procession of scumbags begins...

According to this article on Cnet, expresscameras.com doesn't ship you what you order, they don't ship on time, and they change the price after you've ordered.  Scumbags, apparently.  Cameratopia.com and wisetronics.com are scumbags as well, according to this article.  Expresscameras.com also does business as Photo King   According to this article on the New Jersey State Attorney General's web site, Save Here Distribution is (basically scumbags), going by expresscameras.com, geniuscameras.com, trustedcameras.com, trustedphoto.com, luckydigital8.com, clearviewcamera.com, bluestripephoto.com, and hopecamera.com.  More winning testimonials over here at pricegrabber, from resellerratings.com, and photographyreview.com  as well.  According to this article on sheddingsomelight.com,  the same people also operate as Jack's Photo, PVD Photo, Edison Photo, Blue Strip Photo, shopphotoking.com, save-here.com, pvdphoto.com, mraccessory.com, Mr Accessory, Best Price Cameras, bestpricecameras.com, J&K Cameras, jandkcameras.com, jandkcamera.com, Infinity Cameras, infinitycameras.com, Infiniti Photo, infinitiphoto.com, Century 21 Electronics, century21electronics.com, and Enterprise Photo, enterprisephoto.com.

Next up from froogle is fotoconnection.com.  They have a 30D body in stock for $800.  Right in there with the rest of the apparently-not-scumbag pack.  Smarting a bit from expresscameras.com, so considering that I may have to pay $800 for the 30D after all.  Let's google for fotoconnection.com...  According to google product reviews...63 positive, 15 neutral, and 279 negative reviews.  More scumbags?  Let's look at some of the reviews.  According to this article on resellerratings.com, these people are also 1stop, newconnection, and photoconnection.

Next up from froogle is zoommania.com.  Okay, weird name, but let's have a look.  Forgot how much their 30D body was.  Googling for it...  According to this article zoommania.com supplies crap grey market products.  Not quite the same level of scumbaggedness, but still junk when it gets there.

Okay, how about labellecameras.com?  30D body for $639.  Google for these people and... This article on resellerratings.com shows 5 reviews, 4 negative, for an 80% negative rating.  Again, not the level of scumbaggedness expresscameras.com appears to be up to, but more in the vein of very bad customer service. 

Stop4camera.com maybe?  This article on epinions.com shows high pressure sales and selling items that aren't really in stock.  Also going by howdycamera.com and leobarnet.com. 

Among the practices of these businesses is making you call their 800 number to confirm your order.  This in and of itself isn't so bad, but this appears to usually be a pretext for a high-pressure sales pitch to sell you more expensive stuff.  Bait and switch, I believe that is.  Another habit is listing items on their web site as being in stock, even though they know the item isn't in stock.  You call the 800 number, resist the high pressure sales pitch, then they tell you oops, that item's out of stock, sorry.  Also, they'll send you whatever bundle of stuff you ordered, but list it on the invoice as a single package, then when you go to return or exchange an item, they'll charge you a restocking fee because you didn't return the entire box of stuff.  Another fun practice is requiring you to pay in some form (ex: Western Union or eGold) that gives you no recourse when the seller doesn't send you anything.

Companies I keep seeing mentioned as being reputable include B&H Photo.  I looked and their prices are relatively high, but ok, that's a sense of security for you.  I also see repeated references to just go look for whatever I want to buy on Amazon.

So, let's go have a look at amazon.com.  Lower prices than B&H, but higher prices than the scumbag types above.  At $741, let's give it a shot.  Oh, that's not the 30D though.  Apparently the cost of a 30D in the non-scumbag range of the spectrum is up around $1500 for the body alone.  Maybe I should have another look at the Rebel XTi.  I think we'll give Amazon a shot.  I've ordered several books through them over the years, all with no troubles.

Amazon, $675 for a black Canon Rebel XTi body (no lenses), ships from Amazon itself.  Into the cart.  Now for accessories.

Let's see...Battery grip (plugs into camera's battery compartment, fits 2 batteries into a base attachment) on Amazon...$90 (with 2 batteries) for an Opteka grip...ships from 47th Street Photo.  Google for 47th Street Photo...According to this article on photo.net, they lie about in stock vs out of stock.  Also from this other article on photo.net. Okay, so won't be dealing with them.  Back to Amazon for battery grips...  Another 1 for $70 (no batteries), but 47th Street Photo, so no.  $95 for the same grip with 8 batteries...47th Street Photo again.

Ah...$50 for a Digital Concepts PG-100 battery grip, does the same thing, from Cameta Camera.  Google for them...  According to this article on phototakers.com they seem to be good folks with a bit of trouble on refurbished vs demo products.  Check the Amazon page again...Yes, it's new.  Add that one to the cart for the time being...

Next up, camera armor for a Rebel XTi.  Camera armor is a sort of rubber housing that goes around the camera and on the end of the lens.  $36, ships from Amazon itself.  Into the cart.

Next, a ring light.  A macro lens is for taking pictures of small, very close-up things.  Since the subject is so close to the lens, the flash location becomes a problem.  The XTi has a standard built-in flash above the lens, which will cause this sort of problem.  A ring light is a doughnut-shaped flash that screws onto the front of the lens and, when it goes off, flashes from all the way around the doughnut shape.  First look is at an Opteka RL-500 for $100.  Nuts.  47th Street Photo.  Here's a $79 ring light made by and shipped from Digital Innovations.  Google for them...Lot of hits, don't see any 'these people are scumbags' reviews.  Into the cart for now.

Shutter release cable for $23 from Adorama Camera...Googling...don't see any bad stuff.  Into the cart.  And back out of the cart after reading Don Wiss' stuff.

The XTi takes a compact flash card.  I see a 16gb card listed on Pricewatch, but it doesn't specify the speed.  On Amazon, i'm looking at an 8gb card that says 266x speed.  I don't know what it's 266x from, but I do understand that 1 of the major limiting factors when taking quick-shot pictures is the write speed to memory.  I don't see anything faster than that listed on Amazon, so I think i'll stick with 8gb at the fastest speed vs 16gb at an unknown speed.  $107 from Digital Etc.  Googling...Okay, so they're a wholesaler.  2 pages of google hits, don't see much in the way of reviews, positive or negative.  Let's say...in the cart for now.  Figure no accessories to up-sell; the card's a single widget that either works or doesn't.  No, no, never mind.  Out of the cart.  8gb, 266x, over at newegg.com, $94.  Done business with them in the past.  Always good experiences there.  Digital Etc on Don Wiss below though.

Last but not least (from Amazon) is a fisheye lens.  $33, manual focus, but...47th Street Photo, so no deal there.  Back to search...3 fisheye lenses for the XTi on Amazon, all from 47th Street Photo.  No fisheye for me then.

Extra batteries.  Highest capacity I can find on Amazon is 1700mAh, $11 from Sterlingtek.  Googling...Resellerratings.com review...Couple of complaints about batteries not being shipped or the wrong (cheaper) battery being shipped even though the better (more expensive) battery listed on invoice and charged to customer.  Hrm.  Well, i'm going through Amazon's checkout so there's at least some protection.  Into the cart.

Next up, the macro lens.  $294 from cameraaddict.com.  Googling...According to this article on photoscam.com, it's the same people as Wild Digital.  Okay, scumbags, so no deal.  Looking at Amazon for the same lens, 2 hits only, both $399.  Looking further through the photoscam article...Scumbags also include Butterfly Photo, dbuys.com, Broadway Photo, A&M Photo World, Cameratopia, Digital Liquidators, Ghu, Preferred Photo, Prestige Camera, Regal Camera, and Tronicity.  I guess it's a big thing in Brooklyn, NY, a center for gray market camera scumbaggery.  This article on donwiss.com is from some guy (Don Wiss) that apparently went bicycling around Brooklyn, indexing digital camera stores.

Ah, here we go.  This article on the New York Times and this article on PC World talk about Brooklyn camera dealers, the gray market, Don Wiss, and so on.  The article fills in a lot of backstory I might not be making clear.  And if you want to see just how abusive the high pressure sales jerks can be, have a look at the Thomas Hawk incident.

Back to the article on donwiss.com.  There are so many (a few hundred) listings, I think i'll list them in an index.  I do note that B&H Photo, which has appeared to be reputable in every other online listing i've seen so far, appears on Don's site.  Don's listing for B&H doesn't reference multiple dba's as most of the other listings do, so it appears that, while they do appear on his list, they haven't set off my scumbag sense (as opposed to spidey sense).  A certain unmentioned relative of mine has done business with B&H for decades and says he stops in whenever he's in New York.  He say's they're good people, so until I hear otherwise, I think i'll count B&H on the white list.  I'll put the bad guy index at the bottom of this article/blog entry/rant, along with a methodology for who to count or not count as bad guys/scumbags.

This article is from the New York Better Business Bureau, about Abes Camera And Electronics.  Also from the NYBBB is this article about Butterfly Photo.  And this article about Dbuys.  And this article about Rainbow Tronics.  This article on sheddingsomelight.com talks about the 1 Stop Camera people. 

This article on pricerunner.com, about cameraaddict.com bears special mention.  Someone ordered a camera from them, then got a call saying the person needed to call their credit card people to confirm the order.  The Camera Addict person gave the customer the credit card people's phone number.  The person called, gave whatever information, then found that someone had tried to order a $5,500 computer on the credit card.  The person's bs detector went off after the fact when they realized that Camera Addict had given them the phone number for the credit card people.  Now...i've always wondered why people frequently react to me like i'm nuts when I do this, for example:  The student loan people call to tell me it's time to make a payment, and offer to take a payment over the phone.  I tell them no, I can't do that because I don't know whether or not they're the real student loan people.  I tell them i'll call back and make a payment.  They then offer to give me the phone number, and I explain to them that, if they were the bad guys, they'd give me the bad guy phone number.  They then offer to tell me some of my information to verify that they know me, and I explain that it doesn't matter how much they know or claim to know about me, they could still be the bad guys who've found out a lot about me (say, name, address, phone number) but are trying to get some other bit of info (credit card number, last 4 of my ssn).  Unless i've looked up the phone number and called in, I absolutely never provide any info other than telling them to note the account that i'll call back and make a payment.  Of course, I then call back and make a payment.  This is similar to Carol fussing about my locking the car doors even though we've got a fence and several very large dogs.  Funny, what with karma and all.  They (the student loan people) called, right this very second.  Same conversation as always, with a frustrated lady having the same problem they always have understanding that there is no way they can prove to me, with them calling me, that they're the real student loan people.  I have difficulty getting it across to people that, from a security standpoint, you have to do it the same way, follow the same procedure every single time, no matter what.  Yes, I have to pay for it with the occasional squawking from Carol when she's gone to her car and found, much to her surprise, that the door's locked and the alarm is armed.  I have to pay for it with the few extra seconds it costs to lock my own car door even if i'm just going to take the mail inside, or when I feel lazy and don't want to get out of bed to go find the student loan phone number, and call them.  None of that matters, though, because I know that my information is safe, that my car won't (or is less likely to) be stolen, etc..  Have to follow procedure, every last time.

Right.  Where was I?  Macro lens.  Was looking at cameraaddict.com, but they appear to be scumbags.  Amazon...No luck on the Tokina 100mm lens...Let's try the Sigma 70mm lens.  Checkout is through Amazon, shipped from Cambridge World, which appears on donwiss.com.  However, they aren't listed as going by multiple different, unrelated names.  Cambridge World is cambridgeworld.com and that's it on donwiss.com.  Google for some reviews...It's just 1 review, but This article on dealofday.com says scumbags, so let's err on the side of caution.  How about a Sigma 28mm lens...ships directly from Amazon, $263.  In the cart.

Only thing left that i'm not ordering through Amazon is a camera backpack.  No, no, I was nosing around on Amazon for those and there were a bunch.  Not going to have everything but 1 bit from Amazon.  Here's a Tamrac bag, ships from Amazon, $68.

I think that's it.  Let's see what we've got:  Ring flash, through Amazon, from Digital Innovations, $79.  Shutter release cable, through Amazon, from Amazon, $20.  Battery grip, through Amazon, from Amazon, $141.  Camera backpack, through Amazon, from Amazon, $68.  Sigma macro lens, through Amazon, from Amazon, $263.  Batteries, through Amazon, from Sterlingtek, $44.  Canon XTi, through Amazon, from Amazon, $675.  Camera armor, through Amazon, from Amazon, $36.  8gb, 266x compact flash card, through newegg.com, $94.

Index Of Scumbags

I've seen a large number of business, web sites, etc. listed in various reviews and donwiss.com.  I know that, at least, B&H Photo appears to be good people.  Also, I don't see anything on donwiss.com that says everyone listed on his site are bad guys.  So, how to choose who to add to or omit from the list below?  The negative reviews i've come across- stories of bait and switch, high pressure sales, and so on- let's say those automatically go on the list.  That leaves the donwiss.com entries.  Let's say, of those entries, an entry gets listed if the company goes by more than 1 dissimilar name or web site.  That leaves companies with 1 name and 1 web site.  Of those, let's say if there's a specific negative aspect of their entry (such as, only does business by Western Union, so no recourse) they go on the list.  Going through everything i've referenced in this article/blog entry/rant, then through all of the donwiss.com entries...  I debated about this one, but i'm going to say it's at least suspicious enough to me that I wouldn't do business with someone who uses a mail drop instead of an actual place of business.  Non-existant address go on the list.  Claiming to be a registered business, but not being so goes on the list.  What I haven't included on the list are companies whose addresses turn out to be residences or heavily graffiti covered buildings.  So what if they're running a business out of their home?  So what if their office is in a rough area?  Neither thing necessarily means a dishonest business.  I should also add a disclaimer that I own several unrelated web sites, though I am not a merchant of any kind.  However, my sites are not multiple versions of the same thing; something like i've got John's Widgets, John's Doohickeys, and John's Thingamabobs, but not John's Widgets, Frank's Widgets, and Bob's Widgets.  Keep in mind that I don't really know whether or not each of the companies/sites below are scumbags.  It's all hearsay, since i'm basing everything on what someone else has said or written.  So, as far as what this list actually means, I would say the people bellow are people I would not do business with and, for safety and peace of mind, I would recommend everyone else to avoid as well.  Here's the list:

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Is hot.  Swamp cooler not fired up for the summer yet.  Too many yappy dogs here.  Thunder no longer pregnant.  Or alive.  3 puppies, 1 survived.  Bottle feeding that one every 3 1/2 hrs.  Messes with sleep schedule a lot.  Nice that 2 weeks vacation after next week.  Should have enough $ for a 30D camera.

With Dungeon Lords finished, what to play next?  Fired up Half Life 1 for a bit today.  Yes, I know, Half Life 2 is out (got it installed already), but I don't feel right playing 2 without having beaten 1.  Looking forward to trying the Zero Point Energy weapon in 2.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Just finished Dungeon Lords.  Final boss was a bit too easy.  Problem leading up to him though.  In the last level there's a series of gates you have to go through.  As you approach each gate, 2 spawn points (to the left and right of each gate) spawn increasingly tough monsters.  Kill each set of monsters and the corresponding gate opens.  I think it's a total of 3 gates.  At each gate, Volgar gives some narration, then the monsters spawn.  The problem was that I saved during or after his narration, but before the monsters spawned.  I didn't kill the monsters on the first try, so I had to re-load.  On re-loading, Volgar's narration doesn't happen (it's already happened) and the monsters never spawn.  But without the monsters spawning, you can't defeat the monsters, and without that, the gate won't open.  I tried getting up on the rocks (yes, including back-flipping) and getting around the gate, all to no avail.  I didn't want to lose all the work i'd done between the most recent save and the save before that, so I tried a character editor and tried messing with the Player Position coordinates.  In never did work out what the coordinates are for just on the other side of the last gate, but I did get a set of coordinates that the game will interpret as bumping you to the landing spot for the last area (with the final boss in it).  So, if you're stuck, get the character editor, and set your coordinates for x = 32768, y = 49506, z = 10000.  As for the final boss, I have 40 castings of cataclysm on my character (yes, legitimately earned and bought), so the boss was cake. 

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Thunder still pregnant.  Hope she doesn't have her puppies while Carol's gone.  I have instructions for what to do if it does happen when Carol's gone, and they're gross.  No, I won't go into detail, thank you.  Mid-wife, but i'm male, so...mid-husband?

Pit bull update...a few weeks back I was out working neighborhoods up in the Lake Arrowhead area.  Went to one door, no answer.  It was only then, after I had walked away from my car, that the pit bull next door noticed me.  And he's not tied up.  Great.  And he appears to consider the bit of road in front of his house, this bit being between me and my car, to be part of his territory.  And I see that I have no cell reception, so can't call for help.  All material from the jacket into pants pockets, check.  Jacket off, held out sort of bull-fight-cape style, either make me seem bigger and more threatening, or distract the pit bull long enough, or just keep its teeth off of me long enough.  Keys in hand, ready to get into the car asap.  Right, here we go.  Walk, walk, bark, bark, he approaches, but not closer than 5 to 10 feet.  I sort of shook the jacket when he got too close and he shied back.  Anti-climax I suppose, since I got in the car uneventfully, but it could have gone much worse.

A trip to Yellowstone in...1987 I think.  My cousin Virginia taught me how to shuffle cards (bridge and fan).  Pop always complains about me not appreciating the scenery, that since I usually took a big stack of comic books with me, he could just as well have locked me in the trunk and I wouldn't have noticed the difference.  To which I would usually respond that he could have also just as well left me home and saved us both the trouble.  I understand his sentiment, but once i've looked up and seen that, yes, there are in fact rocks, trees, and dirt outside the car window just like there have been for the last 7 hours, I don't need to keep looking at them to know they're still there.  Schrodinger aside, of course.

Weird...you know how most stores have signs indicating no merchandise allowed in the bathrooms?  The Walgreens in Victorville has a security scanner you walk through in front of their bathrooms.  Guess they're serious.

Bathroom at the Staples in Hesperia was nice enough, though their automatic paper towel dispenser goes off whenever someone even walks by the thing.

There were a couple of girls working some sort of extra in-store table at the Yucca Valley Walmart a few months back.  They were chatting with each other, which was fine, but they were cussing (f-this, f-that, etc.), which was not.  They were not Walmart employees.  Talked to customer service, who said they (the 2 girls) would not be invited back.  Never saw them again after that day.  I don't have a problem with cussing itself- it's just words and how one chooses to communicate is entirely one's own choice.  The problem I see is when one is unable to control or regulate it.  I bang my thumb with a hammer, okay, f- f- f- f-, fine.  But if it's so much part of my daily conversation that I use it in the wrong places and at the wrong times, then it interferes with my daily life.  I don't think i've ever had a problem with it, but I do see a number of kids who don't understand that it's wrong in certain settings, like the classroom or when they're at work, especially in a public setting.

Down to Carlsbad a few months back.  Got to see the USS Midway aircraft carrier, and a Vietnam-era soviet sub someone had bought and put on display.  Got to walk around  inside.  Basically lots of mechanical sub-ish type stuff, but with russian labeling.  Nice museum piece to see, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Home for the weekend, 3 days, yay.  Where's that blasted topic file...  Several different versions of it, had to sort which covered, which not.

Chinese jacks!  I don't remember how to play the game, though i'm sure I can find the rules online somewhere.  Little plastic rings, sort of thicker, flimsier version of a key ring.  Onesies, twosies, and to on are done by attaching that many minus one rings to a central ring.  The main interest in these, apart from general nostalgia, is that they're very hard to find.  I bought a couple of packs from a Longs Drugs a few years ago, and I haven't seen any more since.  Yes, I know, internet, ebay, and all that.  I prefer just to keep my eyes out and be pleasantly surprised one day.

Fat Albert.  I don't recall too much too clearly from my early childhood, but I do remember watching Fat Albert.  I think the racial makeup of the areas I used to live in as a child were mostly white and/or mexican (yeah, caucasian, hispanic, whatever; get over it).  The thing is, I don't remember there being very many black people around.  But I watched Fat Albert on tv a lot.  It wasn't 'oh my god, those are *black* people.'  It was just a bunch of cartoon kids having normal kid problems.  So, when I got to a school or a point in my life where I started to encounter a larger number of black people, it was no big thing.  I didn't think better or worse of them; they were just more people.  I know things would probably have worked out that way anyway, but I think watching all that Fat Albert helped.  So, thank you Mr Cosby.

Got Deepreader on my phone.  Bunch of books installed.  Tacky or not, I still say you can get through just about any book, no matter how long, no matter how boring, in a page or two per sitting in that certain room you have to visit each day.  Thought about working through the Wizard Of Oz books.  I remember liking them as a kid and I appear to have all of them, including the post-Baum ones.  I don't remember which book it's in, but I do have this way-back childhood memory of a girl (don't know if it was Dorothy) being confronted with...the gnome king, was it?  Short fat guy that was scared of eggs...ah, and of Billina.  Something about all of the girl's friends turned into green objects, placed in the gnome king's museum of green objects and she had to pick which ones were her friends.  I'll get to it eventually...oh, and the...what was it now?  It was, I think, a mounted trophy head attached to a sofa that had been sprinkled with the same stuff used to bring Jack Pumpkinhead to life.

Read through all 6 (7?) Foundation books.  Good stuff for the most part.  I'm not at all sure how I feel about the menacing tone of what Daneel intended to do/become with the Auroran at the end of book 6.  A big focus was that he was tired after so many years, so why not do the one thing that would make it never stop at all?  Great logic there.  Book 7, which should be the book that chronicles Hari's and Dors' life after the events of Prelude To Foundation was...okay.  Yes, I understand- wives get emotional and defensive where their husbands are concerned.  The thing that bugged me throughout most of the book was that Dors' behavior flatly contradicted her nature.  She was reacting as a woman, not as...  I understand the motivation, the bonding and becoming attached to her husband and all that, but for pretty much the entire book I had the continuing though in my heard that...naah, that's not the way she should / would act; it's bad storytelling.  I want to say this was the first post-Asimov Foundation book and I hope i'm not knocking Asimov himself, but this book was merely okay.  I don't know how much of a hit you over the head with it thing the last line from Hari was supposed to be, but I remember betting myself that would be the last thing he said.

On a totally unrelated note, I wouldn't be surprised if, when it happens, if it doesn't happen suddenly (ex: a car accident), I get a black rabbit with a light silver shimmer.  I hope I remember my lines if that's the case.  That was about the best one of those scenes (passages) of any book/movie i've ever read/seen.

Star Ship Troopers.  Never read the book; only saw the movie (and not the sequel).  Nice enough movie.  Pitty about the Mormons though.  The thing that (no pun) bugged me the most was that the bug planet was supposed to be on the other side of the galaxy and the bug's strategic weapon was shooting asteroids at us.  Got that part- an asteroid or comet impacting the Earth, causing city-sized damage.  That I buy.  But, if the bugs were on the other side of the galaxy and, regardless of what plasma they can shoot out of their behinds, the asteroids would have to be traveling at sub-light speeds and would therefore take tens of thousands of years to get here.  I know, i'm accusing a Hollywood movie of having bad science.  It was still annoying though.

Critical Thinking Theater.  I sat down and transcribed a random commercial (toothpaste I think), then went through and evaluated every statement made, either on screen or by voice.  I wanted to see what, if any, information the commercial actually provided, instead of just manipulating the viewer.  I think it boiled down to nothing other than saying the product's name.  Thought it might be interesting to go through other commercials and see how little they actually say.  Which sorts of commercials say the most?  Which say the least?

Next topic is favorite starship...wonder what I was thinking?  1701-E's pretty good.  SDF-1...the gravitic ship from the Foundation books...Maybe the...Lying Bastard was it?  A Type 1 General Products hull with a Quantum II hyperdrive motor.  Take it out for a weekend spin...built-in RKV system.  Hard to choose.

Don't remember the date, but I see a note here that I stopped at the Pilot gas station in Hesperia, CA.  Apparently they wouldn't let me pay with debit or credit inside the store; only cash.  Lost the sale of a soda, 2 bags of chips, and a tank of gas.  I can put up with a lot, but there's a point where I just won't spend my money.  This was it.

It's hard to fit this in with the calorie limit and all, but I like cheese.  Not fake cheese.  Not pasteurized processed cheese food substitute- it's not just fake cheese, it's *fake* fake cheese.  So, when I allow myself cheese, I try to make a point of buying something that says just "cheese."

Tempted by the $100 talking deer head thing at Kmart.  It can do canned phrases, or pipe radio music through, or there's a Mr Microphone type of thing included with it.  Looks like fun to mess with people, but apart from work, I don't run into a large enough supply of people.  I miss the original Country Bears Jamboree.

Finally visited the Farmhouse restaurant in Banning, CA.  This is the place by the Highland Springs offramp to the I-10.  With the giant chicken statue out front.  The waitress took way too long to serve us, not just the gosh-it's-busy in here too long, but the does-she-know-we-exist too long.  The buffet at Farmhouse is $16 and the variety is limited, certainly not as good as Hometown (which charges about $11 or $12 per person).  So, unless you have a thing for giant chicken statues, skip Farmhouse.

Hero that he is, sometimes...Superman is a dick.

Always wanted to visit Narnia.  Funny how people in religious stories (Narnia, Old Testament, etc.) always seem to get a physical, incontrovertible example, but when you point this out to anyone in the real world, they go on about how important faith is.  When I tell you about what other people did, the other people get to see physical proof, but when I tell you to do something, you have to take my word for it because I know what the almighty wants and you don't, and if you don't take my word for it you're going to hell.  Riiight.

I don't know how much the idea of willing suspension of disbelief has to do with church services vs movies or books.  Preaching just doesn't do anything for me, because I know that men lie, and I know that, no matter how whole-heartedly the preacher may believe what he's telling me, he is still lying when he says God wants such-and-such because he doesn't know that God wants such-and-such.  He only knows that other people have told him that.  He has absolutely know knowledge whatsoever about God himself.  Blatant logical contradictions like 'these are the latter days" or "the end is near" vs "no one but the father himself knows the hour."  I think what "you have to have faith" translates into is pretty much "ignore the giant, gaping plot hole."  Aaanyway, sermons don't do anything for me, but certain movies and books do.  Example:  Raiders Of The Lost Ark.  I very much understand that this is a fictional tale, but it's still a more powerful moment for me when Indy and Sollah first raise the Ark out of the stone box and later when the Ark is opened, more powerful than any sermon.  The entire Chronicles of Narnia are another example.  Narnia equals fiction, got that.  Aslan equals Jesus, got that.  Birth of the world, destruction of the world, original sin, dying on the cross, got all that.  I feel the stories as I read or watch them.  Willing suspension of disbelief (books, movies) vs a red-line on my bs detector (sermons).  Maybe the difference is the former is being presented as fiction whereas the latter is being presented as fact.

Let's try an easy one:  Preacher says we can not know the nature of God the almighty, ergo we have to have faith.  K.  Preacher then says preacher knows what God wants and what God wants is for me to do what preacher tells me to do.  Again I say, riiight.

Saw ferret food at a Walmart, here in California.  Funny, since I thought ferrets were still illegal in California.

Urr...i'm supposed to write about Christopher Titus, but I don't remember him...Wikipedia says he's a standup comic...Google images?  K.  Doesn't look too familiar.  Youtube?  Ah, that guy.  Okay, screwed up family schtick, got it.  My friend Jerry used to say, even with the 'rents divorcing and all, I still had the Norman Rockwell version of that.  Have to watch Titus' routine tomorrow when I can have the sound above a whisper (Carol's asleep).

Rod Deluhery?  Wonder whatever happened to him.  Saw him at Lamont's service, but other than that, haven't seen him in years.  Kudos for the kidney thing though.

Corrine's reaction...to what?  Need to write in here more often.

The phone-lift thingy.  Where did I see that?  It's a gadget that, when a call comes in, it automatically lifts the handset and does...I don't remember.  A gee-whiz answering machine I think.

Best Buy.  Well, i'd like to write nice things about them, but as they still haven't fixed my car's odometer illuminator their install bay guys broke, I can't really say anything nice about them.  So, for now, i'd say don't trust them with your car, your computer, or anything else you own.

Biotene gum, what?  It's supposed to be good for you I think, help rebuild enamel or some such.

Sleep now.  Bit more Dungeon Lords tomorrow.  Work didn't say I could work on monday, so I do have a 3 day weekend, woot.  Sleep.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Guess I should make entries more often here.  It's been almost a year.

Went to the computer show in Pomona this weekend.  Fun, as always, but it appears to be shrinking.  The show used to be bigger, with a wider variety and selection of vendors.  It used to fill 2 small buildings or 1 large building, but now it's down to 1 small building.  The prices are still good and there's still a lot of neat stuff to look at, but the show does seem to be continuing a downward trend.  $8 parking, $8 ticket for the show or $5 if you order online, so $13 for one person to get in the door.  Strange that parking costs 60% more than the ticket itself.

My desktop is a P4 2.4gHz (socket 478), 2gb ram, 200gb & 250gb hard drives.  Plenty of ram and hard drive space as is.  At the show they had a P4 at 3.4gHz (socket 478) for $108.  The price didn't seem too bad and, while i'd always like my system to be faster, i'm not $108 worth of convinced that it will make that much of a difference.  My system isn't unbearably slow at this point, so no need there.

Verizon FIOS.  Internet service over fiber optic cable.  Whereas dial-up maxes out at 56kbps, DSL/Cable around 768kbps to 3,000kbps, Verizon FIOS clocks in at up to around 25,000kbps.  The most i've experienced is 1,536kbps.  Carol raises dogs, who are occasionally sick or injured.  When they come back from the vet's office, they occasionally have these plastic cone things attached to their heads to stop them from scratching themselves.  It's like if you stuck your head through the pointy end of a cone and then had to wear the cone around everywhere- you couldn't touch your head.  When the dogs are wearing these, getting to their food and water is a problem.  The cone hits the edge of the cage before the dog's mouth gets to the food or water.  So, the dog walks up to the food or water bowl, tries to get to the food/water, to the point where its tongue is sticking out, trying to get some of the food or water, but it can't quiiiiite reach the bowl.  It's funny to see in action, because the dog is still trying to run toward the bowl- it's legs are still going.  Talk about frustration.  For the dogs, this only goes on for a couple of minutes because Carol has a different set of bowls she puts in the cage for such occasions, doing so right after she's brought the dog home and put it in the cage.  It's that frustration, or at least that level of frustration I think of when I think of Verizon FIOS.

Yes, I know I said below that I wouldn't move anywhere that didn't have broadband.  I do have broadband now, but it's half-assed.  I have since married and moved to a home somewhere between Banning and Palm Springs.  No DSL and no cable because i'm too far away from any city.  Verizon FIOS is offered in Beaumont and Palm Springs, but not Banning.  The layout is, roughly, west to east: Beaumont, then Banning, then about 15 miles of desert, then Palm Springs.  As I understand it, Verizon FIOS is not offered in Banning because Verizon FIOS comes with Verizon FIOS TV, and the city of Banning has some kind of agreement with the cable tv folks (Time Warner / Comcast I think).  I'm well outside of Banning at the current place.  If I call in to the Verizon FIOS number, they tell me that Verizon FIOS is offered in my area, but when they search my exact address, it's not available.  The most frustrating thing is that they confirm that, yes, the Verizon FIOS line does indeed run along my street (the major power and phone lines are right outside of the property).  So, it's right there, not more than 30 feet away, but no Verizon FIOS for me.  I don't know if the city shown on my mailing address is an incorporated city or an unincorporated part of Riverside County, and i'm not sure who I need to talk to at the city, county, or Verizon, but man oh man is it frustrating having it right there but not being able to get Verizon FIOS.  I figure i've got a bit of trying to running toward the food bowl to do at this point- no idea if it's pointless or if there's even a potential for success.  Got to try though.  The plan at this point is to figure out whether i'm in a city or an unincorporated part of the county, then figure out who at the city or county would have to make nice with Verizon, then either call or write to that person (with a cc to the Verizon FIOS people).  I'll even visit a council meeting or two if that might help.

I know, with DSL, the nearest phone trunk site has to have what's called a multiplexer to offer DSL to customers in that area.  I remember someone telling me a multiplexer costs around $30k, so it's not a cheap bit of equipment.  I don't know what the corresponding piece of equipment is for Verizon FIOS.  Depending on the number of customers in my area, it might be reasonable if the multiplexer equivalent is in the $30k range, but it might be unreasonable if it's $5m.  Can't stand no broadband, or at least half-assed broadband.  Speaking of which...

November 8, 2006

John tries Linux. Again. I've tried Mandrake before. Installation was nice and relatively easy back then. It was easy this time as well. Last time I was happy enough with the system- it did what I wanted. I could write documents, do spreadsheets, browse the web, do basic web design, irc chat, email, all that stuff. I do remember a major headache last time being getting Java working in Konqueror. That process, that experience, is the major reason I felt then and (as you will see below) still feel that Linux, Mandrake then and Slackware now, aren't ready by a long shot for the general public. Now, I understand that something like 'editing the .conf file to include the refresh rate and resolution you want available to your screen resolution choices' is a terribly simple thing to do for anyone who knows their way around Linux. All it is is typing in an extra line of stuff in what amounts to a text file somewhere. No way, no how is that going to work for an average, everyday user. Compare the processes: Linux: I want to change the desktop resolution to something higher than 1024x768. Okay. Right-click on the desktop...Configure desktop? No, that's backgrounds and wallpapers and stuff. Display tab? Ah, Screen size. Only choices are 1024x768 and below. That can't be right- I know my monitor goes up to 2048x1536. I nose about in the system, looking for hardware settings for my video card...Nothing. I google for changing the screen resolution in Slackware. Ah, I have to run some program (Xorg I think it was) that will write this .conf file (contains, among other things, screen resolution choices) for me. I run the program, reboot, and now I have full screen resolution (2048x1536) and everything on down. Ok, done. Windows XP: Right-click on the desktop. Only choices are 800x600 and below. Click on Advanced, click on Adapter, pick which graphics card I have and maybe give it a driver disk. Reboot. Done. Nice, easy, simple. One might argue that this is simply a learning process and that I have to get used to a new OS. Bull. It should be simple, obvious, and intuitive. Click here, click there, done. No having to hand-edit some damned configuration file or figure out where some unmarked program is, etc.. Was it too hard to do? No. What was wrong was the hair-pulling experience of having to do all that stuff just to get my screen at the resolution I want. It was an equally hair-pulling experience back when I was trying (with help even) to get Java working in Konqueror. The point is, it (Linux, Slackware in this case) is still a pain to set up. It's up and running now (typing this entry on another computer). Desktop is KDE 3.4, it's a P4 @ 2.4ghz, 2gb ram. Eye candy and plenty enough horsepower. Let's go nose around a bit.

The “K” button is where the Start button is in XP. Something familiar. Press that to go find programs. That I understand. Got it. There's a quick launch bar next to the K button. There's Show Desktop, Konqueror (web browser), Home (sort of like My Computer), Kword (word processor), and Help. There's a button with 1, 2, 3, and 4. This made sense, even when I first encountered it the previous time. It's 4 different desktops. You see the same stuff (K button, quick launch bar, etc.), but you have 4 different desktops to open windows on. Say you get a bunch of windows opened up for one project and you want to start another project, but you don't want to mess up how you've got everything opened and arranged on the desktop. Click on “2” to see another desktop with no windows open. Open a browser, word processor, whatever you want do do. Click on “1” and you see all your windows and programs from before still sitting there just the way you left them. Click on “2” and you see whatever new stuff you just opened. It's easy to see when you're using it.

Under the K button there's “Development.” Nah, I don't want to develop anything. It's my first time in Slackware. Oh, there is Quanta Plus. If I remember right, that's for web design, sort of like Frontpage. I can edit my web pages with that. Okay, got it. K >> Editors shows me some text editors. Okay, got that. K >> Edutainment. What's this? I can study Spanish verb forms, practice my fractions, plot mathematical functions, practice touch typing, there's a desktop planetarium, periodic table of elements, and a tests and exams editor. I think i'll try that last one... Program started, Edit >> Add to add a new question, walks you through it. Nice and easy. Made a simple 2-question math test. Saved it to the desktop, no problem. Closed the test making program, there's the test file on the desktop. Let's run that and see what it does... Nope, runs the test designer program again. K >> Edutainment >> Teaching Tools >> Tests & Exams. Ah, the test program as opposed to the test design program. Started the program (KEduca), opened the test file on the desktop, works fine. Took the test, one question right, one question wrong. Ah- Save Results... I can save the test I just took. Okay, makes sense. But I want to print my results...No, doesn't look like I can do that. Can I print the test from the test design program? Yes. Oh- no printer choices. No printer setup. Ah, but there's an Add Printer Wizard button right next to where you choose the printer. Okay, run that... Next, it's a local usb printer, parallel parallel serial blah blah blah...hey, Slackware is already aware of my printer and it's the correct model. Click on that, Next, then Printer Model Selection. What? Now I don't see my printer... Open Konqueror to look on the web, google for linux print drivers for my printer... Now that is weird...Apparently i'm supposed to set it up as this completely different brand of printer. Okay, trying to do so...printing...worked. Ok then. That was relatively painless. I'm not happy that the test program prints the questions but not the multiple choices I gave for possible answers. Oh well, at least I can use the program and print open-question tests. Not bad. Back to the K button.

K >> Games. Arcade, Board, Card, Kids, and Tactics & Strategy games. Try Mah Jonng...lost, but I understand the choices. Ok, next.

K >> Graphics. Image editors, the Gimp (like Photoshop), etc.. Hey- there's a PDF viewer built in. Good. Next.

K >> Internet. There's Mozilla, and IRC client, Thunderbird (oh, good, that's what I use for my email under XP), Firefox, Konqueror, etc.. Ok, I think I understand what I need to from that stuff. Next.

K >> Multimedia. CD player, video players, etc.. Ok, nice to know it's there. Nothing I want to listen to or watch right now, but I know where to find that stuff.

K >> Office. Oh boy are there a lot of choices. Kspread (like Excel) and Kword (like, well, Word) among others. Very good- I know where to find the 2 programs that I absolutely must have to write and do spreadsheets. I've used Kword before. I don't know if i've used Kspread before. From memories of Kword, it's fairly familiar and easy to use. Cut, copy, paste, select and choose fonts and sizes, it's all about where i'm used to it being. Good. Next.

K >> Settings. Desktop settings, screensaver settings, etc.. Essentially what you get when you right-click on the desktop in XP.

K >> System. Info center, user management, and hey- screen size and rotate. Now that blasted Slackware knows what kind of video card I have, I can change the desktop resolution easily.

K >> Toys. Mouse Odometer, On Screen Creature, Tea Cooker,and World Clock. Toys, nothing productive, just little things to fiddle around with. Got it.

K >> Utilities. Dictionary, Floppy formatter, Scientific Calculator, Font Viewer, all kinds of odds and ends. Ok, whatever. Nothing I need to fiddle with right now, but nice to see the stuff that's there. Ah, there's a personal alarm scheduler... Easy to give myself a wakeup call in 1 minute...and up it shows at the right time. No sound though. Guess I still have to set that up. Hope it's not a pain. Next.

That's it for the sub-menus under the K button. There's also the equivalent of a control panel, find files, help, etc..

So. I know how to write a letter, do a spreadsheet, go online, edit my web page. Oh- do i know how to upload and download the web page instead of just editing it once it's already on that computer? K >> Internet >> ftp utility... Login successful. I can see my web page on the host's computer. Okay, I can do it then. Still don't have sound though...

I made it beep! Oh, wait, that's the system speaker, not the sound card. K >> Control Center >> Sound & Multimedia. Sound System, with General and Hardware tabs. Various settings in there and...nothing. No sound. Yes, I see that my speakers are plugged in and turned on. I guess i'm out of luck for sound. Yes, I realize there's a way to set up the system to recognize my sound card, but i'm not interested enough in screwing around with it to find out. Ah yes- and the thing that continues to tick me off is that the scroll wheel on my mouse isn't scrolling. I can move the cursor, click, right-click, and so on, but no wheel scrolling. I google for it, fine a hit explaining how to do it...and the answer is...adding a line, something about Z Axis Mapping, to a config file somewhere. Nope. Not going to do it. Put it in the damned GUI, make my life easy, or i'm not going to use your blasted OS. I should not have to hand-edit anything to begin with, let alone just to get the blasted mouse working.

Which brings us full circle back to Linux (or at least, Slackware) being too much of a pain to use. Yes, yes, yes, learning is good and all that, but I'm not looking for a learning experience here. I just want the OS to work, with a minimum of hassle. No editing system files to get basic functionality, no hair pulling to get stuff to work that should already work, none of that. I know Linux is this big to-do, beyond just being not-Microsoft and all, but it's still not for the average user. Too hard, too complicated, too much to fuss with. I'm sticking with XP for now. No, no OS10 for me, lacking a few thousand dollars to toy around with by buying a Mac. Nope. Shut down, put the XP drive back in, boot. Got a plague and an evil cult to confront in Neverwinter Nights. At least i've got a backup drive to get online with in an emergency.

Got the big test out of the way at last. Won't find out how I did until September, but it's done, either forever or for another year. So, finally get to play some accumulated games. I haven't wrapped up the complete run-through of Duke Nukem, with the hi-res pack. I also see that I still have the Baldur's Gate set of games still installed. I played through the original- don't remember if I finished it- and I wanted to play through it again. And there's the giant space hamster reference. I've had Battlefiled 2 (with the expansion) sitting here, waiting, for a couple of months now. Don't know if Steve's still playing, but I look forward to my first Steve-kill. Also picked up Titan Quest, which Loven and Jason say are basically Diablo 2 in Greece. Looking forward to that. But the one i'm going to try first is Neverwinter Nights. Got the main game, Shadows Of Undrentide, and Hordes Of The Underdark. All these games are installed and ready to go. However, when I first started the game, after the character design part, the game ran at an absolutely unplayable framerate. My system is P4 @ 1.8ghz, Radeon 9550 (256mb), 512mb ram, so it should be pretty decent; certainly for Neverwinter Nights. I tried turning the graphics options in the game all the way up, all the way down, various resolution and refresh settings, etc.. I tried changing the settings in XP- desktop resolution, refresh rate, the hardware acceleration slider bar, etc.. Read online where someone speculated it might be sound-related. Tried in-game settings and even tried disabling sound in control panel. All of this came to nothing. Neverwinter Nights is still unplayably slow, with a frame rate of less than 10 per second. If I turn everything all the way up- all the graphics options turned on- it slows to a few seconds per frame. Frustrating. It turns out I have a Geforce FX 5500 (256mb) card sitting here, ready to go into Carol's replacement computer. Figured, just for entertainment, would through that in my system and see if there's any difference. Magic. Absolute bleeping magic. Neverwinter Nights works just fine, with everything turned on. I'll go check right now...and...With all the graphics options turned on and resolution set to 1600x1200 it gets choppy. Nice and smooth with everything on, at 800x600. Very choppy with everything on, at 2048x1536. Fairly smooth at 2048x1536 and very smooth at 1600x1200 with all the options turned off. I'm not too worried about resolution, so I think i'll stick with everything on, at 800x600, 150hz refresh. I think I may have Kingmaker lying around here somewhere. I don't necessarily mean to play through the entirety of any one of these games, but I do mean to get through them all eventually.

Friday, July 7, 2006

High school. Oh boy oh boy. See, the way I do the blog here is that I have a Word file I add topics to on my pda. I think of a topic during the day, I add the topic to the top of the file. I’m at home and I feel like actually writing in the blog, I start with the next topic at the bottom of the file. I tend to accumulate topics rather faster than I write about them. And, by the time I get to a certain topic, i’ve probably long since forgot about whatever the next topic at the bottom of the file is. Hidden images on Camel cigarettes, expired health permits at Pizza Hut, etc., a paragraph or two at a shot. No big deal. The next topic I see is...high school. More than a single paragraph. A lot more.

The short version is that high school basically sucked. It wasn’t a complete waste of time of course. Winning county-level math competitions, getting to see JPL and the Galileo spacecraft, there are some things that definitely stand out on the good side. However, on the other side, well, there’s more. I don’t know that there actually was more bad stuff or if it’s just the bad stuff that stands out, but man, did it suck. Growing up just a hair’s breadth above being in a trailer park, being for the most part a social outcast, having no direction and no future at the time, it all pretty well sucked. I had my friends, and I guess we were sort of a group, but were sort of the group made of people that didn’t belong to any other group. Lessee...Shouldn’t have broke up with Dorothy Mae Curry, should have given things a try with Kelly Shannon Bryant. Tried with Tammy Len Knaper, but the timing never worked right (we were never single and interested in each other at the same time). Later on she did one of those priest-dude-from-Indiana-Jones-Temple-Of-Doom things (where the guy rips your beating heart out of your chest), so she had her chance and I just haven’t been able to feel to regretful since she pretty much fell on the bad guy side of the line when all was said and done. She does appear to have moved to Arkansas, which is interesting and potentially awkward considering certain other folks that are talking about heading that way. A couple of other people I sort of wish i’d hooked up with (as in relationship; not boinking; or at least not just for boinking) were Anna Marie Collins and JoAnne Richeleau (Jo Ann Roshleau; however the heck it was spelled). I wonder how Heckle and Jeckle are doing after all these years. Anyone else I can think of? Urr...that’s it for the girls I think. Oh, no it’s not. Katrina Haines ended up joining the Army. Hope life ended up okay for her. I did run into Brian Lester a few years back, but he was sort of still stuck in adolescent mode, personality-wise, what the angst and stuff. Oh, and the thing with spheres. Oh well. I remember all these people and the times we spent together, but beyond that I pretty much felt like a cipher throughout high school. Oh boy oh boy, in elementary and middle school I was in the GATE program; sort of like special ed, but for people who are smarter than average. Basically, by high school I fell into the grinder of plain vanilla education, so the opportunity for growth in that direction was never taken advantage of. Life has turned out okay I suppose, but how much better might things have turned out? Now...football would have been interesting, notwithstanding that the jocks were pretty much the polar opposite of my social caste. Turns out the football coach had, at the time I was there, been letting the team boink his wife. At this point in my life I certainly understand that wouldn’t have been a smart thing to do, and i’ve never seen a picture of the woman, but given my social experiences and general lack of self-confidence, that would have been...interesting. Ah well, sour grapes- she probably had something. Speaking of social caste, there’s an observation I had when that Columbine thing happened (many years after my high school days). When I heard about the Columbine thing and why Harris and Kliebold did what they did- feeling outcasts from society, put down and not belonging, that sort of thing- I identified with that feeling, quite strongly in fact. The difference was that I never felt the need for violence as an outlet. I guess that was the big difference- oh, sure, there were plenty of people at my high school that I wouldn’t have felt too badly about if they’d been run over by a bus or something, but I never felt like anyone should actually do anything to those people. I guess the big thing was the position of outcast. Cliques are fundamentally evil. The Debbies on ‘The Oblongs,’ that blonde girl from the beauty contest on ‘Billy And Mandy,’ people like that. Those people are real and they are evil. Cheerleaders and football players- people who, in high school, get an inordinately large amount of attention and school resources, of positive reactions from society at large. Those are people are a drain on the school budget and contribute nothing whatsoever of worth to the world. Yes, I understand- society, alpha males and females, blah blah. I understand the realities of society in that regard. But sports teaches character and blah blah blah. Bull. Bull bleeping spit. Go look at the colisseum that is the football stadium at West Valley High School in Hemet, CA. It is the dominating architectural feature of the school and does absolutely nothing for the vast majority of the students. Does football/football players/cheerleaders teach me english/math/science/history/etc.? No. Does football/football players/cheerleaders teach me a job skill? No. Does football/football players/cheerleaders in any way help me to function in life, to become a productive, tax paying member of society? Not one little bit. It’s all a complete waste of resource and is comprised of people that give absolutely no benefit to society. I found my group to belong with and I muddled through to graduation, but it just ends up being one of those blocks of my life that I don’t look on with much in the way of fondness or happy memories. Yeah, high school sucked. Life’s okay now, but all that Avalon stuff? It’s crap.

Stopped by the Pizza Hut in Twentynine Palms, CA a few months ago. I only get to have pizza on very rare occasions now, what with the dietician and all. Have to go see her tomorrow morning. Last time (2 months ago) I was down a total of 53 pounds, so pizza will have to remain a rarity in my diet. If you want a shock, have a look at the calories in a pizza at your supermarket- not just calories per serving, but calories times how many servings. Pizza Hut though. Waiting in line, looking at the notices and permits and whatnot. Their health permit expired. 7 months ago (prior to the day I was there). Woof. Suppose I could stop in the next time i’m in town, but I don’t have an excuse to stop there. Yeah, I can order just a diet coke (no calories) or play a video game, but I don’t want to risk the temptation of the pizza buffet.

There's a naked man with an aroused boy part on the packaging of Camel cigarettes. There's something else on the right side of the camel, but i'll have to find a large format image. Thought of cutting out the parts we're supposed to be seeing. Maybe.

At the gas station (AMPM), at the checkout counter, are these tiny individual flowers inside tiny glass tubes with cork stoppers in one end. Now, I don't have any personal experience with this stuff, but i've seen plenty of shows and posters about it... The little glass tubes these flowers come in look for all the world like...crack pipes. I'm sure AMPM has no intention of supplying crack pipes to the public, but it's hard to see the tubes on the counter and not think that's what the tubes end up being used for.

Grave Of The Fireflies is the feel-good comedy hit of the summer!

It's the story of a very stupid boy who, because of his pride and laziness, lets his sister starve to death.

Yes, Jason, I feel some sympathy for the little girl, but it was the boy's pride that kept them from staying at or returning to that lady's house. And it was the boy's laziness/stupidity/whatever that caused him to never, oh, I don't know, ask what he could do to contribute to the household, thus maintaining his welcome in the household and, incidentally, his sister's life...

This all sort of fit in with my general view of homelessness and the homeless. I know some of them have been dealt rough hands by life and all that, but i've heard the stories of so many that are in such a situation because of bad choices they made. I've talked to people that run shelters, who tell me they always have open beds, but the reason many go unclaimed being that a lot of people, despite being homeless, refuse to sit through a 45min lecture on religion or how to improve their lives or somesuch.

Oh, and just for reference, i'm assuming that, while I never actually reached that state (of being homeless), I came closer to it than pretty much anyone in the club. I worked hard to avoid it, and barely managed to do so. Before I got my current job, I applied to approximately 550 other places (if you don't have a job, your full time job is getting a job). Point being that if I hadn't made the right choices, I would have been in such a state. And if that kid hadn't made the wrong choices, he wouldn't have been and his sister wouldn't have died.

I miss Mr Roarke and Fantasy Island. I have vague memories of people setting out to experience their fantasies, getting not quite what they expected, learning from the experience, and becoming better people in the end. Pretty standard formula for this show. I know there was one epiode where someone actually succeeded in ticking Mr Roarkeoff. Ah- there was an episode of Highway To Heaven where the sidekick guy with the beard got 'the stuff' and another episode where someone succeeded in ticking Michael Landon's character off.

I should make more business cards for www.ihateher.com and www.ihatehim.com. Haven't handed any out in a while. Got enough stories collected, so it's book time. Never done this before, so I have to find myself a publisher. The first non-sponsored hit for book publisher on Google is, I think, Publish America. Fine and all, but they seem to out of their way to say that they aren't a vanity publisher and that they don't charge any up front fees. The also go out of their way to say that, while on-demand printing (or whatever it was they called it) is a hallmark of vanity publishers, regular non-vanity publishers (such as themselves) use that sort of printing as well. Okay, fine, they seem like nice publishers, but it just smells funny. Yes, they might just be trying to sell their service, but they're just trying too hard. Maybe they are what they claim to be, but the earnest nature of their pitch worries me. I've found that people who try so very hard to convince everyone that they're not whatever usually end up being scam artists of one sort or another. We'll see, we'll see.

Around my building at home we have a population of unclaimed neighborhood cats. The people in the front unit feed them from time to time, but i've long since learned not to do that. I tried feeding one of the neighborhood cats once- just once- and the thing stayed outside my front door, yowling, for hours on end the next day. Never again, I say. I feel bad for the neighborhood cats. I want to provide food and a home for all of the neighborhood cats, especially the kittens. I tried catching them and taking them to the local no-kill animal shelter. It worked in that I did manage to catch several of them and take them to the shelter. Problem is, no matter how many you take away, there's always a supply of homeless cats in the surrounding neighborhood to take the place of the ones that went to the shelter. I want to help them, but no matter how many I help, it doesn't change the total number of homeless cats. If I take, say, 5 to the animal shelter, then there's room for 5 more strays around our building. It's very difficult to resist them, even more so when they're kittens. I think i've done my part though- the 3 cats I have in my home now came from the homeless cat population, so there's at least 3 that won't starve, get eaten or otherwise killed, or make more homeless cats.

One kitten I actually picked up by hand turned out to be very friendly and used to handling by humans. I put him in the crate and he started yowling. I picked him up and just held him, and he was quiet and even went to sleep in my arms. Sadly I ended up giving him to the animal shelter. I wanted to keep him, but 3 is my limit. There was another kitten- a fairly sickly one- that I ended up taking to Carol's, then she and I took it to another place to put it in with a mother dog with milk. The dog took to the kitten, but the kitten was unable or unwilling to do the hunt-the-you-know-what game, even though food was available. That kitten died. So sad.

Good for your health, fun to find odds and ends, and just something to do- metal detecting. One thing that bugs big time is that metal detector commercial- the one that starts with the guy saying something about 'I gotta tell ya.' Gahhh... More like 'I gotta tell ya...or my head will f-ing explode if I don't.' I don't know. I just find that guy really really annoying.

Target had an RC metal detector for $20. Blast. Should have bought one if only for the entertainment value.

Intelligent Design is not a theory. Intelligent Design is a lie through which the religious types hope to sneak religion into our schools.

Spotlight? What the heck am I supposed to write about spotlights? They're pretty much meaningless now and no longer signal anything worthwhile. I remember, back in the 70s, when a single big spotlight (in Hollywood at least) meant some big to-do, like a movie premiere. Now all they stand for are car sales or various other meaningless dreck.   $30 for a 10 million candlepower flashlight at Costco.  Have to get another one, since there's a 15 million candlepower version there now.

Next topic on the list is video games. What am I supposed to say with something so broad?

No, no video game yet. Time top pack up, go home, and go to sleep I think.

Diablo 2! Up to level 84 with my barbarian. Been playing along with Carol. During the week when we're apart, we can play our characters, but we agreed not to do any quests. On the weekends, when we do have time together, we play with a direct cable connection between the two computers. I'm not sure why, with the direct connection and no active connection to the net when we play, but we have a good bit of lag. I don't know how she mananges to play on the laptop- I tried playing my barbarian along with Corrine the other day and it was about half way to being unplayable. Carol says the laptop shows hardly any lag or pausing at all when she plays by herself, so i'm fairly certain it's lag and not either computer having trouble handling the game itself.

I dupe, on single player and TCP/IP. I figure it's a matter of saving time. If I know I can run around and collect gold, then why waste the time with the drudge part of it? I know there are Horadric Cube formulae that let me upgrade a normal item to exceptional, and exceptional to elite. There are fomulae that let me add sockets. I can generate a new character for the specific purpose of getting the imbue quest. I know how to do all of these things in the normal way, so I don't have a problem doing them faster via duping or Hero Editor. What I don't do is create items that I don't already have a specific way to get. For set items I will dupe but not create out of the blue. I finally found my first piece of Immortal King's last weekend, and i'm looking forward to finding more of it. I know I could download a character file with the pieces, or I could create it with Hero Editor, but that would be cheating under my way of doing things. I make stuff for Carol and Corrine too, so I don't do it just to give myself an advantage. I do Mephisto runs and Baal runs, but I don't use any bots. I'm not sure why I find the idea of time-saving bots to be unfair but time-saving duping or creating fair, but I do. We'll see what my barbarian is carrying when I get home, but his defense is up around 20,000 when Stone Skin is active. I think he has 2 Breath Of The Dying swords. The chance to cast Confuse is very nice- distracting some of the monsters and causing them to help by beating on the remaining monsters. I also play, when by myself, with ‘/players 8’ on. The monsters are tougher, but worth more experience.

I have the usual backlog of near-Loven proportions of games I haven't got around to yet. I have yet to get back to Kotor. Maybe when i've made level 99 or better on Diablo 2. Picked up No One Lives Forever 2 and Thief 2; want to try those. Loven tells me i'll enjoy Thief 2, what with the sneaking around and all. Much more my pace. Still have a few thousand monsters to slay in Diablo 2 first.

I don't remember which of the worlds in Kotor that i've already covered. Last I left off, I was on the water covered world. The problem was, I had so many missions started, I lost track of what i'm supposed to be doing. I did enjoy the ability to pause and re-issue orders and such. Ah- that's right. I still have Baldur's Gate sitting on my computer. Meant to go through that again. Picked up the expansion, the sequel, and the sequel's expansion. Pity the Giant Space Hamster didn't appear as more than a passing reference. Another good game for pausing and issuing orders.

Legacy Of The Ancients and Blacksilver for the Commodore 64, while ancient by today's standards, remain my 2 favorite games of all time.

Never did get around to beating Delta Patrol. I think Ken came the closest, but even he didn't finish it.

Riding my bicycle many years ago with my then step-cousin Ken. I turned to see something behind me and managed to ride head-first into an empty aqueduct. There was just enough time for my bike to drop and my head become the forward-most part of me. Bonk bonk on the head, indeed. I don't recall there being much in the way of blood. I don't think I lost consciousness. That was the closest i've ever come to going to the hospital but without going to the hospital. I remember the thing that worried Ken at the time was that I asked where my extra shirt was (tied to the handlebars), the I sat there for about 30 seconds, then I asked where my extra shirt was. Very strange. It took a long time for the injury it made to go away, but it eventually did.

And stranger still, I ran into his wife in town the other day. New number for him, gave him a call, see how life's been the last few years.

Kelly Bryant or Kelly Shannon Bryant was also a classmate back in high school. We met again after high school, but she disappeared after having some difficulty or other with her husband I think. One of the big things I remember, after the fact, about her, was that it turns out we each had a crush on each other during high school, but we didn't know about each other's feelings at the time. Hope she ended up with a happy life.

Katrina Haines was another classmate from high school. She ended up joining the Army I think. Saw her again after high school, but lost track of her again too.

Joanne Richelieau, Jo Ann Richelieau, Joanne Roshleau, Jo Ann Roshleau, or however the heck her name is spelled, was a classmate of mine in Hemet, CA. She was in 9th grade and I was in 10th or 11th. The thing I remember about her is that she wanted to be a rocket scientist. I hope she made it. Wonder what happened to her.

Forrest Wasson, Wasson, Forrest Jr, Wasson, Forrest Earl Jr, or Forrest Earl Wasson Jr was a truck driver for Prime, Inc.. He's a deadbeat dad. He never paid any of the tens of thousands of dollars he still owes in child support. Forrest Earl Wasson Jr is, more or less, the stereotype of the wandering trucker, impregnating various women across the land and never living up to his responsibilities. I wouldn't trust him as an acquaintance and I definitely wouldn't trust him as an employee. An all around scumbag in my opinion.

There's a shape, or a design, that results when you draw a regular polygon and line segments connecting all possible pairs of vertices. In a triangle, it's just a triangle. With a square, it's a square with an X in the middle. With a pentagon, it's a pentagon with a 5 pointed star in the middle. The design looks more and more complicated as the number of sides increases. In drafting class back in high school I had the plotter spit out this shape for either 64 or 128 sides. It took about 4 hours to plot, and I think I still have it. I don't remember when I first thought of it, but I wondered how many individual areas there are for an n-sided polygon. I found a polynomial formula that works for an odd number of sides, but I haven't found a solution for an even number of sides. The difference comes from what happens with intersections in evens vs odds. With an odd number of sides, the design will have no interior points at which more than 2 segments intersect. I've generated the design for large (more than 32) odd n values, and zoomed in to places where 3 or more segments appear to intersect. There are some very very small triangles, but there aren't any exact intersection points. With an even value for n, there are many places where 3 or more segments intersect. In the hexagon design, the middle has 3 segments intersecting in the middle. The problem that I haven't been able to solve yet is how to count those and how to deal with points where 3, 4, or however many segments intersect.

I see a note here that i'm supposed to write about pipe cleaners at Michael's (a craft store), but I don't remember what about pipe cleaners i'm supposed to remember. There's a bunch of different colors as well as different thicknesses. My cats like to bat at bits of pipe cleaner, but that's all I remember doing with the stuff. I've never actually cleaned any pipes with it.

In the Kobiyashi Maru book we read about the Kobiyashi Maru scenario experiences of Kirk (in detail), Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov. Touching and all. I don't remember the title, but there's another Star Trek book with a character named Stone. The only thing I remember about this book was that Stone was described as having beat the Kobyashi Maru scenario, without cheating. This single point more or less made the rest of the book complete and utter crap. Without cheating, there is no way to beat it, period. The whole point of the scenario is that, no matter how good you are, there will always be more and more bad guys. The point was made long before this book that the program will throw more bad guys at you than can possibly exist. You can't beat it because you have finite resources and you are facing an enemy with infinite resources. Mr Stone was bad story telling and my first encounter with a bad fanfic. Yes, I know it was an official Star Trek book, but the quality of it did not rise above that of poorly written fan fiction.

I've run into a number of characters in my time. Steve and the two finger salute when he's really ticked off at a video game. Corrine when she does something especially self-destructive (I don't mean self-abusive, I mean bad life choices). The many and varied adventures of the Hudgens clan. Mr 'bee-bee-bee bee-bee-bee' who didn't get back on his committee and who I didn't actually meet (and who does not have 6 foot long nose hairs), but who bears an honorable mention for making the bee-bee-bee thing (make a continuous 'eeee' sound and drum your fingers up and down in front of your lips) in front of the state party. Loven and Jason for being Loven and Jason. Loven's dad. The unfortunate Tammy Knaper. One of the more memorable characters was my jr high agriculture teacher, John Ventuleth.

Mr Ventuleth ('Mr V') taught agriculture, ran the school farm, and participated in the occasional local posse when there was a bad guy on the loose. I kid you not. He wielded the Hog Cane Of Discipline to the alarm of many a sleeping student. Basically, if he caught you sleeping in class, he would whack the cane on the table in front of you. He knew how to do that just right, so the cane would come down parallel to the table, making a particular cracking noise that would only happen if it came down at the correct angle. No, he never used it on any of his students. A hog cane is just a regular cane, but you use it for guiding hogs around (if their engines are running). Tap the hog on the left shoulder and he turns to the right, etc.. The hog cane was Ventuleth's trademark. Keep in mind that all of this was the early to mid 1980s, in a semi rural setting. He was a character, appropriate for the time and place.

One of the lessons we learned along the way was to follow orders. To wit: When Mr V told you not to look in the bucket, it was probably a good idea not to look in the bucket. One day a girl was told to go and get some bucket or other from the school farm, bring the bucket back to the class, and don't look in the bucket. Or at least, don't look under the plastic bag in the bucket. She brings the bucket back to the classroom. Having the good fortune (thank you, Mr V, for such wonderful memories) to sit in the table nearest the door, we (2 other guys at the table) were told we might want to move our books. This was some sort of biology, animal husbandry, or something like that. This would have meant something a bit different if your English teacher had done this. Mr V took the bag out of the bucket and dumped the contents on our table, for all the class to view and enjoy. A standing rule for all of Mr V's classes was that if you were going to barf, you didn't have to ask permission to go outside. I think we got one of the girls this time, but I don't remember if it was the girl who went to get the bucket. Spread out on my table was the reproductive tract of a sow that had died attempting to give birth. Inside of this were, I think it was 14, piglets (dead, of course). He told us about them getting stuck and how they don't necessarily keep coming out- sometimes they stop. I remember we were looking for a piglet that had mummified (this can happen if they're stuck in the tract too long), but I don't think we found one. There was a lesson involved- he wasn't just trying to gross the class out- something about how, in a normal birth cycle the piglets are like this at this point and like that at that point. The lesson concluded, he put the innards back in the bucket, replaced the plastic bag, and had someone take it back outside. Then he suggested as how we (the 3 of us with the winning table) might want to clean the table. No, why would I do that? I want my clothes and books and stuff to smell like...pig juice? Years later, I find this very strange when I think that, yes, it was gross and all, but it wasn't that big of a deal. The strange part is I get easily grossed out when Carol tries to tell me, despite my many, many assurances that I don't want to know these things, about the various details of raising pomeranians.

An aside, while we're on the subject and being gross- Pomeranians (I don't know if this is true or not with other dogs) breed like this: The male becomes hard and enters the female. The female clamps down on the male's boy-part. They are now stuck together or 'tied.' They have to stay this way for some time for fertilization to occur. Carol has to sit there and mind them because if the female decides she is done and wants to be rid of the male, she can hurt the male in her efforts to get away. When two pomeranians are tied, they aren't face to face. They look more like they're butt to butt, which brings to mind the cartoon character Cat-Dog, although in this case it's more like Dog-Dog. If the reader finds this gross, well, keep in mind that Carol *never* stops telling me about these things. Sure, there are breaks and all, but eventually more details will come my way. We've never had this exact conversation, but this is essentially how it goes: Carol: 'Hey John, when a pomeranian blah blah, I have to blah blah the blah blah.' John: 'Ah! Gross! Please don't tell me these things.' Carol: 'Okay, but let me tell you about when a pomeranian blah blah.' I'm paying attention to her when she tells me these things; the 'blah blah' is used as a generic term here. I suppose everyone is like this about things they are very interested in, and i'm sure i've been like this about some things, but fun biological details make it especially pleasant to hear.

Enough with pomeranians and pig juice. I miss the killer attack duck. He was fun. He was a regular white duck with a yellow orange bill. He pretty much had the run of the school farm. The reason he was a Killer Attack Duck was that he would angrily attach anything flesh IIcaucasianII colored. The only people this was an ongoing problem for were girls wearing sandals or shorts, anything that exposed their ankles. He was a good guard duck though. It didn't take much to get him going- anyone approaching the farm's fence line would be noticed. The neatest thingwith him was that, with properly covered ankles, you could put your hand down on level with his head and he would chase your hand. Move your hand around behind your leg, switch hands, around front, etc., and he would end up chasing your hands around and around your legs. He had personality. Unfortunately, a year or two after I left someone apparently stole him, presumably for dinner. I miss him.

I remember this one guy who was in ag class with us. This guy was the class clown. He was apparently popular and so on. Very much not my crowd. One day this guy is in class with us and the next day Mr V announces that this guy had gone home, put a gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger, with the expected result. Later that day, at lunch on the field, a couple of the girls from our class came up to me and told me about what had happened. One of them even did the crying on my shoulder thing. The weird part about that was that these were girls that I did otherwise have anything to do with.  If one of the Debbies did so to Milo- that kind of weird.  It seems the guy was sitting on the front steps of his home with friend of his. The guy told his friend that he was going to go inside and shoot himself. The friend, such as he was, responded with something like 'yeah, right.' The guy went inside the house and did it. Now, I understand that the guy's family would go through all this pain resulting from the guy's weakness and selfishness, but imagine being the friend guy, having to go through the entire rest of your life knowing that your failure to take the guy seriously cost the guy his life. The guy might have just done it anyway on another occasion, but what if he didn't? What if he had listened to the guy and talked the guy out of that one moment? Sure, the guy hurt for the instant when he actually did it and the family hurt for the rest of their lives, but the friend's conscious choice cost the guy his life.

Over the following years I would occasionally stop by the school and bring Mr V a dead rabbit or two for this or that biology class (for dissection). After all, I have to share the joy. Carol used to raise rabbits, and at one point had a total rabbit population of around 224.

I saw him once every few years at the Farmer's Fair in October, and I did stop by to visit now and then. He's still teaching to this day, but political and economic forces in the school district have not been kind to him, or to agriculture education in general. If it isn't a class specifically targeted at something that produces money for a school district, that district will be strongly motivated not to offer that sort of class. For example, math classes are offered because they will help a school have higher averages on state-mandated exit tests. This, in turn, results in more money for the school. There is no state-mandated agriculture test, so the school has no financial incentive to offer agriculture classes. In my day, in the 80s, there was a decent selection of agriculture classes (Horses Horses, Animal Husbandry, etc). Since then the agriculture program has been eliminated at West Valley High School (Hemet Jr High is no more). Of course this all makes perfect sense when you look at the buckets of money that were sunk into the stadium at WVHS the school is more or less built around. A whole 'nother issue that is. I suspect that what has happened over the years, both to Mr V himself and the agriculture program as a whole, is that society, that history has moved on. Society no longer allows characters like this; or at least they aren't allowed to be as much of a character as they once were. There just isn't room for them anymore. This is unfortunate, because it isn't teaching styles per se, or a certain set of material that sticks with a student over the years. It's the personalities, the characters. The stuff you learn in class is just that- stuff. It's just information. The people stick with you and that's how lessons from decades past will stay with you. Mr V is still teaching, but there's less room for character and personality, so I imagine circumstance has caused classes with him to become a bit less...dramatic over the years. It's a pity, as the majority of my childhood and school days pretty well completely sucked. Ag classes were a rare exception. I wonder- if that's a pattern as societies develop- less and less room for this or that flavor of non-conformity. But what happens at the conforming end of the spectrum? I know that history has swung back and forth along that spectrum. What is it then that causes the pendulum to wing back?

I raised a pig for ag class. From this I learned about caring for animals and managing costs and supplies. Every student had to help out on the school farm. From this I learned about contributing to the group, working with others, and all that good stuff. Cleaning the stadium and bleachers area at Hemet Jr High was one of the first bits of real, paid work I ever did. From this I learned...wait for it...the joys of manual labor! That was a big deal for someone who was so poor (how poor was I?) that he was clothed with thrift store leavings. After every major school sporting event (ex: football games), there would be lots and lots of trash left everywhere. The following morning (usually saturday mornings) we would clean the place up, for a total of $150 split between whoever showed up. I don't remember the most that ever showed up, but I don't think it passed the 10 mark more than a few times. On the other end, e fewest that ever showed up was 3. $50 for each of us. Yes, it's an old person expression, but: That was a lot of money in those days. It's still a lot of money, but, in taking into account my economic setting and being a kid, it was a far greater portion of my income then than the same amount would be now. Bunch of useful lessons though.

My favorite soda was a sort of cranberry soda K-mart carried. It was on the shelves with the flavored water type drinks. I had that written down somewhere...ah, here we go. American Faire Sparkling Cranberry Naturally Flavored Soda, 1 liter, UPC 0 72000 18793 7. I used to drink this stuff all the time. I don't recall if I was ever able to pin down whether or not it had any caffeine in it, but just the taste had some bite to it. Every so often, the local Kmart would mark all the 1 liter water stuff down to 2 for $1, at which point I would buy out the store's supply (20 to 40 bottles usually). I don't remember whether or not there were any calories either. However, K-mart stopped carrying this drink. I even called the 800 number (1-800-842-7886) and voiced my opinion, but it's still gone from the local store. Now, I understand that no matter how much of this stuff I buy, if i'm the only person in the entire country that's buying it, then K-mart probably isn't making a profit by carrying it. However, on a local store level, it seems odd that they would stop carrying a product they sell their entire stock of, every single time. I know the Super Wal-Mart that's nearing completion across the street will be bigger, better stocked, etc., but Wal-Mart has never carried this particular kind of soda. If K-mart continued to carry it, I would still be visiting my local K-Mart even after the Super Wal-Mart opened.

Ralph's is on my bad-guy list. I don't like them. Apparently Ralph's is one of these places with a club card. Each product has 2 prices, the club price and the non-club price. Joining the club and getting the little card is free, but you have to give them your personal information. Okay, so i'm not joining the club then. However, if you get to the cashier and are not a member of the club, the cashier will us a club swipy thing they have (little key chain thing with a barcode on it), getting you the lower price. You don't have to give the cashier your personal information in order to do this. I assume (yes, ha ha) this is in order to get you to sign up for the club. So, if you're in the club, you get the lower price. But if you're not in the club, you get the lower price. If no one pays the higher price, then why the different prices to begin with? Maybe it's so you think you're paying the higher price, but when you get to the cashier and they charge you the lower price, you'll be thankful and more likely to join the club, which then gives Ralph's your personal information. I don't remember what it says when you answer your own question, but I see that i've done just that. It appears that Ralph's is trying to manipulate you into giving them your personal information, and that's why Ralph's is on my bad-guy list. Albertson's is on my bad-guy list too, but I don't remember if it's for the same reason. Oh, Ralph's in Palmdale, CA is on the bad-guy list doubly so because they have a bathroom that requires a token, albeit a free token you can get at the front of the store. Great, just great. 'Attention shoppers! John Perkins is about to go to the bathroom. See this guy? This guy right here- the one i'm giving the token to. He's headed for the bathroom.' That's what I feel like when I have to go ask for the token. I don't like having to involve other people in my trips to the bathroom.

Pit bulls...oh, do I have a history with pit bulls. Carol used to have a pit bull named Brutus. No...Brutus might have been Dianne's dog. Brutus was a friendly dog. I got along well with him, as did Carol and her kids, and Dianne and her family. I never had a problem with Brutus. I don't remember how, but he wound up in the hands of animal control. We never worked out what exactly happened, whether it was just something Brutus did or whether he might have picked up something while in doggy jail, but I think he might have bit someone while in custody. So he was put down and that was the end of Brutus. I want him to bear special mention so it's clear that I don't dislike all pit bulls and I have known pit bulls that I get along with in the past. The next, oh, five or so didn't work out so well.

Fast forward a few years. I'm living at the place i'm at now. Let's see...one, two, three, four, five, six, seven...Let's say i'm in number six. You're standing on the street, which runs east and west. You're looking north. There's a small house with another small house behind it. Those are one and two. To the left is a vacant lot that could fit another house, but it's just empty. To the left of the vacant lot is a house. That is three. To the left of that is a building, a triplex. The right-hand or easternmost unit along the side of the building is four. The unit in the front of the building is five. The left-hand or westernmost unit is six (me). To the left of our building is another house (seven).

In the back of our building there is a fence with a grapevine on it. Way back when, and older couple lived in number 3. The old man had a deal with my landlady- he would take care of the minor mowing and gardening and such for our building, in exchange for which he would get the grapes when they were in season. I think he might have died, but that family moved away a few years back. Another family moved in. They had a pit bull. One day I went to the back of our building and found #3's pit bull in our back yard, going potty. He growled at me, so I backed away and went inside to call animal control. Animal control wanted to know the street number for #3 and told me to walk outside to the mailbox to get the number. The pit bull ran around the back of #3, out to the street, up to me at the mail boxes, and bit me. I still had the animal control lady on the phone (cordless), and while they sent someone out, they couldn't find the pit bull when they got here. He bit me in the leg, and while I did get a bruise, it didn't quite break the skin, which is apparently a big deal for animal control- there's more they can do if the skin is broken that they couldn't do in this case. The folks in #3 kept the pit bull chained to a tree from then on, and we had another go-round or two with animal control because they tied the pit bull up in such a way that it could reach onto my building's property. This bit was eventually resolved when they moved away.

A few weeks or months down the road, I walked out my door at #6 to find a police officer walking through the front yard of #7. He had a flashlight and a shotgun. I asked what was going on, should I go inside and lie on the floor or something? He said he was responding to reports of a pit bull in the area that had been harassing neighborhood children. I mentioned the previous incident and that I thought the earlier pit bull had hidden under the building at #3. We walked around the front of my building and back between my building and #3. When we walked along the path between the two buildings to the point where we could see behind #3, the officer shined his flashlight across the way, behind #3, across the vacant lot, to the corner of #2. There was a man standing on the doorstep, making ‘here boy, here boy’ type noises to try and get his pit bull (which was sitting under the building's swamp cooler) to come inside. The very moment the officer's flashlight swung around, the pit bull started barking, got up, and charged the officer and I. Now, you can have Newton and the laws of acceleration and all that, but perception is a different matter. The pit bull appeared to be charging at full speed the instant he got up. The local police are apparently well trained, as the officer let go of his flashlight and, in the same motion, brought up his shotgun. The officer paused so that he was aiming toward the ground and not at #2, then fired 3 shots, bam! bam! bam!. The pit bull's course curved to it's right (our left) and it tumbled over, quite dead. No yowling or twitching or anything like that, so I guess it was good for the pit bull that it was quick. The officer said something I don't remember into his radio and several other police cars arrived a few minutes later. They talked to the first officer and the guy at #2, and me. It turns out that this was an ideal textbook kill in that there was no doubt or ambiguity- the pit bull was aggressively charging the officer- and the officer had an impartial eye witness (me). Someone came out and carted the dead pit bull away and that was that. Since then whoever actually owns #3 has put up a fence around #3 and has also put up a new fence in the vacant lot area (which my be just a big yard as opposed to an actual vacant lot), so you can't walk straight from #2 to my building. So ends the second pit bull in my life.

The next dog wasn't a pit bull, but more a sort of chow-type dog. It's family was one of the many tenants at #7. At some point it decided that my front door was part of its territory, and that it would start defending that territory. I got it with pepper spray (though I now understand a 10% ammonia solution would be more effective) a couple of times and animal control came out to chat with them a couple of times, but they would always manage to leave it untied or tied in such a way that it could eventually get loose. A few months ago everything finally aligned correctly- I came home, the dog was loose, I called animal control, who arrived and saw the dog loose for themselves. They contacted the tenants in #7, issued them a ticket, a fine, and a court date. I never saw the dog loose after that, and this set of tenants moved away a month or two ago. I don't know to what extent I may or may not have contributed to that, but at least the dog is gone.

So. Everything's fine, done, no mean dogs, just me to live out my happy little life (until moving into the pandemonium of Carol's menagerie). What happens? The people in the #5, who are in-laws to my landlady, decide to have some relative or other stay with them. That relative brings along their- wait for it- pit bull, which they tie to the support post in the front of the building. Now there's a dangerous animal (yes, trying to defend my own yard from me) that I have to walk by every day to and from work. My landlady says to just put up with it, that the relative will only be there temporarily. I don't buy it- they put up a beware of dog sign, so how temporary could it be? Then comes the fun with Fedex (I get stuff from them fairly often), who decides that they won't deliver to me with the dog there. This actually turns out to be a good thing, as the letter I got from Fedex (official letterhead, formal business format, etc) saying they can't deliver with the dog present is enough to finally get the landlady to have the dog removed. When I talked to her after the fact, she said it had only been there temporarily just as intended, but the dog was gone the next day after I delivered the letter, so i'm not too sure I buy that either. But it's gone. And the owner of #7 is apparently selling the place, so he's having a ton of repairs and improvements done that he had never taken care of with the past 4 or 5 sets of tenants. After all these fun dog adventures are done (please?), guess what he put up around #7? Yes, a fence. If #3 and #7 had put up their fences oh, 6 years or so back, I would have had just the one adventure. No police, no gunfire, no stress. Oh well.

Carol, in addition to her multitude of pomeranians, has two larger dogs, one of whom looks like something out of the Hound Of The Baskervilles. Both are female and both, when we've been on walks through the neighborhood and confronted loose neighborhood dogs, have apparently treated me as the alpha male so I don't expect any problems there. Carol tells me they aggressively defend Carol's (well fenced) yard, but when I show up they do the run up and down the fence in a very excited doggy greeting. Are my dog adventures over? Maybe, maybe not. We'll see.

Tuesday, December 6, 2005

The folks across the street and 1 door east moved out. Another lady moved in. When I came home the other day, there were police cars parked in front. Turns out the lady's boyfriend, who I hope is not on the rental agreement, beat her pretty badly. I hope she takes the police up on whatever domestic violence prevention material they gave her. The police are usually out to visit the folks 2 buildings east of me, the folks who, if memory serves, are the local thieves and drug dealers. Oh, and hey, I got to try the 911 feature on my phone/pda. Apparently, once you dial 911, the phone enters some sort of emergency mode, where you have to press a couple of buttons to exit this mode. I guess the idea is to make it very easy to call 911 again after you've called it once. There was a bit of yelling going on outside the other day, so I went outside to watch the show. The folks directly across the street were yelling at the folks...wait for it...2 doors east of me. They got to the point where it sounded like a fight might be about to start. I figured it might be something the police would like to come out and break up, so I called 911 on my cell phone. Turns out, someone had already called and the police were already on their way. The police showed up a couple of minutes later, talked to both families, and sent everyone back home. That was it. Woof.

The lady and children that previously lived in the house across the street, 1 building east, with her 3 children, moved out a few months ago. Her oldest boy took a liking to lanyards and had bargained with me such that, if he was good for a certain period of time, I would give him the material to make another lanyard. Fine with me; i've got a ton of the stuff. The boy has a history of acting violently, both to his siblings and to other children. Then one day he threw a rock at a girl who lives in a mini-complex across the street from me, 2 or 3 buildings to the east. The rock hit her smack in the forehead. She went to the hospital and has since recovered, but, when I asked her how she was doing, she explained that it had broken a bit of her skull and that it had almost, but not quite, been driven into her brain. But she's okay now, so that's good to hear. I've talked to the boy a couple of times since then (his mom visits the lady in the front of my building) and he is completely devoid of any guilt or any sense of responsibility. He shows absolutely no sense or realization that he almost killed that girl. Now...if he had been bad along the lines of not coming home by whatever time in the afternoon he was supposed to, that would have earned him a reset on the clock of how long he had to be good to get more lanyard material from me. This thing with the rock, though, is so far beyond anything of that scale, it has pretty much earned him a permanent ban from the good list in my view. On the 2 occasions he's been over with his mother to visit the lady in the front of my building, i've asked him “So, how's Kathy doing?” Both times he has responded that he doesn't know, and he's done so in such a way as to convey 'why the heck should I know or care?' The boy knows what he did, for a fact, and he doesn't care. He doesn't feel sorry, he feels no regret. Man, oh man, that boy's going to have problems growing up.

For over 6 years now I have been blessed with the social scene of my local coin-op laundromat, all thanks to the lady who lives in the front unit of my building. There's a washing machine and dryer in our building, but since the lady in the front unit (technically her children, but they're under 18) owns the building and, for no apparent reason, refuses to let me use the washer, I have to go to the laundromat down the street. It's only 1 block away, but it's still a couple of hours each week that I have to spend away from home, where I could be doing something more productive, like actual work. Or blogging.

Junk stores, thrift stores, and the like. I enjoy looking at other people's junk I guess. I collect answering machine tapes. Most of the time people forget to wipe these tapes and occasionally there's something interesting on them. There's a nice set of thrift stores on Harvard in Hemet, and it looks like there might be a good set on Bear Valley Rd in Victorville. Junk stores tend to fall into 1 of 3 general categories. In 1 type, the pricing is completely out of the control of the workers. Think big stores, like Good Will. It's a mindless company, with no one who can make decisions on site. In the next type, typically with the owner on site, the purpose of the store is to move product. Make a reasonable offer and, sure, let's get it out the door. This will happen more often at neighborhood swapmeets, where the seller would rather not have to bother with taking the item back home. The third type I find very frustrating. In this type, the owner does not want to sell anything at all. What they want is for people to come by and marvel at their wondrous pile of junk. Matthieson's Department Store in Banning is an example of this type. The owner doesn't really want to sell anything; he want's people to look at his junk and be impressed. He wants to own the junk, not sell it. The owner places an unrealistically high price on everything. Even the employees know the pricing on their junk is unrealistically high. Frustrating.

I picked up a basic GPS receiver a few years agon, in order to go geocaching. It's a treasure hunt where you enter the lattitude and longitude of a cache, then use your GPS receiver to go find the cache. I've gone a few times by myself and, for a few years running, I took a few of the club members with me a few times. Walk, walk, walk, look, look, look, and find. The first time around for a group trip, we did some level 3 rock climbing, which resulted in Jason getting dunked, fortunately. The alternative was a fall that could have hurt him pretty badly. We opted for a somewhat more urban setting the next time around.

People who I wonder what ever happened to include Kelly Bryant aka Kelly Shannon Bryant and Katrina Haines. While I am aware of the circumstances under which they left their residence off of Stetson Ave, I still wonder what happened to them. I wonder what happened to J R Longmire, Stacey Cabiness, Dorothy Curry aka Dorothy Mae Curry, and Joanne Roshleau (who could be Jo An Roshleau, Jo Anne Roshleau, Joanne Richelieau, Jo An Richelieau, Jo Anne Richelieu, or some other spelling I don't know). Joanne went to Hemet Jr High School in the late 1980s. Tammy Knaper (aka Tammy Len Knaper, Tina Knaper, Tammy Knight, Tammy Len Knight) made some unfortunate choices and, to the best of my knowledge, has since run off to Arkansas. Her sad story is truly a topic unto itself. I think i'll save it for another day.

I miss Matinee At The Bijou. This ran on channel 24 or 28 or so back in the early 80s. It was a tv show where they showed movies in the format you used to see back in the 30s and 40s. There was a cartoon, a news reel, maybe a serial episode, and a feature movie. Being a poor boy growing up in a trailer, back in the early 80s over the air tv was all there was. Channel 24 or 28 was one of the channels I could pick up. I miss all the old movies and having the host explain the time period and all that. Sadly, I understand the show has been off the air for many, many years now. Too bad.

Vasquez Rocks, on the way to Magic Mountain. I went there once. I don't remember who, if anyone, I was with at the time. But it was neat to get to see the area where Captain Kirk fought the Gorn. It was worth the 2 to 2 ½ hour drive just for that.

Disneyland holds many fond memories for me, not the least of which is Tom Sawyer's Island. I always enjoyed running up and down the island, and through all the little caves. While I never made use of it myself, I remember the one cave path you could take that had a dead end, and I remember that that dead end, from my earliest memories all the way till the last time I went, always smelled like pee. There aren't too many distinct memories I still have from before I turned 10 years old, but this is one of them.  Of course, I have many many fond memories of Disneyland that have nothing to do with this.  Just had the thought of 'oh yeah, that one cave.'

It's a 5 topic chain! While driving through Palm Springs the other day, I drove under the nudist bridge. It turns out there's a nudist colony (naturist, whatever) in the middle of Palm Springs. Fine, they have plenty of nice, opaque walls. Thing is, they bought some property on the other side of one of the main streets. This presented a problem, because they wanted to be able to go from one side of the road to the other. There was quite a dispute between the nudists and the city that was finally resolved by the city building them an overhead bridge across the street, from one property to the other. Carol (fully clothed, thank you very much), a few years back, used to drive a limousine for one Mr Dirk Drost who, as I understand it, was the owner of Cover Girl. He owned a nudist colony in the Juniper / Nuevo area of Riverside County, over in the direction of Hemet. They had a bit of land way back in the hills, about 20 acres or so. The dirt road, Carol tells me, was pretty rough, especially when it rained. Even more so for a limousine. A few years ago (mid to late 90s I think) Carol used to live in the Juniper Flats area, just south of the Nuevo area. Nice, relatively out of the way, good privacy. Nice barn. I lived in Moreno Valley at the time. I woke up one morning, got out of bed, turned the tv on, did not see a yellow bulldozer, and watched CNN. First thing I see is a fire. Well, that's unfortunate. Narration comes on, explains that this is a live shot of Juniper Flats. Oh spit. Dressed, in the car, on the road, down the Ramona Expressway. As I turn off toward the Nuevo area, I come to a roadblock. They aren't letting anyone through. I talk to the man waving cars off in another direction. I explain to him that Carol does not have a phone, does not have a working car, has 2 children, and raises these blasted rabbits and dogs, and that as a result, she might try to stay with them rather than getting herself away from the fire. I explain to the guy that I intend to go straight in, check Carol's place, get her out right then if she's still there, or head straight out if she's not. The guy lets me through. There's still fire going on at this time, but it's a good long way away from the route I took. I arrive at Carol's, find no Carol and no dogs. I head down Juniper Flats road and over to Green Acres, to Dianne's (now former) place, where I find Carol and her dogs. Dianne Mooney and Lee Wibbing, our friends who lived in Green Acres, had seen the fire and already been up to get Carol out. They had had a more dramatic drive down the hill than I did. The fire was much closer when they drove down Juniper Flats road and there was enough heat to cause the the rubber lining the doors on Lee's car to start smoking. They made it out, though- that was the main thing. Eventually the fire was put out and Carol's place was in the middle of a relatively small patch of unburned ground, so the rabbits survived. I don't know how Corrine felt about it over time, but I do seem to recall Aaron having had nightmares about fire for some time after that. Part of the area that did get burned was the nudist colony, so that's no longer there. I don't remember if it was before or after the fire, but one day I decided, since there were plenty of wild rabbits in the area, that I was going to hunt, kill, clean, and eat my own food, all by myself. All I had was a pellet gun, but it did have a scope. I spent unknown hours out in the brush over the course of 3 weeks before I hit a rabbit. I must have got it just perfectly right because it started to leap in the air (after I shot it) then did some sort of weird body twist as it fell to the ground. Some of Carol's rabbits were raised for meat, so Carol was able to instruct me in the cleaning and preparing of the rabbit I shot. It was a messy, stinky job, but I did it all myself, all the way to having rabbit meat on my plate. It didn't taste terribly good or bad and there wasn't much meat after all the fur and other stuff was gone, but I was happy as the mighty hunter with his very own food. From the standpoint of amount of effort vs amount of food on the plate, it wasn't worth it. But the satisfaction of having done this at least once in my life was well worth the experience, the time, and the effort.

Racquetball is an unusual sport in that I like playing it so much that whoever i'm playing against almost always gets tired out before me. I'm not a terribly impressive physical specimin. Think something in the range of Dilbert with slightly better legs. But I like playing racquetball. I picked it up back when I was in jr high or high school. My former step-cousin Ken and neighbor Rod and I would play at U.C. Riverside and, later, at Ken's apartment complex. I would rarely beat Rod, and I never beat Ken, until one time, at his apartment complex. I don't know if it was luck, or if I had finally acquired the needed skill or if it was just a bad day for Ken. But I finally beat him. Ohh, that was a good day. It was some weeks or months (I don't think it was more than a couple of years) later that Ken had his motorcycle accident. He was paralyzed from the chest down, having fallen from his motorcycle while riding through the orange groves. He might not have survived if his girlfriend, now wife, hadn't been riding with him that day. He survived though, and the last I heard, life was going well for him. I certainly wish, if we could rewind, that he hadn't crashed, but somehow i'm still glad that, on the very last time we ever played, I finally beat him. Sort of a poignant ending I guess. More recently i've started playing racquetball again, with Jason, Steve, Jeff, Nomi, and some others from the anime club. They're all just beginning, and I can still beat them with relative certainty. They're getting better, though, and if I slack off too much they start to catch up point-wise. Corrine certainly enjoyed the one time we played. I don't know what it was about the game, but she really enjoyed it. More people to play against, more exercise, Good stuff.

In the first issue (#0) of Raijin Comics we see Baki The Grappler. The baddy he'll have to fight in an issue or two is strong and certainly bad, but he seems, at least in the face, to be somehow effiminate. He appears to be wearing lipstick. This happens again with the bad guy Shinogi at the end of issue #18. Again with the lipstick. I wonder...is it necessarily lipstick or is it some sort of stylistic aspect of Japanese storytelling? A shade of Kabuki makeup?

Also in Raijin Comics, in issue #17, Fist Of The Blue Sky #18...”The French, the world's greatest military force.” Now i'm not so far on the other end of the spectrum as to consider them, oh, “cheese eating surrender monkeys,” but calling them the world's greatest military force is, at the very least, laughable. Granted, the character who says this line is supposed to be the head for French intelligence, so one would expect him to have a positive view of the French military. And, while it was a couple of generations back, they did surrender when it counted. More recently, though I don't know whether it's the fault of the French military or their government, but there's that whole trying to build a reactor for Iraq thing. Anyway, thanks, Fist Of The Blue Sky, thanks for the laugh.

First, the disclaimer that every story about someone's cats should come with: I know that, with the exception of Carol and, to a certain extent, Pop, no one in the world but me cares about my cats. I understand this. So if the reader enjoys hearing about my cats, then fine. If not, then you have been warned... My 3 cats, all brothers, have their own social organization. There's the black and white one that Carol and Corrine call BW. The largest of the 3 used to have all black whiskers accept for a single, large white whisker. Carol and Corrine call this one Whisker. Carol and Corrine call the 3rd cat Psycho because he is the easiest to startle or scare. None of these are the cats' real names. They each have a name (a 'true name' for those of you who read fantasy books) that I haven't told anyone. At some point I thought to have some sort of charity contest to guess their true names. The idea is that people pay in $0.25 or $1 per guess (Heavy Metal Queen for you Bebop fans). Whoever eventually guesses correctly gets a certain portion of the pot donated in their name to something like their local animal shelter. For now I let Carol and Corrine call them BW, Whisker, and Psycho. Psycho is Psycho due to his behavior. The thing is, that behavior can be traced back to a single incident which, I confess, was my doing. I opened my front door one day in something like 2000 or 2001 and found a tiny kitten, just barely at weaning age, walking around my porch area. I made sure Female (an earlier cat I still had at that time, now belonging to Carol as Marina) was secured in the bedroom section of my place. I opened the front door and left it open as I walked around out the back door. The kitten would let me get close, but not too close. I had brought along a large bit of posterboard and I used it to guide the kitten into my place. I'm not sure whether or not I secured that kitten (who ended up being BW) or just figured it wouldn't find its way back outside too quickly. I went back outside and used the posterboard to guide in another kitten (who ended up being Whisker). I went outside again. I could hear another kitten meowing, but I couldn't see where it was. I looked in the bushes between my place and my neighbor, and there was another kitten. I forget why, but I knew this one was going to be less cooperative. I got a towel and either grabbed the kitten then wrapped him up in the towel or (more likely) I grabbed the kitten with the towel, wrapping him up as quickly as I could. Now...some of you who have raised or dealt with rabbits may be aware that rabbits have a particular noise they make when they are in a great deal of pain or are very scared. It is not a pleasant noise. It turns out that cats have a particular noise beyond hissing, spitting, growling, or the yowling we are all familiar with. This particular kitten made that noise. Which was fine and all since the neighbors accross the street were sitting on their porch and could see me doing god knows what to whatever was making this terrible terrible noise. The situation was also not helped by the mother cat having come round and, seeing me making her kitten make what can only be not a happy noise, did her best to attack from the ground, sort of charging while hissing and growling. I made it back inside, with the kitten, without the mother cat, and without the neighbors across the street calling the police. I was a day to a day and a half before I saw that kitten again, the one who ended up being Psycho. They weren't interested in the food or water I put out for them, certainly not being anywhere near me. But we all got used to each other over time. Good grief did we ever get used to each other. They know my morning bathroom routine noises (shower, brush teeth, etc) so well that they rush to the big cat tower, small cat tower, and edge of the bed just before I walk out of the bathroom. They know when i'm sitting down to put my shoes on in order to go somewhere. They know where to stand to get a walk-by petting when i'm on my way out the door. And I know they know right from wrong, or at least what I do and don't want them to do. When one of them does something wrong and I hiss at him, even if the others are sitting close by, the others will just sit there and the one cat that did something wrong will stop doing whatever and run off. They have a large supply of mostly hand-made toys. Whip-type toys with a stick and string, and maybe a feather on the end, are usually their favorites. If I get them really going, they'll do these full-body leaps into the air, trying to get the toy. They have a thing for slot cars oddly enough. They'll sit around the track, watching the car go round and round, occasionally taking a swipe at it. They argue amongst themselves, but they calm down when they're all being petted at the same time. That's all I really wanted- cats that use their box, like to be petted, and play.

I hate political correctness. I understand that we shouldn't go out of our way to offend people and that there's such a thing as tact, but at some point people just need to get over themselves. Example: Pirates of the Carribean at Disneyland. For years and years the pirates would chase the women around. The unspoken idea was the pirates wanted to have sex with the women. Someone complained, so now the women are carrying plates of food, the idea being the pirates are hungry for food, not for the other thing. Stupid. Just remember, when you go to Disneyland and see the pirates chasing the women, it's not food they're after.

Riverside Community College, Riverside, CA- I don't know if they were forced to do this, but I think it was an administrative choice. The bookstore used to carry Playboy. Then one woman complained and they took Playboy off the shelf. Presumably she was offended by Playboy being there. There's a line, and I suppose it's one of those lines that's hard to pin down, but there it is... I could certainly understand a complaint and the bookstore's response if they had posted the folded out centerfold in the store window. I don't buy that a magazine on the news stand is deserving of removal because someone doesn't like its contents. This woman was presumably upset about the negative portrayal of women inside. It's not the job of the world, this country, this college, or this book store to prevent every single person in existence from being offended. Maybe I don't like how men are portrayed in romance novels. I don't expect the store to stop carrying them or the people who like to read them to stop reading them. People do not have the inherent right to not be offended. Or at least, people's right not to be exposed to offensive material, within certain bounds (there's that line), does not extend to preventing others from exposing themselves to that material. I understand putting the Playboys on a shelf or behind the counter, where children can't get to it. But saying no Playboys for anyone? No, that doesn't fly.

There's a new term that, I think, falls under the heading of political correctness- “person of interest.” As opposed to suspect. When they think someone did it, but they're not really sure, now they call that person a person of interest. They don't call that person a suspect unless they're pretty darned sure that's the guilty person. It's a BS term. If they think you did it at all, then you're a suspect, period. Person of interest is just a weaselly way of trying to say that the person is a suspect but not really. It's political correctness and its wrong.

In 1990 I worked for a video arcade at the Tyler Mall in Riverside, CA. It was a neat place to work. I got to learn about some of the innards of arcade machines- dipswitch settings, coin mechanisms, and the like. We didn't have too many problems there. My boss (Mr Bomb Tarts) told me about people who would try to get change with nickel roles that were really nickel, penny, nickel, penny, nickel, etc., but I never caught anyone doing that. There were two corners, just inside the entrance, where people would occasionally urinate. It was annoying because the floor and the walls were all rug. There was a jelly belly store next door, which was nice, but I didn't have much money at the time, so I didn't get to partake very often. Then there was the Flash. He was a slightly mentally challenged guy who either believed or just liked telling everyone he believed that he was the comic book character the Flash. He'd do that 'time me as I run around the world' thing. He would come to the mall and hang around the arcade a few times each week. Then he decided that he was no longer the Flash, but was now (well, then) the Incredible Hulk. Though I didn't see it, one of my coworkers told me mall security had taken him away when he did the hulking out bit, including ripping off his shirt. I never saw him after that. Someone at work gave me a one day pass to Costco. Somehow I held onto that little bit of paper until 2003 or 2004. I've always wondered where certain belongings ended up. Not that I think anyone swiped anything; more like the lost pen thing. But the Costco pass stayed with me for all those years. I finally got tired of my existing entertainment center, a white, pressed particle board unit that may have been in the family as far back as when I was working at the arcade. It was a nice entertainment center, but it wasn't designed to be disassembled and reassembled, so every time we moved it would end up being a little less stable when we put it back together. Eventually it got too rickety when I had to move it, so away it went. I decided to try one of these, but it was a 6-shelf version. The folks at Costco were having some trouble deciding whether or not to honor the one day pass since they don't give those out any more. They went ahead and let me use it when I explained that it was a surgical strike- that I had a single item I wanted to purchase and I knew exactly where it was. Home I went with the shelves. Easy to assemble and disassemble, has wheels for when I need to move it, and at a rating of 600 pounds per shelf, I don't have to worry about how much weight i'm placing on the thing. What I did not expect was the added bonus that my cats do not like walking on the shelves, what with the wired surface. I've been very happy with this set of shelves. And it reminds me of my old job at the arcade. What also reminds me of that job is the angry imitation Roger Rabbit with suction cup feet I got from work (someone gave him to me; I forget why), that I still have floating around somewhere.

I've found that, if I have a decently filling meal for breakfast when I start my work day, I have no difficulty working through lunch and I don't get as tired with all the driving I have to do. I don't know why it works that way, but it just seems to give me one less basic need to think of during the day.

The bathrooms in the Mariott in Anaheim, CA have no designs at all on the bathroom walls, so no hidden images to find. When I stopped by, in September 2005, their elevator permits had expired 6 months before, in March 2005. So thanks, Mariott, for the unsafe elevators.

One of Corrine's childhood games was when I would have an extra bit of circuit board, we would name the bits of the circuit board as the parts of a city. The library, housing, the police station, restaurants, and so on. That was it.

My big personal soapbox to stand on is showing receipts at the store's door. I refuse, whenever possible, to show my receipt because, once I have given the store the required amount of money for the product, the product is now my property and not the store's. The store therefore has no right to ask me to prove that I bought the product. Costco I can't refuse at, because even if I do, they can look at the security camera, figure out which purchase from which register was mine, my member number, thus giving them the ability to cancel my membership. The process, when other stores ask for my receipt at the door, is this: I walk to the door, employee asks for receipt, I refuse, they get the manager, manager asks for receipt, I refuse again, manager calls police, I get arrested, I sue the store, I make money from the store. This process has never been played all the way out. The manager, if it gets that far, explains the store policy, then I go on my way. From a retired police officer I know, I understand that the store would be committing a crime if they attempt to prevent me from leaving the store, physically or otherwise. The real purpose is to get stores to not ask for receipts at the door. I understand why they do it, but I think it's wrong. So, this is how I am attempting to effect social change. It will be a big to do if any store ever does attempt to detain me. There's at least one unfortunate lady at the K-mart in Riverside, CA who is so tired of dealing with me, she just waves me by. My goal isn't to get stores to just let me by. I don't want them to ask any customers for receipts at the door. K-mart asks for receipts every so often. Walmart does too, but less often. Fry's Electronics is another matter, much to the amusement of a certain unnamed relative. Fry's apparently asks everyone for a receipt at the door, or at least almost everyone. I don't know what it is about me, but they never ask me for my receipt. I make sure to buy something, anything, even some little $0.99 thing, so I have something to walk by them with. They'll ask person after person after person, everyone in front of me on the way out the door. But they don't ask me. The thing is, I go to Fry's maybe 2 or 3 times per year at best, and there are always different people at the door. So it can't be like K-mart, where a particular employee has learned not to ask me, specifically. I suppose they would if I bought something big, like a tv, but their prices aren't that good. I think i'll try wearing scruffier clothes next time. What i'd like to try is going through the door with whatever item, while wearing my suit. If they ask me for my receipt, then the experiment ends with no result. If they let me through, as they have in the past, then I go out to my car and change into my set of scruffy clothes. I got back into the store, buy the exact same item/s, then try the door again. If they don't ask me for a receipt, then...i'm not sure what that means. If they do ask me for a receipt, then i've caught them treating customers differently based on their appearance. While I certainly understand their reasons for doing so, it might be considered discrimination of one sort or another.

One movie I have been trying to find for a number of years now is a black and white movie I remember from maybe as far back as the 70s. I don't remember the title. It was set in Africa- of this i'm almost certain. The main conflict was the family ranch was going to be overrun by an army of regular ants. The solution ended up, I think, with the flooding of a moat or stream channel. Something like that. It's not that it was such a great movie or anything; it's just that it's on the quest list. I want to see it for the sake of clarifying a decades old memory.

Stephen King movies suck. This, with rare exception, is a fundamental tenant of the universe. Granted, i've seen relatively few of his movies and i've read none of his books. The movies, one in particular, have left me with the clear perception that the man should not, without a great deal of supervision with veto authority, be allowed anywhere near a movie set. Let's have a look over at IMDB for his filmography... Argh...they're listing his short stories under his filmography. Carrie. That was a good movie. Being on the lower end of the social spectrum in school, I very much sympathize with Carrie's reasons for letting loose on everyone. I started to watch Rose Red, but then I realized it had the same deficiencies (long, boring, unsympathetic characters) as *that* movie, below. I never saw Apt Pupil, but I know what it was about. It damn well better have had a “but they're really the bad guys” ending to it. What with the near zero faith owed to Mr King as far as his movie making abilities, i'm not inclined to sit through the movie to find out. The Shining. Grrr. Never saw the whole thing, but I have some very particular and personal objections to that one. The Langoliers. Save it, since this is *that* movie. Neeful Things I don't remember too much about. The big thing I do remember is seeing a special effects show about it before having seen the movie itself. Most of it was stuff about wiring half the town to blow up at the end of the movie- gas explosions, placement of det cord, and so on. Lawnmower Man was okay, nice effects for the time. Misery was a good psycho lady movie. I remember reading the book too, but the only thing I remember about the book was that instead of the guy getting his feet mashed by a mallet in the movie, they actually get chopped off in the book. I also remember seeing, at an unnamed friend's house, the adult version of this movie. Psycho lady, guy realizes he's not really hurt, but instead of mashing his feet and trying to keep him tied up, the girl does, well, what they do in those movies. It was a humorously bad parody. Ah, It. Unsympathetic people, blah blah, climb in the sewers, demonic clown, blah blah, giant evil spider thing, blah blah. Mediocre on the suck scale. Graveyard Shift. Monster in the basement of some run down factory. I remember watching this with a particular family member. I remember that we liked it, in a campy sort of way. I don't remember why, other than the characters being...anti-social? carciatures? to the point of being silly. Ah- I didn't know Stephen King wrote the Running Man. I seem to recall that not being too terribly bad- Arnold running around with people shooting at him. Normal faire for Arnold. Stand By Me. Dammit. A good movie. My high school's theme song too. I'll have to, grudgingly, grant this as a good movie. Not grudgingly grand that the movie is good, but that Stephen King made a good movie. Yes, I also liked Maximum Overdrive. Firestarter was okay. All of this pales when compared to the soul-sucking experience of having watched...the Langoliers. It was a few years ago, Pop, Marje, Deb, and I were watching tv one evening after dinner. It wasn't “oh boy, let's watch *this* movie.” It was more “we've had dinner, now let's sit around and watch tv together.” I had been working on the computer, so I came in part way through the movie. Unsympathetic characters, supposed to be running from these things called the Langoliers. Okay, fine. Conflict established. We get to around 9:30pm and everyone, one by one, heads off to bed. Being the stubborn fellow that I am, I decided to stay and darned well watch the movie all the way through. No, no, no. That was my mistake, a mistake that haunts me to this day and that established, for me at least, Stephen King as the king of movie suckage (Roger Corman being slightly more palatable when you add the MST3K guys). So here we are, with our group of messed up characters that we don't care about, stuck in an apparently abandoned airport. We figure out what the Langoliers are- once the present has passed through a particular moment in time, the Langoliers are monsters that eat the past moment. I don't know if we are told why they do this, but that's what they do. Oh no, here come the Langoliers. Everyone gets in a plane and flies away, just in time to avoid the crappy cg Langoliers eating the Earth behind the jet. I think this happened around 10:15pm or so. I didn't think it would last that long, but okay. Fine. There are the monsters, the main characters are escaping, that's the climax of the movie, right? Wrong. Oh, it should have been in any normal universe. But not in Stephen King's. They're in the plane, safely away from the Langoliers. End of movie, right? Wrong. The problem is that they're still trapped in the moment the present has just passed, in the world of the Langoliers. They still have to get back to the present. They spend the next hour and (expletive deleted) forty five minutes figuring out something about having to go to sleep in order to wake up in the present. Now...had they realized this and wrapped things up in, say, 15 minutes or so, then the movie would have been a bad movie, but not the soul-sucking thing it became. The movie dragged on, and on, and on. Yes, it was just an hour and (expletive deleted) forty five minutes more, but it really did feel like a lifetime. I understand, based on this experience, how it can take 3 complete deciduous forrests to print a single one of Stephen King's books. Basically the characters flew around on the plane (actually, they sat on the plane and the plane flew) being their annoying, unsympathetic selves. I didn't care for them, I didn't care what happened to them. I just wanted the movie to end. Fly around, no real plot developement, just annoying people being annoying. 11:45pm or so, wehavetogotosleepokaypingmovieends. Good bleeping grief. If they'd cut the movie so that they people appear to fly away from the Langoliers and right into the present, then it just wouldn't have been so bad. End of the day, this is by far the worst movie I have ever, every seen.

Movie explosions. The vast majority of movie explosions- the kind with the rolling, red fire and black smoke stuff you see in action movies- are complete nonsense. That is, explosions do not happen that way, at least not in real life. Example: An explosion from Enter The Matrix. This is the sort of explosion at they had at the end of Needful Things. This is not real. Or at least, this is not what it looks like when someone really blows something up. Think of videos from World War II or Vietnam- the hemispherical expanding pressure wave when some place or other is bombed. That is a real explosion. Two good movie examples of real explosions are The Good The Bad And The Ugly and Tremors 2 Aftershocks. In The Good The Bad And The Ugly Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach blow up this bridge the union and the confederacy are fighting over. The thing is, in the movie, the bridge actually gets blown up. No gas plumes, none of that. The filmmakers actually blow the bridge up. Most of it is dirt and board flying everywhere, as far as we see. Eastwood and Wallach run back up the hill towards the camera and hunch down. The bridge explodes and all this debris (bits of rock, dirt, and bridge) fall out of the sky, even at the couple of hundred yards away where the camera and principal actors are. Now, safety on the set is good and all, but that was a nice bit of realism. I'd have to watch the movie again, looking specifically for this, but I don't think it was a case of crewmen off-shot throwing handfuls of debris down at the actors. It looked real. I think it was, and I would be sorely disappointed to find out if it wasn't. Anyway, that's the best movie explosion ever, that I know of. Another good movie explosion was in Tremors 2 Aftershocks. I think it was filmed in Mexico. Burt et al get the monsters / graboids / shriekers trapped in a shed or barn and are fixing to blow the shed up. The boy and girl run, with Burt left to start the fuse. The boy and girl run away, safe behind another shed or building. Burt sets the fuse, then runs. As he runs by the shed the boy and girl are hiding behind, he keeps running, looks over his shoulder, and yells no, no, for them to keep going. There are rare moments in movies that really grab you, that are really memorable, that are real 'moments.' Pop and I liked this one. Loaded Weapon had a bunch for Corrine and I. The boy and girl run after Burt, eventually to a safe distance, and the monster's shed blows up. It was a real explosion. Lots of dirt, wood, bits of metal siding everywhere. I remember a long shot, from a slightly elevated position. I don't think the principals were in the shot in this one. The explosion itself looked real. It was nicely done. Pop and I figured that the filmmakers didn't have enough money for a hollywood explosion, and that it ended up being cheaper to actually blow the shed up.

Hooper, starring Burt Reynolds and a very very young Jan Michael Vincent, is a movie I remember from when I was very young. Hooper is an older stuntman who ends up driving around with his new fellow stuntman, Jan Michael Vincent, at the end of the movie, as the climax of the movie they're making within the movie we're watching. Bunch of driving around with hollywood explosions going off all over the place. One of the main parts of this sequence is when they drive under a smokestack that falls and just misses them. I read, years later, that this part of the sequence was an effect. I was disappointed at the possibility, but when I finally gave up and bought the full-screen version at Walmart (there doesn't appear to exist a wide-screen version) and took it home to watch, sure enough- it's an effect. The car does drive under the smokestack, but the filmmakers made a composite- the car drives by in the lower part of the screen, when the smokestack isn't falling, and the smokestack falls in the upper part of the screen, when the car isn't driving by. It's obvious when you frame by frame it, and it's a bit disappointing. Of course they had stuntment in the car- I knew that already. I'm just diappointed that they didn't really do the smokestack stunt, in a film about stuntmen of all things.

I never saw the entire movie, Adventures Of Baron Munchaussen, from the 1980s. It seemed like a vaguely silly movie and i'd probably sit down to watch it if I saw it on tv or in a friend's dvd collection. I was bored the other day- nothing worth watching on the History channel, sci-fi channel, cartoon network, spike, or the BBC. I was trying to find something to watch, just something to keep me company while I type on the computer, when I see either Turner Movie Classics or A&E running Munchaussen. I flipped over to that channel and find that it's an old, but color, movie. It is Munchaussen but it's in German. I watched the remaining half hour or so. It was reasonably pleasant and it did have a happier ending than how immortals usually end up in shows like Star Trek or the Twilight Zone. Nice pleasant movie, the end credits, and the host guy comes out to tell us more about the movie. Then guilt arrives for me. Turns out yes, it is a German production, but it was made in, oh, the 1930s. Great. Just wonderfully great. I've been enjoying a movie made by the you-know-whosits. I feel guilty and I feel dirty for it. Granted, the host guy goes on to explain that it was very strange that this move ever got made, considering the political atmosphere of the day and who was in power. The director (who had been directing long before you-know-who came to power) apparently got to make this movie and make it they way he wanted to. This was odd for the time because there wasn't any you-know-who propaganda in it and fantasy stories such as this were not what the party wanted everyone to crank out. I guess that makes this a bit of a diamond in the rough, but I still feel guilty for it. Maybe i'll detox with something overly patriotic, Red Dawn perhaps.

I don't remember where I read about it, but somewhere I read that men's bathrooms can be made easier to clean by placing a sticker in the bottom of the urinals. Apparently it's an automatic guy thing to aim for the sticker, resulting in fewer misses and less for the maintenance folks to clean.

On my quest list have been various items such as a black yo-yo, one of those pencil boxes with the faceted, sliding, wrap-around top, and a hot wheels Delorean, all of which I eventually got ahold of. Currently on the quest list, but probably on the very long-term side of the list, is a jigsaw puzzle I used to have. It was a 100 piece puzzle. Donald Duck was laying in a hammock. Huey, Duey, and Louey were in the branches of a tree above Donald and had just spilled their ice cream which, as I recall, had landed on Donald's head. And...nope. No luck on ebay at the moment. No luck for my Disney trash can either. Oh well. The point of a quest is to keep an eye out for it, so i'm not in any rush.

When Gmail came out, it sounded like a good idea. Lots of free mail storage, easy login and so on. Then came that bit about our deleted mail not really being deleted. So it sounds like Gmail is not to be trusted. What I ended up doing with my Gmail account was collect spam. Figured it would be interesting to see whether or not I could intentionally get as much spam with that account as my 3 web sites generate for me just by sitting there. To date I have accumulated 42,914 spam messages via Gmail, of which at least 212 are Nigerian 419 scam messages. No, in case anyone's wondering, these messages do not constitute contact with foreign nationals because they are junk mail sent out in bulk, not attempts to contact me personally. As I am not entirely stupid, I don't write back and identify my email address as valid. Of those 212 messages, 33 are from Lagos, Nigeria, 88 from Nigeria as a whole, and 196 are from Africa. My share of the pot ranges from $15 thousand to $44 million (MILLION US DOLLARS), with an average of $5.508 million and a standard deviation of $5.001 million. 89 of the 212 want me to help them get money out of their country. 49 want me to stand in as an heir to collect someone's inheritance. 43 are bank employees. 29 want me to use the money to fund churches, orphanages, widows, and to propogate the word of God. 13 are related to wealthy cocoa merchants or members of a cocoa exporting board. 13 are part of some petroleum-related company, usually the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. 9 are widows of Chevron / Texaco employees (one of whom was named Cletus) who were working somewhere in Africa. 7 were relatives, widows, or former employees of the the late dictator of Nigeria, General Sani Abacha. And I appear to have won 4 separate lotteries. Always entertaining are the messages where someone is, for example, the “chief auditor of a reputable bank.” Diane Mene of Sierra Leone is the daughter of a wealthy cocoa merchant, whereas Aishat Dangana of the Ivory Coast is the daughter of a very wealthy cocoa merchant, so I guess my private information (including bank account, social security number, and date of birth) would have to go to Mrs Dangana. Martins Olusegun is a staff member of the union bank, “big, strong, reliable!,” though Mr Olusegun does not indicated whether this refers to the bank or himself. Stella Ali is a widow and mother of 2 “all girls.” Hermaphrodites don't get much sympathy I guess.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Dallas Starnes was an interesting character, a bad guy, from the Banning, CA area. I met him several years ago (around late 1999 I think) when I pulled into my driveway one day and he was walking by on the sidewalk. He was a fairly scruffy looking individual. He asked me for a ride home. Suffering from the occasional attack of good samaritanedness, I agreed. We stopped at the corner market just down the street, where Dallas Starnes (sorry; want to get that google ranking up!) went inside to buy himself a soda or snack or something. He came back out and explained to me that they wouldn't serve him. Strange, I thought, but I went in myself to buy whatever it was. The clerk, seeing that I had arrived with Dallas Starnes, refused to serve me. The clerk explained to me that Dallas Starnes was a local scumbag who had been cought several times for shoplifting and selling drugs on that store's property. Okay, I thought, so maybe Dallas Starnes is this really bad guy. I had already committed to taking him home, so I dropped him wherever it was that he wanted- somewhere else in Banning. Now that I think of it after the fact, that might not have been such a good idea because that might not have been his home and he might have been going to work to burgle someone's house. Now, of course, I wouldn't have talked to him to begin with. At the time, I probably should have sent him on his way at the store. Still, bad guy or not, I had completed the good deed for the day and so I went home. A few days later some of the neighborhood kids had broken into the front unit of the building where I live. I don't remember why, but the folks in the front unit were fairly certain it had been a particular batch of kids down the street from us. The neighbors had come home and found this damage and (very wisely) called the police, because the bad guys might still be inside. The police came out and found no one inside, so that was taken care of. While the police were there, though, I thought to ask one of them about what had happened with Dallas Starnes the other night. The officer I spoke with told me that the store clerk was pretty much correct, that Dallas Starnes was a general local scumbag. Okay, fine. A few days later there's a knock on my door. Who is it, but none other than Dallas Starnes. He wanted me to help him move a computer which he said someone had given him. Right. I explained to him the chat I had had with the police and how they confirmed what the store clerk had said. Dallas Starnes looked at me with a somewhat aghast expression. I declined to help him, of course. A while after that, I was chatting with my step-sister's now ex-boyfriend, Aldrin. Aldrin had worked with, I think it was, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's department. I related this story to Aldrin who, when hearing Dallas Starnes' name, excalimed 'oh, *that* guy.' Great, just great. Aldrin explained to me that Dallas Starnes was a frequent flyer with many local law enforcement agencies and that he was known, by name, to pretty much every officer between Riverside and San Bernardino out to Palm Springs. So Dallas Starnes excelled at being a scumbag. A year or two after that I was driving down my street, just heading out for work, when I noticed an officer driving the other way. We stopped, window to window. I asked the officer what was going on, if there was anything I could help him with. The officer asked if I knew who Dallas Starnes was. I told the officer that I didn't know him, but I certainly knew of him and what he looked like. I asked if Dallas Starnes was in my area. The officer said no, but that since Dallas Starnes had recently been let out of jail, Banning Police Department would sure appreciate it if i'd let them know where I saw Dallas Starnes at all, even if he was just walking down the street, minding his own business. I never did see Dallas Starnes beyond that second time when he knocked on my door, but it was still interesting to hear these little bits and pieces of info float by from time to time. The last time I heard anything about Dallas Starnes was earlier this year (2005) when, making my weekly visit to the local laundromat, I notice a sign on the laundromat's bulletin board giving details about a memorial service for Dallas Starnes. The laundromat owner took the sign down when I explained who and what sort of person Dallas Starnes was. I never did find out what he died of, though a drug overdose seems the most likely cause. Just for entertainment, I decided to look him up on the publicly available Riverside County Superior Court and San Bernardino County Superior Court record systems. So, for Dallas Starnes' epitaph, I would like to add the following: Divorced at the age of 17, 1 count of DUI, 1 count of evading arrest, 1 count of being an unlicensed operator of a motor vehicle, 1 count of resisting arrest or obstruction of justice, 1 count of being a pedestrian crossing the road against a red light, 1 count of having a passenger who wasn't wearing a seatbelt, 1 count of driving without insurance, 1 count of taking a vehicle without the owner's consent, 1 count of not paying for lodging, 1 count of grand theft, 1 count of theft of utility services, 1 count of embezzlement, 1 count of vehicle theft, 1 count of disregarding the safety of others, 2 counts of grand theft firearm, 2 counts of receiving stolen property, 2 counts of petty theft, 2 counts of driving an unregistered vehicle, 4 counts of resisting arrest, 4 counts of drug possession, 5 counts of driving without a license, 5 counts of having drug paraphrenalia, and, last but not least, 7 counts of drug use. It's hard for me to say i'm sorry to see this sort of person go, and frankly i'm not too sad that someone who has done all of these things is gone from this world. The best thing I can think of to say is that it would have been nice if he hadn't followed that path in life. So much for Dallas Starnes.

Since it's a marathon today, I figured i'd talk about the unpleasant clerk at Food For Less- the one who works nights, with a sort of butch appearance, who didn't want to sell me Sunny Delight. Food For Less had 2 liter bottles of Sunny Delight for $.79 each. Okay, fine. The bottles they had on the shelves, however, had labels indicating that, with each label, you could get $0.40 off your next 2 liter bottle of Sunny Delight. I bought the first bottle at full price, took the label of that bottle, applied that label to the next bottle for a price of $0.39, then took the label off the second bottle, and so on and so on. I want to say I ended up with around 36 bottles or so- all I could find in the store. I went through this particular clerk's line. I said to her, in a pleasant tone, that I was sorry and that I was just trying to make her job as difficult as possible. I wasn't; I was joking. I just wanted the good price, not to make her work any more difficult. She, however, responded in a surly tone that I was doing an excellent job of it. We completed our transaction without incident. Based on her tone and her generally unpleasant attitude, I have never gone through her line again. If she's the only person on the register (this is late at night remember), i'll wait until I can find one of the other workers and ask them to open a register, telling them that i've had a negative shopping experience with that particular clerk. I feel a little bit bad about it sometimes, but the feeling I end up with each time is that it was her job to be professional, she wasn't, and i'm darned well not going to be her customer ever again.

Discounts at Staples. Ooh, I used to have fun with these. Staples used to do 150% price matching, which meant they would charge you the other store's price, less 50% of the difference. If Staples had the item for $2 and the other store had the item for $1, you would be charged $0.50 (match the $1, then subtract ½ of the $1 difference or 50 cents, for a total of 50 cents). This didn't make much of a difference for core Staples items such as paper and pens. Where it did make was with items that were needed in an office environment, but weren't core items. The best examples I found were dish soap and those little bottles of soft soap. Staples always carried the little bottles of soft soap for $2.99. Walmart, on the other hand, almost never had them for more than $1.50. At a Walmart price of $1.50, the end price would be $0.76. At a Walmart price of $1.00, the end price would be $0.01. Most of the time it was somewhere in between. I remember one of the Staples ladies was not pleased to see me because I would buy out their entire supply of soft soap and dish soap. I accumulated a stock of soft soap that lasted for a good 6 years. I still have (7 or 8 years later) a good supply of dish soap left. The fine text of Staples' price matching plan did not include a reference about what would happen if the resulting price dropped below zero. It was with some amount of glee that that same, very frustrated, clerk was instructed by her manager that, yes, I was correct when Staples had to match their $2.99 soft soap to Walmart's $0.91 soft soap, with a resulting price of... - $0.13. They ended up paying me 13 cents per bottle to take away their entire stock (usually 8 to 12 bottles). I only remember the one time it dipped into negative territory, but both soaps usually came in at less than $0.30 per bottle. What I also got a lot of was clerks and managers complaining to me that this wasn't what their price matching system was for, that I was abusing the system. Fine with me- don't have that price matching deal. Lower your prices. Don't complain to me about your inability or unwillingness to compete. As I explained to Staples from time to time, it was entirely Staples' fault for charging 3 times more than the store down the street for an identical item. If Staples didn't like it, then they were perfectly welcome to change their prices. What ended up happening was that Office Depot, which had also been doing 150% price matching, stopped doing so. These days Staples does only 110% price matching, which isn't nearly as good and doesn't dip into the very very low prices I had had fun with at Staples. However, going from $2.99 at Staples to $0.91 still results in an end price of $0.70. It's good, just not as good. Fun while it lasted though.

There's this Napster commercial, the one about imagining if you were like Mitch. The first thing I want to make clear is that I understand that if you think Mitch is cool you are a young person at whom the commercial is aimed, whereas if you think Mitch is an idiot you are probably older and not the sort of person the commercial is aimed at. In the real world Mitch would not keep his job for very long. Not wanting to smell some guy's arm cast is one thing, but outright refusing to do his assigned work (did you have those reports ready?) and installing software that i'm guessing wasn't blessed by the company's IT folks leads me to believe he's just not going to be there for very long. That and the way he treats his co-workers. Yes, kids, if you want to be an unemployed idiot, subscribe to Napster.

Mr Lazenby. Ah, Mr Lazenby was quite a piece of work. Let's put it this way- he makes Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force look like Fabio. Mr Lazenby was this guy that used to live on the street behind us when I lived on Lurin Rd in Woodcrest, CA. Several of the kids in the neighborhood had Commodore 64s, but no money. Mr Lazenby, being a grownup, had a commodore 64, but did have money. He would supply the kids in the neighborhood with copies of C64 games, which was nice and all, but there was a problem... Basically it boiled down to Mr Lazenby being fat and having poor hygeine. Oh, I shouldn't be mean, I know. But Mr Lazenby was a unique piece of work. I want to say he was around 350 pounds at about 5 1/2 feet tall. Two of us (younger teens at the time) could sit side by side in one of his chairs. His breakfasts inclued about a gallon of milk, a pound of bacon, and around a dozen eggs. He showered once every few months and he had basically end-stage atheletes foot that he never treated. If you loaned him a disk- I sh.t you not- when you got your disk back the next day and got home, your disk smelled like him. But the neighborhood kids would visit him because he provided us with new video games. My then-step sister, Darla, asked his wife (a nice old lady) one time why she stayed with him. She told Darla 'because he needs me.' Thing was, we would occasionally be able to hear, from inside our homes about a block away (open field in between though) Mr Lazenby yelling at his wife. I don't remember if he had had any kids (none at that house for certain) but I pray that he didn't manage to reproduce.

Tiger's milk chocolate- a sort of light and dark chocolate swirled together. This is Carol's favorite kind of chocolate and i've been looking for it for years. I've talked to a number of candy store workers and owners, but none seems to have ever heard of it. I've looked online all over the place, but no luck there either. Aside from the fact that tiger milk chocolate may not exist anymore or that Carol may have the name wrong, there are those blasted nutrition bars, Tiger Milk brand. Tiger Milk nutrition bars and tiger's milk chocolate are two different things. I don't see a reasonable chance these days of finding it, but I try to keep it in mind, as I would expect Carol to be very happy if I ever did find it.

I've been trying to remember what show is is at least since the 80s, probably since the 70s. It was a cartoon show. I don't remember whether it was an american cartoon or an anime; I didn't know what anime was at the time. It was a cartoon about a bunch of race car drivers, each with their own car of course. The big gimmick was that their cars could all join together to form a single, much larger car. Whenever I tell anyone about this, they almost always ask if i'm talking about the car Voltron. Since the cars i'm describing turned into a larger race car and not a giant robot, it's not Voltron. I just wish I remembered even the name of the show. I imagine, like Blackstar and He-Man, the show would very simple and childish now vs when I watched them the first time around as a child. It still want to see it again, if only to have fulfilled that particular quest. With the crappy anime showing up on the $1 rack at Walmart (now in the toys section), it makes me think this show might have been an obscure anime.

Tradewars was a space exploration, trading, and warfare game I used to play back when online meant the local BBS. You had a certain number of turns per day in which you could move to various sectors of the game world, land on a planet to explore and mine resources, or do battle with another character's ships. Wherever you ended up when you ran out of turns for the day- that was where other players would find you between then and the next time you played. So if you left your mother ship out and unprotected, you could easily be killed by whoever else came on that day. I mapped that game world too- hexagonal layout with a few hundred systems/tiles. I realize that I ended up making the game not much fun for everyone else because, with the map, I was able to opimize a trade route which lead me to vastly greater resources than everyone else in the game. It got to the point where I had every single good system surrounded with enough ships of my own that pretty much no one, even if they all got together, could penetrate. I understand about sportsmanship and all that, but for the time I really enjoyed the dominance I had over every one else in the game. Good stuff. The sysop only had to re-start the game, which would re-shuffle all the system arrangements, making my map useless. I don't remember if he ended up doing that or if the BBS closed down first. Like all things, that finally passed. I don't remember why, but I never did get into Tradewars 2002. It was a fun time though.

Starflight, one of my most favoritest games of all time. I first ran into it in Architecture class at Arlington High School. It was on an XT or AT system, 4.77mHz, black and white graphics. The game universe (galaxy, excuse me) was incredibly huge for the time- a total of 800 planets. Plenty of upgrades and customizations for your ship, several different races of varying personalities to interact with. Decently epic story to uncover. Good space battles. I spent most of my lunchtimes that year playing Starflight. Years later I bought the game (now in color!) for the Sega Genesis. It was a lot of fun to play and explore, and it certainly looked better, but it didn't quite have the same oomph, the same style. Because I had it at home, I did end up mapping all 800 planets with their varying resources and life forms. I still fire it up occasionally, but it's much less of a challenge now that I know where the important items and races are. One of my fondest video game memories of all time, right up there with Legacy Of The Ancients and Blacksilver.

Legacy and Blacksilver, the greatest rpgs of all time. Yes, I know, imho. They were the very best rpgs of the time, back in the days of the C64. You know it's a good game when you start playing one afternoon, when it's still daylight, you look up and see that it's dark but you keep playing, then you look up and see that it's daylight again. You start to turn as if to stand up and your neck cracks. Tired but happy. I still have both games and i've forgotten most of the major story points, so it should be fairly playable when i'm in that mood again. I did some very nice hand-drawn maps of the levels, with the entire page colored and a colored folder to go with. If I had to pick an all-time, most favorite game of all, it would have to be Legacy of the Ancients. Best game ever.

Made some ham and cheese sandwiches earlier this week. It's been a while since i've made anything using sliced cheese. It reminded me of a discovery I made as a child. Being bored one day, I wondered whether or not those cellophane wrappers cheese slices are wrapped in are flammable. The simplest way I could think of to find out was to light one up and see what happens. I lit it on a stove burner, just the corner of the wrapper. The answer is...they are flammable. Very flammable as it turns out. It burned quicker than I expected. I didn't think to have a sink half-full of water to toss it in. I reacted just as if I were holding a match that was burning too close to my fingers. No, I didn't drop it. I made a swiping motion, trying to put the wrapper out. Sure enough, it worked. What I did not expect to happen was the bit of molten cellophane that flew up into the air and landed a little bit back from the corner of the L-shape on my left hand. It left an odd sort of mark that wasn't exactly a scab and wasn't exactly a scar. It took a long time to go away, but it did eventually go away. I was a little bit more careful with cellophane after that.

So here I am, spending my sunday at Loven's house. The official purpose of the visit is to play Halo 2, but i'm happy just watching, mainly due to my extreme suckage at this game. It's enough just sitting around with the guys. And it's usually impossible to leave his house hungry. The real purpose is to sit around with the guys. Loven's parents are building a permanent barbecue setup in their back yard, so I went out to say hello and see what was going on. I asked them if they expected to have it done by christmas. They said yes, and that if they did I had to pay for christmas dinner. That's nice and all, but apparently christmas at Loven's entails fifty to one hundred people. At least I have the chance to plan ahead. I also appear to have been invited to go with them the next time they visit their native Philippines, where they tell me it will be very very easy to find a wife. I thanked them and explained that Carol might object to the idea.

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

This came as a complete shock to me, but as it came from the manufacturer themselves, I guess we have to take them at their word.  Would you believe that...wait for it...Ovaltine is more addictive than cocaine?  I was shocked and appalled, but that's what the Ovaltine radio commercial said.  What was that line again...that's right.  "No kid can resist the taste of rich, chocolatey Ovaltine."  Because there are people in the world (i'm one of them, thank you very much) who have never tried cocaine, those people have resisted cocaine.  If no kid can resist the taste of rich, chocolatey Ovaltine and some kids can resist cocaine, then it logically follows that Ovaltine must be more addictive than cocaine.  I'm not making any judgements or opinions- this is a logical conclusion based on what Novartis A G, the makers of Ovaltine have told us.  Thanks guys.  We've taught our kids to avoid bad people, we've taught our kids to 'just say no,' but here comes Ovaltine.  And it's legal!  Oh well, maybe next time we'll talk about the addict's behavior of that unfortunate animated cereal character, Sonny the Cocoa Puffs bird.

Boost Mobile is apparently for idiots.  They have this series of commercials where, instead of being 'chirped' and going to some party or to see some girl rapping or something, the show what would have happened if the person didn't have a Boost Mobile phone.  There's one where this guy, if he didn't have this phone, would have discovered the ability to communicate with animals and developed a lucrative career from that ability.  Soooo...the message is, instead of discovering this wonderful ability and making the best use of his unique attributes, he, with his Boost Mobile phone, became just another punk.  In another commercial this girl would have ended up as a ballet instructor in eastern Europe.  Aside from it being eastern Europe, I don't see what's so wrong with that.  She has a talent, she develops that talent to the best of her ability.  Instead, with her Boost Mobile phone, she becomes an unprofessional b.....  We see that she's on a set, there's the cameraman and other film crew people standing around.  The girl's telling everyone to wait while she talks to someone on her phone.  Yeesh.  I realize this is how people may sometimes act in real life, but that doesn't make the girl in the commercial any less of a b.....  So Boost Mobile's message to the young of today is to ignore the needs of others and to not recognize your unique skills and make use of them.

The bad news is that I didn't make it this time around for my master's degree.  My professor told me I could re-take just the part I missed in the next few days, but after the very rushed experience of last time, I didn't want to get through it on just a chance.  The next time I could re-take the test was in October.  I declined on that one since I have festivities with Carol coming up and a possible move, I don't want all that happening at once.  The next shot after that is in February 2006.  That one i'm taking.  Of course I want to pass it as soon as possible, but i'm not too worried one way or the other- if I don't make it, it's just part of my $250 per semester endowment to the university.  Not worried- i'll make it one way or the other.

While walking through Costco the other day, I found that they still carry these 6-shelf metal shelving units.  Aside from providing a good amount of shelf space while occupying a relatively small amount of floorspace, my cats don't like walking on the series of metal bars that make up the shelf surfaces.  It's also a wheeled unit, so it's easy to move around.  I've only had this for 1 or 2 years, but it's thanks to a little bit of paper i'd been holding on to for about 14 years.  Back in 1990 I worked for a video arcade at the Tyler Mall in Riverside, CA.  My boss gave me a one day pass to Costco.  I never got around to using it until 2003 or 2004.  My Costco membership had expired (I have since renewed) at the time, so I finally tried to use the coupon.  The people at the membership desk were a bit leary, but went ahead and let me use it when I told them I had a single particular item (the shelves) that I wanted.  Got the shelves out to the car.  Ah- that's right.  This was also the time when I finally figured out how exactly to let down the back seats in my 2003 Chevrolet Cavalier.  It turns out you have to pull on these ribbon-like handles that are not next to the back seats.  Not terribly intuitive.  Anyway, I got the shelves home.  They were easy to assemble and, with a 600 pound per shelf (for a total of 3,600 pounds) rating, I can put pretty much anything I want on the shelves.  The wheels also have a locking mechanism, so if I put the shelves on a tile or wood floor (they're on rug now), I can stop them from moving around.  It was also nice to finally get rid of the old entertainment center which, while I am thankful for, had become more and more unstable with each cycle of assembly and dissasembly.

The video arcade was fun.  The games were, of course, primitive by today's standards, but they were plenty fun for the time.  I think we had Mortal Kombat by that point.  We did have a Double Dragon machine.  Double Dragon stands out as being the only game I could beat on a single quarter (yes, with the backward elbow jab move).  The only real problem we had on a consistent basis was people who would pee in the front corner of the store.  I don't know what it was about those 2 corners- there were bathrooms just down the way.  I also remember this messed up guy that used to come around from time to time.  He was interesting.  He claimed to be the Flash (yes, the superhero) and would do things like ask us to time him as he ran around the world, then say "go, stop."  I also remember the day when he decided that he was no longer the Flash, but that he was now the Incredible Hulk.  He was entertaining and all, but when, after not seeing him for several days, I asked someone working at the candy store next door what had happened to that guy, I found out that he had done the 'hulking out' bit in the mall, including the part (ala Lou Ferrigno) where he rips off his shirt.

Being a frequent Pic N Save customer (I refuse to call it that other name) due to the interesting junk they have from time to time, I started collecting 1,000 piece Big Ben brand puzzles.  $4 for a 1,000 piece puzzle is a pretty good deal.  They have a few not-Big Ben brand puzzles that I picked up as well.  I suppose I ought to get around to finishing the one 2,000 piece puzzle I started first though.  This weekend I found that Walmart carries 1,000 piece Big Ben puzzles, but different particular puzzles than the ones Pic N Save carries.  Walmart also had some Kodak 1,000 piece puzzles.  Figure if I end up moving somewhere where I can't get DSL, i'll have something to do.

Speaking of DSL...  I live in Banning, CA, where I have DSL.  I pay the little bit extra ($10/mo) for full speed DSL (1.5mb/sec down).  I will not move to an area where I can't get DSL.  Satellite service, while faster than dialup, is still too expensive per unit of download speed.  Even though I have no way of verifying it, i've been happy with the apparent unwillingness of my service provider, Verizon, to blindly provide private customer information to whichever idiot body (RIA, MPAA, the telemarketer down the street, etc).  As far as cable internet service, there's still that whole neighborhood's-on-the-same-network thing.  So DSL it is.  I also really want to stay in the Banning area because we're supposed to get fiber to the home within a year or so.  I remember and my friends still complain about 56k/sec dialup.  I even remember the fun days of local BBSs and dialing up at 300bits/sec on my Commodore 64.  DSL was a big change.  I can do things with the speed of DSL that were just not practical at dialup speeds.  I wouldn't have thought of most of them before I got DSL.  By the same token, I don't know right now what i'll be able to do with fiber speeds (15mb/sec down!), but I look forward to finding out.  Maybe 2 way video at a decent resolution.  Maybe a god-like ping time for multiplayer games.  Who knows?

Watched Forrest Gump on the 3rd.  I think what I find so appealing about Forrest Gump himself is that he is a good man and does whatever is the right thing to do at the time.  The part where he is deployed to Vietnam- I don't know quite what it is, but the sequence, at least the beginning of it, is very motivational.  It really made me feel the sense that, when my country calls me to war, it's time to make war.  It's separate from any debate of the rightness or wrongness of the thing.  It made me...feel the desire to answer my country's call to battle.  Too bad I can't- darned old heart murmur.  It was a real 'time to rock' moment though.

Watched the Omen yesterday.  It's a baby and it might be...well, it would be a silly movie if he wasn't.  Just finished watching the Omen II.  It's an early teen and it might be...and it is.  He comes to grips with who he is and warms to his role.  The one moment where you feel maybe a bit of of sympathy (please allow him to introduce himself) for him is when, having discovered the mark on his head, he runs out on the pier and yells 'why me?'  Talk about a troubled puberty.  He gets back to killing people left and right pretty quickly, so don't worry, it doesn't last long.  A couple of the people that get killed in this movie die rather stupidly.  The reporter lady's death toward the beginning of the movie has a couple of problems.  Her car breaks down, she gets out, there's a crow, the crow attacks her, she stumbles back onto the road and gets hit by a truck.  Let's see now...  She gets out of her car, sees the crow and is scared.  Instead of sensibly getting back in the car where the crow presumably won't be able to reach her, she goes running down the road, where the crow pecks at her repeatedly.  What not-stupid other choices could she have made?  How about not running into the one place (outside the car) where the crow could get her?  Given that she ends up grabbing the crow as it attacks her moments later, she could have grabbed the crown and thrown it in the car.  Or, realizing that however evil, it's still just a crow, she could have choked the darned thing.  But no, she screams and runs helplessly.  After the crow attacks her and she falls into a roadside ditch, she stumbles back onto the road.  Now, this particular road is a long, straight, unobstructed road.  A truck, starting from a long way away, drives down the road, eventually hitting reporter lady.  The truck's driver was able to see reporter lady (and her car along the side of the road) for at least 1/2 a mile to a full mile.  No indication is given that he's one of the bad guys.  It's just some guy in a truck.  It's a clear, bright day.  The driver has all this time and should be able to see reporter lady long before the last moment to hit the breaks and avoid her.  He just keeps driving.  I can't see her, I can't see her, there's nothing right in bleeping front of me on the road, bump, oh what was that?  The guy that, later in the movie, takes Gregory Peck's brother out to the rail yard to look at the bit of wall in the rail car is scared and waits outside the rail car.  Being that he's afraid of, basically, everything, you would think he would stand somewhere *other* than on the rails, next to one of the giant metal things that can kill you.  Stupid, but not as stupid.  The guy that dies by falling through the ice- there was a current according to dialogue.  A current...in the lake?  In the frozen over lake with no river nearby?  It's also a suspiciously strong current, given that we see almost no water movement on the surface of the 2 or 3 holes.  Even though there's this big tree branch, very easy to get ahold of, the drowning guy is dragged under the ice, off to his death.  He dies a bit too unbelievably easy.  So the stage is set for the Omen III, which has a nice triumphal ending.

So here I am, trying the blogging thing.  An online journal sort of thing for all the world to read.  Of course, I can't tell you all what I really think and feel about things, partly because my employer (who sees and knows all) as well as my family (who see and know enough) can see this just as easily as the next person.  What I would like to do is work out how to conveniently edit and post to my blog from my cell phone (the Pocket PC based Audiovox 6600 mentioned below).  I know I can open the web page and edit the html code, but that seems a bit inconvenient.  Figure i'll try opening the web page in Pocket Word or try to find a Pocket PC based html editor.  That way I can report to you all from the field.  Maybe i'll be witness to the next Rodney King incident or a bank robbery or some other event with no one else to report on the scene.  That's why I always keep a camera in the car- just in case.  It almost always happens that I see something worth photographing when I don't have my camera with me.  Among other things I want to try- Looking through one of my glass or fresnel lenses at an ant hill- see what they do with bits of sugar or other bits of stuff, do a bit of writing and take some pics of the raccoons living in the sewers in Banning, CA (they come out of a particular drain if you leave food near the entrance), see about going on a ridealong with the local police department, and visit the local jail in Riverside, CA and the prison in Victorville, CA, both of which give tours to the general public. 

Last week (thursday, I think) was Hard Luck Woman, Ed's last episode.  Sniff, sniff.  Jason chose well with the wall scroll he gave me.  What I want to do now is get a decent screencap of Spike and Jet looking down on Ed's painting.  One of my favorite moments in all of anime.  Unlike the next two episodes, the series finale.  Spike goes to face Vicious in a pointless battle to the apparent death.  He doesn't go to face Vicious to prevent vicious from being the new syndicate leader, nor does he do so because Vicious is responsible for Julia's death.  Nope.  Spike just goes to face Vicious because he has to.  Seems kind of pointless and it was fairly unsatisfying to me.  Yes, it was better than the ending to Berserk, but it still lacked punch.  I cared more for Ed's last sequence than Spike and Vicious'.

Over the past few months my computer has exhibited a bit of strange behavior.  Every so often when I would bump or nudge the desk, or the computer itself, the computer would shut itself off, as if the power had gone out.  I figured there was a loose connection somewhere or a bad wire- i've had a couple of IDE cables go out on me over the years.  When I got my new used monitor (22", 2048x1536, oh joy) I added one of my extra PCI graphics cards (old Matroxes, don't need them for 3d anything, so they're fine for my needs) to run the old monitor.  That stuff about 2 monitors adding to your productivity is true, at least i've found that it is when doing my genealogy work.  I have one window for source information and another window for the genealogy program.  I can alt-tab between the two full-screen windows, but then most of my effort is spent trying to remember info between the windows.  A much easier setup is to have the source window maximized with the genealogy program as a smaller window on top.  That way I can look at the source info in the window underneath while typing in the genealogy program on top.  It's better, but it's still a bit of a hassle in that the genealogy program, in a smaller window, is harder to read.  Also, I have to switch back and forth between the two windows whenever I want to move between pages in the source window.  I've tried 2 monitors for genealogy work before, and it works out quite nicely.  One maximized window on the side for source info, one maximized window on the main monitor for the genealogy program.  The number of people per hour I can add to the family tree increases that way.  I wouldn't think not having to click back and forth between windows would make that much of a difference, but it turns out that it does.  I think, rather than the extra time and effort of clicking back and forth, that it's having to take my attention away from data entry for that extra little bit of time.  I just know my output goes up with the 2 monitors.  Back to the intermittent powering off thing though... When I plugged the extra card and monitor in, the computer would power up when I pressed the switch, but it would power off in a few seconds, long before Windows got a chance to even begin to start.  I took all the cards out, one by one, and dusted them off, then put them back in.  I also dusted off the main board.  No difference.  I tried unplugging each of the drives one by one.  No difference.  I thought, since I had added another card, that the system might be eating more power than the power supply could give.  It didn't seem  like it should- it's a P4 with a Radeon 7200 and a 400 watt power supply.  Thanks to my being a magnet for surplus non-working computers, I have a pile of computer guts, including a 350 watt power supply.  I swapped power supplies and the 350 watt power supply worked just fine.  Since that one has a lower power rating, the only other possibility I can think of is a loose connection or some such in the 400 watt power supply.  In any case, the computer works fine now.  Go figure.

Monday, September 5, 2005

Bad review of the Del Taco at Highway 79 and the I-10 freeway in Beaumont, CA.  Not so much the food but the very very unpleasant night manager.  My friend, Carol, was in their drivethrough when her minivan broke down.  She couldn't help it of course.  She had at least one tow truck company come out to move her out of the drivethrough.  The problem was that the drivethrough is curved and very very few tow trucks these days have the particular sort of lifting mechanism needed to load and pull a vehicle through a curved path.  This happened around 9pm on August 13, 2005.  While the regular employees were nice and pleasant to Carol, the night manager on duty was very unpleasant.  He yelled at Carol in public about something that was beyond her ability to change on the spot, that she was doing her best to fix.  He also threatened to call the police and have her vehicle removed.  Aside from being unpleasant, intimidating, and threatening, this served no purpose as the police would have...wait for it...had to call a tow truck.  The police would have had the same problem removing her vehicle that she was having.  So the night manager was a jerk, threatening and intimidating Carol, even though neither he nor the police nor Carol could do anything more than what was already being done.  This is a black mark on the character of Del Taco and reflects negatively on the entire company.  I think i'll fire off a letter to the corporate office and see what happens.  I think the most reasonable thing would be to have the corporate office arrange a time and date I could bring Carol down to this Del Taco and have this guy apologize in public to her for his inappropriate behavior.  This will, at the very least, be an opportunity for Del Taco corporate to show whether or not the character of the entire company is reflected by this particular night manager.

On the other side of things, the folks that finally got Carol's vehicle out of the drivethrough were Stagecoach Towing of Banning, California.  They can be found at 724 East Ramsey St, Banning, CA, 951-849-2346.  Here's the map.  They had the wheel-lift type tow truck needed to move Carol's vehicle.  Carol describes the tow truck driver, Mr Kenneth Forrest, as having been 'very sweet.'  So kudos to Stagecoach Towing; they sound like nice folks and they sound like they can get the job done when no one else can.  Thanks, Ken.

This is very, very strange.  I could have sworn I already wrote about the stuff on the plane.  I don't quite have a distinct memory of the actual act of doing so, but still...Very strange.  I tried the bathroom on the airplane.  It was fairly small and angles, but with room to comfortably sit down.  There's even a fold down baby shelf for diaper changing, though i'm not entirely sure what one is supposed to do with the used diaper.  There's a bunch of labels indicating what you can and can't put in the toilet and waste basket.  Can't put bottles, cups, crayons, diapers, rattles, razors or bags (barf bags I think it means) in the toilet.  Can't put syringes in either the toilet or waste basket.  I wondered why anyone would be using syringes to begin with, at least anyone who isn't doing something illegal.  Then I realized- insulin, of course.  What they also have in airplane bathrooms, at least in the US, are labels all over the place talking about no smoking and how it's a $2,200 fine to tamper with any smoke detection equipment on an airplane.  Makes sense I suppose- smokers are drug addicts and their time aboard an airplane is a completely drug-free environment.  So, in trying to get their fix, I imagine smokers over the years have gone to great lengths to sneak a smoke while aboard a plane.  It all made sense.  What didn't make sense was when I returned to my seat and I noticed that, on the outside of each bathroom door (3 bathrooms on the plane I was on) was...an ashtray.  On a plane where you're not allowed to smoke, ever.  I thought it might be that this particular model of plane was sold internationally and they all had ashtrays.  I asked one of the stewards, who told me that federal law required the ashtrays to be there.  As I said, very strange.

Friday, August 5, 2005

Got a couple of atta-boys at work. On the plane home now. Missed the flight I was supposed to be on, partly due to dropping coworker off at alternate location. Partly due to a stop on the way to the airport for a nap. Considering that i've lost a cousin, his wife, and their one year old to fatigued driving, I am sensitive to this issue. When I feel it is unsafe to keep driving, I pull over and take a short nap (15min or so). I strongly suggest the same to whoever reads this. Better to have the minor inconvenience of a delayed arrival than to have no arrival.

I did find out about the deal with the hotel's name. The owner of this particular hotel had it set up as a franchise under Amerihost. I'm not clear as to why, but he decided to no longer be an Amerihost franchise. He wants to be a Best Western franchise, but didn't get out of Amerihost in time to sign on with Best Western this year. He intends to do so next year. For now, Americana Inn is sort of a generic, interim name. So that's it for the Americana Inn in Grove City, PA. Oh- the hot chocolate was nice, but they need to have larger cups. One packet of hot chocolate is enough for two cups worth.

The Mariposa Inn in Monterey, CA. I was there for a full month, a couple of months back or so. I should start with the reviews I read online before going there. This one <> talks about the place being somewhat run down and a bit of a dump. The place was not a dump when I went there. It definitely wasn't four star, but it was okay. That review spoke of rats in the ceiling that would run around at night. This alarmed some of my coworkers who were also staying there at the time. I think we all ended up doing the entire month without a single rat siting (sounding?). I spoke to one of the employees, who indicated to me that the bit about the rats may be the result of top floor customers hearing squirrels running around on the roof. Anyway, I should declare, given a month of staying there, that the place appears to be rat free.

The bed, bath, and tv were okay. The bathroom was much larger than the bathroom at the Americana Inn. No free hot chocolate though.

The bathroom wallpaper was notably different at the Mariposa inn vs the Americana Inn. At the Americana they have relatively plain wallpaper in the bathroom. I think it was vertical stripes with a bit of fringing around the top. A bit more interesting at the Mariposa. I have a preference for bathroom wallpaper with odd patterns and stuff, so that when i'm sitting there with nothing to do other than, well, that, I have something to look at and think about. If there are square tiles I sometimes work on the path problem i've played with or a number of years now, but I need paper and pen for that. Back to the Mariposa Inn. Their bathroom wallpaper has a weird design pattern on it. That is, it's a repeating, splotchy pattern with lots to look at. My apologies for not having taken a picture of it for you all to see. There was a frenchman, a mouse general, and a few other things I can't remember at the moment. The oddest thing was...I kid you not, it's very very obvious, not like when some old church type or politician type looks at a painting and says he sees all sorts of terribly naughty stuff...A man in vaguely japanese armor doing the nasty with an artichoke lady (that is, a lady who is an artichoke). I am very much not kidding about this. I feel awkward because it makes me think you readers will get the idea that I have some weird fe.tish for artichokes. Sorry, but I don't. It's just terribly terribly obvious. On the one hand it is explicit in that you can see his actual part entering her actual part. On the other hand, it's not so explicit or obvious that you have to worry about your children necessarily figuring it out. If they're teens, maybe, but it's just line drawing, with no coloring. It's still strange.

It's hard to sum up how I feel about the Mariposa Inn. It's okay, but not great.

French fries. No, not that other expression. A food name is a food name. Yes, the french sold or tried to sell a nuclear reactor to Sadam Hussein, which makes the french kind of the bad guys, but they're still french fries and it's still french toast. And I darn well will not freedom kiss my girlfriend. The city of Freedom Lick? No, no, no.

I have some particular prefereces regarding french fries. I like them hot, but not blazingly so. I like them with a decent crunch, but not burnt. I like them to be large enough so that I get a sense of potato inside, and not just greasy crunch stuff. As much as high school truly sucked, one of the few things I really liked was the french fries that came with the school lunch. They had the exact right crunh factor. I think they were kind of low on the potato-inside factor, but those still stand, as far as regular, everyday quality, as my all time favorite fries.

Del Taco's fried are good, but they don't cook them long enough. Low, but not the worst, crunch factor. Temperature is good. Also, the potato factor is good. Given my overall preference for Del Taco, their french fries are definitely passable.

Carl's Jr has probably the worst fries i've encountered in modern times. They're pretty bad, to the point of being virtually inedible. On one end of the crunch scale, we have crunchiness without reaching into the zone of nothing but crunch ala stale bread. At the other end of the scale we have rubbery fries. No crunch whatsoever. In Carl's Jr's case, the fries are certainly at a decent temperature and you do get a sense of the potato-ness of them, but that's where the quality ends. The crunch factor is pretty much zero. You know that sort of rubbery, chewy consistency potatos get aw they're going bad? That's more or less the texture and consistency of Carl's Jr french fries. I recommend against them.

The fries at the King restaurant are better than those at Carl's Jr. They have an okay crunch factor, certainly better than Carl's Jr, probably about on par with the fries at Del Taco.

Yes, for all you marketing types out there, having decent fries will help encourage me to revisit your restaurant. I am strongly disenclined to visit Carl's Jr in the future because their fries are very very low quality. I am neither inclined nor disenclined to revisit Del Taco or King restaurant based on their fries.

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

Time for my nightly activity- complaining about Funimation. I'm sorry, but there just isn't much else to do once the work day is over here. I'm not at home, so there's no computer, no fuzzes, no Carol.

Tonight's complaint is the voice acting again. In the re-dub, the characters pretty much all sound like... Well, they sound like they're actors reading lines rather than the characters actually speaking. They have less emotion in their voices, as if they're readin their lines in a very matter of fact fashion.

There was part of the show tonight (the first episode of Gokua fighting Vegeta) that i'm pretty sure wasn't shown in the version aired with the first dub. It's just filler, but it's still a nice moment to let us know where one of the supporting characters from Dragonball is now and how she's doing. When Vegeta's doing one of his power-ups we cut to a scene in the city, at a bar, to a certain familiar blonde figure semi-passed out at the bar. It's Launch. Mostly it's just 'ooh, the planet's shaking' stuff. Then back to the fight. That's it for Launch. Just nice to see her and see that she's still doing what she's always done (rob banks and get drunk). No sneezing this time though.

More about the room here at the Americana Inn in Grove City, PA. I find myself a bit more annoyed at the bathroom tonight. If you want to go in, close the door, and have a seat, everything's fine. If, on the other hand, you want to leave the door open so you can see the tv, then the mirror on the door presents a problem. It's a full length mirror, so if you're standing up in front of it, you can see your clothes from neck to foot. If you're sitting on the toilet thought, the mirror is inside the bathroom, facing you. I don't like having to look at the other guy in the mirror, and I especially don't like having to watch the guy in the mirror go potty. Yes, I know, it's me myself, but it's still awkward.

And the toilet itself. I don't think I talked about this before, but i'm fairly unhappy with the toilet. I don't know how this would work with girls. And, while some guys stand up, I always sit down. If i'm going to be in there for any length of time, I usually read something. If there's one thing that really gets to me, it's being bored. I can't stand it. So I have a lot of (PG! thank you very much) reading material at home. Got my stack o comics here. Right. The problem when i'm sitting is that, when I go number one, if I just sort of aim downward like with every other toilet I remember ever using, the bottom surface of the toilet is much much too close, the result being spray that hits around my hamstrings and comes out the opening between me and the front of the toilet. So I have to lean way forward and aim back behind and under me. It's awkward and I don't like it.

Bought some drawing supplies for the plane ride home on the 5th. Got a box of 72 colored pencils and a pencil sharpener. Need to call the airline and find out whether or not they'll take the sharpener, and if i'm allowed a second piece of checked luggage or a second carry on bag. Sleep for now.

Tuesday, August 2, 2005

I guess i'm blind. Noticed this morning on the trash can next to the tv- It's the Americana Inn. Still wondering why the blanked out logos.

The evil of Funimation continues. Goku has arrived. One of my favorite episodes. Yes, somehow, Funimation has screwed it up. Yes, I know, that's what they do and they're good at it. Granted, they didn't screw it up to the point of being unwatchable, but it seems that everything they touch moves further and further down on the suckage scale. It's hard to judge in the case of DragonballZ, but it is happening. Inserting english pop culture expressions like "bring it on" (yes, they actually used that one) cheapens the show. When Piccolo is killed, Kame dies too. As Kame disappears, Mr Popo, in the original dub that I saw a few years back, yells "Kame-san! Kame-sannnn!" Now he just yells "Kame! Kameee!" Making the series accessible to the general public in the US is nice and all, but there's a limit. Funimation, in all its stupidity, has long since passed that limit. Add to that the truly crap-tastic new sound track and you have a truly frustrating experience. On the one hand, there's the drek that is Funimation and what comes with it. On the other hand, there's the desire to watch one of your favorite shows.

I hear Evangelion is coming to mainstream tv in the US. It would be interesting to see mega-wuss Shinji combined with crap-factory Funimation.

A word on death and the next dimension... Vegeta just blew up Nappa. In the first dub Vegeta says "Maybe you won't be such a disappointment...in the next dimension!" Now Vegeta says "...such a disappointment...when you're dead!" The line worked the old way. The line does not work, nor does it even make sense the new way. Grrr. Just remember kids, Funimation = evil.

On a happier note, there is a comic book store near the local Walmart in Grove City. It's a fairly normal comic book store, with most of the normal stuff you'd expect. Nicely organized back issue rack. Didn't find the Superman annual I used to have (the one with the black mercy). What I did find was their very well stocked 50 cent bin. Even better, all the back issues are 50% off, so it's a 25 cent bin. Found some back issues of ROM, but not the one issue i'm missing (28). At 25 cents each, I bought all they had. Always room for backups. Got a few issues of Superman, including 3 issues of Elseworlds (the kryptonians believe Jor-el and they all come to Earth, baby Kal-el arrives on earth and is raised by animals ala Jungle Book, and the Horde succeeded in taking over the Earth). Ten issues of Raijin Comics (non-sequential unfortunately), a bunch of She-Hulk (the funny ones, where she's aware of being in a comic book), and a stack of old issues of Heavy Metal. The difficult part will be lugging all these comics back home. Good thing I brought an extra carry on bag with me. Hopefully America West, the Transportation Administration, or whoever, doesn't decide that Heavy Metal is contraband. I'm still ticked about the fate of Quinella the Quahog.

Monday, August 1, 2005

It's been a fun couple of days. The plane ride here (Pennsylvania) was pleasant enough. Unfortunately my belt buckle set off the metal detector at the airport in Ontario, CA, so they took me aside and searched me (pat-down, above the belt only). Got on the plane okay. Didn't get a window seat this time around, but at least I got an aisle seat, toward the front of the plane, so I could disembark in the first bunch. Layover in Phoenix. Terribly expensive food. Tried to get a burger at the airport Burger King, but they would neither make nor sell me a burger because it was still breakfast time. Everything else was too expensive. Ah yes- they don't give out peanuts on the plane any more. They give out packets of these tiny pretzels. I miss the peanuts. What I really miss are the little plastic wings I got when I went on a plane as a child.

Rental car is okay. Got to the hotel. I don't remember whether or not this is the same hotel as last time, but I sort of don't think so. I could have sworn the parking area was on the other side of the hotel. A nice change this time around is that I didn't get a smoker's room. Where is it i'm staying again? It's a hotel in Grove City, PA. This is strange...There is very little in the way of stationery or other hotel-logoed stuff. What there is (2 bits of stationery and the phone, of all things) is labeled "Amerihost Hotel," but has been gone over with black marker to blot the logo out. I don't know if they recently changed their name or what. Even the emergency exit placard on the door has a scratched out logo/label.

The room. The sink area is kind of small. It's functional, but small. The bathroom is much smaller than the last place I was in (the Mariposa Inn in Monterey, CA). The shower here is fine, but there is minimal room for the commode. You can neither open nor close the bathroom door if you are sitting on the commode. The wallpaper is a bit more subdued than the last place (i'll talk about that next time), with no obvious designs. The bed is fine, and the refrigerator is bigger than last time. There's free high speed data, but I would have preferred if there was a phone jack by the desk. The only one is between the 2 beds (it's only me in the room). Clock radio is nice and loud, so it wakes me up with no doubt in the morning.

There's a desktop computer downstairs in the lobby for anyone to use. Haven't used it since i've got this thing (Audiovox 6600). Infinite coffee and infinite hot chocolate in the lobby, 24 hours a day. That's it I guess. There's an indoor pool, but what with my wonderful figure and all, i'm not going to be using it.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Relaxing week of studying.  Last friday was odd.  Study, study, study, phone rings.  It's the university.  Remember that research class I took and passed?  Turns out that covers the 2nd of the 3 tests.  So all I have left is the 3rd question, which is specialization.  So it should be either secondary education or secondary math education.  Just the one book to cover.  I don't feel nearly as stressed this time around.

Genealogy!  Spent quite a few hours entering people into the tree.  Up to a total of 5,212 separate people.  I've been using Family Tree Maker for data entry.  Tried some other programs today, including Legacy.  The shareware version of Legacy will generate web pages.  Family Tree Maker generates web pages, but not really.  Whereas Family Tree Maker will post your information to Family Tree Maker's site, Legacy generates web pages on your own computer.  But Legacy won't create fan type displays.  Anyway, it's all done.  Will post it as soon as I finish the rest of the updates.

There were a couple of things I meant to complain about yesterday...Ah, 3 in fact.

I like Hormel Chili (no beans).  One of my favorite foods.  While I am not poor, I am stingy.  I also like looking at other people's junk, including the local swapmeet.  One of the regular sets of people there used to be the dented canned food people.  They used to carry Hormel Chili (beans and no beans) from time to time.  At some point, around a year to a year and half back, they stopped carrying Hormel Chili.  Eventually they stopped going to the swapmeet at all.  I'm not sure if they never have a spot at the swapmeet anymore, In any case, no more chili.  Of course, I can get all the Hormel Chili I want from the local supermarket.  The problem is that 1 can is $1.25 at the store, $1 per can when it's on sale.  At the swapmeet, though dented, 1 can was just $0.33.  I just can't stand paying 3 to 4 times as much as I used to for chili.  I've seen it up to around $2.89 per can at convenience stores- 8 times what I used to pay.  What a shame.

Then there's the embarassed lady at Food For Less. Tuesday, July 26, 2005, the store at Highland Springs & the 10 freeway in Banning, CA, a heavy-set lady who I think had glasses and was working the center register next to the cigarrette case- i'm feeling more ornery than yesterday.  Some guy was in front of me, fiddling with the credit card reader.  Our cashier was chatting (that is, social, non-work talk) with the cashier to my right.  Mildly annoying, but fine and dandy I guess since the guy in front of me wasn't waiting for her.  She stopped chatting with the other cashier, picked up her store phone, and called the other cashier, the same one she had been chatting with.  I guess they wanted to talk more privately, but they didn't lower their voices very much.  Other cashier asked my cashier if my cashier had "got any" last weekend.  My cashier responded with something like "oh yeah.'  Ok, fine, they're just chatting.  The guy in front of me is done and leaves.  The cashier is scanning my stuff.  I asked her why she used the phone if the other cashier was right there.  My cashier said she didn't want anyone to hear what she was talking about.  I asked her something like 'so, did you enjoy yourself?'  I think she said she didn't mean for me to have heard that.  When I told her I sort of gathered that, she asked me why I said anything about it.  I told her I was mildly annoyed at her having a social conversation when she's supposed to be working, and that I hoped to change her behavior by embarassing her rather than having a chat with her manager.  That was pretty much it.  I didn't intend, last night, to be so specific when I wrote about it today, but I found myself more annoyed this morning than I was last night.  She's still not as unpleasant as the very very annoying lady (the sort of butch-looking lady who works nights) who didn't want to sell me the on-sale Sunny Delight.

And the flier on my car when I walked out...  Normally I find these fliers terribly annoying.  I try to make a point of going to wherever the flier is from, tearing the flier up, and leaving it at the front desk of the place.  I couldn't do that tin this case.  It appears to be a flier for a new mexican restaurant in the area, where they serve tacos and beer.  Oh boy, oh boy it opens on July 30, 2005.  Tacos at $1, domestic beer at $2.  All very good, accept...  The flier doesn't list the name of the place, nor does it list the location.  So there's this wonderful new mexican restaurant with great prices, 'fun activities for the day,' 'tecate girls,' 'free tortilla giveaways,' and 'lots of prizes!,' including a dvd player raffle.  Too bad I don't know where the bleeping restaurant is.

On the lighter side of things, i've been trying to make it a point to catch DragonballZ the last few nights.  It's one episode per night, weeknights.  Vegeta and Nappa are beating up Gohan, Piccolo, and Krillin.  Goku has arrived at the way station, returned to Earth, called for Nimbus, and is on his way to the battlefield.  I have all of this on VHS, on the computer, on dvd, in some form or other.  I've seen the entire series.  I know what's going to happen.  There's still something about watching things unfold, episode by episode, very slowly, the way they do in DragonballZ.  I've seen some episodes in the original japanese and i've seen all of them in english.  The strange thing this time around is that the evil that is Funimation appears to have re-dubbed the earlier episodes.  I guess they might be going for consistency- re-doing all of the episode so there's a single set of voice actors for the entire show.  In today's episode, Goku arrives at Kame's lookout, jumps off, gets a couple of sensu beans tossed to him from Corin on the way down, then calls for Nimbus.  Strange how one remembers little things.  Goku eats one of the sensu beans, then yells 'Nimbus!'  I could swear they re-dubbed it this time around.  When he called for Nimbus this time, the tone was one of 'her Nimbus, here boy,' phweet phweet (whistle noises).  The moment wasn't the same as I remember.  The way I remember it, the yell was a bit angrier, a bit more determined, a bit more of 'it's time to kick some a...'  It was better the way it was.

Saturday, July 9, 2005

Woof. I don’t remember the last time I woke up after noon. My fault for reading til 2am.

Group: Social Melorists. Don’t forget, i’m still paraphrasing from this page. This group believes that “schools are a major force for social change and social justice” and that schools are “vehicles to create a new social vision.”

Social change how? Who’s vision? On the one hand i’m inclined to attack this viewpoint out of worry that the banner of social change and social justice may take away from the practicalities of education. If it’s all about social change, what about actual job skills and the ability to function in society? On the other hand, school is where you learn about other people, other ideas, other ways of life that you might not encounter in your own neighborhood. Social justice is important from the standpoint that we need to understand other peoples and how they live. I guess social change has its place as well. Not that we necessarily need to change everything, but students should be taught the difference between right and wrong, or at least how to develop their own sense of right and wrong and how to apply that sense to what they see of the world.

As with most things in life, the most reasonable choice ends up being a combination, a mix of the available choices, a compromise. There has to be a certain amount of centrality to curriculum revision or we, as a society, can’t be assured of students coming out of our schools with certain common skills and knowledge. Reading and writing are necessary, and so are a mandated part of the curriculum throughout the United States. The reason we have schools to begin with is a result of our society determining that the most basic curriculum, that which the student learns in his or her own home, was not enough. Children are, by nature, curious and inquisitive creatures. If we want them to learn, if we want them to become ‘lifelong lovers of learning’ (where did I hear that expression before...), we can not treat them as passive receptacles of knowledge. Our curriculum should allow for a child’s need to explore and discover for themselves. In order to prevent the mass of our teachers from falling back to the long-standing tradition of direct instruction, satisfaction of that need should be a centrally mandated part of the curriculum (1-2). How to factor social efficiency into the mix while retaining the freedom of the individual? That’s just a matter, not of teaching the individual the skills society thinks he or she will need, but of providing each individual with the opportunity to follow the path they choose. Social efficiency and social melorism would seem to be the most directly opposed to each other. Whereas one focuses on the individuals’ personal needs (skills to function in the workplace) the other focuses on the individuals’ responsiblity to society as a whole. Yet providing people with the opportunity to follow whatever path they choose in life is not distinct from giving people a good dose of perspective and a sense of responsibility. As we teach our children the knowledge and skills that go with their chosen path, we should also give them a sense of perspective and social responsiblity (3-4). Neither should be done to the exclusion of the other. The child sutdy movement and social efficiency movement are also not exclusive of each other. If this child (regardless of who made the choice) is going to be a construction worker, there is no reason he or she can’t learn about construction in an exploratory, discovery-based fashion. I suppose construction may not be the best example in that we want construction (as opposed to, say, architecture) to be standardized. I don’t want the construction worker that builds my home to suddenly feel creative. I want him or her to build my home to code, just like every other home on the block. Perhaps teaching is a better example. I want the teacher to teach my kid how to read, write, add, subtract, and so on. I’m fine with the teacher finding creative ways to accomplish this, so long as my kid knows what he or she needs to know (2-3). Social efficiency and humanism seem to be easy friends. A centrally controlled curriculum seems, on the face of it, to be the best (or at least the most efficient) way for society to determine what an individual needs to know in order to follow a chosen path (1-3). The child study movement and social melorism? Cake. The child study movement boils down to the need for kids to discover rather than to be told. Social melorism boils down to kids developing a sense of right and wrong and how their choices affect the world around them. You can tell your child what is right and wrong and, as much influence as you will have, that child will develope his or her own sense of right and wrong. That child will do so through a process of exploration and discovery, whether in the classroom, in the society of their fellow students, or in society as a whole in the broader sense. That child will develope his or her own sense of place in society and, correct or not, a sense of how his or her actions affect society. As far as the classroom, children need to feel that they acquired any given bit of knowledge for themselves. That is how they feel ownership. That is how they come to care about the material. Right, wrong, and how one fits into society- however complex these ideas may be, they are still just bits of information. If we want someone to care about, to actually believe in their particular sense of right and wrong, they need to feel that they arrived at that point on their own (2-4). Oh, and no, I have not heard of this new invention- the 'paragraph.'

Humanism says we have to agree, at some level higher than the individual teacher, on what to teach. The child study movement says teaching must not be composed entirely of information flowing from the teacher to the student. Social efficiency say we should teach children the information they do need and not teach information they don’t need. Social melorism says we should provide children with a sense of right and wrong, or responsibility, and of how their individual choices affects the world. How to blend each of these ideas together? What would I take from each idea? I’d take humanism as, at least partly, necessity. Certain knowledge and certain skills (say, reading and writing) are vital to virtually all functioning in our society. From the child study movement i’d take that, because we want kids to learn and to enjoy learning, we need to make sure they feel ownership of the knowledge and skills they acquire. I don’t think it’s a matter of finding one teaching style that takes what it needs from all 4 groups. Each teacher is different and each class is different. Each teacher will develop their own teach methods and their own variation on the curriculum. I think the important thing is to keep the different styles in mind when one is teaching or when one is researching, developing, or revising a curriculum.

Memo to self. Buy plastic forks. I guess i’m not being socially responsible, but I don’t like doing the dishes, so i’ve tried to maintain a relatively paper plate, plastic utensil household. Anything else? I don’t think so. I went to Food For Less yesterday and stocked up. Tried to be healthy and bought some fruit. The apricots were over-ripe though. Pears weren’t quite ready. I have a history of not quite getting fruit at the right point. I did treat myself to some Hormel chili (no beans, chunky, thank you very much), at the exhorbitant price of $1.25 per can. I’ve seen it up to $2.66 per can. Thing is, the dented can people at the local swap meet used to have it for $0.33 per can. They stopped carrying Hormel chili over 1 year ago. The last couple of times I went to the swap meet the canned food people weren’t even there. Sigh. My inventory was over 100 cans at one point. I can’t stant the idea of paying 3 or 4 times (let alone 8) what I used to pay for it. What was it now...mashed potatoes, oatmeal, or grits. I want to say it was mashed potatoes- only 1 of the 3 I can think of that had that many brands. But it didn’t cost that much...Hrm. Now that I think of it, it might have been grits. Anyway, there was the generic brown label variety and, as I walked down the aisle, there were more and more and more expensive varieties, corresponding to more and more recognizeable brand names. The most expensive type was 7 times as expensive as the brown label stuff. Now...I understand that, sometimes, there’s something about an actual brand name product. I’ve never encountered and I refuse to believe that any brand name is 7 times better than the generic. Nope. Just won’t believe it.

Oh. What’s all this b.s.? Well, it’s a blog. You’re supposed to yack about whatever comes to mind. That’s why. As for all the education stuff, well, there’s your child study stuff. It’s nice and important and all that, but if I don’t have something to do with it, it’s too dry to keep a focus on.

Anyway, looking at the schedule here...next week is curriculum. The week after that, research. The week after that, specialization which, in my case, should mean math instruction. If I remember right, I was told to make sure I knew Kliebard and the 4 groups, so that’s what I expect the first test to be about. I’m supposed to review a curriculum research book for the second test. For the 3rd test i’m supposed to review “Secondary Education An Introduction” by Savage and Armstrong. I hope to budget enough time to read the whole thing. I’m also suppose to know the Dewey book (The School And Society / The Child And The Curriculum). We’ll see, we’ll see.

Friday, July 8, 2005

Here I am, at last with the time to sit down and study for my master’s degree tests, which take place at California Baptist University on July 16, 23, and 30. The first test, a big 8 days away, is about curriculum developement. I’m supposed to know about Kliebard and his 4 groups of curriculum theorists (humanists / mental disciplinarians, child study movement / developementalists, social efficiency movement, and social melorists). I don’t know what the actual question / questions will be, but I gather it will be some variation of comparing and contrasting the 4 groups, as well as identifying which group I subscribe to and why.

I am concerned due to the shortness of time. I registered for the test a few months ago, so i’ve had all this time to work on it. However, I have this day job that took me out of town from the last week in May to the last week in June. Got a nice lot of work done, but due to computer issues I was not able to do my typing until I got home. I was supposed to do all typing while I was away, not bringing anything home, but doing all the typing at home allowed me to get a big pile o non-typing work done for the month I was away. It took me just over 2 weeks to get all the typing done. Last week wrapped up at 84 hours. So, I haven’t been sitting on my butt playing video games. Meh. I’ll make it or I won’t. I can sign up and take the tests again if I need to, so while the roughly $250 registering for the tests isn’t chicken feed, I can eat it if I have to. I have a weird sense of concern and optimism at the same time.

Right. Now about this Kliebard guy. He’s a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He classified curriculum theorists into four groups.

Group: Humanists / Mental Disciplinarians. From this page: As part of the colonial curriculum, humanists sought to reinterpret and preserve “revered” traditions and values in a rapidly changing society. Then Sputnik happened. The attempt to replace the academic subject as the basic building block of the curriculum was brought to abrupt end. Longstanding emphasis on local efforts at curriculum change were replaced by patterns of centrally controlled curriculum revision. The humanist position became dominant.

Okay, but what is the humanist position? According to this page, humanism posits the enhancement of human developement, well-being, and dignity as the ultimate end of all thought and human action, even beyond religious, ideological, or national ideas and values. Humanistic education can itself be broken down into 4 groups- classical, romantic / naturalistic / therapeutic, existentialist, and radical education / critical pedagogy.

Group: Child Study Movement / Developementalists. From this page: The curriculum should allow for the natural order of development of the child. It quotes Kliebard- "General agreement... among the developmentalists [was] that schools thwarted the child's basic need for activity by treating children as passive receptacles and presenting them with a program of studies that ran contrary to their natural tendencies and predilections."

So the basic idea of this group is that children are inquisitive, curious creatures, and that schools frustrated their students by treating the students minds as receptacles rather than active minds with a desire to explore and to know. The vast majority of my classes (K-12) were direct instruction and, while we occasionally had group activities, most of it was sitting there, listening to the teacher, taking notes. That was it. One way or another, it boiled down to listening to the teacher (memorization, ala dates of this or that battle in history class) then taking the occasional test (recitation, repeating individual facts). We weren’t doing anything with the info we were given. We didn’t discover the info for ourselves. Here’s data, remember, repeat. Don’t bother worrying about understanding or being able to make any use of the data. Don’t worry about, oh, say, relevance or anything like that. We were given dry, (to us) pointless info, in a manner that did not much more than make us look forward to recess. Developementalists would certainly understand the common student laments of ‘this is boring’ and ‘why do we have to know this?’

Group: Social Efficiency Movement. The main priority of this group is to create a coolly efficient, smoothly running society. "Programs of study that prepared individuals specifically and directly for the role that they would play as adult members of the social order. To go beyond what someone had to know in order to perform that role successfully was simply wasteful. Social utility became the supreme crtiterion against which the value of school studies was measured... Beyond their interest in social stability, many leaders of the social efficiency movement indicated a genuine concern for the dissatisfaction that many children expressed about school and for the high rate of dropouts. The answer lay in a curriculum tied to direct utility and to tangible, albeit remote, rewards" (Kliebard). Vocational education is an outgrowth of this movement.

Grrr. I understand the benefits of a vocational education in that, once you are done with your schooling, you are actually qualified to work in a particular industry. I know children are sorted into career tracks in Japanese schools. I want to say that happens in early to mid high school. If I remember right, the college you get into in Japan defines your career path. You make it into a professional college, you have your shot at a professional job. Otherwise, you are placed on a vocational career track and attend a vocational school. I like the idea that society has something for people who don’t meet this or that academic standard to do with their lives. Having options available for everyone, regardless of their academic abilities or achievements, is definitely a good thing. However- and this is a big however- I have a fundamental objection. “...individuals being prepared for the the role that they would play as adult members of society.” Preparing an individual for the role they would play in society implies a determination as to what that role will be. A determination made by someone other than the individual. A fundamental tenet of republican society is that each and every individual has the right to become or at least try to become whatever they choose. For society to decide ahead of time what role an individual will play in life is, oh, what was that type of government again... The one Senator McCarthy was so on about... Suffice it to say that deciding what role a person will play in society, or what role a person should play in society would be a violation of those truths we hold to be self-evident. A curriculum tied to direct utility and to tangible rewards is not a bad thing. Neither is having a role for every individual to play. It is the right of each individual to find and follow their own path. Nothing wrong with society helping to guid an individual along the path of that individual’s choice. You want to be a construction worker? Ok, fine. Here’s what we’ve got for construction work- information about pay, what sort of work the career entails, what others in the same line of work have experienced. You want to be a lawyer? Ok, fine. Here’s info about being a lawyer. The choice of which path to follow is, and must always be, up to the individual.

Ah, well. It’s midnight and i’m tired. Tomorrow: Social Melorists.