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04.01.02 :: 15:13
I’m going to rant. If you don’t want to read my ranting, skip this entry ^^;
I feel the need to respond to a closed thread on AE. It started out about slave reparations and then got into talking about poor people. What irked me was a comment implying that I had never experienced the tough choices of “which kid gets to eat” or “which bills are paid this month”. I’ve seen both of those situations and know how hard they can be. See, as naïve as this may sound, I firmly believe that if you *WORK* you can dig yourself out of just about any hole.
Now, before I’m pegged as an uncaring piece of white trash, let me tell you a bit about my family when we first moved to Oregon. We were on the dirt side of poor. How poor, you ask? So poor that after the migrant workers went through the fields harvesting, we’d go in and harvest what they picked over. My mother would can pears, cherries, peaches, etc. so that we’d have them to eat later in the year. My father would go hunting so that we had meat. (Meaning, if he didn’t get a deer that year, we didn’t get meat that winter). For many years most of the clothes my bro and I wore came from the Goodwill and mom went to a lot of effort to make them last by patching them up over and over. In short, we were frickin’ poor.
Things didn’t stay that way because my family worked hard to dig itself out. My folks worked multiple jobs and pinched pennies. They provided my bro and I with a good education, and we made the most of it. We studied hard so that my parents’ sacrifice and labor weren’t wasted.
I saw the “which bills to pay” situation a little over two years ago when I had just left college and was depressed as hell. I can tell you what it’s like. Your answering machine has well over a dozen messages on it from creditors who call during the day. (Which I always thought was silly. You’d hope that the person you were collecting from *wasn’t* home during the day to take your call... Presumably they’d be out earning the money you wanted). I’ve gotten the little tags on the door that said [utility] was going to be turned off if I didn’t pay [amount of money] by [date]. And y’know what? That sucks just as much as not eating. Even still, I dug myself out of it. At one point I was holding down 3 part time jobs to do it, but by God I did it.
“Good for you,” you think. Damn straight. It’s also why I have only moderate sympathy for others stuck in a similar situation. If I can dig my lazy ass out of trouble, just about anyone can. Hard work goes a long way, but there is that little matter of it being *hard*. Too many people, IMO, are complacent with their shitty lives. They spend so much time whining about how it sucks, they never bother to figure out how to make it better.
There’s applicable wisdom to be found in, “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime.” I often times think that our social services are content to hand out fish so that we have people living on a dole instead of going out there and earning their way.
Maybe I’m naïve *and* arrogantly proud, but I don’t want things handed to me. Even when my family was at its lowest, my parents refused to accept food stamps. Yeah, meals were lean sometimes because of it, but it motivated us to work all the harder to change the situation.
Too many people are content with mediocrity and then complain when they see someone succeed. They feel it’s the obligation of the successful to share their riches. I’m reminded of the child’s story about the grasshopper and the ants. The ants worked all year to prepare for the winter while the grasshopper squandered its opportunity. Then winter came and the grasshopper had nothing to eat. There are too many grasshoppers in our society.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a rant against things like charity. But we need to remind ourselves about charity’s intent: providing immediate *temporary* relief to a bad situation. I view things like food stamps as government run charity. Charity can only go so far – should *only* go so far. There comes a time when a person has to lift themselves out of the mud, even if it’s by the shoelaces, and get moving forward again. Some people just need a solid boot to the butt to get them going.
04.02.02 :: 14:30
Wow, I was on a tear yesterday. Someone should have hit me over the head with a bat and put me out of my misery ^^;
My evening wasn’t that great. I was tired and menstruating and very depressed. I talked with Vera for a while after getting off work, and then my Internet connection went belly up and I decided that was a good time to go take a nap. Mom called me while I was sleeping to ask if I wanted help cleaning up the house from the party (I was flabbergasted). I got up around 7:30pm and called mom back to see if she’d still give me a hand. We got most of it cleaned up (it wasn’t that bad. I did a lot of the cleaning on Sunday).
After that I was still feeling pretty queasy and sick to my stomach, so I went to bed at 10pm (insanely early for me). Slept pretty solid until 6:30am. Last night I had night sweats (like I had the night before), only they weren’t as bad this time. I think my body’s just screwing with me right now ¬.¬;
Anyhow, enough of my bellyaching. Here are Austin’s pictures and commentary from the party. Vera took the camera with the pictures on it with her, so she’s going to get those developed. My camera with a few more odd pictures probably won’t be developed until the next ice age, so don’t hold your breath on that one ^^;
Today’s moron was a woman who’s been hounding Josh and me for about 2 weeks now. Her email has been having problems. Some of the problems were on our end and we did all we could to fix those. The rest of the problem was user error (and that’s all it was at this point). She said she wasn’t getting mail. I sent her a test message and tracked its progress as it moved through the server. I told her to try to download it when I saw that it made it to her box. She said that it didn’t come and I saw that she hadn’t tried ^^; I told her to hit the Send / Rec’v button. She yelled at me that she never in all her time on the net had to hit that button to get her email. It just showed up. I was tempted to say that the reason no one told her to hit it before me was because to do so is as obvious as breathing, but I was anxious to get her off the line.
She called back about 5 minutes later wanting to speak with Bob about getting a credit for the 2 – 3 days her email was messed up. Nothing else was wrong with the service but her email. She could still use the net and all. Bob offered her $3 credit (which is way more than he should have when you break down cost per day for the service). She wasn’t satisfied. He then offered her a dollar discount on the service for 3 months. She accepted it. I just couldn’t believe that...
Other random thoughts: Pisces6, you didn't miss my berfday, it's not until tax day, but I celebrated it early (who wants to celebrate *tax* day? ^^; ) Man, I want Persona 2: Innocent Sin ;_; Atlus *needs* to bring it out in the US, please! I've seriously considered importing it, but it's a text intensive game and I wouldn't be able to get far without a lot of guessing (especially when it comes to Contacts). Arc the Lad's ETA is still on the 8th. Maybe Working Designs will actually release it this month! (Wishful thinking, I'm sure). I want a dart board for work. That way I'll have something I can throw sharp pointy objects at when frustrated. Final Fantasy Mages moved again and I've lost track of it. If someone finds it, please send me the link ^^; Vera fixed my Chao wallpaper at home. Thanks V! ^^v
04.02.02 :: 21:38
Well... This evening turned out surprisingly crappy, but I’m not feeling that bad about it (go figure). My car is back in the shop ‘cause it’s steaming from under the hood. Dunno when I’ll get it back, probably later in the week.
I finally got a response from the Police Department regarding my complaint. To summaries, they said it was my own fault for looking young and having a license that didn’t look real. No apology was offered and they said the officer was fully justified to treat me like he did. I was livid when I first read the letter, but I shouldn’t have expected anything better from them. Heaven forbid someone take responsibility for making a mistake.
And, to round out the evening, the tv in my room is on its last leg. It’ll probably give up the ghost anytime now --; I’ll go buy a new one on Friday (when I’m paid), but it’s just like, blech, what else could go wrong today? ^^; I thought about borrowing the tv out of my dad’s room, but it’s one inch too tall to fit on my shelves.
On the good side of the ledger... After 2 days of fantasy baseball my team is in the lead... I think... I have the most points, which I assume is a good thing (and that this isn’t a fantasy golf league). My team is named the Beanie Bombers :) I finally got off my butt and updated my profile on ASMR. I also worked a little bit on Centra Garden (the updates were mostly cosmetic).
Oh, and I dunno how I did it, but I smaxored (tm Jeffy) Outlook 2000 into submission this afternoon. For some reason it just wasn’t loading (it’d freeze on the loading screen). I first tried a repair, and that didn’t work. Then I uninstalled Office, cleared out the folders, ran Norton’s repair tools, scanned the disc, defragged, and then reinstalled Office and that didn’t resolve the problem (I was pretty put out by that). But today I’d accidentally opened Outlook instead of Outlook Express like I intended, it sat there frozen for several minutes, and then it opened the rest of the way. Since then it’s been acting normally. [baffled]
04.03.02 :: 14:04
Some days I become very jaded at work. I have to remind myself that I work with the bottom 10% of Internet users and to be patient. Today was a challenge.
It started when I received a call from someone who could not, for the life of them, answer the question "What type of account do you have?" The possiblities include dial-up, DSL, cable, or webhosting. The inability to answer this question is something I've encountered more often then I'd like to admit, so I have different ways of phrasing the question (which include "How do you connect to the net?" and "How much do you pay each month?") Even with rephrasing the question, she couldn't give me an answer.
Maybe I'm an elitist (or else I just use my brain) but whenever I call a utility or business I'm receiving a monthly service from I have the latest bill in front of me. That way, if they ask any pesky questions like "What's your account number?" I'm one up on them. I know that's a rather simple concept, but it works wonders, honestly. What's worse is that I got a couple more calls with the same inability to answer the same question right after that one. Gyah!
From there the calls sunk into the next level of stupidity with the customers being unable to answer "What operating system do you use?" I've learned that many people don't know *what* an operating system is, so I always tack on "like Windows 95, 98, XP, Mac..." and they're usually able to pick it out of the list. The guy I spoke with instantly picked up on 98 and stuck to it like a life-perserver in a flood. The problem is that he didn't have 98, he had XP and when it comes to troubleshooting certain issues the two are like night and day. When we weren't getting anywhere anymore I told him to call HP since it was a brand spanking new computer and thus still under warranty :P
The call that finally shoved me over the edge was from a customer who cancelled his account last month. He told me that right up front. I remember deleting his account from the servers yesterday. His problem? We deleted his email account. I confirmed that, yes, I did indeed delete his email account. Did he not want his account cancelled? He confirmed that he did want the account cancelled, but thought we would continue to provide him with email service. I boggled at that and then told him that if he wanted email only it'd be $3 a month. He said no thanks, he could get it from Yahoo and hung up.
At that point, I went to lunch and ranted to my dad for a half hour ^^;
04.04.02 :: 14:39
Good news, excellent news even! After 3.5 years of pestering and nudging Adam has finally proposed to his girlfriend, Mare ^_^ I’m very happy for them. They’re going to be getting married in early July. Heh... Now it’s time to put my fist where my mouth has been. I’ve been threatening for years to fist fight whoever I had to for the honor of being Adam’s best man. Mare tells me that I have the inside track, but it’s not confirmed yet ;)
I got off my lazy fanny and did a very minor update to my homepage, mostly just cleaning up links and whatnot. I’ve been playing with ideas of what I want to do with it, but I haven’t decided on anything solid yet. I need to put my nose to the grindstone first and finish off Sowing. Then I’ll give other projects more serious consideration.
Dad reminded me that the local pear blossom festival has started and that the annual parade is going to be on April 13th. That’s cheered me up some. I love going to the parade, it’s something I look forward to every spring ^_^ I’ll get my brick of curly fries, pull up a curb, and plop my butt down to watch the high school marching bands and lots of tractors go by. I especially like how the pear blossoms along Main Street are usually floating around by then. I’ll probably never see a real cheery blossom festival, but the pear blossom festival is just as good IMO :)
04.05.02 :: 16:25
I had dinner at my mom’s place last night. ReRun pounced me as soon as I was through the door. He wanted to play with someone, anyone, and would settled even for me. Unfortunately, when playing with me, his “play” usually turns into “bite” and mom won’t let me whap him to curb him of that annoying habit. He bit my hand several times so that I still have little puncture marks in it today. I cleaned it out last night with hydrogen peroxide and it friggin’ hurt. Stupid cat!
When ReRun wasn’t gnawing on me, dad told me how my car was looking. It’s not good ^^;; He said I can drive it around until he gets back from vacation, but I’m not to leave the valley. A lot of crap’s wrong with the engine (don’t ask me what, I’m a techie not a mechanic ;) and he needs to do quite a bit of work to rebuild it. The parts alone are going to cost around $300 =/ Thank God I don’t have to pay for the labor! x.x
Dad’s trying to talk me into just buying a new car. It’s a tempting thought. My car’s a junker that I picked up for $800 from a used car lot ^^; But... I really don’t want to be adding to my debt until I get my college loans paid off. I’m going after those with a single-minded ferocity that says no new car until the monkeys are off my back. B’sides, if / when I move to Canada, I wouldn’t take my car with me. So why complicate matters by getting a new one?
A very rare thing happened today. A customer sent a thank you card for fixing his computer! That was very nice of him ^_^
Tomorrow dad and I (and maybe mom) are going out to Costco to look at tvs. This is cramping my game playing style. I’ve whapped my tv into sort of working. It gets green stripes across it, goes dark, then the characters get all shadowed, blech. Just so long as I can save before it dies, I’m fine.
I’m not playing anything really exciting right now: SaGa Frontier 2. On the plus side, it’s not nearly as lame as SaGa 1 was, but it’s not great either ^^; I’m mostly playing it because I downloaded Go! Go! Digger to my PocketStation and I’ve been playing that while at work ^^;; By the time I go home I’ve dug up a pile of items to import into my regular game =]
Go! Go! Digger is this little game that’s less interactive than a Tamagotchi or Chao. Pretty much you tell your digger how long you want her (yes, it’s a her) to dig for items and she does it. If you don’t pay attention, she’ll fall asleep on the job or run away. It’s pretty easy to keep the PocketStation on my keyboard and hit the button whenever I notice her dosing off (the infrared light flashes).
My current digger’s name is Masa. She’s pretty good about digging up weapons and not falling asleep. She hasn’t tried to run away like the digger I had last night did. I’m not sure if that’s because Masa has a better work ethic or because I’ve been poking her so often ^^;
I should write a mini-guide to Go! Go! Digger. SaGa’s manual isn’t accurate in what it says and leaves out some important details ^^; (I bet the localization team didn’t have a PocketStation to test the game on =P ) They say that hitting the left and right buttons will take you back to the menu (it doesn't). And the manual doesn't mention that hitting the directional buttons while the digger is working will speed her up.
04.07.02 :: 01:42
I've often mocked video games in which a character with a life suddenly gives up what they're doing to accompany the party on a quest. Who in their right mind would drop what they're doing to just up and leave?
I would, apparently ^^;
Back track to this morning. I'm standing next to my dad in Costco. We've finished most of the shopping we'd intended to do (including selecting a new tv) and mom was just looking at one last thing when my cell phone rang. Mare told me that she and Adam were about to come into town and wanted to know if I could meet them at the mall before they continued south. I'd gone out to Costco with my folks, so I couldn't just leave. I talked my folks into dropping me off at the mall and taking my tv to the house for me.
The three of us puttered around the mall some. I asked them to take me back to where my car was (down town) after we were done shopping. I still had to go to Wal*Mart and then go home and set up my new tv ^^ Adam had another idea.
He asked me if I'd go with them to Sacramento. I thought he was joking. That's a 320-mile trip one way and I have to go to work on Monday. He wouldn't be coming back today, would he? Indeed, he did plan on returning today and wanted someone to keep him company on the return trip (he was dropping Mare off in Sacramento before making his way back to Seattle). After considering it for all of 30 seconds I agree with two conditions. The first was that I got to choose half of the music we listened to. The second was that he got me a soda :P So, like any good RPG, Adam went to the Shop (aka 7-Eleven), bought me a soda, and away we went ^^;
It was a pretty nice drive down there. We talked a lot and listened to music. I called Vera 'cause we thought we'd have enough time to go visit her. When we got to Sacramento, Adam realized that to drive to Vera's would be another 2 hours and it was already 8pm. It was too late to go deeper into Cali territory; we really needed to return to Oregon. I kept Adam amused with my mad DJ-ing skillz and we chatted about all sorts of things. It was nice to have the opportunity to just talk with him. We haven't done that in a while.
Now, it's nearly 2am. Adam's decided to crash at my place tonight before going north. I haven't made it to Wal*Mart yet, nor is my new tv out of the box. I'll have to get those things done tomorrow ^^;
04.07.02 :: 13:45
I freaking love my new tv *_* I bought a Philips 19 inch (I can't fit anything larger than that on my shelves). The part I like the most is that it's stereo *_* My old tv was mono with a single speaker on the side that was half blocked by my shelves. Now I can really *hear* things and it makes such a difference *_* I configured the tv and Adam configured the remote (it came with a universal remote ^^v ) Wai wai, I'm happy ^^
Now I have to figure out how to dispose of a sort of working tv. I think I'll call the library's question line tomorrow and ask them. See if I can recycle it or donate it or something like that.
Adam bought Mister Mosquito. That game is on crack, there's no other way to describe it. You're a mosquito that's sucking the blood of the Yamata family. It's funny. You can mess with their heads and annoy them and when they try to squish you they do these funny moves. I don't think I'd pay $50 for it, but once it comes down in price or I can find it used I'll pick up a copy =]
04.08.02 :: 13:55
Oi, I was embarrassed this morning. I went into the server room to put away from files and when I stood up a heard a rip ^^; I'd torn a hole in my pants across the butt ^^; I went home and changed into the new pair of pants I bought on Saturday.
This may be a bit rantish of me, and maybe even hypocritical, but it's kind of been bugging me. IMO, there are fanfic ideas that shouldn't be explored. A example of that was presented today when a person in #fanfics proposed writing a Rue/Mint lemon. (Rue and Mint are from Threads of Fate aka DewPrism). It's a *kids* game. They're *children*.
A'course, another person fired back that the same things happens to Sailormoon and Card Captor Sakura, so why was I getting my tail in a knot about DewPrism? A fair enough point, but CCS lemons get me in a tuff as well ^^; Sailormoon is a bit harder because it covers years in time and has characters of different ages / maturities. (Like, I have nothing against Haruka and Michiru's relationship (all bias aside) because they're mature characters who are old enough (by Japanese standards at that time) to make such decisions). The DewPrism one irked me 'cause they're, like, 11 --; And they're super deformed. SD-hentai is wrong on so many levels...
Maybe it's just the prude in me that's speaking...
04.09.02 :: 18:32
How to quickly piss off a bean:
- Make her the on call tech.
- Give her a cell phone that doesn't work.
- Call her on her personal cell phone to ask why she isn't answering the on cell phone that doesn't work.
- Say that you knew (before handing the phone over) that the on call cell phone didn't work.
Pissed? Who me? You better believe it, buster ¬.¬ It's like, phone hell! Two cell phones and a land line. AUGH!! And when I check the answering machine at home I usually average a dozen "no message" calls. I should disconnect that thing too ¬.¬ [Rages against the answering machine!]
04.10.02 :: 22:10
Blah, blah, blah, blah. Mref, it's Wednesday. Hump day. Wai, I think. Bah, I just haven't "been into" this week. It's just sliding by and I don't care. I have to take my folks to the airport tomorrow. They'll be gone through the weekend visiting my brother. After I'm off on Friday I have to drive over to Kfalls and pick up Austin and Elf for the Pear Blossom festival. I'm looking forward to seeing them and to the festival. I'm not looking forward to the drive. Quite honestly, I'm tired. I've put out too much social energy in the last few weeks. No worder everything seems dull right now.
I've been trying to get myself into the mood to finish up my writing, but my heart just hasn't been in it. I open up my drafts and then sit there and stare at them for hours. That doesn't feel good at all.
I've gotten more work done on my Persona 2 spread sheet. That'll probably be finished tomorrow. It'll make figuring things out in the game a lot easier (at least for me). SaGa Frontier II is ticking me off, but that's nothing new. I don't know why I play games that make my blood boil. I think I'm a glutton for punishment.
04.11.02 :: 08:14
I came to the horrible realization this morning that I've spent a lot more time playing Go! Go! Digger (the SaGa Frontier II Pocket Station mini-game) than I have on the game itself. I've spent around 20 hours on Go! Go! Digger while my SaGa game file hasn't cracked 5 hours yet. I was playing it last night and got mad (again) when a random monster kicked my butt. That's always been a weakness in SaGa, IMO. Random battles are more difficult than boss battles. That and you can be doing well and fine in a dungeon and a difficult random battle will come out of no where and kill you. Grrrr-berf!
Mref, I've been getting 8+ hours of sleep every night this week and every morning I wake up as tired as I was when I went to bed. It's getting harder and harder to drag my fanny out of bed in the mornings ^^; That and I'm having an allergy attack this morning. I need to remember to go by the pharmacy to get my prescription refilled. And go by Sprint, yes, I need to do that as well.. ;)
04.11.02 :: 19:48
Gyah, today was going well until this evening. I took my parents to the airport in my mom's van. After they went in I went to drive off and I couldn't get the van started --; The guard glared at me while I fought to get the van started. Then he came over to ask what the problem was. After he couldn't get the van started he went into the airport to get my dad. Dad got it started and I went on my way.
I stopped by the store to get a soda and on the way home spilt it --; When I got home I went in to get some towels to clean the van up with and found that Pepper had helped herself to a bag of groceries that were on the table --; I cleaned up the car and then cleaned up the mess that was on the floor.
By that time, I was furious. Oi... I need patience and a longer fuse right now. The other day I'd gotten mad and kicked the screen door. Fortunately, I already planned on replacing it this summer --; My foot being put through it didn't help in the least. Must. Control. Temper.
But it's hard to not approach things with snarky apathy. Especially when all I've gotten from work for the last few days are complaints. A lot of those complaints were generated from me going through the countless piles of folders that billing sent to me to take them out of the server. Deliquent accounts were deleted, bah, why do I have to explain the concept of 'no pay, no play' y'know?
I don't like being on call. I didn't like the last person I spoke with. I'm tired of explaining concepts that should be fairly obvious, but I guess they're not. This guy was complaining that he couldn't download a 5M email via a dial up account. He said our server wasn't adequate. I tried to explain it in laymens terms. Like a pipe. You don't just shove something large down it. You cut it up and send it in pieces (if at all --; ) So it's *not* fair to compare his old provider that could handle 150 small emails to our mail server choking on his one large one. WTF? Hotmail wouldn't let you get away with 5M attachments. I agree with Austin and his idea of "customer expectation adjustments". His expectations definitely needed to be pulled back into the realm of reality.
04.12.02 :: 10:07
My dad's a loon ^^; A nice loon, but still a loon. He's a very socialable man. He loves to tell stories ^^ I mention this because he called me at work today to tease me about my working and him being on vacation ^^; He then had to tell me about his travel adventures.
The security at the local airport sucks. I told him that before we went there. The guards are a bunch of butterballs. He didn't believe me until he got there and went through their "security". Ha! He had his shoes unlaced and was ready to give them to the guard. The guard didn't want to look at them. He then demanded that the guard inspect his shoes. Woo.. go dad ^^;
The stewardess of the puddle jumper they took down to Frisco had to arrange where people sat so that the plane's weight was balanced. I wouldn't find that reassuring myself ^^; On the flight they took to LA they had to sit next to a smelly person. I suggested locking them up in the lavatory. Mom said she just breathed through her mouth instead ^^; I really needed to know this, guys ^^;
So, anyhow, they're safe in LA terrorizing them instead of the people here. I still need to stop by mom's printshop and make sure nothing bad has happened. I also need to check up on ReRun. Stupid cat. Bah. ^^; My berfday gifts are up in mom's apartment with the cat. Mom told me not to touch them. I told her that *I* wouldn't, but I couldn't speak for ReRun if he decided to claw the packages open. That excuse didn't fly that far when she reminded me that he's been declawed. ^^; I'll have to find another one ;)
04.12.02 :: 20:50
I watched Sailormoon episode 92 this evening. It's the first time in many moons (no pun intended ;) that I've watched Sailormoon. I remember in college when I watched it so many times I could list every little inane detail to you. I've forgotten a lot of the little things now ^^;
My dad picked up my brother's habit of calling me to have me do a directions search on MapQuest for him when he's on the road. I was going to tell him to go buy a roadmap until he said he was trying to find an anime shop to buy me a berfday gift. Okay, I think I can figure out MapQuest for a good cause like that ;) My brother also had some advice to offer... He said that the key to figuring out what berfday presents were ahead of time was to be sure to rewrap them in the same paper after you've checked them out ^^; Thanks Nanki.
I had a nice chat with Bob this afternoon about work. It's nice to have a boss who listens to your concerns and is receptive to your ideas. I had a few to ping off of him that I think'll make things easier for our customers :)
Austin and Elf are going to be here this weekend for the Pear Blossom festival and to unwind. Wai, I think we *all* need a chance to rest. Elf's been working his brains out because it's his final term of school. I'm sure he can't wait to graduate ^^
04.14.02 :: 17:44
The four adventurers (a geodancer, a ninjaneer, a calculator, and an archer) headed off to the Pear Blossom festival after a bit of prodding by the geodancer (who was sure to rub in that she *told* them to go to bed early the previous night ;) The first stop along the parade route was the geodancer's mother's cat (a vile creature, I assure you ;) Much to the geodancer's amazement the furball had consumed an alarming amount of cat food in two days o.O After sinking his teeth into the geodancer's coat, the party resumed it's journey.
Blech, okay, normal now ^^; We went down a couple blocks and found ourselves a piece of sidewalk to call our own right next to Nick (a co-worker). We sat and talked and ate curly fries until the parade started. The motorcycle police started things off by weaving around and being really loud with their sirens. Then the fire department, and the mayor, and *6* grand marshalls o.O; Uh.. okay.. They are all state political folks.
There were a lot of tractors after that ^^; Elf complained that the pear blossoms (while blooming) weren't floating along the parade route like last year. I ":P-ed" at him for that. There were several plush uncle sam's strapped to the bumpers of large vehicles. I think that idea must have come from the same person who thought of the santa being crucified on the side of a building ^^;
There were two really cool things at the parade this year. The first was the Shriners. They steal the show every year. There's just something *really* entertaining about seeing an old fogey fly around in a go cart =D The other really cool thing was a llama that was dressed up like a person. It was done so well that at first glance from head on you'd think it was a person. Austin got several good pictures of it (and plans on submitting them to Penny Arcade). He didn't get a picture of it when it kissed its handler. Oh well ^^; Austin got some pictures of me riding piggy back on all of their backs on the way to the car. He got a really nice one of me on Elf's back while we're both laughing ^_^
After about an hour and a half there was a lull in the parade and we took that opportunity to leave. They were stupid again this year and left a several block long pause in the middle of the parade. Last year they'd sent police down the route to tell people that the parade wasn't over yet. This year we left before they did that ^^ We went to Kazuko's for lunch instead :)
Kazuko's, then the mall (I picked up the Mini Goddesses DVD 2), and Costco. Grr-berf. After letting us in, the card checker lady followed us and asked to see Austin's card again. Austin pointed out that he didn't have a card and that she'd want to see my card. She asked to see my card again and confirm that it was actually mine. (I have a business membership and they probably figure that I'm too young to be in possession of such a thing. It's off of my mother's business and I've had it for over 10 years now ^^; )
I had a couple aggravating tech calls yesterday. The most frustrating was from a woman who insisted that her husband's email didn't work because he had the same domain name as she did. (CyberNet offers a choice of, like, 14 or something like that). She wanted a different domain name. I tried to explain that the domain name wouldn't be the culprit, but I was in the middle of Suncoast at the time ^^; I called her back today (she wanted to be called back today) and we worked out her problems, which were three fold: 1) She thought that her computer didn't need to be connected to the Internet to send / receive email. 2) She thought that her and her husband's domain names couldn't be the same. 3) She had the account created a couple times, different way. We deleted all but one of them and got it working. The worst part of this is that she said she spoke to two technicians who told her that the domain name was the problem... --;
When we weren't out and about Austin played Okage: Shadow King in my bedroom while Elf played Puyo Puyo Da out in the living room ^^; Timmy and I spent a lot of time watching and sleeping. Hmm.. Sleep ^^ It felt good. Timmy scolded me for sleeping too much, but I finally feel rested, so I see it as a good investment of time ^^
My dad called me last night and had me guess where he was. When I wouldn't play along he gloated that he was at Anaheim stadium watching the Angels and A's playing ;_; That evil man, going to a baseball game without me and then taunting me. He also called me during the 7th inning stretch to tell me the score ;_; No fair!
04.15.02 :: 14:12
I've decided to do a bean year in review post. Y'know, reflect upon the good and the bad from the last year and what things I've learned.
- I visited Disneyland for the first time since I was a child. The magic kingdom is a lot more magical when you're 12 ^^;
- I've made new friends including Jeffy and Pisces6 ^_^
- I started posting Sowing the SeeDs on my birthday last year. I haven't got much further to go before the story is finished :)
- Hitomi, Ayumi, and Utada are cool J-Pop artists *_*
- You must boil the noodles before putting them into the dish when making tuna casserole.
- I drooled over, bought, and finished Final Fantasy X.
- Whenever I think I've found the most obvious computer concept (like turning it on) I'll always encounter someone who'll screw it up. (There is no such thing as engineering to the lowest common denominator, it can't be done ^^; )
- Even at 25, I'm entire too young to be offering advice to some people =/
- I hate cell phones.
04.15.02 :: 23:36
I discovered the disadvantage to living on my own this evening. I went into the bathroom and discovered to my horror that the toilet hadn't been flushed. I looked around accusingly, but the only possible culprit was the one looking back at me in the mirror. Oops ^^; [Flushes toilet]
I had a fun berfday, pretty mellow ^^ My work ordered in Chinese food for lunch. (I think I ate the least of my co-workers. I haven't been that hungry lately ^^; ) Had an okay day at work. I was too happy in general to let stupid little things pull me down. After work I had dinner with my parents at a nearby Mexican restaurant. Yum... sopapitas *_*
I got a few DVDs I wanted, some towels, and a box of mac & cheese for presents ^_^ Oh! And the Lord of the Rings books set. It's been quite a while since I've read 'em. I only vaguely remember The Hobbit. The latest Ah! My Goddess trade paperback that I ordered arrived ^_^ It's Skuld focused, wai ^^
Thank you everyone for your well wishes. I really did have a good berfday ^_^
04.17.02 :: 10:16
Sometimes I think work is just an exercise in patience; enough things happen on a regular basis that aggravate me. Like the SOB who called three times this morning and hung up on me three times when he didn't like my answer. After the third time I secured permission from billing to cancel his account should I weasel his name out of him. (Yes, I do enjoy working at a place that requires a base level of civility from its customers).
My co-workers also provide a certain amount of frustration. Maybe it's wishful thinking on my part, but I don't see why I should have to forward tech emails to people who are already on the tech support mailing list and refuse to go through their own messages. (A message sent by me will get through their filters, but one sent from a customer will be discarded --; ) That frustrates / angers me. It often times feels like I'm the only one who answers customers' tech emails. I know that's not true. Nick does when he's not buried with billing things. Guess I'm just jaded today ^^;
I have a thin scratch about an inch long down the inside of my left wrist that I have no clue where it came from. It couldn't have been ReRun. Pepper's nails are kept short (I don't think she's ever scratched me). Just one of those weird things like taking a shower and suddenly noticing that you have a bruise on your knee. We've all done that ^^
It took me 4 hours to watch Jin-Roh last night (kept pausing to talk to people ^^; ) The movie itself was pretty interesting if not a bit slow. I really like how the people were drawn. I kept watching their eyes and facial expressions more than the subtitles. I think I need to see the movie again before I'll fully understand it.
I'm trying out a new morning routine to see if the results are better. Lately I've had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. I haven't been late to work yet, but I've been close. I got up a half hour earlier today. I'm going to try letting Pepper out twice in the morning and *watch* her to make sure she gets the crap out of her system before I let her back in. And I might start blanketing the living room carpet with newspapers. I'm tired of finding droppings ¬.¬
I know that I've mentioned this before, but the state of Oregon has some really cool websites. One of my favorites is TripCheck and especially the road webcams. It's good to see what a pass is looking like before trying to go over it. (I'm thinking of visiting the guys in kfalls tonight, but the pass is solid white. I'm not too fond of the idea of borrowing my dad's car and then trying to go over the pass with it. I might skip this trip ^^; )
04.18.02 :: 08:43
Working Designs finally shipped Arc the Lad! After a year and a half of delays there's a chance I might have it in my paws by this evening. Scary, ne?
I finally got around to installing LiteStep on one of my machines. I did it to my one at work because I was bored ^^; Here's a picture of what it looks like. I haven't tweaked with it at all. It's changed quite a bit since the last time I installed a build of it.
I'm still getting plenty of sleep, but not feeling it. I slept 9 solid hours last night and woke up this morning like I hadn't slept a wink. It's kind of a bummer. I also forgot to watch West Wing last night =( I watched the A's - Mariners game instead. It was going okay until the top of the 8th. Then Ichiro drove in 3 runs and I decided that going to sleep would be a good idea ^^;
The weather is just freaky weird right now. The east coast is boiling. Here it's raining or snowing (depending on the altitude you live at). Driving to work this morning I couldn't see the mountains in any direction. Everything was just a solid sheet of gray from one end of the valley to the other. Anyone want to trade a bucket of snow for a few rays of sunshine? ^^;
04.18.02 :: 21:51
Well, my plans on having a restful evening of napping and Arc the Lad were tossed out the window ^^; First some salesman kept calling and I kept ignoring the answering machine. I slept a bit until Austin called to ask me a question. Rolled over and tried to go back to sleep when my dad called me to tell me that he was broken down.
I should mention at this point that my parents like to drive around a lot. They go all over the frickin' place in the van. It's what they do. Fortunately, they hadn't managed to get too far before it happened. They were only 10 miles outside of town ^^; I drove mom back while dad waited for the tow truck to get the van. After that we ate dinner. I didn't get home until 9:30pm.
So, no Arc the Lad for me tonight (it's too close to my self-imposed gaming cut off time), but on the good side, I finished reading the latest Ah! My Goddess trade paperback this evening ^_^ I like Chihiro.
Hehe, I showed mom and dad the first episode of Love Hina last night. Dad was unreceptive (as I expected), but mom liked it. When we spoke about it at lunch today she wanted to see more, but asked if we couldn't watch it subtitled 'cause she couldn't stand the character (Kitsune) with the southern drawl [laughs!] And here I thought I was just being an elitist by thinking that it really sucked. My mother has only seen a few anime and she spotted it right away ^^ (I've shown her Ah! My Goddess subtitled, Princess Mononoke dubbed, and Here is Greenwood dubbed). Actually, I really like the Greenwood dub. It's a good example of how you can dub a character with an accent / drawl and still have it fit the character.
There were a few rays of sunshine when I was driving around looking for my folks. Wai, sunshine ^_^
04.19.02 :: 08:45
I was kicking around the net this morning and found this article about marketing to weblogs. My response? Marketers always have to get their paws into the good things and ruin 'em :P I remember when the net was (mostly) advertisement free. Bah.
TuxMel has been playing willing guinea pig to my latest part of SeeDfic. He read the draft and then helped me locate what parts of the story were weak. I'm glad. I'm finally feeling happy with how this part turned out. Just need to tighten it up a bit more before I ask Helen to proof it for me :)
04.20.02 :: 19:46
I fully acknowledge the fact that I can be a complete ass at times. Yesterday after work was a good example of me at my finest. I'd gone down to my mom's shop to wait for dinner in the front area (my folks invited me to go out to dinner with them). I had How to be a Canadian out and was lounging across two chairs reading when I heard her talking to someone in the shop.
It was a former co-worker of mine named Jason. I don't really care for him that much. It's nothing personal, but I see him as being between a 'salesman' (which *always* gets on my nerves) and naive. A naive salesman, in a way. Someone who would sink into those get-rich-quick schemes. ... Which he currently was. He wants to sell those little plug in devices that drive away bugs that you see on late night tv on the web. He has his website hosted with the company. A couple months ago when he started down this path he didn't know HTML at all and kept asking me questions on how to code things. I turned him away then, too ^^;
Anyhow, getting back to me being an ass. He'd come looking for someone, anyone, who worked there to ask about his website and how it was configured. This annoyed me for several reasons. It was after closing time (which he knew). He also knows that I do exactly *zero* configuration work on the web servers. I told him that he could call the office and leave a message for the weekend support (Josh, who maintains those servers, is it this week). Jason wanted me to give him Josh's number so he could call him right away. I told him that I wouldn't give out my co-worker's phone numbers.
He then did what many customers do; started whining about how much money they have tied up in their projects. I know this is terribly insensitive of me, but I don't give a flying cow. The fact that you have $1 or $10,000 invested doesn't change that fact that I don't know the answer to their question. In fact, he had given some company $5,500 to raise his ranking on Google. I bit down on my tongue. Google goes to great lengths to keep their listings from being 'polluted' by crap like that. Whoever was doing it for him told him that Google's spiders only go out once a month to catalogue websites.
Bah. I *wanted* to tell him what a fool he was and that he'd been had, but my mother was glaring at me with much disapproval. Instead I took my book and I went to the bathroom and bolted the door. He asked me once more (yelling down the hallway) what the number was. I yelled back for him to call the office and leave a message. I then sat there and read until I was certain he'd left.
Mom continued to radiate disapproval all through dinner --; I didn't care, I was so tired on the way to the restaurant that I slept some. When we got there my throat started itching and I had a headache. By the time I got home after dinner I was feeling pretty beat. I went to bed early and had odd dreams. I kept rolling over and sleeping more and more. I figure that I got around 14 hours of sleep today --;
And now, for a change of pace, I'd like to rant a bit about the vibrating function (and abuse thereof) featured in some video games. I think it's a great idea personally. It adds some depth to the game to have it shake when your character smacks up against a wall or something like that. The problem is that 90% of the Playstation games out there abuse it.
Arc the Lad is one of the worse offenders I've encountered in a while. Any time you can set the controller on the floor and watch it spaz out during a cut scene you *know* it's too much vibration. I'm about 3 hours into Arc the Lad now and I've *finally* found where I can turn off the vibration function. Stupid Working Designs. They should have put the configuration screen on the start menu instead of on the Battle menu --;
All bias aside, I think one of the games that makes the best use of the vibration feature was Final Fantasy VIII. Having it do a soft "hit" when you connect with Squall's gunblade isn't annoying. The vibration with the GF summonings actually *match* the pattern of what's on the screen. It just isn't rumbling for the sake of shaking. That's one of the (many) reasons I was disappointed with FFIX. FFVIII had done such a fine job with the vibration that FFIX's was nasty =/ I just turned it off.
Another game that does fairly good vibration is Dynasty Warriors 3. I especially like it for knowing when archers are pegging you. There's so much going on that you usually can't spot them, but once you feel them...
Vera is making awesome shirts for #fanfics. I've already ordered the "got fic?" shirt for myself ^o^
04.21.02 :: 21:02
I'm feeling much better today! I'm glad that whatever that sore throat thing was, it was the 24 hour variety ^^
Pepper's back on my shit list. I let her out this morning, then brought her back in and went to the store, and when I came back she'd crapped on the carpet --; She spent the rest of the day out on her lead for that. Bah, stupid mutt.
I finished Arc the Lad this evening. Hehehe, yeah, there's a reason my parents don't buy games for me. I finish 'em too quickly ^^ Though, I knew that Arc I was only 8 hours or so long. I stretched it out to nearly 13 by doing many of the optional quests. I can load the save data from Arc I into Arc II, so it's all good. I've also written a review of the game for Insert Credit. It's not posted, I'm not even sure if it will be posted. I hope so, I'd like to contribute, but I might have written it too colloquially.
I let down the A's this evening. I was watching them play the Angels and in the 8th inning after the Angels took the lead I realized that I was wearing the Angels T-shirt my folks brought back from Cali with them. I'm such a traitor ;_; I'll have to wear one of my A's shirts soon to make up for this transgression. (I was wearing the Angels T-shirt to lounge around in today).
04.22.02 :: 10:45
I had a funky weird dream last night. I dreamt that I was a priest who was living in an apartment with Helen and two other priests (our age). I was the most senior of the priests, and as such I was responsible for the accommodations of the other two. The junior member needed a place to sleep so I went to Black Bird (a local sporting goods store) to buy a foam mat. After that I asked Helen if I could use her computer to do some work. She said I could use her work station at her place of employ since she didn't have to work that day. I was going to do some coding, but then I realized that I was a woman of God now and I hadn't written a program in over three years. I'd forgotten my mad coding skills. Then I woke up.
04.22.02 :: 22:07
Today dad admitted that he was the parental unit that I got my tendancy towards weird dreams from ^^; Turns out that he dreams every night as well, and usually remembers them until late morning. He doesn't bother writing down his dreams like I sometimes do, but they're just as vivid. He says he sometimes tells my mom his dreams, and that she thinks he's a weirdo [laughs] ^^
Arc the Lad II is quickly climbing up my "woot!" gaming list. I really appreciate the fact that the game clock *stops* when you hit the pause button or are in the menus. That's one thing that kind of irks me about Persona 2. It's impossible to get a fair judgement of how much game time you've put in 'cause you can't pause the bugger. You can go to a menu and be 'safe' from random battles, but it doesn't stop the game clock. Like, I'm sitting here right now eating dinner and blogging while my game is paused. Ha!
I've thought (daydreamed?) about moving to Canada for years now. Among the random thoughts that've meandered through my head are what sort of things I would bring with me to remind me of home. I've come up with two. I would bring with me a wind chime so that when the winds blew I'd be reminded of home. (There's been one hanging outside the front door the house since I was a child. I sometimes flick my fingers along it just to hear the chimes..). The other thing I would bring (if I could find one) would be an Oregon state flag. That I'd hang up either tacked to the ceiling or across the doorway separating one room from another. Why? 'Cause beavers are cool, darn it!
Dad took my car to begin work on it today. When I spoke to him this evening he informed me that even more was wrong with the car than he thought. There's a broken piston in it. He thinks it's been broken ever since I bought the car and said that none of the other mechanics had ever seen anything like it. His original estimate for cost of parts was $300 before he knew about the piston. He hasn't given me the estimate since then, but I somewhat dread it ^^; He's already ordered the part, but it won't be here for at least 3 days. Oh well, at least it's being fixed ^^;
04.23.02 :: 20:30
Blech, my stomach was rumbly all night and throughout the day. I went to 7-Eleven this morning to get some 7-UP to sip on. The cashier wished me a good day at school after I paid ^^; The itchy throat came back this afternoon (in addition to the sour stomach). Bah, bah I say!
The workday was unremarkable until the end when I had a call from a guy who wanted to know why he was being disconnected, but wouldn't accept any of my suggestions for trying to fix it. He thought I was BSing him. I wanted to ask him why he even bothered calling if he wasn't going to at least *try* the suggestions he called for. He was one of those who didn't understand why / think that he ever needed to reboot his computer. (It's amazing how often a reboot solves the problem.) But he wouldn't even do that and certainly wouldn't do anything else I told him to. Bah on him too. He can keep his stubbornness and broken computer if it makes him feel better.
Helen and I played Scrabble this afternoon. Man, I was doing pretty well (for me) and managed to keep a handful of points ahead of her for the entire match. Then the program threw up (technical term there) and we weren't able to finish the game =/ I'd hate to think that this match was the 1 game a year that I win from her. I'll be sorely disappointed if it was :P
04.24.02 :: 21:09
Take the What High School
Stereotype Are You? quiz, by Angel.
Blech, I have nothing interesting to say about today. Mom came by this evening to see if I was still alive. (Dad went to the bar after work to shoot some pool). She brought spaghetti. Yay. I showed her the rest of the Love Hina DVD. We watched it dubbed because she'd forgotten to bring her glasses with her. After 4 episodes of Kitsune's southern drawl it has *not* grown on me. I ordered the second Love Hina DVD and the last Hand Maid May DVD from Amazon this evening (I didn't realize LH2 was out) ^^ They're Amazon gift certificates well spent :)
I also showed mom the Weird Al "That's your horoscope" Love Hina video. She was more impressed by how I was making the video full screen with the Alt+Enter then the fact that I'd remotely accessed my machine at work to get the video in the first place ^^; We're still taking baby steps on the road of technology.
04.25.02 :: 02:22
It's 1:30 and I can't sleep, so I might as well rant about what I've been laying in bed thinking about. Maybe that'll help get it out of my mind and then I can rest.
I've been thinking about the snobbishness that I see around me with regards to artists (be it musical, literary, etc). They're so anxious to tear each other day. "Oh, N*Sync's music isn't *real* music. It's a load of crap." Stuff like that coming from music students. Well, here's my take on it. With regards to things like music there are two types of artist (at least). There are those who practice the trade for the technical aspect of it (classically trained musicians, for example) and those who perform on a secular level. I think there's a lot of jealousy on the part of the classically trained people of the secular ones 'cause the secular ones get all of the attention. Who wants to hear Mozart again when there's something new and flashy coming out?
Is their criticism justified? On some levels, yes. When it comes to the technical art of composing music, what they come up with is undoubtedly superior... but that doesn't mean it's better. When it comes to the arts especially, "better" is wholly a matter of taste. One man's trash is another man's treasure, as it was pointed out to me last night. As much as N*Sync's technical skills may irritate, they're the popular ones because their songs attract the audience. It's petty to begrudge them for knowing how to tap into the market.
But that's only half the problem as I see it. There is also a strong sense in our society to want to tear down those who are successful. I'll use Bill Gates as an example. How many people reading this have actually met him? I'm guessing zero. So why sling around insults about how 'evil' he is when none of us have had the opportunity to at least shake hands?
I'd also remind people that the actions of a company aren't necessarily a reflection of the man behind them. Part of business -- a very large part of business -- is putting up a facade to attract customers. Think I'm nuts? Why bother creating pleasant lobbies with fish tanks and whatnot if not to create a favorable impression? If image didn't matter, customers would be sitting outside the front door on milk crates for all businesses care. It would certainly cost less than the heating bill for the fish tank.
I think that before we decide to go after someone for something we should at least bother to get our facts straight. Again, using Gates as an example... Did you know that he was the world's most generous philanthropist last year? Not in terms of percentage of income (he has so much o.O), but in terms of dollars donated. Before you call him 'evil' take a look at this. It's not the Microsoft Foundation. Or the Windows Foundation. That's the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the money that goes to it comes out of *their* pockets, not Microsoft's.
Now, I'm not saying that all 'bad' things have misunderstood good sides, but things / people / music / books / etc. at least deserve a fair shake before a conclusion is drawn. To listen to the first track on a CD or read only the first chapter of a book and then deciding it sucks is hardly giving it a fair chance. And you will get *NO* respect from me for bashing something without giving it even 5 minutes of your time.
There are some things that we're just not going to like. I don't like SaGa Frontier, for example, but I played the game through just to see if there was some aspect that I was missing. I did discover Asellus' quest, which was mildly entertaining. I can say honestly that I gave it a chance and if someone asks me why I don't like it I can tell them. I'm sure with many people, if you asked why they don't like [boy band] they'd give a lame answer or don't even have one. They dislike the band because it's 'stylish' to hate them. That's not cool in the least.
04.25.02 :: 21:28
A woman trapped in a girl's body (or a girl trapped in a woman's mind?), you are bursting with inspiration, dreams and abilities! You hold the simple belief that nothing can stand in your way, giving you the courage to move forward and pursue your desires. However, because your view of the world is so simple, you often overlook life's necessary little details. Don't get too swept away by your dreams that you forget to look at what's right in front of you. Which Love Hina Girl Are You?
Today's been an interesting day to put it mildly o.O; Dad called me this morning to tell me to not go looking for him at lunch at work... he'd been reprimanded and sent home o.O What the story boils down to is that a customer brought their vehicle back saying that dad didn't do the repair. Dad's boss flew off the handle and came back to the shop and started yelling at him, calling him an idiot among other things. Dad went up to see what was wrong with the vehicle and him and the manager got into it again (dad didn't cuss any, he's a better man then me ^^; ) They sent him home for the rest of the week for a bad attitude. He admits that yelling at the manager was wrong, but thinks he's owed an apology as well for the manager calling him an idiot in front of the shop.
The good news is that Vera is planning to come spent June with me ^_^ This is a good thing for the both of us (but mostly me, I think ^^; ) Vera gets the chance to relax and chill, I get someone to shove their foot up my butt [laughs] It's a good thing. We're going to work on redoing the house some, projects that my father has planned but hasn't gotten around to. Today he said that the house is more or less mine to do with as I please (except for pulling up the flooring ^^; ) But that leaves a lot that we can still do, like pull the contact paper out of the cupboards and repaint them. It'll be a lot of work, but I'm looking forward to it :)
She'll also teach me how to cook more than the two dishes I can do now without poisoning myself ^^; (She taught me tuna casserole, so I know it can be done). And we'll get in our fair share of gaming ^_^ In short, it'll be good for me to have some company for a while. I spend entirely too much time alone ^^;
I need to get back into my SeeDfic writing groove. Just been too tired to think about writing lately. I came up with a new motto that plays off of Valkyrie Profile. "My soul burns! My muse has awakened! Ficking Strike: 10-page Blast!" Now I just have to live up to it ^^ (The original is "My soul burns! My powers have awakened! Finishing Strike: Dreaded Dragon!")
04.26.02 :: 08:49
Just to touch briefly on the point I was making the other day. I was watching a debate program on TV and one of the debaters was saying how wrong the book they were debating was... but he'd never read the book he was arguing against. I scoffed and immediately discounted everything coming out of his mouth. How could he offer an informed and (in theory) thought out opinion of the book if he'd never cracked it open?
Anyhow, the reason I'm blogging this morning is because I wanted to try to write down the fragments of my dream that I remember. I was having a party at my place. A lot of the guys were there and we were sitting in the living room playing video games. We were playing the latest Xenogears-esque game. I'd already played beyond the part that the guy currently playing was at, so I knew what was coming and what he'd need to do to finish this section.
Now's where it gets weird. It's like were were playing the game and in the game at the same time. The game shifted to bear some strong resemblances to FFX and he was entering a Zanarkand-like area. I knew that there was an item there that he'd need to collect to unlock a character's Limit. But his hands were more than full with the current task he was doing. I was going to help him out by sneaking to where the item was while the enemy was distracted and stealing it for him. I did this literally. There were so many people in the house that no one missed me for the time that I was gone. The item I had to steal was a can of Campbell's soup. (In my dream I wondered how much Campbell's paid to have their product in the game. It wasn't an unreasonable question considering that Parasite Eve 2 is blanketed in Coke advertising.)
So I snuck back into the house with the can of soup in my pocket. He's nearly finished the section of the game that he was in and was ready to go to the next one. To get to that area he had to travel through an area that this random mech-monster patrolled. It was very nasty monster. In my game I'd beaten it, but only because I'd gained 20 extra levels before getting to this point. He'd be creamed by the monster if it caught him.
What I didn't tell him was that the monster would home in on us if it knew that we had the can of soup in our possession already. I was telling him to move his fanny out of this area before he was caught but he was dawdling. The monsters was coming after him. I yelled at him to move it. He figured out that I had the can of soup and was startled that I could get it this early in the game. He was then caught and throwing into battle --;
The next part of the dream was in my bedroom. Somehow the game playing had moved into there. I was furious at him for blurting in front of the monster that I had the can of soup. Now I was going to have to go outside and try to kick its butt again. He then shook his head and turned off the PS2. There was no more monster, the game was reset. I woke up at that point.
04.26.02 :: 22:42
I had a late dinner with my folks tonight. Mom baked a lasanga. After dinner dad had a bunch of little updates / repairs for me to do on his laptop ^^; I spent an hour doing that and watching stupid tv shows before going home.
I'd forgotten my coat at my mom's shop earlier in the day. I walked to the shop, let myself in, and let myself out through the back door (I didn't want to walk through the dark alley besides the building). Of course a police squad car came down the alley just as I was walking away from the back of the building --; They didn't stop me, but they were definitely eyeballing me. Mreh. I doubt they would have eyeballed my dad if he was coming out of the back of the shop. Or I may just be uber-paranoid about the police now ¬.¬
04.27.02 :: 22:43
I promised Pepper that I'd take her out today, so I did. I took her to Petsmart and let her sniff around for a new bag of treats. She also helped me choose some treats for ReRun. After the pet store we went to mom's apartment to drop off the treats. ReRun spotted Pepper and fled to the bedroom. When I was ready to leave I opened the door to the bedroom and held Pepper tight on her leash. Pepper stood between my legs whapping the back of my knees with her tail (all excited). ReRun was puffed up and growling. They stayed like that for several minutes. Pepper never tried to go after ReRun (she just wanted to make a friend). ReRun eventually de-puffed, but wouldn't leave the bed until Pepper was gone. Their first meeting went pretty well, I think :)
I had to go to the office after that to do a bit of work. (I was on call today. Some of the things I had to do I could do at home or at the office, the office was closer). Then we went to the market. We were gone for about 2 hours and Pepper didn't need to be curbed once while we were out and about. I'm proud of her! ^_^
Being on call today went pretty well, only had one aggravating person call. (Honestly, other "techs" are the hardest to help. We, as a profession, have a *major* arrogance problem --; ) When I finished for the night I went to mom's place again for dinner. She made spaghetti =] My stomach continues to be a problem --; I've resigned myself to going to the doctor. I'll call on Monday and see if I can get in.
04.28.02 :: 10:43
Okay, time for the weird dream of the night. Actually, it started before I even fell asleep. I was still having a pretty bad allergy attack at 2am, so I took an Actifed. (Actifed knocked me on my butt *hard*. Usually I only take a half of one but last night I took a full one instead). I was going to sleep like a rock one way or another.
I dreamt that the toilet in the front bathroom flooded and I had to fix it. I got it fixed and then someone told me that the toilet in the back bathroom was flooded o.O Though the front bathroom was fixed, it couldn't be used right away (for some reason), so I went to fix the back bathroom. The water was friggin' cold. When I couldn't get it repaired quickly, I turned off the water (behind the toilet).
Some random person that my brain came up with was there offering non-helpful suggestions. They became exasperated with how long it was taking me to do a "simple" repair. (The plumbing inside of the tank had become *much* more complicated in my dream o.o) She told me to leave it to her and she "fixed" it. What she actually did was put all the plumbing in the bowl of the toilet. I exclaimed that she hadn't done anything. When you sat down you'd get a piece of tube sticking in your butt. I shoved her out the room and went about fixing it the right way (by putting the plumbing back into the tank, first off).
As my repairs continued my feet were getting cold in the water I was standing in. And I *really* had to go pee. I couldn't go to the bathroom until I fixed the toilet, so I tried to work faster.
Dad woke me up at this point when he came into the house. He came over to watch the NASCAR race with me :) My feet were cold (nothing new there, I am a woman after all) and I did have to go pee. Once I took care of those problems, all was right with the world again ^^
04.28.02 :: 17:21
Dad came over to mow the lawn today. It really needed it. The grass was as tall as Pepper in some places ^^; Dad accidentally ran over Pepper's lead with the lawn mower. I made a quick trip to the pet store to get another one. I bought a 20' one, but it's way too short =/ I'm going to go back and buy another 20' one tomorrow and link them together. That should give Pepper enough room to roam around.
My on call shift for today has been pretty mellow. I had to go down to the office this afternoon and smack the mail server upside the head for freezing. I think I've stumbled along an odd error that I'll have to investigate further on Monday. (I was somehow triggering the freezes, that's not good =/ )
I'm about 6 hours into Arc the Lad II currently. I find that I'm having more fun doing the side quest Hunter missions than going on with the story itself. I also tend to only play the game for about 30 - 45 minutes at a time. It's not that the game isn't fun, but it's not very gripping so far. It has a lot of story, but I don't really care about it (not nearly as much as I cared about FFX's story). I'm not sure if the shortcoming is with me or the game. I'll keep playing.
04.29.02 :: 09:21
It's definitely a Monday. [deep breath] Here's today's idiot / frustration: Customer called up wanted a static IP on a dial up account. We don't offer static IPs on dial up account. He pointed out that we could if we wanted to. I admitted that that's true, but we still don't do it. He demanded to know why. I pointed out that when a business is formed you come up with a list of services that you will and won't offer and a static IP on a dial up account is on the "won't" list. He wanted to speak with the owner. I offered to take a message 'caues Bob wasn't in.
As a bad call in curiosity on my part I asked him why he even wanted a static IP. (The only reason you'd really need one is if you were running a server). He said that wanted to run a relay server. I told him that running a relay server was against our terms of service. He asked why. (Hum, I make this sound like a civilized conversation. It wasn't, he was pretty belligerent by this point). An open relay server can be used for sending spam. I knew I'd hit the nail on the head by how he started to rant on me after that. He proclaimed that it was each person's problem that they got spam. They signed up for it. Boo hoo if they had to weed through the junk in their inbox. I tried to get a word in edgewise by saying that he didn't have to answer for all the spam; he didn't get all the calls from people upset by the porn in their inbox. He said that was my problem.
I warned him three times that he was treading on thin ice. He continued to yell and demand to speak with my boss. I offered to take a message since Bob wasn't in. (And I am very good about passing messages along, even if they might get me into trouble). He kept yelling. I don't have to take that. I hung up on him when he wouldn't heed my warnings.
I went up front to speak with Hollie and blow off some steam. The customer called right back and immediately told me that if I hung up on him again he'd have me fired. I tried to offer again to take a message, but he was more intent on yelling. So I hung up on him again. I then called Bob on his cell to let him know what was coming. Bob assured me that I wouldn't be fired. Though.. even if I were, it wouldn't be much skin off my nose. I work because I enjoy the job. I'm not especially attached to it. I may feel passionately about getting the job done right, but if it's not mine to do anymore, oh well.
Speaking of continued employment, everything has blown over with my dad and his work place. The manager he got into a tiff with was as kind as could be this morning during the reprimand review. Dad thinks that his boss realized how valuable dad is to the shop. All's well that ends well, I guess.
I remembered to call the hotel for AN this morning and confirm the room reservations. No problems there ^^v I also called the doctor and made an appointment to see him tomorrow at 12:30. I'm tired of having a sour stomach and itchy throat --;
04.29.02 :: 21:19
Oi.. Today at work was just okay. My throat was itchy and my voice froggy. I probably scared the heck out of half the people I talked to this afternoon.
After work I scooted down to the mall real quick. I picked dad up a "Happy you weren't fired" gift =] (a Jeff Gordon coffee mug). I also went to the music store and picked up a few things. I had three items and they were each $20. When the lady at the counter rang it up she said it was $40 total. I was like "o.O; That's not right. Recheck your math." She looked over the receipt, turned red, and rang up one of the items that she'd missed ^^;
I did my first check in of the evening and found that all was not right in Internet land. I scrambled back to the office to find the phone ringing off the hook and the mail server crashed *again* --; I can't possibly express how much that angered me. Not because the server was down again (I had to reboot it twice on Sunday and once when I first arrived this morning). I was angry because our admin says that he shouldn't have to take tech calls 'cause he's the server admin. If he's the admin why in the hell hasn't he fixed the fucking server yet?! I'm tired of having to bandaid it and then placate (justifiably) angry customers 'cause he can't fix the damn thing.
Grr-berf! I was stuck in the office for an hour doing that. Then I went home and ate an over full bowl of leftover spaghetti. I think it's the most I've eaten in a single sitting in a week.
04.30.02 :: 18:02
Last night I found not one, but two frogs in my room after I went to bed. I heard the first one rustling around in a plastic bag on the floor. I feared it might have been a mouse ( ¬.¬ ) so I got up to investigate and found a yellowish frog in there. I took him outside and let him go. Went back to bed and not 10 minutes later heard the rustling again. I found a brownish frog where I'd found the yellowish one. I took him outside and let him go. Weird...
The news from the doctor wasn't that great. He said that I have a throat infection (the glands are all swollen and rough looking), an ear infection (right ear), and it's moving into my chest. He gave me a prescription for some antibiotics (only 6 pills? Huh, medication's come a long way..) and a note to give to my boss that said I needed 2 - 3 days off work to rest. Bob took the news pretty well. I think he was expecting it since I haven't been feeling well for a week now.
Well, I guess it's okay to talk about this openly now since the official announcement was today. The company I work for is merging with another local ISP. It'll make the combined company the largest local ISP in the valley. We're going to be moving into the other company's offices. That physical move of servers, desks, whatnot is going to be tonight. It's not a good time to be sick --; Fortunately, I've already sent over most of my stuff (and the stuff I'm in charge of). All that I had left was my computer, phone, and chair.
I just watched a commercial on tv that was a campaign ad for governor. It was attacking current Oregon governor Dr. John Kitzhaber. My questions is: why? For one thing, even as a democrat (no one's perfect, kiddin', kiddin' ;) he's been pretty popular. He's good at keeping the very polarized political spectrum of Oregon pleased most of the time. (That's quite a feat). But even more than that, he can't run for reelection because of term limits. So why bother doing attack ads against someone who isn't even running? ^^;
04.30.02 :: 22:02
Random crap time! I took the IQ test on emode at Yun's prompting. My score was 124 with my type as Insightful Linguist. You are gifted with the natural fluency of a writer and the visual and spatial strengths of an artist. Those skills contribute to your creative and expressive mind. No surprises there ^^; While I was taking the test my bro called me and wanted help with his printer ^^; I just can't get away from tech support, even on doctor's orders :P
I heard Janet Jackson's "Together Again" on the radio today and it got stuck in my head. I also got to think about the lyrics and applying them to the SeeDfic. Hum... It could describe Sean and Xu's relationship. Now I kind of want to write, but that would require effort and motivation ^^; Maybe I'll write tomorrow or something.
I asked the neighbor to keep an eye on Pepper while I'm at AN 'cause I don't trust dad to remember to do it ^^; (Thanks for reminding me, Sean). I found out that one of their daughters is getting married next month. Man, I remember when I used to play basketball with her back on their hoop. When did we grow up?
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