Don't know if I should open the envelope or not

Well, 3 days ago, I had the phone hearing with the unemployment review
people. The call lasted about 35 minutes and I taped the thing. After
some points the guy made I felt were in my favor, and probably one
question I don't think I answered well enough, the call was concluded.
pRick didn't answer or make the call, which I felt was wrong. It's funny
how everyone who wasn't at the store when this happened said I did
something wrong - people who weren't there made that claim. It wasn't
until 2 days after this that people had to tell me they felt there was
something wrong, which is their claim but they weren't there to witness
it so how can they possibly determine that? They were not witnesses, and
the pricing thing was going on all day with no one else noticing or
saying anything - they're just as much to blame.

So today I get an envelope. I've gotta open the envelope to see what
further appealing I can do. Part of me just wants to drop it, but I have
to keep fighting.

I thought the call went in my favor, but that's the Asperger's working.
I can't tell either way, but from past experience, I've learned to
expect the worst.

Things have never been fair for me.

The Manga Cookbook review

Finally!!! AFTER 6 Long Months waiting for this most important book, it's finally out!!

You've seen your favorite anime or manga characters eating or making food and you know it's all Japanese, essentially. But part of the mystery is what the heck ARE they eating? How do you put together a bentou box? (That's one thing I've wanted to know!)

This has got to be the cutest Japanese cookbook ever produced. It's also very easy to follow. The only problem I can see is procuring the proper ingredients and utensils. Most places in the world are probably with 20 miles of an Asian Food store. Some items are available in your local supermarket but they're likely clueless about some items and won't have everything you need.

The Manga Cookbook is a delight to look at as well as learn from, which lends itself well to teaching the "mitateru" concept behind making your food look as well as it tastes.

If you go on the website www.mangacookbook.com, you'll see they have it available online and with a couple gift set options. While I'm sure you can get a bentou set for less than they're asking, I'm sure what they offer is good quality anyway. The sushi set also available separately is a good bargain.

Some things that disappointed me: I would have liked a section on what a traditional Japanese breakfast is, and there's 27 pages available for "Cook's Notes" which in my opinion would have been better used for a few more recipes, perhaps the breakfast section I wished was in there or some recipes for Desserts like handmade chocolate (for Valentine's Day) or Christmas Cake. Considering the average length of a recipe is about 4 pages long, that might have yielded 6 more recipes, but what is in there is a lot, so you shouldn't be bored too quickly!

The best point of the book are the full color photographs near the front of the book! A VERY good tool to use to make sure what you're being told to make matches what they actually did make. (niko niko)

Usagi Ringo? Tamago tomodachi? Tako sausage? I'm sure we've seen our favorite manga personalities eating these at one time or another - now's the chance to make them yourself! (and understand why some students make their lunches the night before! ^_^) I'm sure for Tako Sausage you can use turkey or chicken franks, which are not only kosher, but better for you. ^_- And yes, for Usagi Ringo, the author mentions Sailor Moon, so there's your connection and a reason to buy this one (as well as Warriors of Legend).

I think the recipe for Tamagoyaki is interesting and I might try it soon. I'd love to get the special pan they make for it. If you live near a World Market store, check them out. Very nice things there for your Japanese cooking needs.

This may be the chance to get those picky eaters who don't otherwise like Japanese food to finally try some and like it! It doesn't look like there'll be another volume to follow, but we can hope.

UPDATE November 2017: THERE IS A 2nd MANGA COOKBOOK! You can find it on Amazon and still published by Manga University! It came out in June 2017!!  Sorry I don't have a link to one listing, but hey, how hard is using Amazon anyway? And YES, I also got one of those special square Japanese egg pans! I also haven't checked to see if their URL still works, but I hope it does.


NOTE: Do not sell to eBay user geurrand. Block this user on all accounts. They lie and report you for doing nothing wrong.

Rick Seigal, you are an asshole

So I find out just a few minutes ago some news. My friends who had
invited me to the shop Christmas party were just now informed that pRick
got wind that I was invited and decided that _I_ was the only one NOT
ALLOWED TO COME TO THIS PARTY. Mind you, EVERYONE ELSE IS ALLOWED TO
BRING ONE GUEST. EVERYONE ELSE WHO INVITED THEIR GUEST CAN BRING THEM.
BUT _I_ AM THE ONLY INVITED GUEST NOT ALLOWED TO COME BECAUSE pRICK
SEIGAL HAS PERSONAL ISSUES AGAINST ME. Plain and CLEAR. HE USED THOSE
SAME PERSONAL ISSUES TO GET ME FIRED FOR UNJUST CAUSE.

It could be he's AFRAID of dealing with me. After all, I'm pissed at him
- I could end up doing anything, but mostly I wanted to see my friends I
used to work with and fill my stomach on his dime.

SO A NEW RULE WAS SUDDENLY IMPLEMENTED - IF YOU'VE BEEN RECENTLY FIRED
YOU CANNOT COME EVEN IF YOU'VE BEEN INVITED.

RICK SEIGAL, YOU ARE A CERTIFIED PUBLIC ASSHOLE. major bastard.

In my opinion that is. I'm just saying...

Cleaned the oven

In the UK, what we call a "stove" is called a "cooker" because it's what
you cook on. Go figure.

Anywho, Mom's been wanting the oven cleaned and I though OK, if we can
get some Easy Off, I'll clean it. So we got some Easy Off. This stuff is
named accurately. I recommend using it overnight.

We had this black carbonized mass at the bottom of the oven that would
send smoke streaming out at temperatures above 425 F. When I got to
cleaning some out before spraying it with Easy Off, some of it flaked
off and I threw that away.

It took 2 applications of the stuff before it was 99% clean. Kim and
Aggie (from How Clean is Your House?) would be proud. I want to treat
the racks as well. It was SO EASY to remove, too! A damp warm sponge was
practically all I needed to wipe down the oven, but I used a little
scrub pad of steel wool to remove some of the more stubborn bits. At
least it's clean now! No smoke!

I wonder if any regular degreaser product would also have worked.

It snowed today. I hate snow. The temperature outside was in the 20s, so
I pulled out my Duralast battery. Again. Good thing I don't have to
really go anywhere today. One appointment got changed to tomorrow. I
wish it would get cancelled altogether.

Might have finally figured out the heating problem downstairs

Ever since we moved in here at what I call Maison Ikkoku West (heh), one
thing for sure in the winter was that we have never been comfortable at
all. No matter how much we turned up the thermostat downstairs, it was
always chilly or cold. Cold feet, cold toes - not fun.

Some time ago, one of the guys where I used to work, I think his name
was James or something, gave me these 2 rolls of extra thick rubber
stripping. I think it was for some commercial refrigeration seal or
something. Anywho, one afternoon while working with the 'puter
downstairs, I decided to get these things out of the car and put them to
use. First up was sealing the edges of the front door. Cold air just
gushed around the door. It doesn't help that the front porch isn't
sealed off very well. It was tricky but I eventually used up one whole
roll and a little bit of the other roll in figuring out how to create a
tight seal.

Today, I finally got to doing the same for the back door. Every place I
could see sunlight peeking through, that was also a spot for cold air to
get in as well.

A couple nights ago, I even managed to put some plastic sheeting on a
couple of windows that hadn't got any already. This all seemed to help,
but we were still cold.

The house here has baseboard heaters made by Fasco, but the thermostat
controls are by Eaton. The ones we have are M402 models. About the only
other thing I can think of is that someone messed with the thermostat
downstairs, because the one for my room definitely works. No matter how
high we turned it downstairs, it never got warm enough. It would cycle
off on the maximum setting and it was definitely not 80 degrees!

There are a couple of set screws that you need a special driver bit to
do any adjustment - and fortunately, I have a driver bit that fit.

When I couldn't figure out how to get the screws set, I decided to check
how far the ones in the control in my room look. I also noticed that
there are little black glops on the screws. These glops are not on the
screws on the thermostat downstairs. I guess that's pretty much the
evidence I needed to say someone messed with them.

My guess is that the person who previously owned this place and rented
it out must have included the electric in the rent - and when the cost
got too high (well, it is Ohio Edison around here, the rip off utility
over charging for electric they don't even generate themselves!) he came
in after the apartment was clear (through eviction or whenever he got a
chance to) and must have adjusted the thermostat so it would never get
warm enough. So I observed the look of the set screws in my thermostat,
and duplicated that as best as I could, with adjustments in case the
heaters switched off for some reason.

For the first time, we measured 72 degrees downstairs and it's
comfortable. Now to finish getting the drywall in the ceiling at the top
of the stairs!!

Those Atari 2600 games are still fun

I did something last night I hadn't done in years. I was up until 2 am
checking out and playing some of the games in my Atari 2600 collection.
Some games still suck, some were still fun, and a few I still kick butt
on. Dark Cavern from M Network is one I completely understand. I
remember one time years ago playing it and around 400,000, the game's
difficulty "rolled over" and it got really easy again! I kept on playing
that game, and ran it up to 767,000. I have a photo somewhere of that
feat. Last night without having played it at all still managed to run up
137,000 (the scoring is by multiples of 1,000) without much effort.

Qbert was the only other game I felt I mastered - and my training was on
my Atari 8-bit with the Parker Bros cartridge - on a Black and White TV!
No kidding! I felt when I was practically able to do whatever I wanted
on my computer and B&W TV, it was time to beat the arcade reality into
submission. I skipped college classes that day and spent 5 hours on the
game on one quarter. Heh. I shouldn't have done that.

Some Atari 2600 games still frustrate me. Kangaroo, the conversion from
the coin op, I deemed as "not fun" because of the jumping to the left on
the 2nd board which usually results in the kangaroo falling to her
death. I can do it to the right, but the left? I thought I was doing the
same thing... Can't figure it out.

Miner 2049er - I have BOTH V.1 and 2 of that - the Atari 8-bit computer
version is very playable. There's hidden cheats, too. But the 2600
version has IMPOSSIBLE screens to clear. Someone show me a video of it
being possible to clear it!! At any rate, I hear Miner 2049er on the
2600 is pretty sought after on eBay. I think one collector will flip out
knowing I have the box to V.2 and the box to the Atari computer version!
Gee, did that come on a disk or cartridge?

I found I have Panda's 1983 cartridge of Sea Hawk. I have the Texas
Chainsaw Massacre game, and likely with the booklet, too. I don't
remember getting it in the box.

Many of the games are still just great. A couple recent finds at local
flea markets turned up Star Ship from Atari, and Sega's Spy Hunter. Wow
Spy Hunter is rare!

Tax Avoiders looks a lot like Porky's from Fox. I need to see if I have
London Blitz instructions. ZiMag's I want My Mommy is one of few
cartridges with digitized sound in them. I have 2 Prototypes - Quadrun
and Sinistar.

Ms Pac Man on the 2600 is good, but the mazes are different from the
arcade original - sometimes they look upside down. Pac Man Jr is a
masterpiece.

My nieces are starting to get interested in playing video games. My
oldest niece likes Spyro the Dragon, and she didn't know we had all 3
for the Playstation 1. She prefers playing at our house because we have
a cheat cartridge. ^_^ The older 2 have joined me in playing the Sailor
Moon games on my Super NES aka Super Famicom. I showed them some of the
stuff on my Atari Jaguar, and they've played a little on our Atari Lynx.
I really want to show them the grand-daddy of them all.

I even have an Odyssey2 with modified controller plugs. The original
controllers for the O2 were pretty much useless and stuck to themselves
- the contact switches were of a sticky layer construction. I cut them
off and converted the ends to standard DB9 plugs that use the CX40
Joystick. Heh. All Odyssey2 units should have that, and a mod in the RF
modulator for use with automatic switchboxes.

I forgot a couple of things: I had modified my 2600 Jr to use the new
switchboxes, and where my power supply was. Also, I was lucky enough for
someone to give me one of those Nintendo NES switchboxes at one point
and I was smart enough to not throw it away! I had been looking for the
one that I got with the 64-bit Jaguar...

The mod for using these new switchboxes is in an issue of The 2600
Connection, and it's rather simple. Place a small ceramic disk capacitor
between the RF modulator and the center output pin of the RF jack, and
add a resistor and wire to the power switch to connect at that same
center pin. It's called a DC Blocking Circuit, and the details were in
an old electronics magazine I was given. This way you can protect the RF
modulator and send 9 V DC down the RF cable!

The RF modulator in the Odyssey2 even had spaces in the circuit board
ready to accept the components - I wonder if Magnavox had considered
this feature but dropped it and their engineers left the intended design
in the hardware anyway? Atari Engineers were like that. Design a feature
and leave it in to be discovered outside the walls of Atari. Heh. I can
see spots on the 4 switch 2600 around the internal filtering capacitor
where you can add a power on LED and 750 ohms of resistors. ^_-

What's nice is that some games I thought wouldn't work on the 2600 JR
do, and I know which games absolutely require the original 6 switch 2600
for some reason. But every game I tried worked fine. Centipede is fun,
Millipede is better and way more fun. Really well done cartridge. Best
with a Trakball.

I need to get a photo of the oddball 2600 variant a friend found he had,
a 2800 or something like it sold by Sears. 4 joystick ports!

A method for my Apex AD1200 to play other region DVDs

Woo!! This is awesome! I don't know how people figure this out, but I
can play DVDs from other regions in my Apex AD 1200. I had to refine the
procedure with an extra step, but I got a friend's Region 2 Dutch
release DVD of A Muppet Family Christmas in all its converted PAL 50 FPS
glory play 3 times on my player and display in NTSC on my TV. (note:
getting this on a DVD from overseas is the only way to see it uncut!)

The steps:

1. Turn on player and load disk. While it's loading the first time,
repeatedly press TITLE on the remote (which makes this a REMOTE HACK
^_^) until the title menu for the disk appears.

2. Eject the disk (most of the remote functions won't work and WRONG
REGION will display, but Eject will be one thing that DOES work) and
reload. This time, press one of the number buttons _other than 0_ on the
remote repeatedly. From my experience, it doesn't hurt to press 2. Do
this and the DVD will play from the top which might be a preview trailer
or whatever. But still, the remote will not function except for a few
buttons, so Eject the disk again!

3. On this 3rd time LOADING the _same_ disk, repeatedly press STEP on
the remote until you see "DVD-VIDEO" displayed. Stop pressing anything
on the remote and wait for the STEP icon to appear in the upper right
corner.

4. When you have the STEP icon, press STOP on the remote repeatedly
until it shows the STOP icon. When you have that, press PLAY and the
disk will play and you have all the functions of your remote, including
turning off subtitles. ^_^

Doesn't require a firmware update or anything! Interesting things for
the Muppet Family Christmas DVD - the songs are not subtitled in Dutch.
The subtitles kept getting turned on from the main title menu, but if
you went into the chapter menu and played the disk and turned off subs,
they do not get turned back on when returning to that menu. There were 4
trailers on the Trailers menu. One was for a Dutch movie called
Chameleon 2, one was in English with subtitles for Kelsey Grammer in a
movie musical version of A Christmas Carol, one was for some live action
and CG movie called Fungus de Bullebak with Martin Clunes (I presume it
was dubbed in Dutch), and the 4th trailer was for the Muppet Family
Christmas itself.

What I find most interesting is the video is the 50 frames per seond PAL
standard, so while this was shot on video, it doesn't have the "crisp"
look of NTSC 60 fps video we get. AND - I don't know if it's because of
the way I have to bring up the DVD, but I have yet to see a do not copy
warning screen like all our Region 1 disks get. Do DVDs released in the
Nederlands get warning screens?

What's also interesting is that while this is a 1987 release by Henson
Studios, someone put their website URL on at the end!

One thing I had heard early on about DVDs is that the actual digital
video data the disks contain would play on any DVD in the world
regardless of the player's video format output. Playing a PAL DVD on my
NTSC Apex player proved this to be true. It's this seemingly restrictive
region coding that tells the player how to handle the data. I'm itching
to try a SECAM DVD. But oh man, I would LOVE to try a Region 2 DVD of
Disney's "Song of the South!"

Latest stuff

My filing for disability is now off and running. The guy from the SS
office called when the letter said they would. He had heard about
Asperger's as well, even knew someone with a little girl diagnosed with
autism. He noted I had no edits in any of the application I did online,
so that was good, I guess.

Even though I read something in Sunday's paper that noted Asperger's is
a disability recognized by Social Security, I still feel I'll get a
fight.

I really want to replace my Cyberhome recorder. Out of the last bunch of
disks, it seemed to randomly choose which to finalize correctly. I did
find out all is not lost when a disk didn't finalized right - IsoBuster
is software that can recover disks like that! I had one burned "bootleg"
DVD I bought in Canada that doesn't work and I hope I can get it
recovered. It's possible to find the files and copy them to your
computer HD (providing you have the room) and then with other DVD
mastering software, re-create the proper additional files if necessary
and burn a new disk that will work.

The Cyberhome doesn't seem to have problems with +RW disks. It usually
doesn't have problems with HP +R disks. I dunno. I should clean it out
or something.

Filed for disability

Finally finished the disability report with Social inSecurity, and then
filed the application for benefits. Might have trouble with that,
though. I dunno.

I don't know what's going on with the unemployment people or the union.
I'm supposed to hear back from them at some point - I was expecting
something from the union sooner than later. Oh well. No news is good?

Random thought: Filtered water tastes good.

Anime with bunny girls is definitely good, so some of my favorite anime
has bunny girls. ^_^ Or we can say that when I find out an anime series
has bunny girls in it, I tend to like it, or at least the episode(s)
with them in it. ^_^ Close behind that is china dresses and certain
styles of swimsuits. So, whenever there's an episode where they go to
the beach, I call that the Swimsuit Episode. Nya hahahaha!!

I need to find the power supply and signal cables and such for my Atari
2600 jr so I can test the 2 cartridges I bought at flea markets lately.
I don't know if I had Star Ship already, but I know that I have it now.
And the rare Spy Hunter by Sega cart. I think that also uses 2 joysticks
- I didn't get an instruction booklet with it, so I'm not sure.

Some of these ghost hunter clubs with websites have this annoying
javascript trapping of the right mouse button, mainly on pages where
they present WAV files of EVPs they've discovered. I don't freaking care
if you claim a copyright on it, let me play the clips the way I want
to!! Good thing I have a download manager so I can grab those clips and
play them as I like _anyway_. :P nuts to you people for that annoying
script. I prefer to load the main page and then open new tabs for
various links from that.

I miss working with my friends. I don't miss some of the assholes I had
to deal with, like pRick. Heh.

My lot of Cardcaptor Sakura cards that I eventually listed on eBay for
$1 and then relisted once for $1 drew some attention, but people
"forgot" to bid on it. Oh well... I'm not listing it again.

Latest changes

Doh! Anywho, with the latest accessing via the puter to add the pic, go back to my "6:25 pm" post and now you can see the video linked there from Youtube. I've also edited the last couple of months of postings, fixing line wraps and all. I don't think I'll go back to fix it all - too much tedious work that really I might do in bits but not all at once. I have a clip for for the first Sailor Moon Super Famicom game with the secret tessen of Invincibility that I have finally uploaded!!

What is it about the image in the coupon ad for Isaly's ham???

Comment to try to send to Isaly's:

Hey - I don't know what it is with the photo or image you use when you put a coupon in our local paper for Isaly's chipped ham, but it bothers me. It's like the kid holding the sandwich (which we can figure is made with Isaly's ham) has his arms and elbows stretched WAAAAY out wide abnormally, you know? And then there's the girl on the right, and it seems like the African-American boy on the left you can barely see - like he was added as an afterthought or something. Please - you have to change this image. I mean, yeah, it sorta screams that kids like Isaly's ham. Who doesn't? OK, some people may never end up eating it, but still, that image is like - there's gotta be a better way to get the idea across. I think if even I were to hold a sandwich like that, it'd be a pretty stupid image to show people.

First post with an image and I had to reset my password to finally get back into my blog via the 'puter... Because I do most of my postings of rants via email. Thanks for the comments - keep them coming.

How to remove Shockwave Updater Icon

It seems Adobe with its Macromedia thingy has been at it - adding things to their stuff that people don't need.

Take for example, Shockwave Player. The latest, version 10, comes with an updater that for some reason puts an icon on your taskbar. It's different from the usual stuff you know should be there. You can't right or left click on it. It sits there mocking you.

Oh yeah? Do the 3 finger salute - control, Alt, Delete - in XP and bring up the little task manager. Find "PostUpdater.exe" and End Process. There'll be a little scary warning box, but still say Yes. Now, on our system, the Shockwave Updater icon doesn't disappear immediately, so I do the salute again and then just exit out of that. Usually it goes away right then.

So what is it? If it's where it's supposed to be - windows/ system 32/ Macromed/ Shockwave 10/ directory, then it's safe, essentially. Some people have reported false anti-virus positives with other copies not where it's supposed to be. I imagine it's some automagical updater in case Shockwave suddenly needs to be updated.

Sorry, Adobe. Let me decide when to update Shockwave, thank you very much. Our system had Shockwave version 8 on there as well!!!

So anywho, as long as the process has terminated, go find the directory where PostUpdater.exe is and rename it. I used the "nxe" extension. Close all windows and restart the system. Now this time it shouldn't come back.

One word of note - when I shut down the system the first time after this restart after renaming the file and getting rid of the Shockwave Update icon, there was some warning box that flashed up for a microsecond before the system shut down. It might have not been anything, but I wanted to know what that was. I turned on our 'puter again, looked at it load the way we're used to and then re-shut down. The warning box did not pop up again. Hmmm.. Oh well, maybe it'll show up next time. (shrug) I hope it doesn't.

The file I renamed appeared as a 52K file, btw.

Might freaking finally have another job!!

It was just before 11 AM when I was entertaining my 2nd niece with some Sailor Moon video games on my Super Nintendo when I finally got a call on one of my applications! I went in for what turned into a preliminary interview as the guy who I would be working with (sorta like the head guy) was busy with unloading a delivery that just came in. I guess this part would take an hour or 2, so I guess I'll be waiting for another call early next week.

They need people!! and they can use my previous experience! I did mention my Asperger's, and said that mostly it shouldn't be a problem - they probably won't even notice I have it. But once they show me what they do and all, I can pick it up pretty quickly.

More later! FINALLY!! a freakin' call on one of my apps!!!!!!

The meeting on the appeal for the union

After submitting yet another round of applications, I decided to go to the union appeal meeting after all.

I had a chance to say what I could about Asperger's, how my doctor said it played a role in what I did. I was asked why it wasn't brought up before or while I was working there, and I told them it's because for the most part it was just a preliminary opinion and it wasn't a problem in my working there. When the labor relations guy said that if I didn't understand what I did wrong, then there's something wrong with me - I took it upon myself to finally find out what it was. I also felt the statement was very hurtful. He didn't care - it was his job to think for Rick when it came to firing people because Rick can't think on his own.

Asperger's was the reason I was treated differently. The one guy said Rick "had issues" with me - but he never came to me to tell me what they were!! I don't know what I did that made him hate me. All he needed was an excuse to fire me and they chomped on one.

The one union guy Joe said he hadn't heard about Asperger's before I mentioned it to him in that appeal letter they read, so he pulled up some info off the net - it looked like it was from Wikipedia. He contacted the corporate guy about it and my situation. The Corporate Guy - who is NOT A LICENSED PSYCHIATRIST MIND YOU - said he _doubted_ Asperger's played a role in what I did and that _it was too late now_ to bring it up. Yeah, right.

My licensed psychiatrist - I did name them - said it did. People with Asperger's can develop obsessions about things. It can be anything. In this case, it was an obsession with discounted cereal. It would not have mattered if I told someone else or not.

I found out that the thing Rick had an issue with the most was over the gift card.

I have a disability that will affect my capability to hold a steady job and I am trying to file for SSI or SSDI. The "voluntary" statement the loss prevention guy got out of me was entirely coerced and I felt that if I did what they asked, that the issue would be resolved and I'd get to work again. Joe seemed to feel the same way, but Rick being the asshole he is, wouldn't let me come back. Ron H misrepresented his "interests" and intents. I even asked him point blank if I was in trouble and he made it seem like he needed my help. Yeah right, I "helped" him get me fired for unjust reasons.

I made a point of showing them that while the Employee Handbook _mentions_ the Accu-scan policy, the actual policy is not spelled out nor any clear info on what constitutes as "abuse." If I had known that, we wouldn't be in this situation. At any rate, there was an entirely different book used at that July 25th meeting. Ron H tried to get me on the bit of "Employees are subject to the same purchase limits as customers," but they all knew that wouldn't stick. It took them over 2 weeks to figure out what else to call it.

Joe read off a statement that was concocted by the labor relations guy. The only purpose that served was to show what position the store had. There were 3 other people in the rank-and-file members on the board tonight. One was from Boardman, and another from Youngstown. I don't remember where the other woman was from. I don't think they believe I have Asperger's, but then they're not trained to know how to spot it. My doctor said Aspeger's people can hide the symptoms well away from home - but to the people who live with them, they see it as clear as any trained and licensed psychiatrist.

And my problem is, very few people take the time to get to know me past the things I do because of Asperger's. Those who do know me are good friends.

I should not have gotten in trouble for a mistake the store made.

Figured out the blank image search results!

It took me to getting blank pages when trying to load the ad_banner images off karindvd.com to finally realize that Norton Internet Security was being anal in blocking ads - and being a bit too agressive. It blocked images of print ads on one site from its gallery, and was blocking image search results from Google. I had to look up on the net about this, and figured out how to stop Norton Internet Security from blocking stuff I don't want blocked! The software really should prompt people by saying there is content that could be an ad and do you want to block it. Provide a box where you can say Not This Time, or Yes, or Apply my decision to images from this site, or whatnot. Instead I would get blank image search results because some of the HTML content had strings it was detecting and presto - it blocked it.

I prefer it be like Firefox, and let you choose which sites and ads you don't want to see, as well as the capability to BLOCK ADS IN FLASH. ARGH!! Also the ability to grab Flash content from a right click menu!! Why hasn't someone done this?

Also found some images I had saved on other WebTV accounts and finally got them off in some way. One unfortunately was truncated prematurely. Dangit. One was giving me fits. I don't know if it was the email or Yahoo! being anal. This 549K JPG would download in Firefox, but you go to it in My Computer and see nothing. The file would be 0 bytes. I must have tried everything and downloaded the damn thing 10 times. So I took to forwarding the message I sent from WebTV to Yahoo back to myself on Yahoo. Then I forwarded that as an attachment to WebTV where I had the laptop grab it...

This is another annoyance of the desktop. I got Outlook under XP to access my POP mailbox on WebTV only once!!! Yahoo! doesn't seem to have a problem. I can read newsgroups, but I think either AVG, Norton, or Norton Internet Security is blocking access to the WebTV pop server. AVG certainly jumps in and pulls up this window, and everything screeches to a halt. Accessing the pop mailbox for incoming messages times out. One time I got it to work I figured out that IE had to be running. I haven't gotten it to work since.

What the hell am I doing wrong? It's all configured!! Does Mozilla's Thunderbird work any better?

The Laptop - no problem. Dial up and connect, launch Outlook and it does its job. No fussing.

At any rate, I finally got a copy of this 549K image that actually saved. I managed to squish it down to about 239K. It's on a floppy. Yay me.

What was that from?

I don't know why, but my father left some sort of phone message on our answering machine for me - he seems to think there's some reason why I'm not driving the truck anymore. Well, yeah, in spite of the fact it didn't hold oil pressure the last time I drove it, I guess because I FREAKING SOLD THE THING would be a better reason why I don't drive it anymore.

I don't want another truck. Where'd he get the idea I did?

I wouldn't mind getting back the $252 that I spent of my savings fixing the alternator in the Kia. I wouldn't mind someone else paying to find the short in the electrical system that still remains and for a new Interstate Battery.

Driving the Kia has been cheaper - the registration renewal is cheaper, insurance is cheaper, the tires are cheaper... And a little better on gas. That truck guzzled it.

Heck, while you're at it, I'd like $3,000 to pay off my credit cards and a trip to Japan.

Like I'll ever see that unless I play the lottery.

I do wish someone would offer me a job.

Recent annoying commercials

Just now on the TV, they ran this ad for crApple's Ipod, or at least one of their newly released over priced pieces of crap. There's this song sung by some female singer. I HATE THAT SONG. I don't know what the song is, I don't know the annoying singer - she can't sing at ALL - and I don't know what the bleeping song is about!! I can't understand any of the words. Mind you, I can understand some spoken Japanese, but this is in English and I can't make out any words!! Please somebody erase that commercial!

Taco Smell is now offering these things with Melted Cheese. I know what the commercial says, but it's so damn stupid. MELTED!! THE DAMN CHEESE IS MELTED!!

And McD's has a Dollar Menu, and the people who order from it are dubbed "Dollar Menunaires". OK, stop. People at the ad agency who did that - don't you see the stupidity of that term? You CAN say MILLIONAIRE because MILLION in English ends with the letter "N"!!! MENU does not end in a consonant, so the term would be "MENUAIRE." Hyphenate the word, if you must, but REMOVE THE "N".. ARGHH!!!

Don't even get me started on people who put in an apostrophe before the S when they write plural words...

Does anyone play a bean bag tossing game called "Cornhole"? Where the hell did they come up with that name? Where's Beavis when you need him in "Cornholio" mode?!? "I am Cornholio!! I need TP for my bunghole. Are you threatening me?!" OMG... The only reason this "game" exists is that grown adults need something to throw while holding cans of beer in their hand in this present era when Lawn Darts have been made illegal because of them being dangerous.

I suggest another name for this game. Corn bagging. It totally removes the stigma of the original term. If people really need to get out and throw things, I see they've already passed on other things that actually make sense. I still think they made up this game completely out of the blue. There's bocci balls and stuff like that. Play that. (rolls eyes)

Minor things in the past week

Only 1 of my items on eBay sold, but I have more of that to come. I'll relist most of the other items based on how many hits they got.

A very nice friend called me up Thursday about a place that's looking for a full time cook. So I applied yesterday - they seemed to think that my having 10.5 years experience in food service was something. I hope they call and the place is doing OK.

I had to take some money out of my savings to cover my minimum obligations for the month. That really hurt. It stings. The first time in 3 months I had to do it that way.

Progress on filing for SSI and / or SSDI is still grinding along slowly.

My meeting with the union was also rescheduled for later. I've also had to appeal the state again over my unemployment claim. They just don't want to see it my way!!!

They're taking my appeal letter seriously

Today I get a certified letter I have to sign for. It's from the union. They sent 2 copies. Sheesh, one was enough.

At first I decided not to open the letter because I figured it would just be one of those things where they wouldn't even consider my appeal. It turns out they will be considering my appeal about my grievance. I hear there's been people taken downstairs at work by Ron H to talk about something. I haven't heard back what that's about yet, but I hope to find out soon enough.

Problem is, I don't know if I'm going to be able to make it. There's a job seeker thingy in Youngstown the same day. I don't know if I can even afford the money for gas to go to this union meeting. I don't know how to do both if I even try to do both.

I doubt I could ask people as witnesses for my situation due to how pRick tends to retaliate against people. I would really like to be at this meeting and add that I have been diagnosed with indeed having Asperger's. Witnesses could add facts that depending on which employees spot pricing errors, their fate is much different than mine. I was told about certain Reese candy bars ringing up 5 cents each, but nobody got in trouble over that.

I also finally and officially retired my Catch and Release system as far as rain and the roof goes. Since the roof doesn't leak anymore, I pulled down the buckets and my big clear storage tub I bought over a year ago at General Dollar in Salem for $10. I washed it out with borax and water and let it air dry. Observing how it was marked up, it never overflowed during its time as a rain catcher system. It was the last mess to be cleaned up from the whole roofing debacle a few months ago. It's now holding more of my anime goodies. I need a few more of these storage
tubs.

Our efforts to get legal help in filing for disability hasn't gone anywhere in the past week or so. One legal group said they'd send mom an attachment to print and send to the doctor, but it never arrived and they've not called to see if we got it. So I guess we're going to blow them off and try for something local. Someone at Tri County Autism didn't seem to know how to use their email system to forward messages, so I'll have to try again with them.

One of my credit cards raised my minimum payment by $1. I haven't used the damn card for that statement and my minimum goes UP?? (bleep)ing hell.

I considered not putting this up...

Because my father sometimes gets on here and reads this, I considered not putting this up. He gets things wrong and considering what it's about, he would conclude that I'm stupid or something. Yeah, he's that kind of arsehole to do something like that. No tact or compassion. Stuff like that is why I have nothing to do with him anymore. The less abuse, the better. Nothing will EVER change that.

tonikaku... An email I sent to the union rep.

-paste-

Well, this may probably be the last email you will receive from me about my situation. At least now we understand more about what happened.

I went to my mother's psychiatrist yesterday for an evaluation to see if I have Asperger's Syndrome. After carefully looking over everything and a discussion with my mother, the doctor said that I do in fact have a form of Asperger's and it definitely played a role in my decisions to do what I did back on June 28th, 2007. She also doesn't understand why I would get fired for a mistake the store made.

She explained that I was basically "adding to a collection" as my mom pointed out that I've got several collections (so in this case, I was collecting cereal. I'll add that whenever other items have been marked down, I'll buy several of something if it's something we actually would use - I bought several packages of pancake mix when it was marked down and I also had coupons). The doctor explained that it was probably something I couldn't avoid doing - I saw what was apparently a good deal, and it didn't matter whether or not if I told someone else. In my mind, it was not against the rules.

There is no treatment for or medication to take for Asperger's. I can file for disability because it is a big reason why I've not been able to hold a job unless it's in conditions that are suited for someone with Asperger's. I worked in the restaurant for over 10 years because I was mainly alone in the kitchen, had little interaction with customers, and it was a structured schedule that was basically the same every day. I had NONE of these at Big Bird. Had I been transferred to Hot Foods like I begged, I'd still be employed there now. If management at the restaurant hadn't become abusive, I'd still be there. Asperger's is also the reason why I've not been able to find another job. The doctor also explained it would affect job interviews as well. I may think an interview went well, but in fact it didn't.

I think I'll try to see if an attorney can help me with a Wrongful Termination suit. I may have a case, I don't know. The store made a mistake. I think there's some sort of state law that says when something rings up less than advertised, a store has to sell it for that price. And like Kathy said, I was a customer when I made my purchase. I also feel parts of what consists of the Accuscan policy in the manager's handbook (which is NOT in the employee's handbook) were taken out of context and not interpreted in whole as it should have been.

-end-

For a while there during the initial consultation, it looked as if the one student doctor (a lady from Jamaica) didn't think I had Asperger's. Dr. X said it's best to talk to the mother because she knows best. Most people with Asperger's don't think there's anything wrong with them.

When asked what would be some keywords I would use to describe myself, I had trouble thinking of stuff. Anime fan (otaku) was easy enough. I'd have to think about that. Then she asked what would be some positive things friends would say about me. I came up with Generous (I paid for meals at a couple of restaurants a couple times I went out with friends before and after Colossalcon). Mom said they would say Loyal. Then when she asked me about anything Negative, I said you'd have to ask my friends because they know me better than I do.

Dr. X said I was very bright and all. I think they were impressed I taught myself Japanese.

They went on many things my mom told them, as well as some things I mentioned - like my anime hobby, the fact that I have few friends but at least I stick with them. I don't do much social interaction. She asked what do I like to do when I'm alone and have free time, and I said anime. ^_^

I definitely have a huge anime collection. Maybe not the biggest, but probably up there.

But at least there's help. The application process for SSI or SSDI is long. You have to be careful how you answer the questions and make sure you answer them correctly every time. They do a phone interview. If I have to fight for what I'm due, I may have to get a lawyer. Oh great.

Were those people raised in a barn??

OK. So we thought we had heard the last of that bunch associated with Morgan. Just after 5 pm tonight, I'm on the computer doing stuff and suddenly I hear this loud Thump! and shaking of the house. Then I hear another one... So I go outside. It's her brother Drew Delane, and with a friend. He's after his futon sofa. Apparently it's his. Apparently, she's also taken stuff from him. Apparently, she owes him over $400 on a bank card.

Lies she told him:

That he still had plenty of time to get his stuff because the eviction wasn't final yet. I have a writ that says it is.

She claimed the reason the electric wasn't turned out of her name was because she arranged "a deal" with the landlord over tires that supposedly were punctured. There was no such deal. It was in the lease that she is to change it into her name.

Then he went on something about the place not having a roof for 2 months. Uhmm It's none of his business nor does the roof affect the apartment she was in, but it was pretty much finished soon after she moved in. It wasn't 2 months. More like 1 month or 3 weeks. Whichever.

Then he went on about the upstairs apartment not being suitable to rent because of black mold. Well, I've been in there and I don't see black mold, but again it's none of his business and it doesn't affect the downstairs apartment!! He's never been in there!

What right did he have to attempt to kick in the front door to that apartment just because something of his was in there? NONE! Her brother came close to being charged with breaking and entering property he does not own. I got out my Writ to show them the eviction was final. I didn't have to give them access to the apartment, but the landlord didn't want the sofa futon. I did ask again about the missing fridge, and again he claimed he knew nothing of it. I mentioned again that she owes over $1,600. We're beginning to think that she tried to show up at the hearing so she could dispute how much she owes. That first hearing was just to get her the hell out.

Even the judge said I could consider that futon as abandoned. But I was nice enough to unlock the door and let him claim his property. The fridge is still stolen. Why she would have that removed is beyond me. I hope this is the absolute last we hear from those people. I predict
we'll be getting more trouble from them.

Though, tonight I was out on the back porch looking for the kitty that's been basically living here since M. moved in. I saw someone out on the road almost drive past, then stop and back up. The car looked familiar so I got up and ran inside. I guess they pretty much left or turned around? Hope so.

Aaaanndd!! She's OUTTA THERE!!!

I almost didn't make it to the court appointment. I did go out 15 minutes ahead of time to find out my battery was almost dead again!! Thankfully, I was able to get someone passing by to jump the battery for a few minutes and it was strong enough to start. I saw the Air conditioner button was active... Oy vay... I hope it wasn't the reason why the battery was drained again. Last time I remember driving it was either Monday or Tuesday of this week. I gotta drive it every other day or disconnect the battery, I guess.

At any rate, I showed up early. I had my papers in hand. It wasn't until after 20 minutes after the hour that they finally called us in. I was reminded to take off my hat (oops, sorry). But in general, it went as I was told. The case was uncontested - so the judge did accept my power of attorney. Since the defendant did not appear, it was defaulted to me. Otherwise, had she appeared, he explained it might not have been useful in the case of advocacy or whatnot. He looked at the complaint, and issued the Writ of Restitution, which basically said our former tenant no longer had any right to the apartment effective immediately. I asked about the property she had left in there, and the judge said I have every right to determine what to do with it. Consider it abandoned, have the sheriff remove it, etc. Well, since she stole the refrigerator, might as well keep the thing she left. I'd like to sell it to get another used fridge in there.

The place is generally clean except for slight damage in a couple of spots, but the major holes she had her brother fix and generally he did a good job. I'd still like to remove the paint over the graffiti she wrote in the bedroom.

The locks have been changed, the windows have been locked and secured. The front door latch is damaged but in general it can be secured. The electric is off!! So the next potential tenant will have to apply and get the service turned into their name.

We won the First Cause, to basically tell her she's out of there immediately. Not 30 days, not weeks. NOW.

I'll let the landlord decide if we need to push for a 2nd cause for money and damages. We may need a lawyer for that as my power of attorney may not be enough. It was enough in a no-contest hearing, but it may not be enough if she shows up at the 2nd Cause, which she just might. We will need the judgement against her for what she owes and that she must pay it.

What's all funny is that in the short time it took the judge to hear the case, I was back out and saw that our former tenant had the nerve to show up and with her baby!! She was too late!! The lady at the clerk of courts explained to her that the judgement will stand effective immediately. I didn't have to pay to have the Writ served on her. ^_^ Then as I was leaving, I noticed a certain car in the court parking lot that I've seen before. The guy driving it had tatoos on his arm - markings I had seen before. As it turns out, and I'm just saying, he's been driving a green truck that been pulling over at the house across the road from us where work has been going on fixing the place up. Now that this whole episode is over, I can concentrate on other things...

The air conditioner she and her boyfriend removed along with the chair was put back in the apartment. ^_^ We're planning on putting a different table in there as well.

It is now public record that an Eviction notice or forcible entry and detention complaint was filed against Morgan Delane / Haught in Columbiana County Municipal Court in Ohio. A Writ of Restitution was also filed against her in the process of the First Cause. She owes over $1,600. Renters: Do not rent to this person!

6:25 pm

So they're back again. Hopefully to finally complete removing their stuff.

But they couldn't just show up and do what they need to do. Oh no. They began by beating all over the wall between the 2 Apartments. They've repeated their "performance" 11 minutes later, and then 2 minutes after that. About a quarter till 7, Mom said she can't take any more of that and so I call the county sheriff's dept. I explain to the lady that they've been harassing us this past week ever since the eviction notice was served on them. I told her the name and she said they spoke to her earlier today. Ah. I reiterated that I've been doing exactly what the deputy on Wednesday told me to do - stay out of the apartment and make sure she can get in. I haven't been in there since her brother let me in (with my sister on the phone at the same time).

Even just 4 minutes ago from typing this they beat on the wall. They did this while I was on the phone with the sheriff's dept. I have a 23 second video clip on a camera, put up right against the wall to illustrate how hard they were beating on it.

They also went and removed the air conditioner and put it on the wood chair we had left in the apartment. They were not authorized to do that. It was perfectly fine to leave that in.

Hopefully that was a sign they were actually vacating the premises.

7:21 pm - beating on the wall again.

See the video!

Maybe they're trying to get a rise out of me and I'm ignoring it all and that's annoying them, or at least they're trying to get my attention.

She Did It Again

Latest note:

"you were told to stay out until after we went to court the sheriff said (if) you were in here more time you were going to be charged with criminal trespassing Im calling him in the morning Im sick of this STAY OUT you want something wait till Im here I'll be out _before we go to court_"

I have not been in the place since her brother let us in Tuesday and especially after she called the sheriff to claim she was locked out on Wednesday.

She is sure making more problems for a place she's leaving.

She lied again to the deputy

Just got off the phone about the lady in Apt. B.

She's called the sheriff's dept claiming the locks had been changed and that she was locked out of the apartment. So while on the phone, I tested the front door to Apartment B. It was unlocked and opened right up. She has a key to that door.

She's trying to accuse me of trespassing. Last night while I was on the phone with the landlord, her brother invited me in the apartment. The primary function was to inspect and make sure the items she was not to remove were still there, of course minus the fridge.

As the deputy who spoke to me sees it, as long as she has personal property there, she has not abandoned the apartment. According to what we were told months ago, as long as the main occupant has not lived in the place for 30 days continuously, it can be considered abandoned.

The deputy said to make sure she has access to the apartment - easy enough. Not to go in there until after the Aug 24 court date when the judge says we have ownership again. The lady claims she'll be out by the end of the week. Fine. I'd like her out tonight.

The removal of the fridge to "fix" it is criminal though, but he says we'd have to sue her separately for that.

I basically told the deputy who spoke to me tonight that she's lied twice to them. She has never been locked out. The replacement of the front door strike plate was maintenance that she never told us about after one of her 'guests' kicked in the front door.

She's just dragging it out, and she can resolve it by just getting her stuff out as quickly as possible.

Latest note

Lady formerly of Apt. B has my reply to this note she posted last night:

I know you were in here trying to take pictures. I called sheriff that treaspassing & you are going to be prosecuted the frig was broke haven it fixed will be back tomorrow.

DO NOT COME IN here without my permission you are not my landlord if she wants to talk .....

My reply was basically:

I have already talked with the sheriff and my sister.

I have power of attorney for this building.

Since you have not been here officially for the past month and therefore not available, I do not need your permission. I was on the phone with the landlord last night when your brother invited me in. Landlord reserves the right to enter premises for inspection. See #13 of the lease agreement.

-end of that bit-

I'm amazed a little that she spelled 'prosecuted' correctly, such a big word for her small mind.

I saw her leaving a few minutes ago dressed in scrubs. She's got a job somewhere it seems.

My other sister said she was trying to intimidate me with her first statement. I didn't need to take pictures inside when I got such good shots from outside the windows!! Of course she wrote things on the one wall and I've been able to pull out a few things that were practically painted over. Her bitching about mouse droppings all over the stove (complete lie), the carpet being nasty (when I thought it was supposed to have been replaced?), no gutters on the house (which does not affect her in anyway) and something about the "landlord's [unintelligible] pisses his pants" which is just a juvenile shot at me. She was unauthorized to remove any property other than her own from the apartment. I'm surprised she didn't lock the door. ^_^ I reattached the
strike plate to the front door. I was planning to change the lock and then leave it unlocked to make them think they still had a working key. (evil grin)

The fact that con-artist called the sheriff's dept over the fridge basically means she's scared. She gets arrested for one more thing and she's in jail for a while, probably. I will see if we still have one photo of the fridge originally put in there so I can compare it to what they'll "return."

Maybe they got the notice ? ^_^

OK so anywho, tonight my mom has a sleep study and we leave here around 7:40 pm. I get back around 8:30 pm and notice the black grate thingy that goes at the bottom of a refrigerator is laying out front of Apt. B. Earlier there were a bunch of people, the lady we tried to rent to, her trespassing freeloader boyfriend, and a few of their friends.

I come back, they're gone. So is the frig. My sister bought that fridge. Boy will mom have a field day with that. There's graffiti in the bedroom. I got a snippet of that on the camera.

I called the sheriff to file a report and deputy called me back to take my report.

A few minutes ago, the guy with the green truck returns. Someone picks up the lady's car and he goes inside. Well, we can pretty much guess they've been fixing dry wall damage that has happened, and the guy doing the work isn't doing a bad job at that. I ask him where the fridge is, he says he doesn't know what's up with that. I guess another person with a truck showed up and they took it??

I told him the fridge wasn't to be removed. I went through the list of stuff that's also not to be removed. I had my sister on the phone the whole time. ^_^ He lets me in to see things, except for the bedroom. (you can guess why but I know already - and I really wanted a good shot of the stuff they wrote). There's a few more things of the lady's to remove and that's OK. I said as soon as her stuff is out, I need the keys back. The locks will be changed as soon as her stuff is out and I have the keys.

He'll finish up and paint things, which is OK. I mean, they're at least making some good, but at the same time they stole the fridge. The report is filed and charges will be brought up.

Whew!! I thought they'd never leave!!!

Annoying frustration of Google image search

I don't know what's going on with Google's image search, but every so often I'll come up with a search term that brings about annoying behavior that I cannot figure out!!

OK. On the desktop, it's WinXP with all the latest updates. We have AVG and Norton for antivirus protection, possibly Spybot S&D in the background, and Norton Internet Security.

Most recent search term I used was the entire line, including quotes:

"car show" "sailor moon"

The first page comes up blank!! It'll have the Google stuff at the top and then the line of page numbers at the bottom but no results in between! This bodes badly. If I bring up page 2 of the results, I get stuff. Usually when one page of results comes up blank, others later on can sometimes behave the same way. "gamehotties" or the site URL in full also brings up similar behavior of Google image search - some pages are blank.

WebTV NEVER has this problem!!! By comparison!

This behavior on the desktop occurs in BOTH Internet Exploder 6 and Firefox 1.whatever it is. (I have the install for FF 2 but haven't run it yet.)

I don't think I've ever had a problem with Google Image search when I used Internet Exploder 4 on the Win95 laptop.

ARGH! I hate knowing something could be filtering and or blocking my content for absolutely no reason at all other than it's trying to piss me off. A good thing I still use WebTV.

Sometimes when you fiddle with something you figure it out

When I found out about yet one more piece of Wedding Peach animation that I still had not seen, I tried a bit of a websearch to find it. One website had a link - the key verb is HAD - but the file was removed and so was the link!

Then I found someone on Youtube uploaded a rather poor quality copy of it. The clip is the 3 girls Yuri, Hinagiku, and Momoko, on stage singing Virgin Love. This appeared on a Furil concert Laserdisc, but for some reason ADV never got the rights to it.

The problems with the clip from Youtube, aside from the asinine and annoying blockiness - Youtube allows for clips to be 150MB or 10 minutes, so when you're under the time limit, at least go for quality - is that when you have decoders that can play Flash Video media, they don't always transcode into other container formats well enough that the audio and video match up.

One converter I have can do the video from 23 to 29.97 frames per second. The video plays too fast at 23, and too slow at 29.97. There was a middle setting of 25 that I had to use when extracting the video by itself. Then I had to go back in and pull out the audio by itself.

If I couldn't adjust the playback speed of the video, but I do have Audacity and it can adjust the playing speed of the audio! In order to remotely have the video and audio synchronized for much at all, they'd have to play at almost the same length of time. The audio, I found out, was about 1.7 seconds too short! Audacity allowed me to adjust the speed by a small amount - -.8 percent. That's a Negative eight tenths of a percent speed reduction. This meant the audio would now run longer than the video, but under tests I performed using Windows Movie Maker, it pretty much synchronized well, much better than the program that had converted it.

I had used VLC to play the original file and it did a nice job - the video and audio remained aligned, but VLC as a stream converter, it's lacking in functionality. It can play the file it creates, but almost nothing else will. My Apex DVD player could play it...

But at any rate, I was able to convert the file, mix it back together, and even grabbed my translation of Virgin Love, and subbed about 95% of the clip. ^_^

If I can get a nice clearer copy and the dialogue translated a bit better than I did it, I'll resub it again.

Now that I figured out that Windows Movie Maker can do subtitles but not exactly where I'd like them, I might re-do the Hana Yori Dango movie... ^_-

I figured out how to grab streaming media...

With the use of SDP Multimedia's streaming media downloading software, which is free, and Mozilla Firefox, also free, I finally was able to grab digital audio samples of stuff from Japanese web pages for anime CDs that have samples to listen to.

I focused mainly on Tokyo Mew Mew CDs because I seriously want the actual CD. Two tracks for Mew Pudding have a Chinese flavor, and it's those I really wanted. The audio samples are about 45 seconds in length, unless of course the actual track is just under that length... ^_^ The Windows Media Player clips are much clearer and better quality than the comparable and muddy audio of RealPlayer. I guess it's not Memorex either.

Basically... Load up SDP's software and launch Firefox (provided you are already online). Launch a 2nd window of Firefox because you will need it.

Go to CD Japan's website (just as an example - this could work for others that offer streaming clips of anything). Find the listing in English of the CD you are interested in. If it shows that samples are available, launch that page link in another tab. Close the originating tab.

Find the WMP streaming link for the clip you want to hear and left click on it. A smaller window will now open and load from some website. Pay attention to the URL that Firefox says it's loading that window from. You will need that as your Main website URL in the 2nd window. Write it down, and then type it in the 2nd window, but don't click Go yet.

Go back to the player window that opened. When the player window is loaded and likely the clip playing already, hit Stop on the play bar. Move your mouse pointer to the bottom, just above the bottom border for the window. If you right click here, you will eventually get to the pop up menu for Showing that page or frame's source. Open it. You want to see the source HTML for the player window. For the player I had to deal with here, the 2nd line actually linked to the media bar and played the clip. Highlight this line. The first one loaded the album image, the 2nd is the line you want. It's easy enough to figure out. Do Not include the quotes!

Copy the line that basically has the URL info you need, and go into your 2nd browser window. Paste the text there after the main site URL that you should have observed Firefox loading from, and Go.

You should get a slightly funky page, but the streaming media bar will be there, and loading the media. Stop the playback, and right click to look at the source for the page. This is where you should find the MMS link to the WMA media you are trying to save! When you find it, highlight and Copy. Bring up SDP's thingy, and Open, Right click to Paste and OK. Then Go and it will bring up a Save box, then grab your media. Presto. Always look for MMS links for media, and SDP can grab it.

Some of the Tokyo Mew Mew clips I saved were less than 45 seconds long, and the rest were about 45 seconds. Sometimes that's enough, but I still want those CDs!!

Da latest

Well, I have my withdrawal card from the union. I've begun filing for unemployment compensation but I don't know right now if it'll be approved right away or I have to appeal. I think that'll need cleared up.

I wrote a 2 page letter to the union appealing the decision to not pursue my situation, so perhaps it will be further looked into, since I can bring up any other issues that relate to my case.

I've filled out lots of job apps. Nobody's called me back on any of them. Maybe I should call them? Dammit.

When they ask for reason why I left LJS, I put down "desired a less stressful environment." The reason for leaving Big Bird, I put "desired a return to food service."

Rite Aid, in the same plaza as Big Bird, is looking for a full time cashier. That would be sweet. I'd be visible in the same building and pRick couldn't do anything about it. But they ask if I've ever been dismissed or forced to resign. I was dismissed before my probationary period was up at Fisher's Big Wheel because I couldn't work with one other guy and unload the trucks fast enough. I guess that counts, but if I don't list it as one of my thingies in employment history, I think they'll ask why it's not there, and I guess my answer would be it was over 10 years ago.

Hmm...

I applied at the nursing home where my sister works, but unless her boss lady gets enough balls to get rid of one lady who's been milking the clock, as my sister puts it, then I'm still waiting for too long for that call. My sister says I'd have to get a physical (I hate them), a TB test (I don't have it and one test in Jr. High I basically avoided because I hate tests where stuff is injected into you - just something creepy and wrong with that), and something else. And for some stupid reason, I'd have to wear scrubs. Uh... Altman Hospital has an online job app site, but they ask if I've ever been fired. Online info I found doesn't indicate that they can't ask that, and advice people have left says to answer truthfully. I'm not sure what reason to put.

Big Wheel - couldn't work fast enough
LJS - ???
Big Bird - buying the wrong item at the wrong time

Some people say to write "ask me to explain".

My friends who still unfortunately work there are not spending their money in the store anymore for fear what happened to me will happen to them. As long as it doesn't line pRick's pockets. Mom's psychiatrist (or whatever she is) says she's very familiar with Asperger's. Mom just happened to ask out of the blue. The doctor rattled off a list of stuff and Mom seemed to think it described me well, and that I was probably born with Asperger's, which means I got it from my dad, and he's a real jerk. So there's possible talk to set up an appointment for possible evaluation. And then there was talk of possible "prescribing" of medications. She can prescribe whatever she wants, I ain't taking it. I will refuse because I don't need medication for anything mental. I don't believe in in it because I'm not experiencing anything that needs medication. I'm not a crazy person like one lady friends have told me about. But if the evaluation goes the way we're expecting, at least there's SSI or whatever I'd get.

Gee, if only they hadn't changed the rules, otherwise I could look forward to a several thousand dollar award, like my dad got. For his "mental impairment" of whatever, he got a check for a cool $10K when he filed. Promised each of his kids $1K each, but me and my sisters had to call him on the phone at his new personal 800 number to beg for it. While his kids with his 2nd wife didn't. Messed up, ne? I never saw any of the promised money, either. I could use it now!!!

I felt good about Subway when I applied there. "We're Rolling" Pretzel company was hiring and I applied there. Panera Bread was hiring and I applied there, but they actually gave me an estimated amount of time before I could expect a call.

I guess things are more stringent now. Consumer reports? Background checks? !!! What does my credit score have to do with being able to work? That's stupid and unfair.

I am so bored.

Tamagotchi V.4.5 has the star thingy attachment and looks like the UraTama a friend got for me from Yodobashi Camera in Tokyo. ^_^

Oh yeah, blurb: Comic Con announcement of sorts: Tokyopop licensed Mamotte Shugogetten manga. At least this time we'll likely get to see the entire run. Raijin got only 4 books out, with nearly 5 or 6 books worth of content in their magazine. I emailed Tokyopop about not making the same mistakes.

I recommended they look into "Bow Wow Wata" and when I email them again about Shugogetten, I'll ask them to look into Hanaukyou Maids manga.

Compounding Crap

Well, it wasn't enough for me to get suspended from my job for doing
nothing wrong. Oh no. Our tenanant in Apt. B and her 'boyfriend' had to
add something more. At some point after Tuesday, like Tuesday night or
whatever, they threw a bunch of brand new finishing nails under my car.
While I think they were intending to try to make me drive over them and
flatten a tire, they were thrown in such a way as to short out something
in my electrical system, thereby shorting out my battery and destroying
my alternator.

I'm going to fill out an application where my younger sister works and
see how soon things happen after that. The union is fighting for me and
everyone feels I have a case to get my job back. There's things I did
wrong, but there's things I did right.

I have a feeling it'll be a tough fight and I might have to take it to
an arbitrator.

Just yet another personal vendetta thing the high boss has against me in
his quest to make me quit working there.

A little note taped to the back door window this morning

Our renter in Apt B is finally getting the idea that the electric should
have been in her name all along. We're still going to file an eviction
notice just to make sure she leaves.

"To whom it concerns"

Well, she knows my name, this wasn't necessary.

"Please tell your sister to send me the bill for June. I'll pay it - it
will be in my name Friday, and I was planing (sic) to give you some
money Friday, And we plan on leaving within 2 weeks. I apologize for
being an inconvenience. I'm sorry being rude to you & [your sister]."

I wonder what happened recently that she's all nice-nice now. Anywho,
I'll half-accept it for now. I'll completely accept it after she leaves.
Maybe.

"If she has any questions, she can reach me at [deleted]"

"Thank you (signed) Morgan"

At least we got her attention that we are definitely in control and
anything they try to do is going to be illegal.

I feel good about this.

So Apt B tenants continue to thwart us

But not for much longer. At least my older sister is getting the form
filled out and notarized. I will pay the fee. I want them out.

After looking over the lease she wrote up, my sister told me do
something about the power to the apartment. I leave, then come back a
while later. I find out the power to the apartment is back on. Jamie
Miller, the guy who's Morgan Delane-Haught's boyfriend and father of her
baby daughter, broke in the basement here. I've filed a complaint with
the Columbiana County sheriff. A deputy told me later that the electric
service can't be legally shut off. And actually, if they felt like it,
they could do a similar complaint against us for turning the power off.
(Sounds like it would cancel each other out.) And I'm like WHAT? It's
YOUR property but you can't do anything about it? The service was
supposed to be turned into Morgan's name and she never did that. Since
she moved in, she's been running up the bill by leaving lights on for
days at a time. She doesn't care, she's not paying the bill!!! Even
though my sister says she'll be sending her a bill for the electric, I
don't think it'll get paid. So we'll add that on to the amount we say
she owes.

I want to be there when the eviction notice is served. The deputy was
helpful in saying we might as well follow the eviction process and let
it go. And we should get an attorney who can advise us on stuff like
this before we do anything.

Still, he broke in. The complaint's filed.

I'm writing the lease contract this time. We'll check backgrounds on
applications thouroughly. Not getting screwed again.

Colossalcon goodies haul and other stuff

What I collected at Colossalcon:

Eiken DVD

Kashimashi V.1 - This series is being marketed to "Yuri fans" and is
Subtitle Only - No dub.

Otaku no Video, Princess Tutu V.6, and before the Canadian Premiere, I
had Suzumiya Haruhi V.1 at Best Buy and earned Get-Go fuel points at the
same time.

I didn't buy any CDs at the convention. I did find The Beatles' Revolver
CD though before the convention. Been wanting that for a while.

Sorta Huge Chii-chan figure.

Suzumiya Haruhi goodies - playing cards, 2 Suzumiya Haruhi "Flash Plate"
thingies - solar powered!; SOS Brigade leader armband and a Haruhi
plushie. ^_^ One girl had purchased a big Mikuru plushie but some jerk
stole her off the table she had it on in the artists area.

Air Gear Gachapon set only because of 1 bunnygirl figure. I will likely
sell the rest on eBay.

Sailor Moon World 2 cards, Cardcaptor Sakura cards from the first movie.
Rei-chan plushie that's also a towel holder (if you want to use it that
way). Sailor Jupiter stationery. I also found 3 posters. These are those
posters you can't buy at Anime North anymore because it's one of those
"indeterminable license" items.

Tsukuyomi girl in PE Bloomers figure ^_^ Kawaii!!

4 figures (entire set) of Princess Rein (rain) and Fine from the anime
The Twin Princesses of the Mysterious Planet. One trading figure from
the PSE 3.0 trading figure set by Range Murata. It wasn't the girl on
the front which is the reason why I took a chance to buy it.

Loads of keychain figures - Ojamajo Doremi Christmas set, Pretty Cure,
and Pretty Cure cellphone charms. Tokyo Mew Mew pencil toppers.

Completed the set for Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne manga and picked up Pastel
book #3.

I think that's mostly everything.

NOW onto something completely different-

We served a 3 day notice to vacate on the tenant in Apt. B. When I got
home from the convention, Mom found a lot about the lady my sister got
in the apartment.

She used her maiden name instead of her married name which she had
gotten in trouble for because of writing bad checks. Last month, she
wasn't in the hospital - she was in JAIL for one day. She keeps getting
arrested for passing bad checks!

We had a couple of "bums" as mom put it hanging around front. The guy
just got out of jail, and was violating parole for being around the
woman he was with who was wanted in Columbiana county!

She's been lying to us this whole time. In fact, she got some sort of
attitude like how dare I return home while she was out. Um, like I live
here? I found my Do Not Block Driveway sign had been ripped off the
buidling. OK, I'll add that to the damages she or her friends have
inflicted, like the broken hole on the back porch. I nailed that sign
back up.

So she's like "I'm not going to move until you serve me an eviction
notice" attitude. Fine. I went to get the forms on Monday. If my sister
has problems paying the $196 fee to have it served in person, I just
might help as long as I get the refund on the $100 deposit for the
sherriff's services to serve the notice. My sister is trying to see if
her arrests can become a fast track out of here.

Now, if my sister would just sell her property in Florida, she'd be out
of her hole in what she owes my aunt. Maybe.

Colossalcon 2007 Report

The first thing I have to say about Colossalcon is that I had a very
good time there.

Registration opened up at 9 am!! 9 am! Anime North opens that at 1 pm.
That means for Colossalcon, stuff happens as soon as the day starts. I
got to see some Otaku no Video in one of the video rooms.

Oh hey - this will impress you if you've never seen this - the video
rooms are run off computers. Unless they have to run a videotape,
everything is loaded onto the hard drives and run off the systems,
equipped with projectors. The neat thing, if the system is set up in
this way, that someone could use their wifi connection, check up on what
file is playing, adjust volume, pretty much keep up on the status of the
video rooms at any moment. The only time this went bad was a Spanish
subbed live action Death Note movie was playing, and someone volunteered
the use of their DVD with English subs. I got to fix that, and the crowd
of cheers I got when I figured it out (I haven't much experience with
PowerDVD).

The systems ran all day with few problems. Neat.

I later was able to go into the dealers room on Friday and bought a copy
of Otaku no Video on DVD. Only 1 dealer had it. And it's the only
official Gainax release with any Daicon Bunnygirl footage in it!

The dealers room was small but made up for it with the dealers in there.
Fast Food Anime (bought Kashimashi 1 for $15!), Hammergirl Anime with a
large selection of discounted manga (I completed my set of Kamikaze
Kaitou Jeanne manga and got Pastel #3). One dealer had 8 different
flavors of Ramune. I also bought out their Sailor Moon World 2 cards. I
had almost a complete set from one box, and box 2 had Card 29 of that
set which was the only one I needed. JC Comics and Cards had a nice big
Chii-chan figure I snapped up. There was one guy selling trading
figures, but if you ended up with a double, he would trade you for
another until you didn't have a double. Anime Pavillion was there but
without their customary CDs. Anime Palace from Columbus OH had very
reasonable prices on items I bought. One guy offered Staff discounts!
^_^

I struck out trying to complete my sets of Angel's Tail (need 3 and 4),
Galaxy Angel Z (again, need 3 and 4). Princess Tutu (just need #1!!!).

Also on Friday was a test run of our Okonomi Stop. ^_^ Got donations for
6 servings that day. ^_^

We also had reports of 2 people counterfeiting badges for the
convention. In fact, the con chair was escorting one of these idiots out
so he had like 2 minutes to tell us to get cup ramen ready for the
eating contest. We whipped up 50 cups in very little time, and
considering we had very little notice... ^_^;;;

Saturday was the main operation of Colossalcon's unofficial ramen stand.
The microwave oven we were using burned out mid-way through operations.
However, I managed to mix up 2 more batches of okonomiyaki and made back
my money and a little extra on the supplies I bought. That was
definitely the hit of the convention. I'm sad to say some people didn't
get to try any when I shut down at 5 pm so I could go to the cosplay and
videotape it. I'm hoping next year I'm able to offer more variety, but
this at least proves when I have something authentic, made with good
ingredients and with authentic Japanese Okonomi sauce and Kewpie
Japanese Mayonaise, it will be good and people will buy some.

Though we had a couple close calls of nearly getting shut down by
convention security (one or 2 well-meaning individuals who got
straightened out).

I had hoped to open around 10 am, but we had people sleeping in the room
and I wanted my shot at the dealers room again. ^_^

After counting the money I had collected, I decided to lay low on the
last day of Colossalcon. Besides, we were having to clean up, pack up,
and get out that day anyway. I didn't get much of a chance to see people
and costumes, but at least I have one roll of film to process and I've
yet to watch the video I shot.

I spent too much money. I didn't spend it all though. And I struck out
again on meeting any girls... T.T

Another Renter Bites The Dust

After only 1 month, the latest occupant of Apartment B has been ordered
to vacate due to not paying the security deposit as well as not paying
rent for June.

She "lost" her job in May. Boy, that set a new record. At least the
previous occupant had her job for about 5 months before she got fired
from it due to stealing from a client.

We're going to pick the next renter and I'm going to write up the lease
contract. There's a LOT of conditions that will be met.

I figured this lady would be trouble from day one. While she was moving
in, the building was having the roof worked on. We were told in no
uncertain terms what was to go in the dumpster and was not. She decided
upon herself without asking anyone to put one chair we had in Apt. B in
the dumpster. I had to remove that. Then she put in other items she no
longer wanted - apparently going through the stuff she was moving and
getting rid of it. Garbage. Garbage consisted of any personal items you
would buy for yourself. That included clothing and furniture as well as
food. I had to put a sign on the dumpster before it stopped, which was
me writing on a pizza box that got deposited in there.

The chair smelled like dog urine, apparently peed on by the little dog
of the lady who lived there. It didn't smell like that before!

Then she claimed she kept getting nails in her tires and had to buy 3
new ones, and wanted my sister to pay for them. She refused. But she did
pay for new carpet to be installed. Hmph.

We eventually did get rid of the chair. But one night I came home and
found mom's roll top desk sitting outside Apt. B with flowers and
planters all over it. Morgan, not her real name, said she didn't have
room in the apartment for it, and asked if we had room for it. I told
her no, but it could be put in Apt. C, but it was mom's and she wouldn't
want it ruined. Again, she decided without asking to move something we
provided, and did so in a way that we would not have approved.

I had to post a sign saying Do Not Block Driveway and put up a Visitor
Parking sign. I told her it was safe to park in the grass next to the
house. She did that only once, instead opting to park in front of Apt.
B's front door or our door or some space across the road. I had to honk
my horn only twice when coming home, and had to deal with a drunk who
backed up a little too much early on.

My older sister, the landlord, is not waiting this time. When she got a
call from the renter, she explained that we was going to ask her to
vacate and had 3 days to leave. "But I have no other place to go!" Too
bad, you no pay rent and security deposit ($750), you no stay.

So we got the statement tonight, printed 2 copies. One was posted on her
front door, the other was put in an envelope and slid under her front
door.

Apt. B renter finally returned about 10 minutes ago. I was in the
kitchen doing stuff. She knocks on the back door. Right away, she
accused me of entering her apartment and wanted to know how the envelope
"got into the middle of the floor". I told her I simply slid it under
the door. I don't have a key to her apartment, and I was never in there.
What had happened is that the envelope was caught by the bottom edge of
the door and was pushed into the room when she came back and opened it.
That seemed to calm her down a bit, but does not remove the reason for
the letter, and that is to vacate in 3 days.

How dare she get smart with me and accuse me of being in there anyway?
Well, you didn't pay rent, and you spoke to the landlord over the phone
who said you are to leave. She isn't going to take her money, because
then you have to wait all over again to evict someone. If she doesn't
leave, then there will be a sheriff called to evict her.

How odd it is, 2 strikes for my sister

How odd it is that while we're not in Toronto and going to Anime North,
it's all I can think about today. It's like there's this big party I
could have gone to see, but I'm not there. All day long I've kept an eye
on the clock and thought about what would be happening had we been
there. It's sad that it's too big, too much going on, and too corporate.
All along they've been wanting the companies to come to the convention,
but as a result it's the fans that get pushed out of the way. You can't
do some things, you have to do this to do that. Preference given to
media. You can't sell this. It's like a big trade show. Much of the fun
is gone.

But at the same time, it's not the companies that made Anime North fun.
For me, it's the girls in costume, and the underlying hope that I'd be
able to talk to some and make friends. Or meet that special someone. Oh
well... T.T I'll be depressed all weekend.

I realize we will be going to Colossalcon in a few weeks. I just miss
going to Canada. I wish I could go to Japan. Maybe I'll have better luck
with the ladies at Colossalcon.

----

My older sister has 2 strikes against her in finding people to rent Apt.
B. The lady today got laid off. I guess technically that's the correct
term. And as she was going around paying her bills locally, she got
pulled over by police that somehow she was passing bad checks. Somehow
her bank account got closed. I hope she can find out what the hell
happened. Hopefully she'll have another paying job soon. She seems like
a hard working person. I don't yet know the full details, but this is
the basic info I have. I almost had a single gentleman and his dog in
line to rent the place, but I never got a reply I was expecting.

Anywho, when I came home, her car was blocking the driveway. I told her
it's safe to park in the grass. She also had Mom's rolltop desk OUTSIDE
(without asking anyone) with plants all over it. I mentioned to her
about this being outside. She said she didn't have room for it. I said I
don't think Mom would want it ruined. And after I bring down the air
conditioner left in Apt. C by my sister, she says her brother will be
over and he'll help install the air conditioner and she'll ask him to
help me move the desk up into Apt. C.

353 Nails, Colossalcon, Anime North, Canada

So far the final tally on nails I had to clean up with a metal detector
stands at 353 nails. The lady in Apt. B says she still picked up a nail
in a tire. I've not had much of a problem there, but I will see to
getting out again and seeing if I can find more.

Got to watch my DVD of Memoirs of a Geisha. Finally!!!

Got to see some members of the main Colossalcon staff. Good people. Got
to see the hotel. OMG. There's a swingers bar. OK, maybe not best
described in that way, but I'm not ever going in there unless they have
Japanese Ladies Night.

I am sadly going to pass on Anime North. Not because we couldn't get the
time off, but because the convention is too big and too corporate. As
one friend put it, it's just a huge Anime Industry trade show now.
Corporate sponsors squeeze out the rights of fans to sell "unlicensed"
items like doujinshi. When fans get trampled on, it's no longer any fun.

My friends and I are hoping to plan an excursion to Canada later in the
year, but hopefully not too much later. Maybe by then gas prices will
come down from their gouging levels. There is no incentive for those
companies to get their refineries up to 100% capacity AT ALL. We need
one "blend" of fuels that can be used year around. It's always when the
refineries "switch" from their so called Winter blend or Summer Blend
that this price hike happens, and boy are they loath to lower prices as
fast as it went up.

Plans to build new refineries are usually met with resistance due to
concerns for the environment. Well, people, what do you want to do?
Cheap plentiful gas or pay $5 a gallon and continually complain about
how much you're paying?? Figure out what the heck you want and then DO
IT. And Oil companies - When you get the Go Ahead for building a
refinery, get the damn thing built FAST, get it online NOW, and make it
SAFE. No freakin' explosions or accidents that drive up the cost to
consumers when it doesn't cost you any more to get the raw material! I
hear it costs $9 to refine a barrel of crude oil into gas.

If I could afford a Hybrid car that doesn't have operational problems
and was cheap to repair if needed, you bet I would have one. In the
meantime, we ALL need to conserve as much as possible. If we could cut
back by 11% all the time, it would have a huge difference in the long
run.

The letter I sent that got results

CI Service Dept.

Dear Sir or Madam:

Please find enclosed one of your products, an MP3 player, a 512MB model, number MP3512B. As you can see, it is a formerly working model. I have enclosed a copy of the sales receipt to show you how much I paid for it. The main reason this is in your hands at all is the fact that within 2 weeks of purchasing the product, it failed to continue working properly.

First indication the product was about to fail was the single color backlight had stopped working. Attempts at getting it to work again, such as removing the battery and putting it back in, resulted in the product not working altogether. It refused to turn on no matter what after that.

I tend to not like how things do that, so in a fit of anger over this MP3 player not working anymore, I grabbed it by the earphones and whipped it at a wall. This resulted in the earphones disintegrating in my hands as the player hit a hard surface and subsequently fell apart.

Now, I'm not going to blame you for my impatience, but I refuse to take the blame in the fact that the player began a fast track to being useless, and in so doing, I am returning it to you. Clearly some of my actions has rendered the warranty void, but the way I see it, the product had already expired and therefore deserved the fate it got. I am not completely turned off to your products as I have been using for some time a 256MB model made by your company. It's very rugged and the design is excellent. I'm very happy with it and will continue to use it. It's a shame the 512MB model was of rather flimsy design and construction and failed to do its job for very long. The 512MB model was intended as an "upgrade."

I don't expect any response of any kind, I'm just letting you know that one of your products failed to deliver. I don't know why I had to pay $30 in the first place to find this out and let you know. At any rate, there's one of three things you will end up doing: you may refund my money, send me another 512MB player, or nothing at all. At least you can figure out what went wrong now that you have this one. The other model I have is the MP3257. Very nice. Make them more like that, just with more flash memory.

Sincerely,

Wedding Peach Secret File

I waited at least 10 years to own a copy of the book, and finally I have
it and I didn't have to fight others on eBay to get it.

I was checking out alt.fan.sailor.moon by chance, and a girl in Illinois
had posted a message about selling some items. Eventually I was able to
discover the Wedding Peach Secret File book was among them, and her
price was not out of my range. I fired off an email, asked her to call
my phone number and leave a message if I'm able to get it from her.

After I returned home from work that day I emailed the girl, I got the
message. [happy dance]

It finally arrived yesterday.

And thus ends the saga of the book I ordered through Diamond and perhaps
Capitol Cities distribution and never arrived.

Thanks to Lori for letting me snag this baby for a pittance (which isn't
much more than the price I saw in Previews - I will have to dig out the
book I ordered it from, either Previews or Advance Comics).

Thanks to Sabrina H, a wonderful young woman who sent me photocopies and
scans of the book when I was wondering where the hell was my ordered
copy. If you didn't live so far away, I'd try to date you. T.T Anyone
who went to so much trouble is worth keeping as a friend and more.

Done.

The roof is done.

The major clean up is done. I did it mainly by myself. The neighbor in B
said she'd help twice - but all I got was 15 minutes of stuff, and then
she had a friend help with that.

It was over 5 hours of using a garden rake and a snow shovel to pick
this stuff up and put it in the dumpster. It had to stay over 2 extra
days at $50 for me to get this done.

All that's left is the downspouting and looking for nails.

Yeah. whoopee.

Unexpected good things

I seem to be collecting MP3 players.

Some time ago, I had purchased a Curtis 256MB flash drive model at
hhgregg for $25. It has been a good model, nice and rugged with good
sound quality. But I soon filled it with files. I had been eyeing 1G
models for a while, then saw a 512MB model in an hhgregg advert for
about $30. So I went over and snapped it up.

I realized soon after I bought it that it was going to be trouble. The
battery door didn't quite fit - a tab used in the design of the part
snapped off so I had it held shut with a piece of tape. 2 weeks after
that, the single color backlight stopped working. Attempts to get it to
work again, which was mainly pulling the battery out and putting it back
in, resulted in the unit not working at all.

In a fit of rage over this piece of junk, I whipped it at a wall and it
naturally burst into pieces. The earbuds themselves disintegrated in my
hand.

On March 1st, 2007, I finally shipped the thing back to Curtis
International along with a copy of my sales receipt. The thing was still
under warranty, but due to my fit of anger, I doubted they would do
anything. Warranties usually do NOT include coverage for acts of abuse
or neglect, but in my case, the device failed to work anymore so it
deserved what I did to it.

In the middle of that, a friend had noticed one model of MP3 player at
Officemax that was a sport model that read Secure Digital memory cards,
up to 2 G. Attempts to order it failed, but I found a simple card reader
/ MP3 player at USB Geek for $15 US. I ordered 2 and traded one with
that same friend, who ordered 2 1G SD cards, and traded one of those for
one of the players. This is a no frills player, no screen. It just turns
on, plays MP3 files on the card, and turns off. It also plugs into the
USB port directly. The clear plastic case for the device is quite
fragile. Mine had broken into pieces that I was able to superglue back
together. I haven't tried a 2G card in it yet, nor other forms of memory
cards. Should be interesting to see what it can do. Some files it won't
play if the sample rate is too low.

Anywho, back to the other player...

I will have to include the letter I sent along with the Curtis MP3
player sometime soon, because today via FedEx, was a package from Curtis
International. They had sent me a brand spanking new 512MB MP3 player.
This is a different model from the one I bought at hhgregg. This
completely knocked me over. I had sent off the defective unit, explained
why, and didn't expect anything out of them except hopefully making
better quality products. After all, the 256MB model was a beauty of
design and still works just great.

This new model is sleek, sexy, and has some nice features. I hope this
is one of their top of the line models for the memory size. It has 2
output earphone jacks! It has an Inline Jack for recording from other
devices! Imagine being able to record off your tape player then pulling
that over to your PC and editing it later! Multicolor backlight! Much
more rugged and precise in design and manufacturing. It doesn't have a
built in USB plug like the other models, but a cable is included to plug
it in, as well as a CDrom for Win98SE.

To the people at Curtis International, thank you very much for honoring
your warranty when you didn't have to, and I now believe I will get my
money's worth. Please continue to make MP3 players that are rugged and
also look nice.

Some pointers:

1. A 12 band customizable equalizer would be nice. When I have to put up
with subpar quality earbuds, the equalizer that I can adjust at will can
offset the bad qualities of the worst of earbuds. Presets do only so
much.

2. Decent bass boost regardless of audio mode - Lots of bad earphones
are midrange and compress the quality so much. The bass range gets
squeezed out. It needs all the help it can get.

Oh yeah, the one feature that knocked me out in regard to the player
Curtis Int. sent back to me - support for Japanese text!! OMG! This is
too cool! The model number is MPS533! I can put my Japanese anime MP3s
on the thing, and if any of the ID3 tags are in Japanese, I'll get to
see that. Sugoi ne!!

The roof is almost done. The part over my room is done. But the roofers
working on the part above Apt C just popped the old shingles off today
and created another huge mess and a roofing nail nightmare - again. The
dumpster company wants to come pick their property up soon, and I have a
huge mess to clean up. I wish the roofers would have been more careful -
some pieces hit part of the Dish Network antenna dish thingy and broke
part of the plastic covering. It still works, but I'll need to glue it
back together and use some duct tape or something. I half a half-day off
tomorrow. T.T

Comment to send to milkbone.com

For quite some time, I have had an issue with the picture on the back of
your products. It shows a person holding a treat with the dog supposedly
looking at the person and the treat. The problem is the eye line of the
dog to the human does not work. If the dog was REALLY looking at the
person and the treat, you'd see the BACK of the dog's head. The
illustration is really annoying on all the boxes this appears. It should
be more with the person holding the treat and have them appearing from
the right side of the box (you don't need to see all of them) and the
dog actually looking right at them. The way it is now, it's really
annoying.