More info on why I won

Saturday I got an envelope from the unemployment review comission. Today
I got one from Jobs and Family Services. I was not expecting one from
them, considering how I was expecting things to go.

The J&FS letter says my unemployment benefits claim was ALLOWED.

I taped that phone call we had. I opened the other envelope I already
had.

What's interesting was that the store's story changed Yet Again, this
time trying to say I was fired for Failure to Accurately Register Sales
in addition to the other 2 they've repeated all this time.

The store Has No Rule that says employees must notify management when
they suspect that an incorrect price has been entered into the computer.

REASONING they allowed my claim:

The employer alleges that the claimant engaged in willful misconduct and
dishonesty.

(The number of times I turned in found money or one lady's purse and
they want to try slapping this on me. And even after I "worked" with
them to resolve the issue about how much I paid for the cereal.)

However, the evidence does not establish that the claimant was
dishonest. He took the merchandise to the service desk where a cashier
with some managerial responsibilities allowed him to purchase the
cereal. She did not advise him that he should first bring the matter to
the attention of management.

Claimant was not responsible for entering prices into the computer.
Another employee made the error which created the situation that
ultimately resulted in the discharge of the claimant. The claimant used
poor judgement in purchasing products that he knew were incorrectly
priced. However, his conduct does not amount to an act of dishonesty.

The evidence does not support the employer's allegation that the
claimant violated three work rules. There is no evidence that the
claimant failed to accurately register sales. The claimant's job is to
scan merchandise which has already been priced. The employer has not
shown how the claimant abused Accu-Scan. The employer has provided no
evidence of a specific rule or policy which would have required the
claimant to report suspicious prices to management.

Due to his excericise of poor judgement, the claimant was deserving of
some discipline. However, he did not engage in wrongdoing of a
sufficient magnitude to justify his immediate termination.

Therefore the hearing officer finds that I was discharged without just
cause in connection with work within the meaning (of some section of the
Ohio revised code).

And there it is.

I win.

I WON!!!!!

I FREAKING WON MY UNEMPLOYMENT REVIEW!! Finally after 6 months of this crap I finally got someone to hear my case and saw it the same way EVERYONE ELSE saw it!!!

The main things pointing to MY FAVOR:

J&J Foods has no rule that provides that employees must notify management when they suspect that an incorrect price has been entered into the computer.

The Evidence does not establish that the claimant was dishonest.

The claimant (Me) was deserving of some discipline, however he did not engage in wrongdoing of a sufficient magnitude to justify his immediate termination. Therefore, the Hearing Officer finds that I was discharged without just cause.

I stand to collect quite a bit!! I will keep you updated as to how petty my former employer is when it comes to any appealing they may try.

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.