Went to Lucky Star

Kagamin came along to help me eat pork lo mein!

Holy crap! Michael Jackson did what?

This has been one hell of a week. Please, don't let any more celebrities
die for no reason the rest of the month!

Ed McMahon died Tuesday, then today we get a double blow - Farrah
Fawcett and then.. What? Michael Jackson? Holy crap. I'll bet no one had
him in their death pool.

The news channels have been covering this since around 6 pm, and ABC and
NBC pre-empted their evening schedules, both with 2 hours about Michael
Jackson and now with one on Farrah. CBS is like "well, damn, we don't
have anything."

Michael should be remembered for his talent. Farrah should be remembered
for her work on "The Burning Bed."

Steve Martin once said on a comedy album (which I own a vinyl copy of):
"Farrah has never called me once - even in spite of all the hours I've
spent holding her poster up with one hand."

More or less like that anyway.

I'm sure Ed will be missed on the MDA Telethon. I had a cousin named
Ricky who had MD, and he passed away at age 21. I barely knew him.

I'm thinking of pricing the Michael Jackson albums I don't yet have and
maybe buying them. He was such a big part of our culture in ways we
probably don't realize. Gone way too soon. And then there's people who
aren't gone soon enough, even if it's just back to where they came from
(they don't have to die to just go away).

Wrangling Firefox 3 into shape

For some reason I mistakenly told Firefox 2 to download the latest revision of Firefox 3 and all attempts to stop it didn't work when I thought it had. grrr...

Already I had problems with it.

First off, there's a crapload of plug-ins I did not ask for, and therefore I have disabled them in Firefox 3.

AOL Media playback plug in? NO.

Metastream 3? NO.

Microsoft DRM crap? DOUBLY NO.

Move Media Player? What the hell is it? NO.

Quicktime plugin for Netscape? I don't use it when I don't have to.

Real Networks for Jukebox, Player, and their LiveConnect. OMG NO!!!

Silverlight? What the hell is it? NO.

Windows media player DLL? Not right now, thanks.

Yahoo! application state? Are you nuts?

MOZILLA, WHY are these plug ins installed with Firefox 3? Why don't you give people a chance to opt out of these instead of being a bully and forcing them on us?

In addition, I had to install a new version of my Download Manager Tweak, and then Turn Off Firefox 3's auto virus scanning of downloads. The delay was annoying. I can do that myself. I don't need it for JPG images!

And then I was SO annoyed at the "awesome" new Address Bar in Firefox 3. There are tweaks you can do for that from About:config to stop your bookmarks from appearing and turning off autocomplete, but the real beauty came from a plug in called "oldbar 1.2". Ah... So much better.

Let's see what else I'll have to change.

Japanese steakhouse

Went to Wasabi. Had the Unagi don. Oishii!

Owari

Colossalcon is over. I am tired. Not looking forward to going home even though I want to be on my way home now.

Vibrating HD? RR out at the same time

I making this post so I can get some help on what might be a bad hard drive or not. Called home to see how things are and I get told that at some point the computer froze and the HD was vibrating. A whir~click is bad but not vibrating? Mom had to shut it off at the power strip. At worst we buy a new HD at best we also put in 2G RAM.

Hhgttg Kalahari arcade

Don't waste your time or money in the "arcade" at the Kalahari. The games supposedly take tokens, but in order to get them you have to buy a card to swipe at a token dispenser only to find out very few games actually take tokens and that your card now has no credits. Yeah each token is 50 cents and most games take more than one. A complete ripoff!

Badge!

Getting my staff badge this year was so much easier ~ My name was on the list!

Just about ready to travel to Colossalcon

Had trouble falling asleep last night and then realize I had forgotten a few things. That always happens. I thought I had included a needle and thread for emergencies that require a needle and thread. And then there's the paper cutter I forgot. I really should have brought one of my MP3 players. Instead I used the cell phone with a plug in handset and listened to the FM radio. One thing I didn't know about FM radio signals is that they embed some amount of digital text in the signal. I found at least 7 radio stations receivable in the area that ID themselves or also include song title and artist name. I guess some high end car radio receivers can display this data, but this is the first time I saw it, even on a cell phone.

I'll keep looking for the needle and thread. I know where my money is. ^_^

I guess for all the things people remember to pack, there's a few items they always forget.

And then there was the disability check that didn't arrive when it should have. It better be here today dammit. Not a good sign for the weekend.

Yell until at last finally it sinks in

I don't know why I have to yell so much at my mother. Maybe it's because
of her attitude with some things.

Last week, after waiting longer than necessary, she got her Narnia
Caspian DVD in the mail, something she bought off Half.com. Only there
was no return address, and the DVD was a bootleg burn with a paper label
I could peel off which hasn't been just yet.

I got on her case about it, to stop playing Pogo right then, get on her
account at Half.com and lodge a complaint. Instead she just kept playing
Pogo and the more I yelled at her to take action this moment while the
thought was still fresh, the more she just got mad at me for yelling at
her. Unless I yell at her, the least likely it is that the message will
sink in. So anywho, for what seemed like an eternity, she finally gets
on half.com and contacts the seller. I told her to say that what the
seller sent was an illegal bootleg copy with a paper label and we can
tell when the DVD is a burn (it's usually some shade of purple) and that
paper labelled DVDs are not going into our players ever, and she wants
her $6 (supposedly) back. Well, the seller hasn't replied in all this
time, so she's finally going to seek justice from half.com.

Then tonight of all times, she's giving the dog a Greenie. I don't know
if people know what a Greenie dog treat is, but she seems to think these
are damn good, but at the prices in the store for some variations of
Greenies (like $32 a box) I'm buying what is sensible (though $4 a bag
for a bunch of these things is not as sensible as 99 cents for regular
crunchy dog treats at Aldi's). But for some reason she has to blurt out
that she ordered some "real" Greenies. But for the godforsaken fact what
I have been buying at the pet store IS a REAL GREENIE. WHY DO WE EVEN
BOTHER BUYING THEM IN THE STORE IF SHE INSISTS ON WASTING MONEY ON THEM
ONLINE??? Says so on the damn package GREENIE. The logo matches. Oh but
she goes on to say it's the one that "exercises the jaw more and cleans
the teeth". Um... What? Doesn't it say on the ones (she calls them
biscuits but they are REAL GREENIES dammit) that these do that, too? WHY
DO I EVEN BOTHER!? Anyway, that exchange brings on some yelling by me,
notifying her that $32 is on a dog treat is overkill. It's an
unnecessary expense, but for some reason it just does not sink in with
her.

Part of the problem is when she finds out she's got some extra $$$ in
the bank, she tends to spend it wastefully. I can't get through to her.
I think it was last night or earlier today when she mentioned buying one
of those stupid upside down hanging tomato planters. ARGH!! WE DO NOT
NEED IT!

We have a leaking bathtub faucet, and I will make an attempt to get her
to go in and share the cost of parts and maybe a plumber to install the
thing in the coming weeks. I still want to install it to learn how to do
it though.

Anyway, I yell and I yell common sense at her, and I'm going to yell
until I either get court-ordered control of her finances or she finally
listens and gets the idea without getting angry. It's because she does
what she does that keeps pissing me off because that's how we ended up
losing the Euclid Ave house and where we are now.

She refuses to take responsibility for her actions. She's got all this
cross-stitching stuff she bought and hasn't touched any of it now that
she's got a lot of time to do something. Why don't we sell it? (well,
for one thing eBay doesn't let people use money orders for payment
anymore, so that kills my use of eBay for good.)

It makes me wonder if I would miss my mom if she should happen to die at
some point. Parents aren't supposed to be asshole pains in the butt.

On an unrelated note, a paper labelled CD that I could not get read at
all in some DVD capable drives copied just fine in my mother's Dell with
a CD burner. Not a single problem pulling all the files off. But the
Win98SE box's drives? 50% read until it got errors. Even the other Dell
that I'm going to return at some point when they're ready for it had
problems. It has a DVD combo CD burning drive. Not a chance. I've had
this CD since 2003, and only now did it occur to me to copy it off
because of the paper label. I wonder why the CD burner drive did what
the DVD drives could not? Maybe a bigger laser beam for a better read? I
dunno. The main thing I wanted off was a 598MB MPG video file and that
came off no problem. Nice.