A mixed bag

So anywho, I can finally say for now the Check Engine light has gone out
for about 2 weeks. So far, so good.

Browns won their first game of this season.

And I hope it's just a battery that needs charging in the cell phone. I
tried to turn it on while waiting for my mother's prescriptions to be
filled, but all it would do is come on, give me a white screen for a few
moments, then shut down immediately. The battery wasn't dead by a long
shot. It had at least 2 more bars of battery charge showing. I last used
it Saturday and I remember shutting it down when I got home.

If it continues this immediately shutting down business, I don't know
what to do with it. It still has some months of service left and over
600 units of airtime left. I almost got mad enough to slam it on the
floor at the store. If it's a nearly dead battery, OK, so that's what it
does when the battery is damn near dead. Other than that, I or my
friends who got it for me may have to call Tracfone and bitch them a new
one. I still have some pics (correction: maybe HAD) I wanted to get off
the thing.

As much as they are useful, it's stuff like this that makes me think why
people even have them when they go bad. I've taken very good care of it,
so I have no idea what happened to it or anything.

I wish I had a SIM card reader...

If it works again like it should after charging, I'll try sending a post
to let people know.

Liz's Magic Knight Rayearth bling

Liz's MKR Bling on Youtube

Recent video I've finally put up on Youtube. It took an hour and a half due to our slow connection. It was captured with the Tevion USB video capture box, recoded into an MP4 to fix the gamma and contrast and some bottom edge clipping, then re-encoded without loss of resolution into WMV where I was able to edit the clip into what I put up.

Hopefully this will get her attention and finally get in touch more regularly. I don't know if I have more footage of her...

In Memorium: Duane Dawson, 20 years later

While today's date, October 10th, holds some happiness for me (my
youngest niece's birthday is today), it also holds some other sad
meaning for me and a friend.

While attending Stark Technical as it was called then, from 1987 until
when I graduated in 1990, I got to meet people and for a short time my
friend of who knows how many years at that point also attended. During
1989, thanks to another friend who used the local BBS handle of Lord
Humungous (aka Rick), we got to meet a fellow by the name of Duane
Dawson.

My friend and Lord H got to spend more time with Duane than I did, but I
got to know him quite well and he was a "cool dude" to know. He even
drove me and Lord H to my house after classes one day.

I wish I had a photo of Duane. Or even of his friend Ed, who had an
Apple II system he was wanting to sell. In my archive of stuff, I still
have the handwritten in pencil ad he wrote so I could try putting it up
on local BBSs or someplace hoping to score him a sale.

Just before the week of October 10, 1989, Duane finally managed to buy
the leather jacket he had his eye on for some time. However, on October
10, 1989, he and Ed were on their way home back to Wooster or
thereabouts to their jobs after classes. Unfortunately, it was raining
that day and Duane was driving way too fast. His car hydroplaned and
crossed the center line, crashing into a van headed east.

Both were killed upon impact.

I still have the copy of the STC Student Newsletter that has the
announcement of the accident. Hopefully I'll dig that out and put it up
here, and in addition to that, maybe the clip of video I had recorded
(with audio) of us doing our Techniques of Writing presentation, with a
"Mad Lib" type of program I wrote. Duane, my friend, and I did this for
each of the blurbs we were supposed to present. I think we got a good
score for it. Aside from that, the only other thing I have of Duane is
him belching into the mic of my micro cassette recorder. He was fun
because he did things like that. Though I'm sure and I hope he'll
comment, my friend who spent more time with Duane and Lord H as a group
has more interesting stories to tell, like the bat in the sporting goods
store at the mall. Even though he was the one to blame, it's stuff like
that I missed out on.

I might have said some heartless things to Lord H in email on local BBSs
that off the top of my head were the first things I could think of, but
knowing now that I have Asperger's, it was the only way I knew how to
deal with something like that. It probably also drove a gap between me
and Lord H, whom I really liked. He was cool, too. In some years
following Duane's death, I used to call Rick on October 10th when I
still knew his number and we'd talk for a while. I forgot when I stopped
doing that. Last time I knew anything about Rick, he was working for
FedEx or some place like that.

Duane and Ed. I was hoping to get to know Ed as he seemed an OK person
since after all he was Duane's friend. I can't believe it's been 20
years already.

T.T

A RANT: The Big Screw by Satellite TV

OK so a while back, we used to have Dish Network. But because we moved
only 1 mile to the east, but still part of the same zip code, Dish
Network forced a change of "local" channels to Youngstown instead of
Cleveland stations we had been getting.

Only because we moved 1 mile to the east, on the edge of a neighboring
county, but still SAME ZIP CODE.

So we dumped Dish Network, and DirecTV promised us, yes we could still
get Cleveland stations through them.

Just this past week, and even today, I get notices that Oh Wow DirecTV
is going to be changing something about the locals we get. Well, if it
means getting the WRONG locals for our SAME ZIP CODE as before, then
there's going to be a problem.

This somehow involves an "upgrade." I don't see how this is an upgrade.
It's a downgrade. We're still in the SAME zip code.

For some stupid reason, they cite some 2004 law, claiming they're using
Neilsen research to determine local market stations based on ZIP CODE,
but it looks like they want to use where you actually LIVE in the ZIP
CODE.

What does this mean? I HATE TIME WARNER. This Forces My Hand - I'll Drop
Digital Satellite Altogether If we're being forced to take local
channels that isn't our market. My committment to DirecTV is pretty much
up. They're more expensive than Dish Network, but up until now, we had
the right market for our ZIP code, namely Cleveland. When Channel 3
shows the Browns pre-season games, we would end up missing them because
they're not shown anywhere else.

Why Do I Hate Cable? Continual Rate Increases Every Year. Kickbacks to
the local government to allow them to remain a monopoly. They pass on
"franchise" and "regulatory" fees instead of taking that as an expense
of doing business. CABLE IS EVIL. Time Warner Also Doesn't Have NFL
Network. They may have Big Ten, but they're being asses about the NFL
channel. Gee, digital satellite services have it at no extra cost!

Plus Satellite TV gets unfairly taxed.

So what do I do? Can I explain to these people I'm STILL IN THE SAME ZIP
CODE? Can I refuse this "upgrade"? Would I stop getting Cleveland locals
as a result and have to pay an unfair fee later?

Youngstown is not my market, and I should not be force to have to get
locals I do not want.

What took them so long to do this? Why now? Their Neilsen research data
is FLAWED.

What is the absolute cheapest cable TV service I can get without being
forced to use a cable box?

Article: Just Add Water

Found this webpage linked to from the autism newsgroup.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/wave-hello-to-the-surf-genius-with-aspergers-1797025.html

Some of the comments below it are of interest to me, such as:

I have Asperger's, and I suffer because of other people.

To most people, I would say "Please make the effort to get to know me in
spite of my behaviors." Some of the few who already have would say good
things about me.

Taiyaki

First takoyaki, now taiyaki!

USB PCI Cards are neat

Got my ordered $5 USB 2.0 PCI card from Microbarn yesterday. I let it
sit around to warm up from being outside. Jeez, the last week or so has
been darn cold, or at least cooler than it really should be around this
time of year. I really hope this doesn't mean another 10 below Zero kind
of winter. OH SH....

Anywho, I get upstairs, open up the P4 case, and into the slot the sound
card was, goes in the USB card. NEC Chipset and all.

Power it up, and XP finds the card! And seems to like it very well. The
CD that came with it has drivers for Windows 98 so I don't even need it.

I begin attaching devices to it. The little $10 digital camera still
doesn't seem to work well as a PC web camera. Oh well, let's get to the
high speed video capture box. That installs easily and it WORKS. OMG.

Plug in a thumbdrive, no complaints that it could run faster! Plug in my
external hard drives. Seagate comes up fast! Plug in the Maxtor - it
doesn't give me delayed write errors. Wooo!!!

Now to get the DVD burner and keep looking for 16G thumb drives.

This card has an internal USB port. I could probably put the 16G drive
on that. I'll have to see if it doesn't cause problems. Too bad I can't
reconnect the front panel USB ports to that internal one. They're good
for game controllers anyway.

ANY time you run into a system with No or Slow USB ports, get a 2.0
card. I could have easily wasted $35 at Best Buy but instead got this $5
card that does the job. Cheap but still high quality!

So now my younger sister uses the Aspergers excuse...

So anywho, my younger sister shows up so she can do some stuff in the
kitchen as far as getting the walls scrubbed so they can be painted.

She sits down and talks about some stuff with my mother. I'm nearby
trying to do one of the daily crosswords in the paper. Heck, I'm in the
same room.

Then she gets to talking about some "meal swap" thing they do (I guess
in relation to the church they go to) and complaints about other people
in this thing complaining about the quality of the meals each other
gets, and add to the fact that they'll be getting some deer meat in the
next month or so (and some of the people in this swap thing claim they
don't like it), they'll have to take a break from it. That and the
presence of MSG in stuff that the other people make, even though she's
been telling people that if they swap dinners with her family not to use
things with a whole lot of MSG in it.

My sister, for some reason, is on a big Anti-MSG kick. She says there
was some book my father brought to their house that she read about all
the things that MSG causes. But I've been on Snopes, and as I remember
reading, MSG doesn't do all the things people claim. My father is nuts
and will find anything to support his claims of anything, whether or not
it actually has properly researched scientific proof behind it. I don't
know what book it was. I don't particularly care, either.

Glutamates are in lots of food. Milk for one. Soy products. The
Monosodium form comes from Yeast processing. It occurs naturally
otherwise.

And of course I'm ready to point out the bufoonery of that belief that
it causes fatigue, depression, etc. Just like artificial sweetners can't
be causing so many unrelated conditions, the same is for MSG.

She comes back with the "Asperger's excuse" like my older sister did,
and of course that puts me on the defensive and I get annoyed and angry.
I fight back with "Don't invalidate me with that excuse" and it doesn't
go well. So rather than talk it out or something (the computer
downstairs was on, someone could just as easily gotten on it and loaded
Snopes to settle the discussion), my younger sister gets mad and leaves.

So while she's out, and before she gets back home, I call her up and
leave a message. I tell her she owes Mom an apology. And I deserve one,
too. For her and my older sister to use Aspergers as an excuse to
invalidate me as a person, and my opinion as well, I deserve better
treatment, and that it's not fair. It's not fair.

I get better treatment from my friends and the BVR people than I do from
my own family! heck, even the counselors I've seen!

She called a while ago before I completed writing this posting,
apparently she and my mother spoke for a while, maybe things are going
resolve themselves. I don't know. At least one person here might have
gotten an apology.

My first house call?

Got to work on someone's computer today at their house, my first since
getting A+ certification. Actually, it was a daughter of one of the
ladies who come in to help my mother with her personal care and stuff.

From what I was told is that it just stopped working and wouldn't boot
past the Windows XP logo screen, and would reboot after a while. Some
other bit was about her Symantec AV reporting she got some worm or
something before things went bad, but then her "subscription" to that
had expired. But in the meantime, they had hooked up the computer of the
lady I had helped with earlier this year.

Without AntiVirus software on it. Yeah, Not Smart, in spite of how much
this daughter thinks she knows. I promised the lady I helped that when
they're ready to put it back on the net, I would finish what I had
started and put in security it needed.

So anywho, before I take a look at the problem system, I get to
installing the security stuff I think will help them with little problem
and worry. Since her RAM is 1G and dual channel, and a nice beefy AMD
Athlon processor, I decide that AVG Free 8.5 is going to work well for
them. After running scans (nothing major thank goodness), I get
Malwarebyte's tool going and it finds stuff. Spybot Search and Destroy
goes in, adding its resident TeaTimer and it finds a few more things. Ad
Aware AE goes in, and this time it doesn't find a whole lot, which is
extra good.

I put in a few more goodies. Firefox 3.5.3 goes in to update what I've
put on there already and then slip in all the security and other goodies
I like and show her how to use NoScript and FlashBlock as well as Ad
Block Plus. With NoScript, when you load up a page and nothing is going
on, allow any of the currently blocked scripts. Note which domains have
blocked scripts (like ad serving domains), and carefully allow or
temporarily allow stuff until the page works. Some pages you temporarily
allow things when you're not going to be there much, some you Always
Allow if you are going to be there much. Just allow enough to make the
page work. I showed her a few examples of what to allow.

Also turned on Cookie handling so she can get to training Firefox what
to block. Same with Ad Block Plus.

Media Player Classic Home Theater edition went in. And then created a
desktop shortcut for her Microsoft Works word processor. She forgot I
put that back in on her HD.

Had that finally nicely locked down and onto the problem computer. Dummy
me though, I took my extra monitor and forgot the power cord... I was
hoping to set up both systems and use the net connected one to look up
solutions while I worked on the other.

Only it didn't get quite that far. I got the problem system hooked up.
one thing I forgot to bring was the diagnostic CD for various things, so
I grabbed a copy there and burned it to a CD.

Her drive was a 200G Seagate, a few years old. It's been across the
country and back. It's probably been left on for long periods without
actually needing to be on.

It was showing its age.

Ran SeaTools off the diagnostic CD. The drive was unable to pass the
Short Test. So I ran the long test. Sector Read errors started popping
up. I could hear a lot of activity by the drive as it ground through the
errors. SeaTools eventually clicked up 99 errors before it stopped. I
ran it a few more times, trying to get it to repair problem sectors. One
early sector it claimed to have fixed resurfaced a bit later as being
bad again.

I had managed to check only the first 4% of the drive (about 8 gigs)
before concluding that any more work on it would not yield anything.

Actually tried to boot the drive into its Recovery partition, and it was
unable to recover. Tried to boot into XP on the primary partition and it
did exactly what she described. Well, the boot process was unable to
complete because it couldn't read part of the drive!

The error pattern was odd. It would get to LBA 74000 or so before it got
errors, would grind through a bunch, then hit a patch it was able to
just sail right through until 17400000 (something like that). So the
entire drive wasn't bad. After some of that, I tried to boot XP on the
drive and it attempted to fix something with the file structure on the
drive, but the actual system files it was still unable to successfully
load.

She'll have to buy a new drive, and she just goes and says she knows a
few people in the service (somewhere, I didn't catch where) that do this
as part of their job (family relatives) and she'll send the drive to
them to see what they can do with it.

About the only way this drive will have any data recovered off it is if
the drive is taken apart and the platters put into another device.

The problem being faced here is her system had a working DVD burner
drive. It wasn't working anymore though. She had pictures on the drive
copied off her camera's memory card. No backups. No burned CDs, no flash
drives, nada. Photos from Italy where they had been for about a year or
so. Not to mention resumes, financial info. Stuff that should at least
be on a thumbdrive!

It would take intensive forensic work on that thing to get anything off
it. IF she's lucky, with a big IF, that drive is put into another
system, any important info should be quickly copied off because that
drive is on its last days. I don't know what kind of damage happened to
it, but the chances of getting things off it aren't very high.

I kinda got the idea that maybe she didn't think I knew what I was
doing, but then I did get the front off her system and pulled the drive
out through the front of the case. ^_^

If anyone else seems to think as I do that her drive is likely done for,
by all means leave a comment saying so. Some drives last a long time,
some don't, it's all relative.

Oh yeah! Almost forgot about the printer! They had tried to hook up an
HP Photosmart printer to it via USB but without installing the drivers
for it. I mean, if you can't find the CD, why bother hooking it up?
Anywho, someone did. And it wouldn't print. I solved that by going to
HP's support website and finding the XP package of basic software and
drivers for the printer. Shut down the 'puter, unplugged the USB cable.
Start it back up, run the driver install, and turned on the printer and
plugged it in when the installer said to. Device was detected and it
prints now. That seemed to surprise her. ^_^

About the only other thing I was unable to work on was a JVC mini
digital video camera. It had a USB plug as well, but they didn't have
any CD of software for it at all. The camera DID have an SD Card slot,
but no card. I told them to get a card (2G would be kinda nice) and use
it with the 'puters many card readers. That would solve the other
problem until they got a CD or whatever for it.

Lucky Star OVA DVD

Oh man, I don't know. Bandai looks like they're getting ready to get out
of the U.S. anime DVD market or just really trying to cut corners or
save money. Special Edition release for Lucky Star v.6 was cancelled so
that just the DVD was released, and now the OVA DVD is Sub Only. The
menus are sparse - no animation or music. It's like bare bones
everything. Kyon must have done this during an all-nighter. A stark
difference between this and the TV series DVDs which are very nice.

At the end of the main part, there's a frame before it ends that shows
they could have put on Japanese TV commercials as extras but they
didn't. What is nice is the end part with the Live Action Lucky Channel
is shot on video, also included as a no-credit extra but with subs. I
can now delete the video file I grabbed to preview the OVA, since I've
heard the audio goes out of sync and isn't subbed at that point.

I could have ordered it from Right Stuf at a slightly lower price, only
to have shipping compensate for Best Buy's price. So in the end, it
evens out.

I enjoyed the OVA, good to see more Misao!

I've been ordering the Lucky Star manga from Bandai, so hopefully
Diamond will ship V.2 and future books when / should it be published.