Hoping for a future

A few days ago I sent in the application for the Rural Development
Uniform housing loan. Or something much to that effect. I hope I hear
from them soon so I can snap up one of a few houses I have en eye on.
The house we're currently in went on the market in April without our
consent. My older sister claims she's upset that mom's upset for that
happening, but I know better. It's crockadile tears. Then, just because
it's been... what, 3 months? since that happened and the house here
hasn't sold? She's trying to blame the unsold house on us? I heard talk
of her wanting to kick us out so the house will sell. All I know is,
when the name on the deed for the house is mine, my older sister will
never be in my house ever again.

Something of a revelation

After reading over the text of stupid customers that I had saved, I
realize something but only after having some exposure to Gordon Ramsay
and his Kitchen Nightmares, Boiling Point, and Beyond Boiling Point, as
well as the current Fox series Hell's Kitchen - I should have had
complete free reign and control of how I wanted to deal with stupid
customers when I worked at the restaurant. When that one stupid woman
complained of "cold fries" when the dish had just been dished up from
product that was still under the hold timer, I should have been given
the right without retaliation, much like Gordon Ramsay, to go right up
to her and ask what the problem is.

"What's the problem?"

"The fries are cold."

"Oh really? Let's have a look at one then."

Pick up a fry, break it open (crisp fries should snap open), and have
hot steam come out of the broken ends.

"That certainly looks like a hot french fry. I can grab some of the cold
ones out of the freezer if you need something to compare these to.
Satisfied now?"

Oh man, the things I wanted to do. Gordon Ramsay is like an idol in
regard to how chefs should be. Perfectionist, demanding of respect, and
willing to fight for the quality and reputation of the food they create.

Damn straight.

Anywho, here I sit at my mom's desktop working on files for a CDrom and all, and I realize something. It's Tuesday before Anime North, but I'm not doing something I feel I should be: gathering at a friend's house with all of our group that goes to Toronto around this time of year, waiting to leave Wednesday morning, an extra day or 2 ahead of time so we can do shopping at Pacific Mall before the convention. This feeling is odd. It may also relieve the tensions of crossing the border into Canada as well as the post-convention blues when coming back and all. Everything tells me something is wrong. I should be somewhere else feeling good - but I'm not. It's kinda depressing. I don't have my camcorder ready with charged batteries or blank tapes; I didn't get any clothes ready; I don't even know what panels they'll be holding. I'll have to ask my anime friend in Toronto to see if he can get me an additional program book. I never really expected to go this year. I didn't even pre-register! Instead, the Wednesday before Anime North, I have to get ready for work, then a day off, then I work during most of the convention. And things at work aren't the greatest either, so I will likely not be in the best of spirits right now. I have my friends and I work with people I like, more or less. It's just sad.

Everything right now says this is wrong. My friends' plans also imploded, which in turn imploded my plans. I have money that I won't be spending where I want to spend it. My exposure to Asian and Japanese culture will be lacking. This was not how 2005 was supposed to be like.

Anywho, I must plod on. Somehow. I'm going to miss all those people in costume. Damn.

Pioneer DVDs marked down at Valu City

A friend on a whim for something else went to a local Valu City store
and noticed a rack over by the toys and small appliances with Pioneer
DVDs on them. Of note, a Card Captor Sakura DVD, one CardCraptors DVD, 2
Adventures of the Mini Goddesses (Urd and Skuld files - dunno why they
can't just number them), Black Heaven. $5.99 each. There may have been
others, I don't know. I know of one other Valu City store and may try
checking it out to see what they got.

Interesting to see stuff like this popping up almost all over. Dollar
General, Big Lots, and now Valu City? It was a few years or so ago I
found MEAD's Sailor Moon design notebooks at Valu City and ended up
collecting all 6 designs. It's nice to see stuff like this still popping
up. And it sorta makes up for our group's destroyed plans for Anime
North this year. T.T

change of plans all around

First off, there will be No Anime North trip this year. We will try to
plan something else instead, and maybe shoot for Anime North in 2006 if
things work out all around. I am also hoping to shoot for a trip to
Japan possibly in 2006.

Secondly...

"OK, change of plans is in the works."

"First off, I may have use our union influence to finally get the
position I've been screaming for. They put people in there and they
don't exactly want to be there - then they get someone like me with
experience to be there and I get totally ignored!!!"

Scratch that - Management at the store is using "customer service
issues" as an excuse to not let me go to Hot Foods (which I have
experience doing - 10.5 frigging years of experience!) NOR to train me
on registers! Bastards! I have another ace up my sleeve, and I will not
reveal my plans just yet. I had one of the union stewards pound an
explanation out of the HR person, and even then they got the brush-off
and got lied to as well. I have written down notes of this whole ordeal
so I don't forget any details. I have not given up fighting.

"There may also be a plan in the works that will allow mom and myself to
buy a house. It will end up in my name, and if I can get something in
the price range I'm thinking of, this could go well. I'll have to start
praying I can find something where I will like it. I liked living on
Euclid, so perhaps there will be something available. Heh."

These plans haven't changed. I'm still working on this.

"Been selling on eBay pretty steadily for the past month. Some items get
no interest, while some do surprisingly well. Up to now, all my JEM
listings have sold the first try. I fear the Star Stage won't, and only
because I haven't been able to find one piece. T.T"

My last few listings came and went. The buyer of the Psygnosis lot says
disk 1 of Awesome is missing. While I don't think that's true, I will
look to see if it ended up staying here. My brother in law took in
almost $500 for the remote control model airplanes he had me sell for
him on eBay, with one seller being a bit of a fussbudget. Might block
them from future listings.

Been working on graphics from CDroms a friend sent me. The Prototype
Generation BBS collection, the Venice Perfect Memory collection, as well
as some assorted sound and video files, and "Digital Pink" which has a
terrible rate of duplicate images and other stuff. Compressed a bunch of
uncompressed KISS files into LZH archives. Today's KISS software has the
ability built in to uncompress from LZH archives. ^_^ Also working on
converting .AU files to .WAV or even MP3 if the file is big enough.

Most of the pics in JPG format needed better compression. All pics are
getting the BBS stamp removed. Some get softened to make them look more
like a computer graphic rather than a poor grainy GIF conversion or bad
scan. Improves the overall look as well as the space saved on disk. Some
of those JPGs were huge. Criky.

Testing with Veggie Sloppy Joes

Vegetarian Sloppy Joes

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup lentils, sorted and rinsed
2 cups water
2 onions, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
3/4 cup ketchup
3 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. cider vinegar
1 Tbsp. yellow mustard
10 kaiser rolls, split and toasted

PREPARATION:
Sort over lentils and combine with water in medium saucepan. Bring to a
boil, then cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Place in 3-4 quart crockpot
with remaining ingredients except for vinegar, mustard, and kaiser
rolls. Cover and cook for 10-12 hours until thickened. Stir in vinegar
and mustard just before serving. Make sandwiches using toasted buns. 10
sandwiches

There was a skillet version that didn't take as long...

Trying to do an update

It seems the mail 2 blogger thingy is fixed. One tech support email
suggested changing one setting and I've done that. The previous thingy I
sent got through anyway.

Been trying to do a rant on work. Even though one person keeps saying
"it's your job to do that" or "that's what you're being paid to do" -
those statements mean nothing to me. It may be my job, but that doesn't
make it right!

Anywho, earlier in February...

"The time taken to do the deed was worth it"

Just to prove that taking the time to download security updates is far
less in comparison to the time it will take to clean out the ravages of
internet damage to one's computer, here's a little tale.

Yesterday, I finally had a chance to get to work on one friend's Win98
SE desktop. He had contracted a browser hijack, among other things,
after stumbling on a website that wasn't quite on the level with people
who land on it, if you know what I mean.

The first moment I got there and started it up, it was slow. The dialer
for the ISP came up. I thought "Wtf?" So I cancelled it out. That
brought the desktop to a screeching halt and had to shut down. So I
decided, whatever it's going to do, let it do it.
Start up again, the dialer came up, so I let it do its thing. Some thing
or other came up as having crashed, but instead of closing the warning
box, I let it sit there. Trying to load up My Computer to get to the CD
rom, the computer launches the browser and immediately goes to some
website. I minimize the browser so it doesn't get in the way. Before
that came up, I noticed a desktop shortcut now appears that wasn't there
before. Hoo boy, this thing's got some serious crap going on. Fix it 4.0
tries to do an internet update, so I stop it. Another blank browser
window tries to come up, I minimize then eventually get it closed.

In the meantime, I finally get the CDrom drive to come up, and the
computer runs the install for Ad Aware. It takes a while, but I get it
running and it goes through finding registry keys, registry values, over
200 cookies and 1 folder, eventually finding on its first scan with the
definitions it comes with, 212 items to remove. When you run installs
for stuff like this, you're supposed to close any open programs, but
with the problems this system was having, that wasn't an option. Just
let things fall where they may, and you get on with it. Ad Aware removes
most of the stuff, closing the browser in the process. I have it then
ready to scan on the next restart.

Now, the side benefit from having the crap on there was it kept checking
in over the net connection, which kept the ISP from dropping carrier. I
have Ad Aware do an update and run it again. It finds more items, and
does a more thorough scan. I have the system restart, because there are
sometimes items it can't remove because they're in use.

3rd scan was pretty fast. 6 processes running, it catches 4 more
registry keys. The system is starting to come up to speed. I run AVG
Free, and it has to do an update right away. I run it, and it takes
around an hour and a half. It finds 57 occurences of virus in various
files, like variants and copies of Krepper, some trojan downloaders, a
trojan dialer (which explains the system dialing up at startup). It
heals 3, deletes the other 54 files.

Eventually, the system is clean, the HD is quiet, and the desktop is
responsive. The home page hijack changed at least 3 times before it
stayed with Yahoo. I increased the security settings and it now prompts
for cookies, because that's how a lot of this spyware and malware
garbage gets on your Windoze computer. You can stop a lot of that now.

That took about 7 hours to complete. In the end, the result is worth it.
Most rewarding 7 hours I spent working on a computer, I feel.

Downloading a security update - a few minutes at a time

Which would you be willing to wait for?

Addition: Due to the power outage messing up the modem on WebTV, I've
discovered something surprising. If I connect with the terminal while
it's still on and it's misbehaving (meaning it needs to be turned off to
clear the RAM), I can turn it off, and have it re-dial right away and it
seems to connect on the first try. I don't know why. It does this
usually after I have the terminal hang up and then re-dial again.
Connections go easier once I've already been online... Go figure.

Is it working again?

Testing to see if the tech people fixed things.

My archive CDroms...

Both of my archive CDroms underwent some revisions lately. Since finding
out Google was giving away Picasa 2 software, I grabbed it for my mom's
system and installed it. It works nice for some features, but it's habit
of how it handles edited pics annoys me.

Say I copy a bunch of pics onto the HD. Run Picasa 2, it finds them and
sorts according to the date stamp on the files, and then according to
subdirectory name. Go through the "folders" of pics, view and edit them
one by one. If you crop or make changes you want in the final pic, you
have to "Hold" them in the picture tray. Go through and edit and hold
them, then Export the pictures to a folder. Even if you select the
original folder, Picasa 2 creates a Picasa.ini file you have to delete,
as well as a new subdirectory for the exports... I had to move the
exports (the resulting edits I wanted) back up to where I wanted them.
Then as I was done with each folder of pics, I removed them from Picasa.
It's set up to never overwrite your original pics, but that's what I
want...!!

So a lot of cropping and other adjustments were done. Really smooth
editing. It doesn't let you draw or create pics (which it should do),
and I find its editing features like compositing a bit odd and not
working the way I expect it. But it does nicely, and the pics I wanted
to crop are done. (At least until I add more..)

I did a first count of floppies I went through for my archives. It's not
complete yet. I counted 376 720K discs, and 235 1.44MB disks, 125 unused
(736 total so far) and I still have more to count...! You gotta realize
lots of those disks were not completely filled, and I had numerous
copies of the same files. I had to weed out a lot of duplicate data.

I also finally checked out 3VR's "3D Adventures of Sailor Moon" which
never ran on the laptop because it didn't have video support the
software needed. It ran on mom's XP desktop with practically no
installation - it had the DirectX components already, far much removed
with newer versions since the CDrom was made!

It's somewhat nice and all. I mean, for kids, it's OK I guess. The
interesting thing is to go through and copy off the pics for the cube
puzzles. There's a couple in that directory not even used in the
program!! I extracted all the BitMap pics that looked OK on their own
and converted them to JPG. Pulled off the Midi files, and the video AVIs
which can be played in Media Player without the 3VR software. The video
in those files mostly looks like a bad capture of lousy videotape...!!

The most annoying thing is that when you try to visit the various areas
looking for the 5 pens, the software more often than not exited. Some
interesting bits:

- in the Fashion Salon bit, Mars has one selection of clothing that
includes 3 china dresses!

- Also, Venus has some black clothing that makes her look evil. I
composited the gloves that you couldn't mix with another outfit and
might send that to a friend to send to a serious Venus fan - for that
matter they both might enjoy it, because they're both serious Sailor
Venus fans!

- After examining the graphics, it shows the fashion salon thingies with
4 snapshots instead of the 3 you get right off. Chibi-Usa even gets her
own fashion salon thingy.

- There's at least 2 graphic images in one directory you don't see used
in the software itself. If you were to make a copy onto your HD, you
could change the horrible WAV audio files to sound better with other
voices, and possibly edit or change the texture mapped BitMaP pics for
various things. ^_- 3VR didn't use any of the DiC dub voices, and the
recordings they did use are kinda lame.

And finally, long time host of the Tonight Show, Johnny Carson, passed
away recently. He got to enjoy only 13 years of retirement. I can't
believe he's gone.

Unbelievably excellent moment

I haven't had much of these lately, but today was one that was
"Priceless."

Anywho, I had to go grocery shopping on my day off. So I have a few
stops to make, and to spend the time doing it (and kindly driving me
around) was my friend.

Big Lots had media cases I needed (got 2 of them), a couple thingies of
super adhesive stuff (might put that truck rear view mirror back up),
and something else.

Go to Aldi's and do most of the shopping.

Went to Marc's and got some stuff (forgot the spaghetti sauce and had to
go back in...).

But we walked over to where I used to work in that same plaza (Westwood
Square) so I could fulfill one promise to one lady I used to work with.
She had given me a couple of photos of 2 cats she used to have, both of
which have sadly passed away. I promised I would give her a floppy with
those scans on it so she could see them on her family's computer. I hope
she still has it. But what I ended up doing was making a wallpaper
graphic JPG, and sharing a "PG" edition of my Anime Archive CDrom with
some movie files and somesuch.

So we approach one door, and I see duct tape over the handle on the
inside, which by placing it where it is, keeps the latch thingy on the
inside pushed into the door handle and it can be unlocked. I laugh at
this because it seems either it has broken or no one remembers how to
make the mechanism work right anymore. (heh!)

Anywho, as I walk in, my former manager comes out of the restroom and so
he's like RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. I stop immediately, because he's not
seen me yet. My friend observes he picks up a tray, gets a glimpse of me
at the one corner you turn to go towards the back, then books it to the
back. (^.^)

Anywho, one lady I worked with that I don't really have an overabundance
of negative feelings towards tells me that the lady I want to give the
CDrom to isn't there today. I ask her to give it to her next time she's
in. We talk a bit then I find out Randy, one co-worker I enjoyed working
with, returned because his other job screwed him over. I encourage him
to get a job in a union shop, because you won't get abused there. I
suffered so much abuse I'm actually glad to be where I am now. (I say
this aloud and there's some customers in the store! Heh!) My friend
spews out where we work now (I didn't want to let them know) but now I
feel it's not like they can do anything, and it's not like the UFCW will
even listen to people from non-union shops anyway.

So anywho we leave. My friend observes "Your former manager disappeared
quicker than a magician!" I observe later that he never even bothered to
greet me or anything. Of course, I didn't come to say hello or to talk
to him. My purpose was to deliver that CDrom.

I've been laughing about this since that moment. Unbelievable priceless.
Made waiting 3 months before I showed my face in there again well worh
it. I hope they notice that I didn't ask for a drink or anything. I'll
have nothing to do with YUM! brands foods ever again.

For the first time ever, I feel things will be alright once the midnight
shift job falls into my hands. If we can just hold out until that
happens...!