My grandfather wasn't always that great

During the time I worked at Long John Silver's, I learned to be careful with what I told my grandfather over the phone especially after work when I'd come home in pain all tired and exhausted. Mom learned quickly not to tell him all about her suffering because he'd sit there on the other end just chortling away, gleeful at our suffering. I made that mistake once and then Mom would talk to him later and hear him laughing as he talked after hearing from me. That's when she advised me to be careful with how much I told him because as she put it "He's just sitting there being entertained by hearing you saying how much you're tired." 

Rather than tell me (or us) how proud he was (he wasn't) we had jobs and were working hard, his toxic retired ass sat there enjoying his delight over our misery. He put in a lot of years at Minerva Wax Paper and had a good pension in his retirement so he was living rather comfortably. But being supportive and nurturing wasn't something he did. He wanted people dependent on him and our financial independence was a threat to that.

He was at least a toxic father, didn't much appreciate being a grandparent (at least not that I could tell), but somehow embraced being a Great Grandparent when my first niece came along. 

I still remember the one time he left a message on the answering machine (a shame I don't think I still have the tape) calling me a "Goddamn sonuvabitch b@stard." Gee, thanks, Grandpa. Love you, too.

Rurouni Kenshin to get a new anime

I hope this is successful and popular and it pisses people off because those are the ones who need to get a life.

I'm not a fan of Kenshin so I won't be watching and everyone is sick of the vitriol which gets dredged up. You don't like what he did? Go away, don't comment, go on some other forum and spew there. Lots of web space everywhere else. It's like parking too close to the driver's side door of the only a car in a parking lot just to annoy the owner.

Atari 2600 for Christmas: 40 years on

40 years ago, my mom crossed a labor picket line to work the presses at Merit Plastics in East Canton along with her friend Frances R. She did this for several months until she had saved up quite a bit of money, then went to Service Merchandise in Canton, Ohio to buy our first Atari 2600 and 2 games, Combat and Space Invaders. I know these details because I recently came across the sales receipt for that 2600.

It would be awhile before we would get more games. I got Kaboom! for my birthday. Pac-man was bought at Electronic Service with funds kindly provided by some guy she was seeing though he didn't know he was paying. Hehehe!

Finally, the great North American Video Game market Crash happened and the local Fisher's Big Wheel had a container display full of marked down cartridges. $9.99 each! What does a kid do? I went out and collected aluminum cans to recycle. One summer, Hershey had this rebate program where you send in candy bar wrappers and they send you a check for $5. Only thing to it was there was no limit to how many times you could do it. I collected those wrappers out of garbage barrels at the parks, took them home to iron flat, then stuffed envelopes. I read the directions very carefully. I don't remember how much money I earned this way, but judging from the cartridges in my collection, it was quite a lot! I can still tell you which games I got at Fisher's.

We were hard on that 1st 2600. The power supply needed replaced at least once. I remember rebuilding the old one. Then we had to get another 2600 because of the stress of use but by then they were much cheaper. The Atari Club sent their Atari Age magazine and they sold the popular Joystick Repair Kit. We also ordered a few games direct from the club. The Saturday spent playing and solving Raiders of the Lost Ark was a good one!

Mom would later say she regretted buying that 1st Atari 2600 because I stopped going outside to play for the most part. I had enough of the neighborhood bullies and brats. I'm fricking glad I found something I could be good at. Video games made my clumsy child age a lot better.

64-bit Atari Jaguar CDROM Braindead 13 Easter Egg

Troy Cheek used to host this little nugget on his website (now gone) but here it is thanks to the Way back Machine.

Andy Floyd of Fidonet ATARI_ST says...

1. Start Braindead 13 with the Memory Track cartridge installed.
2. When the game begins to play the intro animation, skip it by pressing a fire button. (Not necessary but hey, you've seen that before, right?)
3. Select a New Game.
4. When the scene begins with that shot of the fireplace, immediately press OPTION and Save your game, then Continue.
5. Play up to the point before one of the witches (usually the one to the left after you get past the Conservatory).
6. Instead of pressing Right or Left, you should see an Elevator and press UP.
7. This transports you all the way to the showdown with Fritz, and then the Brain Chamber.

I have done this at least 3 times and always works.

Data Existentialism

This is the sort of thing you don't want at 5 a.m. You're using your device and looking at pictures when it suddenly decides to stop recognizing your micro SD card and now shows only what's on the internal storage.

Yeah, my Alcatel device decided to do that. I had deleted 2 images off, and I was just looking around when it decided to do its own thing and blam. Settings said by not showing it there was no SD card. It decided on its own to unmount it. Yikes.

So I fully get up, get out a flashlight and open up the back, remove the battery, and then get at the card. Contacts are gold plated and clean. What the fudge. Put it back in and together, still not acknowledging the card.

This is NOT happening. Make the effort and turn on my Windows 7 desktop. Get out the Micro SD adapter. Make a backup directory. Insert card into the reader slot. Windows says there are errors and should it scan and fix? I say no, let's just see what's on there. And up pops the directory of the card. So yes, it still works.

Grab everything and drag to copy into the backup directory. And it goes well, except for one imgcache directory with an error. I tell it to skip it. No other read errors. But I notice while browsing in My Computer there are a few images not popping up a thumbnail and same with a few video files. The images won't load at all, the video files at least play. One looks like there's some bad data. Hhhrrmm...

I forget to scan it and pop it back into the Alcatel and boot it up. It once again sees the microSD card! And as expected, Gallery isn't fully populating all the image folders. So that may be that imgcache error. Stop Gallery, clear cache, delete application data. Let it rebuild its thumbnail database and it does. So it seems to be OK.

But I still made that backup of 3.7 gb of data and photos.

When I actually buy candy

I just realized there are only 4 times a year when I actually buy candy for personal consumption:

• Valentine's Day - if I can find a special KitKat variety

• Easter - $1 solid Chocolate Bunny or 2. This will always be chocolate regardless what I buy.

• Halloween - again, special KitKats apply

• Christmas - something chocolate

Always cheap, at least 1 bag of something. It's enough.

I found my game online!

Years ago I had toiled away writing a conversion of Spectrum Holobyte's Soko-ban ("Warehouse Guard") game on the IBM PC for my Atari 8-bit. I had dumped all the levels in hex on printer paper at college, so all I needed to do was figure out the game.

I used a powerful font editor called Envision, published by Antic Magazine. It made creating an animated font very easy. I designed a smoothly animated font for Push It! which I called my game as well as signed my name into the font.

At one point it bogged down even in compiled TurboBASIC, so I pulled out MAC-65 and began putting together a machine language subroutine to check the screen. It was the most important piece of my game and the program self modified it by inserting the screen address and my string table of screen addresses which needed checked as well as how many. It returned a number equal to the boxes put on solution squares. You completed a level by pushing the boxes onto the solution squares.

And I wrote it, finished it, played some levels, and basically had it on a disk and thought not much of it until I uploaded a Diskcomm file of it onto an Atari user group BBS in Arizona. And then I forgot about it.

Some time later, I was contacted by that user group how they went nuts over it and how 6 levels were "unsolvable." So I went back to those the printouts and reentered them and a few I had made mistakes. But I made sure to play those 6 levels and surprise - I solved them! I sent them a new disk but the user group still insisted they were unsolvable... 

I thought as a lark to search for my game online, and I was surprised to see someone uploaded it!

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-push-it_4178.html

Yearly visit to my doctor?

Last week I ran out of refill counts and when that happens, I have to call my primary doctor for refills. Only this time, I had to go in to their office first. I was expecting to be able to talk to her about my issues - falling drowsy and then asleep around noon even in spite of a rousing wake up and breakfast, not having the 4 things I need for my care - scale, shower seat, hand sprayer, and rollerator. I don't know why I don't have these things when all my mother had to do was ask for them.

Instead, I was NPO since midnight before the day of my appointment because they were wanting a blood draw. I was less than enthused.

I spent my week getting ready. I get a phone call from my pharmacy saying I have refills to pick up - apparently the doctor people called them in already. I tell them I will be there on the 3rd because I have other things also to do on that day. I planned to leave my broom closet around 10:30 a.m....

Only thing is 2 days before my appointment, I get a building notice they are doing Covid cleaning from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and would people either stay in their units during that time and spend as little time as possible in the halls.

8:30 a.m. ... Goddamnit to f•vk. So along my preparation to have a little post blood draw picnic, I basically have to wake up and immediately get my underwear, pants, and shoes on before my feet can swell up after being wrapped the night before. And then be out of the building before 8:30 a.m. leaving me to have to wait in parking lots before going to the doctor and bring supremely early.

One detail I left out out until now is I usually take 2 acetaminophen tablets for pain because it hurts getting around. I have to do all this getting out, go to my credit union, go to the doctor, then the pharmacy store, with absolutely no pain relief. Somehow, I managed to do this.

I get out, check my mail, get to my vehicle and get in, get to my credit union, get back in, and get to the pharmacy store parking lot where I wait. I pop on the radio, listen to lunatics on talk radio, look through my mail and other bits I need to write stuff on. I considered going in but realized this was to be a busy day, so I waited to advance to my doctor.

Get to my doctor and no weigh in. I don't get to speak to my doctor, it's straight to the blood draw person. Not enthused. Get the spike in my arm (still hurts a day later) and now I'm being asked to pee in a hat. This hat you don't wear - I'm being told to perform a little urine sample. This is a surprise, because I went back in the broom closet before I left and I was pretty sure I didn't have any more. But I was betrayed and enough came out in the hat to get my nuts warm and moist whereupon I pinched it off to remove the device from the toilet so I could finish... And then I was done. Didn't get to speak to my doctor.

Back in my vehicle, I have my little picnic. Sandwich, water with flavor packet, cold rice with PreCure curry. And 2 acetaminophen. Only thing is, this triggered something else the body does. I started farting. That means I need to visit a toilet soon.

For supper the night before, it was also rice with a little PreCure curry packet. And a raw egg mixed in the hot rice. Only it must not have been hot enough, because my farts were signalling I needed to hit a toilet damn soon and there would be no pain relief or waiting for a powered shopping scooter, this poop baby was going to deliver itself in my pants if I didn't hurry up.

Get to the pharmacy, park, get out, and grabbed a cart without accident. Walk in as quickly as I could, making a beeline to the men's restroom and thankfully nobody on the toilet. Barely had moments to get my ass uncovered before this runny shitstorm was forcing its way out into the toilet.

Then I realized I need to bring my magic butt wiping wand with me at all times because this was going to need wiped off. I also found out the short small end of my cane can be quickly adapted for this purpose with enough toilet tissue wrapped around one end.

Somehow I managed this whole episode of a day where I dropped off the one container I still had for a refill and went back to grab a charged shopping cart (the slow green one) and conduct my business.

Only to find out my doctor called in 3 refills of pills. I hope more get called in after next week's appointment.

When Barty Crouch Jr used polyjuice to become Mad Eye Moody, why was he also missing an eye & part of a leg?

I miss my Marmalade.