And so it ends…

Meanwhile at Mrs. Fields, the store owner has decided to pursue opportunities elsewhere (not to be discussed here at this time. Maybe in a future post). At first he tried to sell the store, but there were no serious takers. I was seriously thinking about buying it myself (confession: back when I was working for him exclusively, my dream was to own my own store). But there were no takers. And so about a month ago, the decision was made to close. And today was the last day….

I have now officially lost my second job. Financially it won’t set me back at all (after all, I still have a full-time primary job). And I’ve already been offered a position at his next opportunity. But owing to the distances involved, I don’t know if I can accept it.

And so Mrs. Fields closed today. I have taken down the store’s Facebook page. Today ends over 26 years of working for Mrs. Fields in some form or another. It started in April of 1995 at The Original Cookie Company in the South Hill Mall. About a year later that company merged with Mrs. Fields. And then they bought a couple of other concepts. I’ve worked in the South Hill Mall, the Tacoma Mall, the Westlake Center, the SeaTac Mall (now the Commons At Federal Way), the Kitsap Mall, and precisely two hours at Southcenter. And with the possible exception of one PretzelMaker at the Kitsap Mall, they’ve all closed. Shopping malls are in a serious decline. For many years, they used to be my livelyhood. But the only constant in this is that it’ll change. And like it or not, you have to move on….

So a pipeline got taken down…

So a pipeline got taken down by a ransomware attack. And people are panic-buying gasoline, which is making things worse than they need to… This is mainly affecting the East coast. I don’t think we’ll be affected here on the west coast.

But as for ransomware attacks, I think I’m pretty safe from that. I hope. I have backups. And they’re physically disconnected from my computer until they’re needed. You can’t hack it if it’s turned off….

Still signed in, after all these years…

So, I did a recent security audit on my Google account. Found out I was still signed into my Google account on my old HTC 10 and HTC One (M8) phones. I could remotely sign out on my HTC 10, but there wasn’t a way to sign out of the other one. But there was another way to delete my account information. I just factory reset both phones. Actually I booted phones into recovery (remember, I had rooted these), and deleted everything. And they’ve gone into The Drawer. I haven’t used one in over 2 years, and the other in over 4 years.

And I just wiped my Samsung Galaxy Note 9, too. And it too has gone into The Drawer…

Mother's Day Today....

Today is Mother's Day. May Barbara Bryant spend all eternity frolicking in the Beer Volcano and Stripper Factory. Ramen.

Happy Mother's Day, if applicable... 

All done

So, a couple of weeks ago, my computer’s power supply went south, and I had to replace it. And while I was replacing it, I replaced upgraded two of my hard drives. So, now I have 4 hard drives: 1 ssd, and 3 hard drives. My computer now has a total of 25 tb of storage. Anyway, because of the drive replacements, and all the data being moved around, I ended up doing a system wipe. Completely. Meaning  I used the ‘clean’ command from the command prompt. Between my Epic Games, Amazon Prime Games, and Steam Games I think I downloaded about 3 terabytes’ worth of crap. Then I had to redownload my GOG, Origin, and Ubisoft games (these I normally keep archived on another drive, but the drive got wiped).

But it’s all done. I just have to keep reminding myself that my hardware is permanently incompatible with Windows 7, and every time I’ve tried it has lasted for 12 hours at the most. And then I’m back to square 1. Although I’m getting better at rebuilding my system. I’m now down to a week and a half. It used to take me just 2 1/2 days to do it. With 2 different versions of Windows even. But then again, I only had 2 30 gb hard drives at the time, too….

#Ipickedaheckuvatimetoquitdrinking

It is now Cinco de Mayo. A minor Mexican holiday. Where a battle is commemorated that the Mexicans won (in a war with the French that they eventually lost). The actually Mexican independence day commemorates the Grito de Dolores on September 16. It is celebrated more in the US than in Mexico.

So, most of us here will be eating tacos (most likely the Taco Bell version not the authentic Mexican ones) and drinking Corona (founded by German immigrants, and therefor more closely related to Budweiser than Mexico), not realizing that it’s not really that big of a holiday.It is more known for it’s historical significance in Mexico….

On my Grandpa’s dairy farm, he had a steer named Cinco de Mayo, because he was born on Cinco de Mayo. He was friendly. But my father was in the Army at the time, and he got posted to Germany, and so off to Europe we went. At Cinco de Mayo (the steer) became meatloaf…