So what all happened with my new phone, and a few other things…

Ok, so I had my nice shiny new HTC Sensation 4g, and all was well, as I had posted previously. I got the phone on Saturday, and I was told that T-Mobile’s system was down, and my sale/contract renewal was done with an ‘off-line’ sale. The clerk went over all of the terms with me, I thought, and my boss was there to provide his credit card (the promotion at the time was that the phones were free after rebate, and my boss would simply get the rebate). I took the phones and then left the T-Mobile store.

The first red flag should’ve been raised the following Sunday. I got a call from the T-Mobile store saying they had charged my boss’s credit card the wrong amount, and would actually be charging it for $20 more than what was supposed to be the charge, I thought. But due to my erratic work schedule, I wasn’t able to get back to the store till the ensuing Wednesday. I get there and the manager pulls out my paperwork and hands it to me. I then saw that not only was I on a two year contract, but I was also on an equipment installment plan, which no one had said anything to me before! So, not only was on a contract, but I was going to pay full price anyway. The next Saturday, I returned my phones. I had my HTC Sensation 4g for only one week. When I returned my phones, I was told that I had to pay a $50 restocking fee per phone. I simply told the clerk that I would eat the loss.

What happened here was fundamentally wrong on a few points.

• The amount charged to the credit card was changed ex post facto. This was my boss’s credit card, and he sure wasn’t happy when he found out about this.
• I had to sign a contract without actually seeing it, let alone the fine print. IIRC this is illegal, and I should probably report this to the state Attorney General’s office. This is a real sticking point, because:
• The terms were either changed ex post facto, or the clerk failed to tell me about it (in fact, the clerk who handled my return said that it appeared that this was most likely). It doesn’t matter to me. I see no between malice and incompetence.

So, being a reader of The Consumerist, I knew what had to happen. I deployed an Executive Email Carpet Bomb (something I’ve had to do before, with Pierce Transit). A couple of days later, I got a call from Christopher Lowe at T-Mobile. Basically, he said T-Mobile was right, I was wrong, but he was going to offer to credit my account for the restocking fee in question. I declined. I don’t need to fucking freebie if you’re going to talk down to me. Having checked my account online prior to the call, I also saw that my phone line was still under contract, even though I had already returned the phones. I made sure that he set my account as not under contract. I hung up, and I thought I might still give T-Mobile a chance.

While all this was happening, I talked to my brother about switching to Sprint. The day after I got off the phone with Christopher Lowe, Philip and I were in Puyallup to celebrate our parents’ birthdays when we came by a Sprint store. We went in, and picked our phones out, and at this time Philip told me that when I talked to T-Mobile executive care, his data service was cut off. That was enough for me. I dumped T-mobile. My brother got an iPhone 4s, and I got an HTC EVO 3D. Basically, a Sensation but with a different radio, and 3-D camera.

T-Mobile is a royal cluster-fuck when it comes to customer service. There were at least two (possibly three) occasions where T-Mobile could’ve kept my business. All they had to do was not be total incompetent clods. I’m now starting to get collection calls from T-Mobile about my last balance. I’ll probably pay it. But I think a complaint to the FTC and the state attorney general’s office is in order, too…

Hello World!

Ok. So I renewed my phone contract yesterday. T-Mobile had a sale, where any smartphone they had was free after rebate. And my boss was willing to lend me the money. So I went top the local corporate store and got the HTC Sensation. It was unrooted with the stock ROM. And that lasted all of abøøt an hour and a half once I got off work. To be honest, by the time l bought the phone, I had already downloaded and tweaked the latest ENERGY ROM for. It is essentially the same as the one for the HD2. So I have good comparison for the hardware.

And all I have to say is that it's lightning fast. I guess a 1.2 GHz dual-core will do that. And the Ram (768 mB), meaning I don't have to mess with a swap file or zRam (both are more trouble than they're worth on the HD2). I guess running Android on a phone that's designed for it (with proper drivers) makes a difference (remember the HD2 original came with WinMo 6.5, putting Android in it is kind of like putting a Corvette engine in a Mustang: you'll very the performance, but there will always be issues).

There are a couple of drawbacks to it. While all the literature I saw about it advertises that it has 4 gB of internal storage, only 1 gB is available to the user. Ok, I thought. But I soon realized that no one had implemented A2SD for the Sensation. And currently there is no way to repartition the NAND. So I'm making very liberal use of the move to SD. If I don't need a particular app for a widget, it'll get moved to the sd card...

But overall, I'm impressed. Right now, I'm running Gingerbread. But they have Ice Cream Sandwich coming right around the corner....

And did I mention that in the 10th and Commerce test, I can pull about 5 megs? Not too shabby. A short while ago that passed for broadband speed....

Stood up….

Saturday, I was at work, and when I got off, I noticed one of the employees at the business right next us had an HD2 like me. He told me he wanted to Netflix on his phone, and the only way to do that is either put windows phone 7 or Android on it. He still needs WinMO, so i told there was a way to run Android off the sd card (which I did for a while), and he said he’d be back so I could (I have all the necessary files on my laptop).

So I show up. At my work on my day off. And the id10t stands me up….

Ok people, if I’m willing to fix your techie items, then you need to show up when I say meet me. I didn’t buy a bus pass this month, and I have to eat the loss for the round trip bus fare. Fortunately, A co-worker called out, and I can make some use of my time here. But still, this is something to consider when you decide to no-show….

And he totally deserves it!

The Giants won a football game yesterday. You may know of it, but I won’t mention it because the No Fun League are total assholes when it comes to anything even remotely close to it…

Yes Eli Manning deserves the MVP and the obvious Ring that goes with it. At least until Frodo decides to throw it into a volcano…. But the title if this is about Tom Brady. He got a Well-Deserved Beating yesterday. And if there is anyone in Football who deserves a Tom Brady Well-Deserved Beating, it’s Tom Brady. His wife was asking everyone to pray for him and the Patriots during the game.during the game. There are many things that I may pray for. For one team during a professional sports event is not one of them. If I were to invoke a religious ritual for an NFL game, there is but one option: sacrificing Tim Tebow…..

So I just nuked my laptop..

And my tower is next. I thought I addressed the issue of my laptop freezing when I nuked Firefox, but they persisted. So I took the nuke from orbit approach and wiped it. I wasn't looking forward to it, but it was necessary. With my laptop almost literally going everywhere I go, I decided this approach would deal with any malware, if it was the cause. If it's a hardware issue, them I'm fückered...

While I'm doing this, I also backed up my tower for a wipe and reinstall. I think it's time for that, too. I had to turn off the automatic updates when the last round of updates caused my computer to stop being able to make new folders.... And while is safe for now behind a NAT router, It's something I should probably address...

In a semi-related story, I've discovered I like FS 2004 better than FSX. I don't have the fastest of computers, and I probably will never be able to afford one, and FS 2004 runs pretty decent on what I have....

So Google is updating there privacy policy....

And apparently its: All your base are belong to us. And there's no way to opt out. A lot of people have a problem with. I'm one of them. The only way to not have all of your information tracked everywhere across the Internet, is to delete your Google account. I don't think it'll be that bad really. To be honest, I don't even think it'll survive the extra-special attention the State Attorney General's office will inevitably give it. Nor will I think the FTC give them a free pass over this.

Also I should add that I don't see any personalized ads in the future. Something about all my computers and even my Android Powered HD2 all having a HOSTS file...

Paula Deen and I have something in common….

Paula Deen and I have something in common. We’re both diabetic. Yes, I know there is a fundamental difference between what I have (type I) and what she has (type II). But as she says, it’s not a death sentence. I’m coming up on 10 years of insulin shots (and needles still scare me) this year, and I’m not dead yet. I can’t go ape-shit on sugar anymore, and I should watch what I eat, but the world still goes around.

People are sure to rise in condemnation about this, especially given the food that she is known for cooking. but I won’t. The responsibility doesn’t lie with the chef who cooked your meal and put it on your plate. The responsibility lies with you. You ordered it. You’re eating it. And you should know better….

Taking a look outside

I think I now know the secret ingredient in Frosted Flakes: dynamite. That’s how I’m explaining the white stuff I see on the ground. Or is it raining cocaine? The roads haven’t been all that bad today (I live along Pacific Avenue in Pierce County, and that’s usually one the first roads to get de-iced/sanded when it rains cocaine). I take the bus to work, so that leaves me no excuse to call out. However, certain shifts I work fall outside of Pierce Transit’s operating hours, and I’m not too particular about walking upto 4 1/2 miles home in the snow. But I’ll discuss that with the boss… According to the weatherman, the worst of it will hit on Wednesday which is fine with me. I’m off that day….

So my neighbor at work…

There’s a portrait studio next to work. And I’ve become acquainted with the manager (it’s a small business). I noticed he had two computers on the front counter: one for actual production , and he had a second one with internet access that he just used to watch youtube. Last week, he did something stupid and downladed a ‘screensaver’. He then asked me to clean up after his misadventures on the internet. Even booting into ‘safe mode’ wouldn’t work. I thought I could try to fix it, but I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to ‘nuke it form orbit’. There is no virus that can survive the ‘format c:’ command. Maybe the next time I go up there (I’m off for the next couple of days), I’ll give it another crack, but I’m just waiting for the owner to bring in his windows disk. I burned a live cd (OpenSuSE KDE), but it didn’t work.

There was another business who wanted me to look at a computer, saying that they needed a cpu or a motherboard replaced (evidently I was a second opinion). I advised them to just replace the whole computer (with the way hardware is evolving, that’s probably the best bet)…

And on to my house: my tower (the WinXP box suddenly wouldn’t let me rename folders). I fixed it temporarily by using to system restore to go back to last week’s windows updates. When I’m not as busy, I have a feeling that a wipe/rebuild is in order. Ugh. I used to do it on a weekly basis when I had my pIII (running both WinME, WinXP, and SuSE). Now it’s just a PITA just to do one.

My laptop has had some issues of late freezing. Going on a wild guess, I unistalled/reinstalled Firefox, deleting all the user data (the only thing I kept were the bookmarks). I then reinstalled my extensions. No issues, so far….

An insight this morning...

On may way to work this morning, it dawns on me: this was the first Christmas in ten years that there absolutely no candy canes in my house. Even being a diabetic hasn't kept me away from them...

But this year was a cane free Christmas. Maybe I can find some at Wally World today..

Some detective work of late….

If i haven’t said so before, I now prefer to use the Energy ROM for my Android powered HD2. The phone is old, and mine is starting to show it’s age (I hove about 10 blocks in my phones memory that are going bad), but it still soldiers on, and it can still run software that’s designed for phones that are coming out today. In fact the version of Android and HTC Sense on my phone are my advanced than even what my brother has on his HTC Sensation (btw, there’s and Energy ROM for the Sensation, too….). Team Bluedroid also publishes a pretty decent Sense 3.5 ROM (in fact it was the first Gingerbread ROM that I had for more than 2 hours). Also of mention is mwakious. When it comes to the overall look and feel, I like Energy. The issue is that while Energy has the looks, it doesn’t have all the features I’m looking for, so I take elements from the other ROMs (like Flikr, laputa, etc. Usually from the Bluedroid), and incorporate them into the ROM (not that hard to do, since all the ROMs are .zip files, and you just have to unzip them, make your changes, rezip them, and flash). 9 times out of 10, this goes well. Even up to the December 14 ROM. When he release the December 19, I downloaded it and installed it. And then noticed that it wasn’t rebooting. In fact, it was on the boot animation screen for 4 hours while I was at work (at the most, it should be a half hour, even after I wipe the Dalvik cache). My quick and dirty workaround was to reflash the ROM whenever I needed to reboot. A pain in the ass, but Energy ROMs are generally stable enough that you don’t normally need to reboot everyday… When the December 25 version, there was still issues. Finally the December 26 version came out, and this version was supposedly address the rebooting issue. When I tried it, I found I could hot reboot the phone without any issues, but whenever I powered off the phone, or pull the battery, there were issues. The December 28 version came out, and it had the same problem. If frustration, I switched all the way back to CMYLXGO. Then acting on a hunch that it was an issue with the kernel in the ROM, I redownloaded the kernel and recooked it into the ROM before I flashed it. No more problems. So far.

Christmas has come, and is almost gone….

Went to my sister’s for Christmas Day. Texted my nephew to have the Altar and ram’s blood ready for the human sacrifice, and I was disappointed. Food was served, and there was a lot of it. To confess, I forgot my insulin at home, and I did over-indulge in sugar (but as soon as I got home, I immediately took a shot, though). But the food was good, and I got to see the brother that I hardly ever see (in Christmases past, we had the tradition of the Christmas Mule, where one brother did his Christmas Shopping, and the other was the bearer of the back-pack (the shopper had to pay for lunch…), But we’ve gone our separate ways. It is nice to see him and his girlfriend, though.

Eventually, it came time for the distribution of the loot. My parents gave me a gift card to Wally World, which is what I requested. I don’t necessarily need stuff right away, but with the gift card, when I realize what I need, I’ll be able to get it then. My aforementioned brother and his girlfriend gave me a big bucket of popcorn, and some sugar-free candy. I promptly regifted the popcorn (and one of the bags of candy) to my nephew (after explaining that I really don’t have the best of teeth, and I don’t do nuts that well, and the popcorn is just months of hyperglycemia). The armor-all gift set I got last night I regifted to my brother-in-law. My brother-in-law (and my sister) gave me a new coat, which has a removable liner (which can also be used by itself). I also got a hat and some gloves.

The gifts are irrelevant. I really don’t care about what I receive anymore, or even if I receive anything at all. It’s about family, friends, and having a good time.

Bah! Humbug

Well, it’s that time of year. The Godless Pagan Holiday (Winter). This year, I got Christmas Eve off, a simple gesture from my boss, but greatly appriciated. With those incompetent clowns at Peirce Transit cutting service to the bare bone and then some more, it would’ve almost been impossible to get to Grandma Bryant’s for Christmas Eve. I was originally planning to overnight there, and so I packed my laptop, the power cord for it, and the usb cable for my phone (so I could charge it from the laptop when I plug it in. I only forgot my phone at home. Phil and I decided to give Dad (he lives with Grandma Bryant) the old WiFi router that I replaced a last October. And I set it up as a Christma present to him.

We do a modified Secret Santa, where you buy the present, and they’re distributed by lottery. Usually there’s the one present that’s chosen by the one person that results in a big laugh. A few years back, it was a cousin who got a kid’s photo album (at the time, they were very definitely not having any children, she and her husband). This year, my name was called, and it was my turn to pick a presnet from under the tree. I picked one, and I heard a cousin try to dissuade from picking it. As I opened it, I realized why. It was a car detailing kit (in the big Bryant family, I’m the only non-driver). A good laugh was had by all, including me. It’s not about the present. I won’t be using it in the near future. But a good time was had by all, and that made it all worth it. I brought a Target gift card (my line of reasoning is if I don’t know who’ll end up recieving it, then I might as well get them a gift card. If they can’t find what they want at target, then they don’t deserve a Christmas present…). This year, the same cousin who brought the car detailing kit grabbed the gift card. She also grabbed the gift card I brought last year.

Well, tomorrow, we’ll have Christmas at my sister’s. But right now, I’m doing in my own Christmas tradition: watching midnight mass on TV. I’m definitely not Catholic, but I do have a couple of friends who are, and I figure this is one of the things we can do together…..

Today’s lessons:

What I’ve learned in the past week:

• When you’re thinking about selling your laptop, don’t actually delete your account until it’s agreed to change hands. Then if you do, don’t delete your user account, just wipe the drive.
• When you delete your user account (thinking you’re going to sell your laptop and later decide not to), perhaps you should consider that opportunity to wipe your laptop drive rather than try to rebiukd you account.
• if you decide to simply rebiuld your account (along with all your files) accross the network form your tower (with it’s 1 Tb drive), then remember that even with an N WiFi network, it’s going to take about 36 hours using the windows 7 migration tool. However, if you just bring the router back into your room, pull out the ethernet cables again, and manually copy them from one machine to another will only take you about two hours.
• The Windows 7 data migration tool is really good at transferring your Firefox and Thunderbird settings…

BTW, yes I did finally get smart and wiped the drive on my laptop. I don’t have all my programs installed yet, but I have enough for now. I’ll finish the rest later….

Spelling mistakes are left here on purpose….

See you in Hell, Dear Leader!

Kim Jong Il is dead. Maybe his replacement will have more sense. What’s the point in acquiring weapons of mass destruction (with his nuclear weapons program) when your people are starving? The scary part about his is the unknown. Who will succeed him? Granted you can’t go that much further off the deep end that he was, but that is also a possibility. But it also brings hope. Hope that his replacement will have more sense. Or at least two neurons and the ability to rub them together…..

Seahawks vs. St Louis...

Tonight the Seahawks are playing host to the St Louis Rams. At the Clink. While both teams royally suck, theSeahawks should do well. Historically, they have the best Monday Night record.... And in nationally televised games, they usually never do too shabby, either. Note if they could only win the non-national games...

Approaching usability….

When I last blogged about using Gingerbread, I was using bluedroid. And the next day when I went to work, I had to reboot the phone to swith from Wi-Fi to 3g. And then I had to reboot to get back on W-Fi when I got to work (one of my employer’s unwritten perks is I’m allowed to use the company’s Wi-Fi for my laptop and my phone, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my job). So, as soon as I get back home, I switched back to CMYLXGO’s Froyo. I don’t know what it’s been, but ever since I got my 32 Gb card, I haven’t been able to finish setting up that ROM. I can install it and start setting it up, but usually before I finish moving in, something happens, and I end up starting over….

Anyway, it’s been a month or so since I tried Gingerbread, and a lot of progress has been made. I’m now using Energy. The only drawback is that it doesn’t have all the widgets that I’m used to in other Sense 3.5 ROMs. No problem. Some trial an error, and I copied everything I needed from the Bluedroid ROM I downloaded. Some things that I’ve noticed:

• It is now possible to switch between 3g and Wi-Fi without rebooting. A real plus since T-Mobile now meters my 3G bandwidth, and I really don’t need to reboot my phone at the start and finish of every journey…
• I can now switch between keyboards. Which means I now use the Swype public beta on this ROM. Though for the most part, I still use the default Touch Input….

Compared to Froyo, this biuld seems to be more stable. Then again, I haven’t finished installing all of my apps yet. This ROM (which is rooted, as all the others ROMs I’ve used) comes with Titanium back-up cooked in already. So, I’m doing a back-up every night to save my work. It’ll also make it that much easier when NRGZ28 puts out the next version.

BTW, did I mention that when I first bought the HD2, the first WinMO ROM I put on it was an Energy ROM. And it was also my preferred ROM when I had my Rhodium.

I will be finishing up my contractual obligations torwards T-Mobile in the very near future. Then I can upgrade. I’m debating between getting a Sensation, or an Amaze….

Just saw the game….

I Just saw the Seahawks game tonight. Vince Young is going to have a terrible time taking a dump tonight. With all 11 pairs of Seahawks’ shoes up his ass and all….

Seriously Vince, Seahawk defenders are not your wide recievers. Granted, I (and most likely the team) really don’t mind that you give us the ball consistently, but that’s probably not the way you want to play. Try throwing it to your teammate, next time.

If it wasn’t for the interceptions, this game would’ve been close. Possibly an
Eagles victory. Offense sells tickets. But it’s the defense that wins games…

So I have a dvd in my laptop…

Never really used it. Between YouTube, Netflix, and the uber-high speed wi-fi (now that I figured out how to configure my router to the ‘n’ standard), I never really used it till now. Netflix doesn’t have all the movies I want to see, and I’m not going to pay extra to rent a dvd.

Cue the Pierce County Library. They have DVDs. And a pretty good selection, too. And the 1-week loan is longer and cheaper than blockbuster. So, I’m watching Battle Of The Planets. I remember seeing this growing up, and Ted Turner did a version of it a few years back. You can tell that it was obviously an adult anime edited down and redubbed into essentially a Childrens’ show…

The original series must’ve been good, but trying to watch it through the editing is a bit tedious….

Thanksgiving has come and gone

For those of you who chose to do The Airing of Grievances and The Feat of Strength, you jumped the gun…

Went to my Aunt’s for thanksgiving. Turkey was served. Along with the usual sides, and what I could’ve swore was Soylent Green… Although I did appreciate the effort she went through to bake the no-sugar added pumpkin pie.

Ok, I got my flu shot...

I got my flu shot a week and half ago. So why am I still getting sick? I guess its part for the course that get sick during the holidays. Last Christmas I had a very passable Brian Johnson voice. Hopefully this year, it won't be so bad...

I voted today….

I filled out the absentee ballot today. This is an ‘off-year’ election, where the main issues are the initiatives. There were also a couple of miscellaneous candidates, most of whom were running unopposed. I had some fun with those. I wrote in JP Patches, Gertrude, and Brakeman Bill. On the initiatives, I voted this:

• I-1183, I voted no. Both sides have been running misleading ads. I don’t think we need to change the current system of state liquor stores, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I also voted against this on the principle that the initiative process is there for people to change the law directly, not for Costco to try and buy it.
• I-1125, I voted no, just on principle. It is a Tim Eyeman initiative, and he has admitted to doing this as a profession, and most, if not all of his initiatives are pure crap. the first one he did that actually passed was promptly thrown out by the supreme court for being poorly written. <rhetoric>Maybe somebody should propose an initiative to have him tarred and feathered. Or deported to France.</rhetoric>.
• Prop 1. I voted no. This would authorize a tax increase to improve 911 service. If the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department has enough funds to accost me when I’m walking home at night, because I’m on some sort of double-secret probation or because Parkland residents are beneath the protection of the law, then they don’t need any more funding. Hint: not everybody you encounter is a criminal, and treating everyone like suspects and criminals is not really fostering trust in the community. Maybe it was a stop and frisk initiated under false circumstance, but the end results are the same….
• There were a few other issues, but I voted for them, namely one that would require background checks for senior caregivers. The vunerable need to be protected…

We have Gingerbread!

Finally, I found a Gingerbread ROM for my phone with tolerable issues. Yes, they all have problems, but this is the first that I feel comfortable with. I’m going with Blue Droid. Right now, they only have posted the version for the European version of the HD2 (which uses an ext partition on your SD card, to overcome the only 512 Mb of space on the phone which is not good when you’re trying to shoehorn HTC Sense into it). The CMYLXGO Froyo ROM dies have it’s advatages, and I’ve also updated my version of it, but I like this ROM. I know NRGZ28 updated his ROM recently, but I’ve had too many issues with it. I’m also doing a few things differently with this ROM:

• The only app that I’m cooking into it beforehand is the Amazon App Store. And the Terminal Emulator. Everything else can be manually installed when I install Root Explorer (which I paid for from the Spamazon app store.
• No alternatives keyboards. I tried cooking in the native Gingerbread keyboard, and I think that may have caused more issues than it’s worth. I’m not even going to use the Swype public beta. Besides I really don’t need to. With the HTC Touch Input, there is also a trace feature (like what swype uses as well), so I don’t need it. The other keyboards, while the looked good, and worked well, aren’t worth the hassle…

Tony LaRussa hangs up his mitre…

After leading the Cardinals to another World Series title, Tony LaRussa has announced his retirement. One of the very managers to go out while at the very top. Usually when I see a manager go, it has been due to a mid-season shit-canning (usually well-deserved). On occaision, I’ll see news of one retiring, but it’s usually after one losing season too many in The New World Order (Mind-Control Division), I just want to know, since he’s a Cardinal, if he’ll be allowed to wear a mitre and take part in the next concave…

Patience, Roger, Patience

Ok, since I have Apps2sd on my phone, when I uprgraded my memory card, I had to reinstall everything on my phone (my apps are installed onto a hidden partition on my memory card). My first attempt at this was a dud, since I set the second partition at 4 Gb (I have a 32 Gb card now, so space isn’t an issue). When xda-developers says to use 2 Gb at the most for your ext3 partition, there is usually a good reason for it. So after repartitioning, reformatting, and re-copying everything to my card again, I had to re-flash my ROM again. I thought seriously about giving Gingerbread anither try, but I decided to go with my highly modified CMYLXGO ROM. Yes it’s Froyo, but it’s stable, and it does the job. At this point, I don’t think there’ll ever be a reasonably stable Gingerbread ROM for the HD2.

Anyway, long story short:

• When you first flash a ROM, set the phone down and walk away. It’ll take a while for it to actually be ready. The same goes when you initially put your acounts in. Especially since my phone doesn’t have that much RAM compared to other Desire HD based phones.
• If you can, try to use wi-fi to download your apps. For some reason, my 3g service has been rather spotty. And when my internet cuts out, it usually means my phone freezes, and only a reboot will fix things. Probably I should have a chat with T-Mobile. Fortunately, one of the local employees also uses and Android Powered HD2, so I might be able to get somewhere with it…
• Root Explorer is definitely worth the $3.99 I paid for it (through the Spamazon app store).

Today’s lesson is patience. If you don’t let your ROM settle after you install it, you’re going to have issues…

So, the Sounders lost tonight.

So the Sounders FC lost 3-0 tonight. They can still pull it out. They have one more chance when Real Salt Lake come to town. It’s difficult, but it’ll be possible….

OTOH, I got to see the Huskies game tonight. Defense needs some serious work. And there were a couple of questionable calls by the officials. But they got the job done, with timely turnover and a lot of touchdowns…

Full 90 time, playoff edition

Sounders FC vs. Real Salt Lake. In Salt Lake City. I like the MLS playoff structure, where each they play a game in each team’s stadium, with the winner decided by cumulative goals. This way, every team is guaranteed at least one home game in the playoffs. On like some other professional sports promotions, MLS knows what side the bread is buttered on, and that without the fans, they’re fucked. The NHL is still recovering from it’s last labor dispute where they lost an entire season. The NFL almost lost the season, but cooler heads prevailed in the nick of time. The NBA is going to find out really quick that loyalty is a two-way street. If they don’t show loyalty to their fans, then the fans won’t show up. They won’t buy tickets, and they won’t buy the merchandise. Lose the ego, people. Your fans won’t take it lying down…

A few more misadventures on the internet…

Day off today. Normally, I’d sleep in (especially since I have to be at work überearly tomorrow morning). But I had to get up early today, and keep watch at the door. Last week, I ordered some probably useless crap from Worst Buy, and both items were supposed to arrived today.

First item to arrive was the wi-fi card. I like the Netgear WG-311v3, but the driver installation can be a bit tricky. And it’s darn near the only wi-fi card that I can find that has a Win9x driver for it (come to think, I’m probably going to end up just parting out the other tower I have, but in the rare possibility that I use it, I’d like to have a compatible card for it). Looking around, I noticed that Worst Buy is going from pci Wi0Fi adapters to usb (which I don’t like, as components like this sometimes tend to throw you rude comments when you pull them from one port, like during system maintenance, and then put them in a different port. Besides I have enough of a cable jungle as it is…). On the website, they had a deal for a factory refurbished Linksys WMP600N, so I went for it. A glance at google shows the possibility of Linux dirvers for it too (though that is not a high priority now).

The second item was a microsd card for my phone. A 32 Gb one. Meaning I can sync my entire music library over, and still have plenty of space for my hidden data partition, and several ROMs at once. And it’s a class 4 (might not be workth bragging about, but it is replacing a class 2…).

A little moving….

Nothing much. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just moving my cell phone’s files (basically the ‘kitchen’ where I cook my ROMs) from the laptop to the tower. While I like the laptop for it’s portabiltiy and (mainly) the fact I can surf and tinker around from the easy chair in front of the tv in my room, I do appreciate the dual-monitor display that the tower offers, which make’s it far easier to manage windows.

I really don’t cook ROMs. I just drag and drop files. Most of the Android ROMs for the HD2 are Clockwork Mod recovery type. Meaning that they’re .zip files. If you unzip them, you can then delete the files you don’t need, and add some of the programs and/or other files, that you have to have (I do have quite a few ringtones that I use). Just rezip and you can then flash your ROM, with your ‘tweaks’ cooked in…

I explained this to my boss when he had me root his LG G2x, and then he started downloading new ROMs for it. After a phone call to me (which I reminded him to be in the T-Mobile forum, lest he get a $500.00 battery charger. BTW, it’s easy to flash a clockwork ROM on a LG G2x. I should know. My boss can do it. BTW, he now has the latest Samsung Galaxy S II, and the LG is now for sale. Given his modus operandi, the new phone will be for sale in about three months. Not that I have anything against it. That’s how I got my first T-Mobile Shadow, and my HD2 (which I still use).

Sic semper tyrannis

Hello, it’s been a while. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t forgotten to write. I’ve just had other things that, in hindisight, probably don’t mean much, but they had to be taken care of…

• They got Gadaffi. We will probably never know how he died (aside from the gunshot to the head), be it he was shot by a rebel intentionally, or caught in the crossfire between the rebels on the loyalists, we may never know. But he was a tyrant who ruled with an iron fist. And eventually, his own people got the point where they weren’t going to take in anymore. He almost immediately threw out the country's constitution (and the rights that went along with it) while seizing power. And then there was the theft. If perhaps he’d put the profits from the Libya’s oil revenues back into his country (instead of keeping it to himself and his cronies), perhaps… Well, I’m not going to speculate on that.

Gadaffi is dead. I’m not rejoicing in and of itself over his death, like I didn’t rejoice over Osama Bin Laden’s death. We should remember that violence only begets violence. But at the very least, he is out of power, and there is hope for the nation….

One of the many reasons I’m grateful for being an American is the opportunity to change regime every four years peacefully.

They still rock….

So I’m about to retire for the night, and I’ve got Late Nite with Jimmy Fallon on. And tonight, The Moody Blues are performing. To be honest, this is a band I haven’t really followed. Ever. But they sounded good (I remember Nights In White Satin on oldie’s station growing up) and what I heard on Jimmy Fallon sounded similar. But what matter most is that they sounded good….

Ok, who wants to see Paul Stanley in drag?

Ok, everybody should know by now that in the ‘80s, KISS ditched the make-up, and became yet another hair-band for the most part. With the execption of Revenge (which is the best KISS album. Period). Case in point:

Perhaps the Star Child should’ve been seeing a therapist…

No, I don’t consider myself a fan of KISS anymore. Sorry guys, but The Boulder Pledge has been invoked. You chose to spam me, and I realized that with the aforementioned excetion of Revenge, you’re nothing more than overly-merchandised clowns. And for the most part, not really good…

I know this one is late, but….

I just have to say that Jay Cutler chose the wrong week to become a Christian. Who would’ve figured that the Detroit Lions would now be 5-0? And the Seahawks beat Eli Manning. In New York. Not too shabby…

Eventually, I’ll get it right….

I’ve been trying to get my Android Powered HD2 to run Gingerbread. Everytime I think I solved the problems, another one comes up, and I decide to go back to Froyo. It’s olders, but it still works. I’ve swtched from Rafdriod back to Cmylxgo, with some modifications:

• I’m using the apps2sd. I’ve given 2 Gb’s on my memory card for a separate paritition. Even though my phone has a full Gb onboard, I’m still running out of space on my phone. This means I don’t have to worry about running out of space, and I use a larger system directory (which means I can cook even more stuff into my ROM).
• I’ve also cooked in the Topia and the Color transformation packs. And I shamelessly cooked in the start-up animation from the Bluetopia transformation pack. I tried using the color transformation pack in Rafdroid, but Rafdroid uses a diferent sized font, and the results didn’t come out looking quite right (It functioned just fine).

My boss has a T-Mobile G2x, and he’s been trying to sell it. I rooted it for him when he was running Froyo, and I upgraded it to Gingerbread. He asked me to root it for him (which is basically install Clockwork recovery and then flash a copy of the stock Gingerbread Rom that had been rooted). Now he’s asking me to cook a special ROM for him….

I now officially have three computers in my room: my XP tower, my laptop (that this is being written on), and a Win98 tower. I finally have all the necessary power cords, network cables, and even a surge protector for it. I just need to get a monitor for it (my XP tower has a dual display, and I can easily pull one monitor off for the other tower, but I like my twin-headed display too much). With all three of them going, I don’t think I’ll need to use the heater too much this winter (and this is going to be a La Niña winter, too).

So long, Steve Jobs

Steve jobs had passed away. I’m not going to bother with linking to any story on this blog entry (if you want the whole truth, just google it…). Some of things companies brought us under his leadership:

• The iPhone: about four years ago, my boss’s wife got him a T-Mobile Shadow for Christmas. He was impressed with it, almost happy. Then he discovered you could jailbreak an iPhone and it’ll work on the T-Mobile network. And that shadow was my very first smartphone when he sold it to me. A few years later, his wife got him an HD2. I’m still using it… The iPhone brought us the app store (before the android market and the spamazon app store).
• The iPod. Essentially the original iPod was an mp3 player with a hard drive. It’s gone through many evolutions, but you can still get an mp3 player with a hard drive.
• OS X. I’ve never had a mac, so I can offer no opinion on this.
• The iPad. The very first tablet to have anything resembling success, though IMHO some of the current Android powered offerings are better…..
• Itunes. It revolutionized the way we buy music. When it first came out, I was semi-impressed with it (I’m a windows user). For the first time, you could legally purchase music and download it (instead of pirating it or ripping your cds). Not only that, but you could also buy induvidual tracks (later came the option to buy entire albums). I didn’t like it because it didn’t support .wma playback, and to convert .wma files to something itunes compatible took forever and a day. I just stuck with musicmatch jukebox and/or windows media player (when windows media player 10 came out, it finally came with the ability to natively rip .mp3 files, so I’ve used wmp exclusively since then).

I know this isn’t a complete list of his achievements, and there were some things he did that even I regret, you can’t deny his influences. Remember this even when you turn your pc on (remember the original MacIntosh had the very gui for a computer)…

What when down this week….

I got a second monitor again for my computer. But I’m still drawn more to my laptop. There have been a couple of things that I’ve wanted to blog about this week, but I’ve also been mastering the art of putting things off. And that is a skill that you need to constantly practice…

Anyway, some if the pointless (and some not-so-pointless) stuff that has happened recently:

• Fall has arrived. I can tell this from the rain. On my day off. Like this afternoon, I guess off form from work, and I couldn’t help but notice the droplets falling on the pavement around me as I walked home form the bus stop. And it really picked up when I got home. Like cow pissing on a rock.
• It’s over for the Mariners. Another season of losing. There were a couple of streaks, and iirc we went a week before the first w. But we only needed The New World Order (Mind-Control Division) for a few weeks this year… Because then we have Association Football (that’s soccer, idiots)…
• The Sounders FC have clinched a play-off spot. And the Cascadia Cup. And a return to next season in the Concacaf Champions League. Three winning seasons, and three playoff appearances. Though the Seahawks have demonstrated that you don’t necessarily need the former to have a latter… Though I hope they can repeat next year, as Kasey Keller is retiring at the end of this season (hats off to Keller, though. In MLS, it’s usually Latinos and Europeans who are the stars. Keller, an American was a star in Europe before coming to Seattle.
• The Seahawks aren’t too hot (as usual) Jackson ain’t getting the job done, and Caroll needs to get Whitehurst in there, or he needs to go back to the NCAA….
• The Detroit Lions are *team* to be reckoned with this year. 4-0 (that’s right, undefeated), not 0-4. They’ve defeated the Vikings (in Minneapolis, a feat that’s not supposed to happen). And they went into the fourth quarter with Dallas down by 14 points. Then Tony Romo decided to embrace Christianity. And we all know what Lions do to Christians…
• Tonight’s Sunday Night Football match had all the features. Lots of touchdowns, like you’d expect in a good professional game. It’s just none of the touchdowns came from the offense. They all came from the teams’ defenses or special teams. And this wasn’t a low-scoring affair. It has been said that offense sells the tickets, but it’s actually the defence that wins the games. Tonight was no exception.

A winning weekend (not you mariners)

The Sounders FC won the Cascadia Cup yesterday. And the day before, they were mathematically assured of a berth in the playoffs. And they’re doing better in the Concacaf Champions League than they were last year. They’re going to the playoffs for the third year in a row. Not too shabby considering as the team is only three years old. MLS had the right idea when they gave franchises to Portland and Vancouver as well. The Derby matches are always fun, and more people are enjoying it than if it were just the Seattle team (like with The New World Order (Mind-Control Division) and the Seattle Mariners. Though with the Mariners I have to say that they don’t just suck. They swallow, too. What the hell happened to them? Wasn’t Ichiro won of the reasons we went to the playoffs in 2000/1? But the season will soo be over, and the fans’ suffering will end. Until next spring.

And the Seahawks won today. At least the defense won. And I got home from work early enough that I saw the defense win it. But they always say that while your offense sells the tickets, it’s the defense that wins the game. They beast the Arizona Cardinals 13-10. And they did it the hard way. They Cardinals weren’t wearing their mitres…

And guess who’s 3-0? The Lions. I saw them in the preseason when they gave Tom Brady his well-deserved beating, and I decided to root for them this year (I don’t think they’re playing the Seahawks this year so I can safely have divided loyalties). I think what happened is somebody told them in the locker room that all of their opponents this year are Christian…

At last! Or so. It could be said?

As I said last week, one of my monitors died last week. Coincidentally, I got paid. Remembering how one of my friends had an unused monitor in his garage, I emailed him and asked him how much he wanted for it. He said he'd give it to me for free. And he delivered it, too. So now my computer now has two Gateway EV700 monitors, and I can also use one for my workbench wherever I need to fix a tower...

The end of an era…

If you’re willing to serve your country, and possibly die for your country, it shouldn’t make a difference whether or not you know the difference between teal and fuscia…Don’t ask, don’t tell has been repealed.

It’s time for ARRR! again…

Today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

So remember to buckle yer swash, shiver yer timbers or go walk the plank…

Its back....

Finally, they chased away that bright yellow UFO in the sky. And we can now go back to our self-watering lawns and our self-washing cars. And its not even my day off...

Friday night, I took down my window fan and put it away. Then I closed the window. And fifteen minutes later, I had to turn the heat on. And less than a week before, we were hitting the nineties....

You can’t catch me! I have Gingerbread!

After running Froyo for almost a year, I finally saw that the development on the Gingerbread ROMS  for the HD2 has made some progress. Enough that I thought it could be worth the trouble of giving a try…

Not that I had anything against the Froyo ROMS. The rafdroid ROM is as stable as anything else available, and the Cmylxgo isn’t that bad that well. But there were some bugs:

• The Rafdroid roms like to reboot. A lot. And the current one has issues with bluetooth.
• And the Cmylxgo like to freeze. A lot. And it likes to reboot somewhat, too.

And it doesn’t help the Cmylxgo stopped developing for the HD2, and went to the HTC Sensation (and btw, Igwanarob, NRGZ28 went to the Sensation as well). Rafpigna, the developer of Rafdroid, has also said that the current version would be the last version, most likely.

So, I went looking for a Gingerbread ROM in the XDA Developers forum. There were a few ROMs out there to try. I downloaded a couple. The first one I tried was the CoreDroid. It was more a customised port of the Sensation software for the HD2. It was slow, it crashed, and there were graphical glitches. Needless to say, I went with another one. I went with this one. So far, I’m impressed. I don’t see any of the bugs/annoyances with this ROM that I saw with Froyo. But time will tell if this turns out. If not, I have my local archive of the Rafdroid, and I’ll just live with it’s quirks….

Edit: the day after I wrote this, NRGZ28 published a new energy ROM based on the HTC Sensation. I tried it, and I was impressed with the appearance. However, I've decided to go with something that's proven to work: Froyo. So i'm running Rafdroid again. Though I've rolled back the kernel so my Bluetooth sets will work with it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it...

Yet another hardware eulogy….

This time, I know it was hardware failure. I could hear the death scream, and I thought I could smell the Magic Blue Smoke. Farewell, Sylvania F72. Of course, this means that my tower won’t have a dual monitor display until you’re replaced. Which really is going to bite. I could use you to keep the My Documents folder open, while I used my other monitor (a Gateway EV700) to edit a document. Now, I’ll have to re-learn how to switch between windows on one display again. Maybe I should get a hi-def display now (I have a 1gB video card, so I think my system has the oomf to drive one). But that’s too expensive for now.

But with the exception of that, the rest of my tower is running well. But with the monitor gone, I think it’s time I moved most of my computing to the laptop….

It's been 10 years....

Since the tragedies in New York, The Pentagon, and Pennsylvania. Everybody else is talking about never forgetting 9/11. I must be in the minority. I would rather forget it...

What had happened since then? This is no longer America, land of the free. A have become a neo-fascist police state in the name of security. We cannot travel by plane without being sexually assaulted and/or subjected to medically significant amounts of radiation. Or correspondance is now monitored, probably routinely without a warrant. We can now be stopped anywhere by police and told to present our papers without cause (it's happened to me more than once). We are becoming a nation where if you're not a right wing evangelical Christian, then you're a criminal. In some states, it's even worse, if you're not white, you're a criminal. Due process of law and habeas corpus are things of the past. They don't even need proof anymore. They just have say terrorist, and you're locked up without lawyers or a judge, and subject to torture. Benjamin Franklin once said that those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither. We are now a nation without liberty. And there are still credible threats, so they say. So we are still a nation without security...

I did not rejoice on that day. And I did not rejoice on the day they killed bin Laden. Violence breeds violence, and is in and of itself evil.

Really, the only way to defeat the terrorists is to be free. The thousands who died that day died free. Yes, the attacks will come. Terrorists will rage, armies will assemble, and mobs may combine. But we can not give in to our fears. When we become a nation of fear, then our enemies have won.

Fuck the terrorists. I want my Liberty back. Live free or die...

To Simon Malls…

Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message.

A while back, I complained to you specifically about the Coke machines eating my money, and how I would only get a partial refund frim guest services. The reply I recieved was that you authorized the refund of the remainder of my money, but by then it was no longer worth it, and I decided to just eat my loss. I also decided that the Tacoma Mall (and the stores therein) would no longer see my business as a result of the 'go pound sand' attitude that I was shown. And I told you so at the time. I thought that would be the end of the matter. But no. You added me to your spam list. My home internet access, and my phone's internet access are both limited and metered. *I HAVE TO PAY FOR THE UNWANTED ADVERTISEMENTS YOU SEND ME!!* I do not need your ads, you don't need my business (if you did, you would've made sure your vending machines were working, and you would've made sure guest services actually gave a damn about customers).

Once again, under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Spamming is considered theft of services and trespass to chattel (see CompuServe Inc. v Cyber Promotions). Your messages are unwelcome.

So I’m Netflixing tonight….

Tonight, I’m watching the Franco Zeferelli film Romeo & Juliet. I first saw it in the 9th grade Engrish, after having read it. I’ve just realized how Cosmopolitan The Bard was. Only Shakespeare can do a movie set in Italy, and when they make a movie of it, they still use British actors.

CBS is a kill-joy….

I saw this on slashdot. Whenever I flash a new ROM on my Android Powered T-Mobile HD2, one of the apps I downloaded from the market was the tri-corder app. It was ad-free and open source. The funtionality in the app was always duplicated in other apps, but it was still fun to use. Not anymore. CBS killed it. This sucks. C’est la vie….

Ok, my towers going down the tubes....

Or it could just be a random system fart. But I doubt it, since it was showing the exact same symptoms a last week. Fortunately, I still had the windows XP CD still in the drive, so I just booted to the CD and an running chkdsk. Again. I think its time to back up my data, this time to an external computer. Fortunately, the first time my tower had issues, I bought a laptop. And I have enough space on it to hold everything. But first thing is first: I must get the tower running...

Edit: Ok, so I ran the short chkdsk, and I was able to boot into safe mode. Unfortunately, I can't move files across the network, but I am copying my important files to my second hard drive, which will then be physically disconnected until I can repair it. Something tells me my terabyte hard drive might be going....

Edit: it was actually just a cable that got pulled just loose enough. After unplugging everything, then reseating all my cable and expansion cards, it's ask good now...

No more Starz on Netflix

I was reading that Starz content will not be available on Netflix anymore. Apparently 300 million wasn’t enough. Starz specifically wanted higher prices. Too bad. Big Fat Fucking Deal. Yes I have the Netflix streaming plan. But I also have Starz as part of my Comcast/Xfinity programming, and I can still stream there on-demand programming though my laptop.

But I prefer Emergency! reruns, and 6 degrees of Kevin Tighe…

I got a haircut a couple of weeks ago

Actually, I got several hairs cut <rim shot>. But as I sat down into the chair at the Tacoma Mall Mastercuts, the stylist suggested a Mohawk. My reply was only if I could giver her a tonsure, waxed. Needless to say we agreed on the ever popular and low maintenance 3 and 1 (clipper setter #3 on top, and #1 on sides and back). I thought to myself that I could be worse. At least nobody suggested the Justin Beiber…

So, I was going to the bus stop last night….

And I was approaching the bus stop, I noticed someone waiting 10-20 feet away from it. I didn’t think nothing much of it. I do it, if there’s a ‘character’ at the stop, and I want to give him a wide berth. I went to the bus stop, and I saw a radio flyer wagon with a bunch of stuff on it, and two people sitting on the bench. It wasn’t until right away that I realized what was going on: a drunk was getting serviced orally by a hooker (?) at the public bus stop, while there was still traffic! Anyway, I immediately stepped away from the stop, and the john came out and started lighting into the other guy standing there (apparently he was supposed to be the lookout). they all left during the argument, and I went to the stop (by then, I was the only one there), and I could tell they were prettily hammered. When you’ve left five minutes ago, and I can still smell your beer, you’re probably very well pickled. I boarded my bus. As the bus proceeded on it’s route, I noticed that same wagon a couple of blocks down the road near some bushes. And two pairs of feet in the horizontal position….

Moral of this story: Don’t even sit on the bench in King County Metro sheltered bus stops. And there are still a very small minority of the populace who still uses bus stops to actually catch the bus. And I’m one of them….

It's alive, part deux?...

When we last left my tower, I was running Chkdsk on it over night. It finished during the night, and I turned it off. This morning, I turned it on and loo and behold, it booted into windows! Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! And then I couldn't get online anywhere... That was simple. I just had to power cycle my modem and router.

As soon as…

As soon as I get one tower upgraded to something workable, the other one tries to die….

Like I posted Monday, I got the processor situation in my Win9X tower upgraded (I ‘borrowed’ a couple of power cables and a monitor from my main WinXP tower so I could see if the other tower works. Then on Wednesday, my brother’s boss dropped her computer off for me to look at. From what she was telling me, I thought that it had given up the ghost, and was merrily frolicking amongst the Beer Volcanoes and Stripper Factories. SO, again, I pulled the monitor and the power cables from my main tower, and started analyzing it. It turned out that her main issue was the video cable had come loose. Still, I ran Windoze Update on it, and made sure she had a decent AV. While that was going on, I tried running my main tower with only one monitor, and I noticed it wasn’t booting normally (the splash screen was just hanging, and the colors weren’t all there). Oh shit. I put all the hardware back together (thinking that it was just because I was trying to run it on only one monitor when 2 had been installed. And it wasn’t booting. Couldn’t even get to the POST. Finally, I got it to POST, but then the hard drive wouldn’t spool up. Finally, I had to give up on it, as it was 1 on the morning, and I had to get up a 5 to work a 13 hour shift.

I get home from work tonight, and give it one more try. For some reason tonight, I was able to successfully boot off the XP cd, and get it into recovery console. Right now, I have chkdsk running, and it’s 57% percent complete. This may take a while, as it’s a 1 terabyte drive.

I’m so grateful that I bought my laptop the last time my computer had issues. But on the bright side, I know now how to change a slot 1 processor, as well how to re-seat a socket 775 chip…

It’s alive?

About a year and a half ago, my former district manager at work gave me his uber-old computer, a 265 MHz Pentium II. He had upgraded hos computer to a laptop, and it was just sitting in his closet. I casually asked how much he wanted for it, and he gave it to me outright. It sat in my room for a year, and I decided to restore it. If I’m going to run Win98-WinME, then I’m going to try to get a decent processor. Looked on Ebay, and there were a shit-load of cheap Pentium II Slot 1 processors available. Ordered one, it arrived today.

A couple of months ago, my boss offered me his old computer desk and monitor (he, too, went from tower to laptop). The computer desk works, but the monitor is a dud. Pulled one of the monitors off my main tower, and the slightly less-old tower works, though I can’t get into the BIOS (and it just sees a 500 MHz Pentium Pro, instead of a 700 MHz PIII). But it still works. With my boss’s computer desk, I’m trying to set a separate computer desk in my room. And along with this, I’ll have a separate work station set up, so when I get called upon to fix a tower, it can just be dropped off at my house, and I can leave the rat’s nest behind my main tower alone….

A little older, hopefully wiser….

When somebody posts to my Facebook wall, I get the usual email. I also get a text. It comes in handy. If I know who’s ‘freinding’ me, I can confirm it without having to open my browser. However, this can have it’s drawbacks/ Like when my birthday comes around, and everybody posts their wishes. And they have to do it at three in the morning. Fortunately, I remembered I can put my phone on silent mode…

My birthday was today. As of this writing, I have about 20 minutes left of it. I didn’t get much this year, which is alright with me.  The well wishes I got from my friends (and my sisters. And you, Mom & Dad) throughout the day were the highpoint of the day. And Steve, shall hunt you down, and repeatedly say ‘NI!’ at you until I get my shrubbery…

Aside from the well-wishes, I did get a couple of items. Mother gave me a case of Coke Zero. I told my father I really didn’t want anything specific, so he gave a couple of Federal Reserve gift certificates.

Surprisingly my boss hasn’t tried selling me a phone this year. Three years ago, he sold me his Shadow. Last year, he sold me his HD2. But this year, he’s selling me a computer desk and a monitor (to go with the old tower I already have. When I’m not screwing around with that tower, I’ll use it as a workstation, ie keyboard, monitor, and mouse so I can fix other towers, something I still get called upon to do….).

Life isn’t fair….

I remember in the late ‘90s, there was this drink put out by Coca-Cola called Surge. I drank it. And enjoyed it (this is before I was diabetic). And then, I realized it was gone (right about the time Target stopped carrying 1-liters). I’d get home from Seattle (I was working in the Westlake Center at the time), go into the South Hill Mall Target, grab a 1-liter of Surge, then go to South Hill Hobbies (the owners were by best friends, and one of them still is. RIP Bob), and my Happy Hour was chugging it, and then going home.

Anyway, Surge went to The Beer Volcano and The Stripper Factory in 2003. Here are 24 other items that are no longer with us. Pepsi Blue is actually still with us. It’s just know as 2000 flushes…

I now pronounce you Google and Motorola

If you haven’t heard it yet, Google is buying Motorola Mobility. Motorola has in the past made phone that are icons. Remember the microtac from the mid-90’s? Or perhaps the first wearable phone, the star-tac (some years later they released the RAZR, and the Star-tac was still lighter than it). I used to have a motorola, a blue MotoRIZR Z3, that I bought from my boss (who at the time had the original T-Mobile Shadow, a gift from his wife). Six months later, he sold me his Shadow. Two years later, his wife bought him a HTC HD2. Six months later, he sold to me. IMO, he made the biggest mistake of his life (there is so much more you can do with an HD2…). Hes now using and LG Optimus G2X.

This will probably do much to improve Google’s market share (iOS is still the phone system for douchebags, but there are still lots of douchebags. And then there’s The Anti-Christ….). If this clears anti-trust, good things could happen. Then again….

My contract went up two weeks ago. But waiting to see if the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will go through before I renew/upgrade my contract. Sprint is also a viable option…

So I got a birthday wish last night from one of my friends...

I'm sure he meant well from it, and I appreciate the thought. But still it isn't my birthday yet, and I'm not really down with celebrating birthdays and/or holidays early. One day at a time is the best strategy in my opinion for special days. it's the same with Christmas Creep. I like the example of Norstrom. They dint set up for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I can understand it if there are other events like an overseas deployment that make an early celebration necessary, but to everyone else, you can wait till the appointed time...

So I'm still running Froyo on my phone....

And I have absolutely no motivation to upgrade to Gingerbread. Aside from the obvious fact that I'm still running an HD2, which wasn't originally designed to run Android. But I think I've been through that before....

Since April, I've been running Roms by CMYLXGO. First I was just running stock, then I figured out that since the roms were just basically zip files, I could customize them with my own software selections (and save space by taking off programs I didn't use). But I realized that space was still an issue. When I was running droid off the sd card, I usually had an entire gigabyte to install my apps too. When I was running just straight nand (everything off the phone memory), all the software ran off the phone memory, and space ran out really quick. Then I switched back to Rafdriod. I used to use it before I was using cmylxgo. Basically, it's a stock Desire HD adapted to the hd2. But since it's also written for the european version of the hd2 (which only has 512 megs of memory), it has a little trick up it's sleeve: you can partition your sd card, and have a fat32 partition for your memory card & have a ext3 partition for your phone's data partition. Space is no longer an issue. With a 2 gigabyte partition on my memory card, I have as much available space on my phone that I had with the MyTouch 4g. Without the ticking time bomb of a possibly defective emmc chip....

There is progress being made in developing a Gingerbread rom for the hd2, but there are still a couple of bugs in it. Nothing really big, but it's enough to keep me from upgrading. If it works, I really don't see a reason to try and fix it.

Tomorrow, it'll be a year since my boss sold me his HD2. Though I should give the shout-out to his wife, who bought it for him in the first place (which wouldn't have happened if I hadn't shown her my Touch Pro 2 when I bought it). And I'm still happy with it.

First Pre-Season Game is in the books….

And all I can say about it it that Seattle’s back-up players are better than San Diego’s back-ups. Starters got to play one quarter at the most, and then we saw the back-ups and the others play. Which in my opinion is the best football. The starters pretty much know they have employment secured for the rest of the fall, so they aren’t going to play that much. Everybody is still trying to get work for the fall, so they have much more motivation to perform in the pre-season. During the game the Monday Night Football crew were also pointing out some changes this year, among them being (in no particular order):

• Horse collar tackles don’t actually have to be a tackle to draw a penalty. A safety measure.
• They’ve expanded the rule to protect vunerable players (ie punters right after they’ve kicked, etc). Any contact will now draw a 15 yard penalty. People may say the sports degenerating down to touch football, but I can see the league’s point. It’s a safety issue. They’re in a position where they can’t protect themselves, they’re usually not anywhere near where the play is, and they can really get hurt….
• No more two-a-day practices. That was actually part of the new collective bargaining agreement. And there must be a minimum of 5 days off during the bye week.
• All scores are automatically reviewed by the replay official, who may direct the referee to look at it. This way the coaces don’t have to waste there allocated challenges.
• The big change this year in the rules was relating to the kick-off. The ball is now kicked off from the 35 yeard line, and the players on the kicking msut start with a body part on the 30 yard line. This is another change made in the name of player safety, but I can see the kick-off turning more into the opening touch-back than an actual kick-off return. In tonight’s game, I saw a the majority of them returned anyway, though that may be due to players trying to impress somebody into a roster spot, and possibly a job.

Hopefully the Seahawks will make the play-offs with a winning record this year….

Just another sucky Monday morning….

It’s a day off, but I ordered a stick of RAM for the tower last week, and Worst Buy is shipping brown. They said anytime betwwen 9 and 7, so I set the alarm to get up at 9. Pulled the laptop out to the living room, and the Wi-Fi is out (as laptop was unable to connect to the apartment’s secured wi-fi network). And come to think of it, my Android Powered HD2 was unable to connect as well. SO I go back to the tower (it has a wired connection) and I start to play with the settings. Rebooted both the router and modem. Reflashed the  router firmware. Restored factory setting. Twice. And eventually I got the wi-fi to work. DNS is still buggy, though (I think that my be an issue on Comcast’s end, as I did verify that I’m using the right DNS servers…).

While I was writing that last paragraph, Fat Bastard’s Co-Workers showed up with my delivery: a 1 gig stick of ram for the tower. I don’t think I’ll be putting anymore in it. It already has 2 gigs in, and a 1 gig video card, and the maximum it can support is 4. No, I didn’t do this for XP. I’m doing it for an eventual upgrade to windows 7, which is also why I’m setting up my win9x tower. And a nice off-shoot to setting up the separate win9x tower is that’ll I’ll a separate monitor, mouse, keyboard, and a workspace to I bring friends’ towers home to fix them (and maybe charge them). I don’t really mind most of the time having to fix their computers. I do mind having to pull my tower out & disconnecting all the cables, and then remembering to reconnect them. Why can’t people just leave my rat’s nest alone?

No more Linux. I can get the tv tuner to initially work, but once I install the Catalyst driver, all I get is a buzzing noise. Not even a window. It’s not worth the frustration. I guess this means I can pull the 2nd TV tuner out. I had disabled in Windows. It was just there for Linux….

EDIT: Who knew that to fix the balky router I just has to power-cycle the surge protector it and the cable modem were plugged into?

EDIT II: It’s confirmed that my supposed ‘n’ router is crap. Apparently my roommate has had nothing but problems with it since I set it up, but he never told me…. So we’re back to the old one. And I moved the modem/router out to the living room, so we can all get the same signal…

Ok, who wants to play 6 degrees of Kevin Tighe?!

I joined Netflix tonight. Only the 7.99 streaming plan, though. If I want to watch a DVD, I can always check it out for free from the Pierce County Library. When I first got my laptop, I saw the standard Windows Media Player, and then there was the Windows Media Center, which is essentially a 64-bit version of Windows Media Player, plus some enhancements for TV Tuners and the like. And Netflix. So, I’m now watching Emergency!. And unlike Hulu, which only had 4 seasons, and you had to watch commercials, this has all 7 seasons. And no ads, so far.

So, to hell with 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon. Let’s play 6 degrees of Kevin Tighe.

And I’m sure I’ll find other things worth watching, too. I can also stream HBO programming (since HBO is part of my xfinity tv service…).

A record I’d rather not see broken….

The Seattle Mariners lost 17 straight in a row recently. And the manager didn’t get shit-canned. I’m shocked. Last year, Don Wakamatsu got canned for an even shorter streak, but there were some other clubhouse drama issues as well. For starters, he brought back Ken Griffey, Jr. who did nothing but whine and eventually retired in the middle of the season…

I told somebody at work recently what I thought of David Beckham (think man-diva). Today he told me rumors of his own line of underwear. Guess what, he’s right.

The Sounders FC lost yesterday (I’m watching the rerun right now on root sports). But, the Mariners won, so I’ll take it. Apparently they’ve already clinched a play-off spot, according to my father, though he could’ve also been talking about the CONCACAF Champions League…

Sorry Charlie, but you’re not starting the Seahawks this year. Pete Caroll is going with Tarvaris Jackson instead of Charlie Whitehurst… A bit of risk in my opinion. But then again, going with a back-up is a risk, too.

So I can watch….

I have HBO as part of my cable service. I don’t really watch that often (I mainly have it for my roommate. Though I have been following the HBO2go app for may Android powered HD2. Since I have a comcast.net email address (Comcast is both my isp and my tv provider), I apparently can stream HBO on my phone. An interesting development. And even greater development is I can stream it on my laptop. And apparently I can stream Xfinity’s on demand programming, too. I just finished up Scott Pilgrim vs. The World:

The Vegan Police
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World — MOVIECLIPS.com

This could be a very interesting development….

Help wanted….

Hasselbeck has received a Matt Hasselbeck Well-Deserved Shit-Canning. Well, it wasn’t exactly a Well-Deserved Shit-Canning, but it’s the same end result: he’s not here. IIRC, he’s gone off to Tenessee, and there’ll hell lead the Titans to there Tom Brady Well-Deserved Beating. I wish him the best, in his future losing season. Which probably means that Seattle is looking for a new quarterback (though, I will root for Charlie Whitehurst. I just the offensive line holds up…). It has also been heard that the ‘Hawks were seriously considering Brett Favre. God Forbid. I saw his last play last season. He should not take the field again. Ever! Before, I thought it was just funny to joke around with him being old (like his suspension due to testing positive for Geritol). But now, my position is that he needs to stay retired. For his health. Seriously. Besides, the conditions of the turf at CenturyLink Field are not conducive to the use of walkers on the field. Perhaps if he’d actually ran instead of just telling the oncoming rush to get off his lawn….

While we’re on it, the NFL needs to seriously address concussions and head injuries. Sure we love to see all the hits, and ball carriers getting crunched, but there are people getting hurt. I know a lot of you think the NFL is devolving to touch football, but many of these players are beating themselves senile. And most NFL careers and ended by the time the players are in there thirties (many of them earlier). And I just don’t think it’s right to sacrifice your entire life just for 16-18 hours every fall in your 20s…. Perhaps the NFL could also borrow a page from the NHL’s book. Make ‘attempting to injure’ a call-able foul. Once called the offending player is immediately ejected from the game, and the league has to review it before he can return. Or maybe, the league could borrow the concept of the yellow and red cards from MLS. Yellow = your first and last warning from the officials. Red = you’re ejected from the game, and your team is playing short-handed for the duration….

Technorati Tags: Football,Matt Hasselbeck Well-Deserved Shit-Canning,Tom Brady Well-Deserved Beating

Anybody have a….

Ok, one of my hobbies is fixing computers (if you haven’t figured that out already…). One of my friends (actually my former district manager) comes to me on e semi-regular basis (I’ve configured 2 laptops, and I think three towers over the years for him) for his IT needs. His first computer, a Gateway Pentium II, he gifted to me about a year and a half ago. It’s a good tower, and the hardware is still sound. It will probably never run WinXP, and don’t even go there about Vista or 7. At first, I thought I was going to put WinME on it, and run some of my old games on it. The problem is that the more I look at it, the processor is too old for even my old games. But, there is hope. Apparently it has a socket one processor. And there appear to be Pentium 3 processors available for it. But the better part of me hesitates at spending any more money on it. Something is telling me that I’d be better off just parting it out. But it’s still here in my room, gathering dust and waiting….

So if anybody has a Pentium 3 socket 1, I might be interested in it. But that’s not a really high priority. I already have a tower that works very well, and I just got a laptop (in fact, this entry is being written on it…).

In a somewhat related story, we got a new Wi-Fi router. My boss was trying to sell me his old computer, which I wasn’t interested at all in (he was asking way too much for it, and when I looked at it, it doesn’t have enough upgradable shoulders for me). S, he was then going to sell me his computer desk, and the monitor (the computer desk, I thought, would be good for my brother and his iMac, and I’d use the monitor for my aforementioned fossil). In the end, I decided against both of them, but he also had a Wi-Fi ‘N’ router available. That I couldn’t pass up. When I put the cable modem and router out in the living room (so my brother could get a decent connection on his box in the kitchen), I had connectivity issues. When I put the Internet Gateway in my room, I get a decent connection (wired is always better than wi-fi), but I felt bad for my brother. So I put the ‘n’ router in my room, and took the laptop out to the living room. And promptly got a 16 mps connection. So the router can stay in my room without guilt. This also means that I can take the wi-fi card out of the tower (it works perfectly, I just like the empty slot next to my video card for air circulation…).

BTW, I’m giving Linux another try….

80+ yesterday….

It was over 80 degrees yesterday, and today we had rain. Go figure. In fact, I was woken up by thunder this morning. I guess that was Summer’s token appearance. Though with the weather the rest of the country is having to endure, I will not complain about the year(s) without a summer in the great Pacific NorthWet….

And it was my day off today, as well…

It’s over. Finally!

Now we can have a football season again. The NFL lockout is over, and there’s now a 10 year deal. We’ll have peace and football for a decade. Which is good. A few years back, the NHL had a labor issue, and it went to a lockout. And eventually the entire season got cancelled. They still haven’t recovered from it, IMHO. If you cancel your season, and your fans take up new sports, then there is a very good chance that they’ll not come back. The NFL labor dispute wasn’t going to be any different. The players make a lot of money. The owners do, too. If the labor dispute had gone to to the point to where games had to be cancelled, then… I  shudder at the thought. No matter who would’ve won, the fans would’ve lost. And I’m sure they would’ve gone on to other sports (like the EPL) and not have come back. In America, the MLS runs from Spring to Fall, and in Europe, there football season lasts from fall to spring (I have Fox Soccer Channel as part of my TV service, and I can watch in-season soccer year round).

Professional sports (ie the NBA, NFL, The New World Order (Mind-Control Division), need to realize that the fans’ loyalty comes at a price. And alienating them by arguing between players and owners isn’t the best thing to do to guarantee your future. Remember, your revenues and your paychecks ultimately come from us, through our ticket purchases, cable tv fees, etc. And if you’re not playing, we’re not buying….

The 27 Club gains another member

Amy Winehouse is dead. I never really listened to her music, but I heard of her self-destructive behavior (which is part of the reason why I didn’t listen to her…). So sad. She had the talent to go far. But she also had the self-destructive behavior…. Questions should be asked when one of your biggest hits is titled ‘Rehab”, and the main line is ‘NO, No, No’…

May she now have the peace that she cou;dn’t apparently find in this life…

Finally, some decent TV worth watching….

Beavis and Butthead are coming back!

Sneak peak, courtesy of MTV:

MTV Shows

I may eventually forgive Mike Judge for King Of The Hill…

In less than 4 hours…

The last space shuttle will come in for its final landing. Ever. I remember the first launch, when I was in the first grade at school in Goergia (this was sufficiently important stuff that we watched it in class, even in the first grade…). A few days later, we saw the landing. Live. After the first few missions, they became sufficiently commonplace that the news no longer preempted the regular programming to show the launches. The exception was one day in 1986 when they broadcast the live launch in school (for some reason or another, my teacher at the time didn’t turn the tv on, but it was on in the adjoining classroom). But it was turned on right away when it was realized what had just happened. May Christa McAuliffe frolic in the Beer Volcano and Stripper Factory.

A lot more of the technological innovations we enjoy have come from the space program than you really know. Not being able to put people into space on a regular basis will eventually have an adverse effect on the economy, and I’m afraid people don’t realize that. Yes, it takes our tax dollars, but the innovations that we can derive from them will in the long run bring an even greater return on the investment.

0-7??!!

If tonight’s Sounders FC match was a boxing fight, it would’ve been stopped early. That’s the jist of what I can say about it. Casey Keller did a real kick-ass job in the first half, but then they pulled him at half-time, and Manchester United brought in somebody (who’s name I can not recall). And he promptly scored himself a hat trick. Which anybody should be proud of (most soccer teams rarely score three goals for the entire game, let alone individual players…). But this is a friendly match, it doesn’t really count towards any teams’ record (though this is also the preseason for the English Premier League, and some of the best performances are always from players looking for work….).

60,000+ fans. Seattle is definitely a soccer town…

So Long, Borders

So, it is apparent that Borders is going to have to liquidate. One of my work sited was located near the Federal Way store, and I was on relatively speaking terms with the employees. So, when they initially filed for bankruptcy, and published that this store was initially going to stay open, I was happy (and a little bit relieved….). Then in April, they announced that the store was going to be liquidated. Two days before the store’s final day, one of the employees told me that the whole company will probably be liquidated by June. He was only a month late….

Who’s to say why the company ultimately failed? I have a couple of theories:

• They failed to develop an e-reader. Spamazon has the kindle. Barnes & Noble has the Nook. And you can buy and download a whole shit-load of books onto one of them, far more than you could carry if you had to carry books….
• The Internet. Why go to the bookstore when you can have it shipped to your door, after having ordered it without even bothering to put your pants on? Or, if you’re tech-savvy enough, you could even get it for free (though that may involve legally dubious means, exercise this at your own risk…).
• And the reason why I never shopped at Borders: The Pierce County Library. I don’t think the Pierce County Library actually killed Borders per say, but because I live only three blocks from the Parkland/Spanaway branch of the Pierce County Library, I never really had the need to buy a book from Borders. They have an even better selection. The length of a loan is 3 weeks, but that’s more than enough to read a book, and it’s free. Oh, and they have e-books, too.

On the day they finally closed the Federal Way, I downloaded my first E-Book from the Pierce County Library to my phone. Border’s died because they didn’t adapt to the times. People just don’t go to the bookstore anymore. There used to be time when there were these things called music stores (at one time, the South Hill Mall in Puyallup had three different stores that carried only music). Now they’re all gone. People are now downloading music (iTunes, anyone?).

That’s the nature of business. And life in general. Adapt. Or die…

Wi-Fi is good, but….

A wired connection is even better. When I was moving my files from my tower to my laptop, I had a LAN already already set up, so I thought I’d just drag and drop the files. But when you’re moving over 60 gigs of files, a wi-fi LAN perhaps might not be the best of ideas. I was only getting 500 KBs/sec, and it would've taken me about 12 hours to do everything. But if I used a wired connection, it only took me about 3 hours. But since I didn’t have enough network cable available, my brother had to go without an internet connection while I did the move.

But if you’re not moving over 60 gigabytes of data from one computer to another, then wi-fi is generally good….

So there’s a new Harry Potter out…

I’ve never really cared for Harry Potter (or Twilight, for that matter. When faced with Team Edward or Team Jacob, I’ve always preferred Team Grandpa Munster…). The best way to deal with Voldemort, or any wizard for that matter is to get a balance scale, a duck, and an unruly mob:

Snape way played by Alan Rickman, who was also the voice of God in Dogma. So, I wonder, why can’t Hogwarts have Jay and Silent Bob, too?

Why didn't I hear this growing up?

I though I heard once or twice on the radio when I was in high school, and no more. I thought the tune was catchy and a bit uplifting.

After those 2-3 times on the radio, I never heard it again. Until I was at the mall the other day, and the played it over the intercom, and I Soundhounded it (Soundhound infinity was a free app of the day at the Spamazon app store a while back, and I got it).

Very good song. Too bad Micheal Been passed away, and he didn’t get the mainstream success he deserved. In the ‘80s, a lot of bands put out even worse music, and saw more success than him….

Heineken Tastes Like Piss…

Actually, I shouldn’t say that. Corona tastes like bottled urine. The last time I had a Heineken, though, I had a headache that lasted till about 4 in the afternoon the next day. And I only had a beer and a half. I;ll stick with Guinness or Henry’s, thank you…

Now, we play the music video:

One wonders what drugs they were on. Heineken may be Dutch urine, but I don’t think ‘shrooms are part of it. Good song, great band. Questionable beer, and what the hell were they on when made the video? And why didn’t they share it?

Fun with 2 Computers….

So, when I got my laptop a couple of weeks ago, it took me 2, almost three nights to copy all my files over to it (I did it with the Wi-Fi LAN). But I’m glad I did. I did a maintenance wipe on my tower tonight. There is no virus that can survive a ‘format c:’ command. Actually I didn’t do it just for the maintenance aspect. I wanted to try a different configuration with the partitioning (only to realize that once I’d set all my partitions up, I liked the original setup better). But this time, I can take my time putting it back together. Especially since the aforementioned laptop happens to have all my music copied to it…. But  I do have an impetus to fix the tower eventually. It is my room’s primary TV, after all….

Did you know?

That those really neat looking themes from Windows 9x will work on Windows 7? My shiny new Windows 7 laptop is right now running the plusWindows Millennium theme. I figured out that the Win9x themes will run on WinXP when I was dual-booting ME and XP a few years back. Then when I went to straight XP, I copied the <C:/program files/plus!> directory into my xp directory, and the themes worked. In Windows 7, just copy the plus! directory to your program files directory, then start THEMES.exe. Though for best results, change the windows 7 theme to windows classic first…..

23 years ago and change…

I remember the spring of my 8th grade year. I just started taken an interest in the local professional sports scene (my favorite team was the now defunct Tacoma Stars. I still hero worship Steve Zungul and Preki. Today, I consider myself a fan of the Sounders FC…). The previous fall, I had finally figured out how the sport of gridiron football is played, and I ‘borrowed’ my parents’ walkman to listen to Seahawks games on the radio (Pete Gross went to The Beer Volcano and The Stripper Factory even before there was a Flying Spaghetti Monster). And then The New World Order (Mind-Control Division) decreed that baseball season should start, and I started listening to games on the radio. For the first part of the season as I was listening to the Mariners on the radio, Dick Williams was the team manager. They canned his ass midway through the season, and I paid little attention to it at the time, instead following the anitcs of Jimmy Snyder before he got shit-canned after the season and they brought in Jim Lefebvre, who eventually got the team to post its first winning season. Ever.

Anyway back to Dick Williams. He had an illustrious career as a player and a manager, and skippering the Mariners was the twilight of his career. Dick Williams passed away yesterday. Like I’ve said before, I never really followed him. He was almost an afterthought, and was gone beofre I realized what a contribution he had already made. Now he can join Dave Neihaus….

Not Guilty...

So, they returned a verdict. Casey Anthony is not guilty. There are many people who still think she did it, but it comes down to this: there were 12 people in Florida who had the best position to decide guilt or not, the jury. And they said not guilty. That's all I need to know. Whether our not she actually did it is now irrelevant.

People may say that justice was denied for Caylee, but the criminal justice is set up the way it is for a reason. Everybody deserves due process of law, and unless the prosecutor can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, you are considered innocent. Think about it. Would you want it any other way if you were accused of a crime you didn't commit?

The start of another summer

Over the years a resident in Washington State, I've come to realize that we do have an actual summer. It starts right around the fourth, lasts through most of July and August (with the exception of Hydroplane weekend) and ends right before my birthday.

Beyond that, if you can're see Mt. Rainier, them come inside out if the rain. If you can see it, then come inside, it's about to rain...

So I'm watching the family fourth on King 5

And what can be more patriotic song to set fireworks of to than the Monday Night Football theme? Although a couple of years they used the Immigrant Song... They've also used Smoke On The Water this year.

This takes me back. I remember my first fireworks display that I went to. I was actually scared to death of them for several years later, because I thought they were coming right towards me. I guess they'd why I've always preferred watching then on tv...

Happy Fourth….

Ok, so I’m celebrating my Fourth of July the same way any red-blooded American ought to: by giving my Full 90 with the Sounders FC.While blogging on my apartment’s wi-fi from my laptop. May the LA Galaxy receive a Tom Brady Well-Deserved Beating…. So far, I’ve seen on penalty kick (note: a hand-ball is not the best of moves when you’re on D…).

As for the previous game (New England Revolution vs. Real Salt Lake), somebody ought to shit-can the referee. There is no difference betwwen incompetence and malice, and referee in that match was both….

So, It’s National Get Dunk and Blow Yourself Up Day…

AKA the Fourth of July, or Independence Day (Coincedentally the 15th anniversary of the beginning of the end of Jeff Goldblum’s career….). I don’t set off fireworks. I just hope my neighbors don’t cause too big of a fire and burn my apartment building down. I usually watch it on TV, and let the professionals blow themselves up….

I read somewhere that less than 50% of Americans know who we defeated in the American revolution to gain our Freedom. I supposed it was a worldwide Axis of Evil, comprised mainly of Genghis Khan, the Canadians, the Mexicans, Rodan, and Barbra Streisand. And George Washington had to call on Brian Boitana and Robert Smith from The Cure…

Guess what's on Cooking Channel!

Iron Chef! The classic Iron Chef! As in the original Japanese version. Life is even better now. Iron Chef America is good, but it's also wise to pay your dues to the original, where you can legitimately wonder if chairman Kaga is wearing a dress, or pants (if memory serves me correctly, his wardrobe was one of the greatest expenses in the shows budget...). You can also see the really tall chef's hats (whenever I saw Sakai's hat, the thought always came to mind that the taller the heart, the smaller the penis.....)

Tonight, it's Battle Pumpkin. Allez Cuisine.....