So They Won Last Night...

They lost to Denver. They won vs. San Diego. And last night, it wasn't a football game. It was a massacre. Somewhere in the third quarter, Mills Lane ran into the field and tried to stop the game. It was that kind of blowout. The Seahawks punter didn't take to the field until well into the second half. Abd the Bears punter fielded more snaps the Jay Culter.

And I missed most of it. I had to open at $dayjob (which means being there at 6, which means up and at 'em @ 1:30 in the morning). Now that usually means that I'd be home in time for the game, but my firmer employer wanted me to come in and cover the shop for a few hours. So I did. Didn't get home till well after 9 last night. and then I had to run errands at my mother's house. But I did get home in time to sit down in front of the 60" and watch the third quarter....

I bought a coffee maker a year ago, and I have set where it is needed the most: in my room. So when I get up, I can hot the button, and have it ready by the time I scrape myself out of bed. But I didn't use it today. 10+ hours of sleep is a passable substitute for caffeine. And you do have to use caffeine responsibly. After all, The Underpants Gnomes have no place in the workplace.....

Birthday misadventures and e-commerce…

My birthday was yesterday. I received lots of well-wishes from my friends on Facebook. But the actual celebration was this past Friday (my brother planned it). My sister gave me a Russell Wilson jersey, and we promptly watched the pre-season game where the Seahawks dismantled the San Diego Chargers. This was a complete surprise, as tradition dictates that my birthday never gets celebrated by my family. And I’m usually happy with it. Normally, I’ll take the day off, and enjoy a quiet day to myself. Actually I should correct myself. The past two birthdays, my brother has made sure that dinner was provided (I’m always happy with pizza or Chinese take-out). My father gave me a Spamazon gift card, which has all been used up. About this time, I had also been making some purchases (I’ve long since figured out that if I really want something, I’m going to get it myself).

Long story short, this is what I got:

With the Spamazon gift card:

• A Samsung BD-F5900 / BD-FM59B 3D Wi-Fi Blu-ray Disc Player. It has Wi-Fi on it, so I can play Netflix on my 60” TV. There was some initial difficulty in setting it up, as it initially thought that it was still in Mexico (I saved a few dollars and got it refurbished). But I got it reset, so I can now use Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant Video. Though I currently don’t subscribe to either (that’s probably going to change, though…)
• 300: Rise of an Empire. I liked the original 300, but I’m not going to pay movie theatre prices.

And I then got some other items on my own:

• It was time I retired both Gateway EV700 monitors that I had been using for the past 14 years. So I got an ASUS VN279Q 27-Inch Screen LCD Monitor. Replacing 2 17” CRT’s with a 27” LCD. I should’ve done it soomer. I really like the HD display. And playing FS is going to be a blast with a 16:9 aspect ratio display. I no longer have to use my tv if I want a widescreen display (which is good, as it only has one hdmi port, and my Blu-Ray player only connect through HDMI)… And with the retirement of the EV700’s, I now am no longer using any component from my original Gateway computer that I got in November 2000.

And I’ve also purchased some DVDs:

• Henry V. I used to have this before. Then I loaned it to a friend, and never saw it again. Shakespeare always makes a good epic. There are times in my life when I could use Derek Jacobi to narrate my life. We could all use a chorus… Though it is ‘out of production’ so I had to get a used copy….
• The Princess Bride. A storybook story with the Dread Pirate Roberts, Princess Buttercup, and Andre the Giant….
• The Austin Powers Trilogy. I liked all three films, and this was chance to own them all.
• The Naked Gun Trilogy. I remember seeing these many years ago. This was Leslie Neilson at his finest. Play LA’s finest…
• Robin Hood: Men In Tights. My. Favorite. Movie. Of. All. Time. And to think I never owned it on DVD. And somehow Mel Brooks’ retelling of the story is so much better than the Kevin Costner treatment. Rabbi Tuckman is better than Friar Tuck.
• Spaceballs. When it comes to Lord Dark Helmet vs. Darth Vader, you have to go with Rick Moranis. And I even got an extra copy for my co-worker, Pizza the Hutt (see Rene, I did mention you…)
• Top Secret. A spoof of both Elvis films and war epics. And it’s funny. Especially that one scene with the cow…
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Once again, I used to have this version, but I lent it out, and never saw it again. Now that I have it again, I shall grin, and then feast upon the lambs. And sloths. And carps. And anchovies. And orang-utans. And breakfast cereals. And fruit bats. And large… On second thought, skip a bit, brother.
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Special Collector’s Edition). I have the regular version (along with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan). For another birthday a while back, I got the Director’s Cut of that film, and so I’ve always been on the lookout for them.

Some of these items (like the Blu Ray player and the monitor) were purchases that I had been planning for a while. But most of the DVD’s I got on impulse in a moment of weakness.

I’ll try to be stronger. I promise.

Another trip to the doctor

It's been too long since I've last been here. But I really had no choice in the matter. After my last visit, Aetna denied my claim, and I ended up paying over $600 for a diabetic checkup & office visit. Then United Healthcare decided I didn't need to see a doctor (which I previously wrote about). So I went with Group Health. And it took almost 2 months to get that in order. But today, after numerous phone calls,  I got into my doctor's office.

Health care is good. Getting insurance is a nightmare. But, I went for over 10 years a diabetic without insurance, and any insurance is beget than none....

To the backups go the victory. And hopefully the job.

Ok, with less than two minutes to go in the preseason opener, it looks like the Denver Broncos will win over the Seattle Seahawks. Big deal. It's only a preseason game. It doesn't even count. This is mainly to decide who gets a job fit the regular season. Their backups are better than ours tonight.

When it comes to football season, I've always had a preference for the preseason. Because you're watching people fighting for jobs, fighting for your job period is probably a better motivation than fighting fit a trophy and a ring. I could possibly understand the ring part, but it's not even forged by the Elven-Smiths, so it's not even one of the Rings of Power...

Aren't Virtual Machines Fun?

I use VMWare player on my tower. Because I have really important software (ie games. Really old games) that I still occasionally want to use (play). And it won't run on what I currently use. But thanks to the miracle of the virtual machine, I can have a working copy of WinXP and WinME handy to run them. And since I can run my video card though my hdtv, that means I can run Windows ME on a 60 inch monitor.

But don't worry. I promise to only use my powers for good....

Coffee or computer?

Due to the nature of my work schedule, on occasion I have to be up überearly in the morning. And there are times when I'm too tired to even get to the kitchen & the coffee maker located therein. So last year I bought a new coffee maker. And I put it where I needed it the most: in my room. It was originally placed on my TV cabinet, and it shared the same power outlet. When I got my current TV it had to be moved. The only available real estate in my room is on my computer desk, sharing the same outlet as my computer. Ave knowing how much juice each one pulls,  this choice is presented to me: coffee or computer? This morning I actually realized that I was turning my computer off for a cup of coffee. I guess this is why I have my tablet. So I can blog about my decision of coffee over the computer....

Once upon a time, I had sworn off coffee (most likely an over-reaction to an unfortunate indecent at work, when I ended up tossing my morning coffee and the salami sandwich I had the night before) and drink. I'm giving coffee a try again. But I'm still dry....

A hope for peace....

I'd want I'm setting in the media is true, then Israel is holding to its truce in Gaza. Perhaps it may even be possible for both parties to sit down abd settle their differences peacefully. In this conflict there are no winners. When you deliberately target civilians, you lose period. And that's something both parties are not innocent of.....

Violence. Is. Evil. Period.

Hopefully today will be a better day

Ok, a couple of days ago, I got on the wrong bus, abd I was late to work. Today as I boarded the bus,I made sure to ask where the bus was going.

Moral of the story: You only need to get on the wrong bus once. If at all....

What am I getting into?

Since I got my Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 (LTE) on Sunday, my old Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 Wi-Fi has been on the market. Actually I only decided to sell it today. Posted it to my Facebook, and I immediately got two offers (the greatest was 2 dollars, two jalapenos, and a loaf of banana-zuchinni bread from last year. But my sister and I came to a deal. And my old tablet has been sold.

That was pretty simple. What is now complicating things is that I was approached by another friend about buying a laptop. He told me the specs about it, and there was some negotiating. And in the end, I made an offer. Which was accepted. I told him I won’t have the money right away, but if he couldn’t sell it elsewhere, I’d buy it.

But I have to pay off my new TV first….

Another reason to regret recent poor judgement….

So I got my 60 inch TV recently. I then set up the entertainment stand for it. Somewhere along the way, I got an HDMI cable for it. The original idea was to get an HD-DVR cable box for it from Comcast, but those plans have fallen through for now. Tonight I realized that the video card on my tower has an HDMI port on it, and it’s within 8’ of my tv. So I hooked them up, and my tower and my tv can talk to each other.

So I now have a 60 inch monitor. I could get used to this. But I can only watch TV, or use the computer with is. Oh, wait. I have a tv tuner in my tower as well. This is going to get interesting….

Getting the day off to a proper start

Well, what can I say? Right now I'm trying to be in my way to work. But Pierce Transit isn't having anything of it.... Took the route 410 to Puyallup, abd has a half hour layover while waiting to connect to the route 402 to Federal Way. The problem is there are two 402s that stop here. One to Federal Way, one to Graham. Guess who got on the one to Graham.

Long story short, I'm late to work. What a way to start my day....

Yet another decision I'll soon regret...

So I upgraded my tablet yesterday. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 had served faithfully since I got it from Wally World. But I felt it was time to upgrade. And Sprint had a special. A Galaxy Tab 3 with 4g data. For free. With a contract of course...

So of course I bit it and got one. I only have 1gB off data a month for it, but that's more than enough for what I plan to use it for. If I'm going to Netflix on the bus, or stream the game I'll do that on my phone (unlimited data). But for the occasions where I want to blog or Facebook on a bigger screen, this will do fine.

Underneath the hood, my new tablet has a faster processor, twice the space as my old tablet. And of course internet access.

And yes, I've rooted it already....

On recent events of late

Violence is never acceptable. Be it in Ukraine or in Gaza, it only does harm. Killing people in retaliation for killing one or a few persons or to fulfill your hubristic nationalist ego is pointless. Sure you can take down your intended target, but at what cost? What good will it do to your cause to shoot down a civilian airliner with almost 300 people on it, all of whom had nothing to do with your dispute? Why do you feel the need to launch rockets on a daily basis into Israel? Why do you feel obligated to deliberately target a hospital? Why do you have to kill over 600 Palestinians (and in fact, kill more children than your total casualties)? I'm not going to take a side in any of these conflicts. One upon a time, I would've taken up a side, but those times have since past. War is very rarely justified, and I will not be an advocate for violence. War is evil. Violence is evil. If anything, I condemn all the parties. There are ways to get your point across (sanctions, embargoes, etc...). Deliberately targeting civilians is not one of them.

When it comes to Ukraine and Gaza, I’m not going to just single out one side for condemnation. I condemn all sides. If someone kills one of your people, and you retaliate by killing one of theirs, then you’re really no better than them. We’re all grown adults. We can solve our problems without killing each other. To quote Rodney King: “Can’t we all just get along?”

Violence. Is. Evil. Period. Any questions?

A replacement

When I got my HTC One last January, this first accessory that I ordered before it was even delivered was a case. Namely an Otter Box Defender, which was purchased from Worst Buy. It works well. I like the high-impact plastic case, the screen protector *and* the silicone outer skin all serve to keep my $600 phone damage and scratch free. I use the belt clip to keep the phone on my backpack’s should strap (mainly so when I’m playing music through my bluetooth, the signal doesn’t cut out.

It did it’s job well. Though through the months, it started to show its wear, mainly from me trying to take it off and put it back on too much. I started noticing that more than a couple of the latches were broken on it. So long story short, I had to replace it last week. But it’s better to replace a $30 casae than it is to replace a $600 phone. And yes, I did replace it with another Otter Box Defender.

This time, I’m not taking it off…

So I got my TV a week ago…

Well, a little bit more than a week ago. I still need to get the tv stand for it. You may ask, what kind of of TV did I get? I got a Sony WEGA. It is a projection type tv. So, it is a big screen tv, but it is also, well, big. But it is an HDTV, and an improvement over what I had before. Down the road this may prove to be poor judgement on my part. I maybe shouldn’t have done it.

But a deal is a deal. And I agreed to it. I may get buyer’s remorse, but I’ll still live up to my end. It’s all about responsibility….

I’ve possibly used poor judgment of late…

No, I haven’t done anything criminal. Nor anything morally compromising. A couple of weeks ago, I got a text from a friend wanting to sell his TV. It is a 60-inch monster. Went to mutual friend, and after telling him about it, we proceeded to have fun mocking the first firend. And then I thought, that I could use an HD tv. And he’s willing to take payments. So I bought it. I had already aggreed to buy his printer, so this was added to the deal.

About the tv:

• I don’t know much about it other than it’s a Sony 60 inch tv. And it’s coming with a stand. We have a 36 inch set in the living room so I know it’s going to be huge. To that end, I’ve spent most of my day cleaning my room (those of you who truly know me would know that this never happens. Today, I threw out a complete computer desk (which I bought from this same person back when I was working for him), and I threw out another tower (a pII tower that I had tried to turn onto a pIII tower, but I never was able to get working as such. In fact, I never got it work for what I had intended for it)…

And about the printer:

• I got a Lexmark Impact S305. Run of mill multi-function printer. Similar to what I’ve always had (like my Canon MultiPass C755 [rip]and my Canon Pixma MP250). Except for the fact that it’s wireless. Once you’ve set it up on the Wi-Fi, all you need to do is literally plug it in, turn it on & and you can print. Which means I could probably have it out in the other room. But I’ll keep here in my room for now. And I really like the individual ink colors. I hate having to replace the enitre color cartridge just because I ran out of one color…My other printer, the Pixma MP250 still works. But I may retire it to in-the-closet spare status just for lack of space in my room. USB cables can only be so long…

Well, this may down the road prove to be poor judgement on my part. But then again, I was at Wally World pricing 60 inch TV’s and they were all over 4 figures. SO it may be a bargain. We will see. It arrives on Sunday…

Forgiveness is always better than revenge...

My former boss may not like this post, since this is being written about him, but I fell that I have to write this. And there is wisdom to be learned. Like the subject of certain posts of late, who he is & the company in question will remain in pectore, though in due time, you may figure it out (especially if you follow me on Facebook). But for now, I'm not naming names...

After I was fired, my first priority was to put out a resume, apply everywhere I could find & basically find another job. I was still hot under the collar about the way I'd been treated, and I was going for revenge, as documented here. I was out for revenge. Almost at all costs. I avoided his store, and I made sure everybody knew why I left. I was right (after all, I had the documentation & I had prevailed in my unemployment claim. And L&I had sided with me as well). And the final piece in my plan was to simply take his ass to court. And to convince my (now former) co-workers to go in with me (even in small claims court you can get up to $5000 per head, which would've been easy for me, as I have documentation and proof of retaliation). But I couldn't. At first I just decided to walk away from it. I'd found another job, was making better money. I'd received a couple of text messages from my former employers, and I just silently deleted them.

But through the months, I realized that I was getting even more bitter over this. Whenever I saw mutual friends, all I could say was how he was a jerk/thief & that he should be shunned. In the end, I was looking more like a bitter, disgruntled former employee. So, I refriended my former employer on Facebook, and started talking to them again. One of the things I've learned in the movies is that hubris will be one's downfall, and I'm not looking to become another Darth Vader (you know, the whole getting your limbs cut off, and left to burn in lava just isn't my thing)... Eventually, I worked up the courage to go back to the store and talk to him in person. Long story short, that hatchet has been buried, and I'm back to working for him on occasion. I'm not going to cut ties with my current employer (after all, I'm making more money here than I was for him, and he just doesn't the payroll anymore). I may not agree with him, but I don't need to argue the point, nor do I need to prevail with him. I know I'm right, and that's the only person I need to convince.  You don't have to prevail in every argument. A friend is better than an enemy. Forgiveness is better than revenge.

Underway on Linux. Again.

I must be a glutton for punishment. Every once in a while, I'll try to install Linux. Usually what will happen is there will be an epic fail within the first two hours, and I'll end up wiping it completely. A couple of times, I've ended up taking the nuke form orbit approach and wiping my entire tower, and starting over with windows and linux. Sometimes it'll last more than two hours, but I'll end up nuking it because I can't the graphics driver to install. Or the tv tuner... But I always keep getting drawn back, called by the Siren's Song of running my computer and sticking it to The Anti-Christ.

Then again, I think I've stated before here that I want my primary OS on my tower to be Linux-based. Of all the distributions I've tried, I keep coming to OpenSuSE. It supports both KDE and Gnome, and I can get it to play nice with all my hardware. I've dabble in Fedora before, but I couldn't get it to mount my windows drive, so I couldn't really 'move in', and it only supported Gnome (if you're migrating from WIndows, KDE is the way to go).

This time, I've gotten past the all essential graphics driver reinstall stage. Two monitors is really important to me, and what has happened in the past is that I could only get it recognize and drive one monitor, or I'd only be able to have the same display on both monitors. Not good. The next things I have to do are install the printer drivers (a little tricky since I'm running the 64-bit, and the only drivers I could find are 32-bit, but I can brute-force it), and the TV tuner (not that big of a deal right now).

So, Hello World. I'm under way on Linux. Again...

So, United Health Care doesn't want me to see a doctor. Period.

With the passage of Obamacare, I lost my company provided health insurance. Not that I grieve for it. The one claim I filed for a routine diabetic checkup was denied due to a pre-existing condition, and I ended up paying over $400.00 out of pocket for a 15 minute office visit (GFY Aetna). So, I filled out my online application, and I qualified for the state's basic health plan (aka Apple Care),  in this case provided by United Health Care. I assigned a doctor (who was not the previous doctor I'd been seeing). They call themselves managed care. It should be more correctly called micro-managed care. I looked on their website and saw that my previous doctor was on the network,  but the website wouldn't completely load so I couldn't do anything about it. I asked online how to switch providers, and I was ignored. They just sent me a new ID card with the sand provider. I tried calling them, but all I got a as a voice recognition program that couldn't understand what I was saying (kind of like a menu where they deliberately how the choices).

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago,  when I updated my income (getting more hours at work), and I'm no longer eligible for United Health Care. I'm still covered by it till the end of the month,  and i was finally able to switch to my old provider. So i call and set up an appointment with him. The next day, I get a call from the doctors office saying that I'm not listed in the system, and that I'd be paying for this out of my own pocket. I don't have over $400.00 so I canceled the appointment. After calling United Health Care, I was told that the changes won't take place until I receive my new ID card, which probably won't conveniently arrive until after I'm off of United Health Care.

I'm a type I diabetic. And United Health Care doesn't want me to see a doctor.

So, it is Mother's Day today....

So today is the day to celebrate motherhood. Whatever issues you may have with your parents, at least take the time to acknowledge her existence and the gave that she bore you for nine or so months, then endured the Hell you gave her for 18-21 years... I say my mom's yesterday, I'll probably be over there again tonight. Abd tomorrow we're going to get together at my sister's for the actual mother's day celebration.

I did do something today as well,  and I would encourage you to do it s well. I went through all my facebook contacts,  abd left a Mother's day wish on the walls of all my Facebook friends whom I know to be mothers. And it just about killed my phone's battery...