Happy Tuesday People!

I’m not Irish. I’m not Catholic. And I quit drinking quite some time ago. So today is Tuesday.

Happy Tuesday. Especially to all you non-Irish, non-Catholic, sober people. Having said that, it is perfectly alright to go out and celebrate if you so desire….

Just remember that St. Patrick’s day started out as a religious holiday in Ireland, and it was celebrated by going to church, not drinking green beer (and btw, Guinness is not definitely green, and St. Patrick’s color was blue).

But I’m not Irish, I’m not Catholic, and no longer drink. Happy Tuesday People!

About the new phone

Ok, I got it last week. I think I said something about it. I also got a 64 gB memory card for it. So my phone now hame twice the capacity of my tablet (phone has 32 gB on it, plus the aforementioned 64 gB card, while the tablet has 16 gB and a 32 gB memory card). It figures, since I use the phone more than the tablet (not that I’m knocking the tablet. It has served me well, and will continue to.

Anyway enough about that. I got the phone. It has a quad-core 2.5 gHz processor (which is what I was running on my previous phone when I over-clocked it). My previous phone (HTC One M7) never had any issues with lag even when not overclocking it, so that’s not an issue. The main issue with my previous phone was space. 32 gB is normally plenty of space for one’s phone, but when you put the entire system on it, plus your apps, and then your music library, you can run out really quick. But with the memory card, I can go to town at Google Play, and still have space for my entire music library, and be able to download a movie or two).… I should point out, that my phone has more storage than my first computer, even after my first two hard drive upgrades….

As for software, as soon an I got it, I had it unlocked, rooted, and s-off’ed (all of which were pretty straightforward affairs, unlike when I s-off’ed my EVO 3D). It was a little bit more expensive than previous times, as I had to use Sunshine since there was no other way. And there are certain things that are just too darn hard to flash with just only unlocked phone. I immediately flashed Lollipop to it (I prefer to use the Venom ROMs, which is also what I usually ran on my previous phone). But after a few days, I went back to KitKat, just because that was what I was used to. I may go back to Lollipop in the future, but I’ll go with what I’m familiar with for now (the ROM developers are on XDA, and I have donated to them. Twice.

So far, I’m happy with the new phone. It does have an all-metal unibody construction, though I never notice it, as I keep it in an Otter Box. It is always better to smash the $30.00 case than the $700.00+ phone….

Some adventures online….

I’ve ordered a new phone. I’m getting an HTC One (M8). My previous phone still works pretty well, but there are issues with running out of space. So I’m getting a phone with a memory card slot. It’s not the latest and greatest, but it doesn’t have to be. Considering how it will be rooted, unlocked, and a custom ROM will be loaded on to it as soon as I get home, I’m not really concerned about being the bleeding edge… I also ordered 2 cases and a memory card for it. The cases have already arrived. I also ordered a memory card for it (after all, it does a slot for it). It should arrive next week.

Now all I need is the phone….

Some wisdom learned recently….

Never underestimate the power of hello. You can say that you’re free, but in reality you may just be fettering yourself even more.

I may not be free, but I’m at peace in certain matters tonight. What I thought were my dreams may not come true, but I still have a friend. You may not like reality, but you have to make peace with it. Dreams can be a good thing. They can give you goals to reach for. But you have to prepare yourself for failure. And you have to learn to bounce back from it. My heart has been broken, but I’ll learn wisdom from it.

Like I said, there are certain matters that I’ve made peace with now. Tonight, I can sleep with the just.

About that last post….

Some of you may coming here searching. Sorry, I deleted it. For some reason, I just didn’t feel right about it. Maybe it could’ve been TMI. Or what I’d written wasn’t really what I wanted to express. Anyway, it’s now gone…

I don't know why I'm doing this

I'm once again trying Linux. I know from previous experience via a live cd that they don't have drivers worth snot for my tower. But there is VMWare player. Yes, I will miss my previous tower, and being able to run it without vm software. But I have to play the hand I've been dealt.

At least with a vr, I don't have to nuke a hard drive or my tower. But I still feel like a glutton for punishment at times...

I don't know why I'm doing this but here we go. Again.

Way too much stuff….

Once upon a time, I could back my data up on CD-ROM. Those days are long past. Then I got a DVD burners. From about 20+ cd’s to 4-5 DVD’s. Then (at the time I was wiping my system once a week, trying new things out) I just started using my second hard drive. At first everything fit all fine and dandy on a 30 gB hard drive. The only issue was that this was an internal hard drive, so if I got a virus, I could still lose all my data on it. Then the 30gB became an 80 gB. Then my first computer died, and I got a second one with a 250 gB drive. And I used a 160 gB as my back up drive (it was still an internal hard drive, but this time I made sure to disconnect when I wasn’t backing things up, or accessing a back up…). Then I got my 1tB hard drive and my 250 gB became my backup. Then I finally bought a usb hard drive enclosure, so I could have my back-ups physically disconnected from the tower when they’re not needed. And along the lines I bought another 1 tB hard drive just for back up.

Last night, I did a system back up, storing all my essential files to my usb hard drive. What was once only 7 gB’s is now 431 gB’s.

Man, I have way too much crap….

Me Vs. Reality…

Since I’m home from work sick today, I think I’ll write some here….

Reality and I have never been the best of friends (in fact this post is more of me expounding on this). In some form or another I’ve always had some sort of dream in my head. Sometimes these took the part of a science fiction superhero (like you’d find in a comic book). Or I’d daydream about having billions of dollars. Sometimes it could just be a simple thing as having an annoying coworker/manager fired and frog-marched off the premises at work. But they’re just dreams (or fantasies). Sometimes they can be good. They can give you a goal to work for. Some are so far fetched from reality that they really only serve as entertainment value. Then there are the dreams that are close to reality, but not quite. They can be subtle. You can think that the goals needed to attain them can be realistic. It may be just that one obstacle that you need to overcome, but it’s just barely unrealistically out of your reach. But what is really happening is that your dreams have become your Reality. You’re so caught up on this one issue that you fail to realize that it’s more likely for you to wake up and all of the sudden you’ve become your favorite comic book super-hero. And what good is fostering a delusion? Sooner or later it’s going to hit you. Reality. When all the unrealistic dreams, fantasies and delusions that you’ve fostered come crashing down, and you realize that they’re not going to happen. It’s as if your house of cards has come down, and all that is left for is pick up the pieces of your broken heart. There are times when all you need to ‘wake up’ from your daydreams is for someone to tell you ‘no’. Rejection can be a good thing. It can teach you to take no for an answer, to respect others’ feelings (and their space). But my difficulty lies therein. Nobody has told me no. Yet. I keep thinking upon this matter, and my mind is divided into two camps. One side tells me that in the absence of rejection, to keep trying. The other side tells me that silence will be my only answer, and that it is best to move on (after all, I don’t mean any harm & I will still wish the person well…). I keep going between the two camps in my head. Sometimes I go with the former. It gives me hope. Then there are the times I go with the latter. I proclaim to myself that I’m free from the fantasies and delusions. Until they return the very next day. I’ve tried to be realistic about this. To temper my dreams with reality. But it seems like I have to either live in FantasyLand, or I have to attain Kolinahr, shedding my ‘petty emotions’. There has to be a balance between the two. I can’t go living in La La Land, and I’m human; it is impossible to completely repress what I feel. Such is the nature of my quest. To keep grounded in reality, but to keep persuing my dreams. Someday my Realities and my Fantasies will become reconciled. I hope….

Reality used to be a friend of mine. Please don’t ask my because I don’t know why, but reality used to be a friend of mine….

Did I mention…

Did I mention that I don’t like being sick? Woke up this morning with a headache. Usually these stem from caffeine withdrawal, so my first course of action is to fire up the coffeemaker (and to also remember to be more gradual in stepping down from the coffee). Four cups later, and I’ve become The Great Cornholio, and The Underpants Gnomes are now running through the apartment. I still have the headache, and now I feel the crud in the back of my throat.

So I was thinking about calling out. My next shift is at 6 tomorrow morning, and normally the go/no-go decision would be made at 2 in the morning, when it’s not really easy to get a hold of the manager on duty at work. So I’ve decided a pre-emptive sick call is in order. I’d rather have my absence be known now so it can be covered for than to call out at the last minute. My current employer offers all of its employees paid sick leave, and I’m going to use it. It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve had to call out before….

Did I mention I don’t like being sick?

Yet Another Lesson Learned

My former boss (actually now a current boss again since I’m working for him once again) has a T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S5. On occasion, he has had me root his phone. And usually what happens after I root it, he then looses root the next time he downloads an update. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He usually just runs the stock, factory ROM (I’m just rooting his phone, I’m not installing recovery, nor am I flashing a custom ROM). The main reason why I’m rooting his phone is so I can install adaway and use the HOSTS file to block the ads on his phone. Generally when he upgrades his phone, since he’s just running the factory software, he loses root, and I have to re-root it. Very recently, he upgraded his phone to Lollipop. And so, I was asked to come in and root his phone. Again. So, I got my laptop and headed up to root it. And halfway through the process, the phone wouldn’t boot up. After some digging, I realized that there was no root yet available for his phone (there may be a root available for it, I’ll have to do more research). Fortunately, he is sufficiently computer literate that he was able to recover his phone.

Why am I writing this? This is a lesson I’ve learned since I got my first Android phone. That you never update your phone as soon as the update comes out. Inevitably there are going to bugs and/or you’ll lose root (not that I’m concerned about that since I’m S-off). For my HTC One, I'm currently running Venom. Currently, it’s KitKat (Android 4.4.3), but Lollipop should be coming shortly. I’m probably not going to be jumping at the bit to update it. It’s sometimes best to wait and see if there any bugs…

This is yet another lesson learned…

A sad day on Science Fiction

And in tv and film. Leonard Nimoy had passed away.

It's wasn't till my teenage years that I really got to see Star Trek The Original Series. So my first exposure to Spock was a copy of a copy of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. And he died heroically at the end of the movie...

But my first exposure to Leonard Nimoy was a series he did in the '70s called In Search Of:.

He will always be Spock. I don't know if I can add anything else to what has been written about him. Other than he's gone to the great Star Trek convention in the sky...
RIP Leonard Nimoy.

Just a couple of thoughts on a Sunday morning

Note: I started this post Sunday morning. It's now Friday. I guess I should finish it....

Recently, I tried to transfer to location that is more local for me at the company where I work. The reply I got back s that I would have to step back down to part time before they would even look my file to consider it. But I also attempted to transfer last year when I was part time, and I was told to go suck it. So I'm not going to transfer. As for my next plans, I'm keeping those to myself.

The only winning move in Office Politics and drama games is not to play. Yes, we all have our issues at one time or another. Sometimes the best thing to do is to pull the person aside and privately work out your differences. Other times you may need to discreetly tell your leadership about your concerns. But always talk to your coworkers, not about them.

Respect is a two way street, and it must be earned. In life, abd especially in the workplace.

I know I've posted on this matter in the past, but events of late have brought the topic back up again in my mind. Abd this is still my position...

Why does this keep getting longer?

There was once a time when I could sit down to my computer, partition, format and reinstall a dual-boot system (WinME and WinXP) in two days straight. And this was nuking both drives, so I had to restore everything from CD. Then as my system kept getting more complex, eventually I stopped dual-booting windows, and still my times to from initial wipe to finishing the rebuild kept getting longer and longer. Days became weeks. My back-ups became bigger, but with a second hard drive (that was no longer being repartitioned and formatted every time) and my DVD burner, backing up was never a problem for me.

I started this rebuild on December 11. I now just finished it tonight, over two months later. I guess it’s because once I get my web browser reinstalled, I immediately start ‘using’ my computer again, and ‘moving in’ slows down considerably. I also guess that it doesn’t help that I now have a phone and a tablet. Both are Android and rooted (in fact the phone is S-Off). Come to think of it, I think I know why it took me over two months to reinstall everything on my tower. During this time that I was supposed to be working on my tower, I was busy wiping my phone, going from Jellybean and Sense 5.0 to KitKat with Sense 5.5, and KitKat with 6.0. Right now I’ve found the most stable configuration is KitKat with Sense 6. Of course that’s all out the window, now that Lollipop is now out for my phone.

I should also add that I don’t think I’m going to be dual-booting this tower. There is only space for one internal hard-drive in this tower, and there aren’t drivers in Linux for my internal components yet (as learned from a live-cd test). Maybe in virtual machines down the road.

It took me over two months to do it. But it is done…

Finally, a day off…

Sorry readers, it’s been too long since I’ve been here. I thought that with my phone and my tablet both having blogger installed on them it would be easier to post things, but Life just keeps getting in the way. Today is Valentine’s Day, and I was going to help out a friend today, but he said I wasn’t really needed (though I was still welcome to swing by). That and the fact that I have to get up at 3 tomorrow morning to work led me to the decision to cancel my plans today and stay home. Brought the laptop out to the living room, poured a cup of coffee, and here I am…

• About two weeks after I bought my brother a Wi-Fi Blu-Ray player, his TV dies. So, of course, he replaces it. With a bigger set (though still not as big as mine).
• I joined Amazon Prime. I like the free 2-day shipping on lots of items, but I got it more for the free video & music streaming. And I’ll eventually start reading more on my kindle. Think of it as more of a Hulu Plus/Netflix, but with an annual fee, rather than monthly. I also have Netflix and Hulu Plus, and I can follow programs as they go from one service to another….

I was Austrailia Day last month, and for some reason I keep playing this:

I really don’t care for clowns, but in this case, I’ll make an exception…

I am not Charlie Hebdo

First things first, I condemn violence in any form. It is fundamentally evil. Especially in the name of religion. It’s 2015, and we don’t need to come to blows over who has the best invisible friend. The criminals who attacked the office of Charlie Hebdo are terrorists. They are cowards.

But having said that, I also have to ask why Charlie Hebdo would publish something so inflammatory. I like to say that I was brought up with enough sense to respect other peoples’ beliefs and practices be it Christian, Jew, Pagan, Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh. I condemn the violence that has occurred in France of late, but I also condemn the inflammatory cartoons that Charlie Hebdo has published.

My sympathies lie with those who lost their lives in those attacks. But I don’t see either side as being completely innocent. Charlie Hebdo has published inflammatory pictures that I myself see as offensive and I’m not Muslim). And the terrorists decided to use force of arms to force their views on everybody else.

Violence. Is. Evil. Period. But I am not Charlie Hebdo.

A lesson learned…

When I went to Full Time at my current employer last fall, I became eligible to enroll in the Company provided health care plan. At the time, I was using a health care plan that I’d purchased through the marketplace, and I decided to continue using that one. Big mistake. Because my employer had offered more than the bare minimum insurance and I didn’t enroll in it, I’m ineligible for any tax credit. So I’m paying full price for health insurance until my employer’s next open enrollment plan.

Lesson learned: when or if you convert to full-time employment and your employer offers health insurange, enroll in it! I didn’t and now I’m paying the price….

Yet another laptop….

So, last fall, my mother got a laptop. An Acer that she got through Wally World… It wasn’t that bad of a laptop. It had Windows 8.1, which is normally bad, but it also had a touchscreen (which is really the only way to deal with the metro UI). And she used for only a couple of weeks, before deciding to go with an android tablet (she also had a windows 7 tower, so she’s not hurting for a computer, and your truly is keeping up to date, patched and secure). Anyway, she wasn’t using the laptop, and so she gave it me.

It does have its drawbacks, first off it has windows 8.1 on it. But is also has a touchsreen. The processor doesn’t have quite the horsepower that I’m looking for (but it is a laptop).

On the upside, it has all the normall bells and whistles that I’d expect form a laptop. DVD Burner, Wi-Fi, USB (even has a usb 3.0 port). Added bonus: integrated bluetooth. Did I mention the touchscreen?

I shall probably use it mainly as a back up to the tower (a lesson learned from my tower’s failure last November) and for when I need to go to fix somebody’s phone/computer.

Yes, it has windows 8.1, which I absolutely detest. But then again I got it for free. And I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Thank you, Mother.

2014 - A Strange Trip

As of the writing of this post, 2014 has about 2 hours left. Much has happened this year. I’m not going to go into current events that much (that’s what the Internet is for)…

I replaced my phone, my tablet, my computer, my printer, and 2 pairs of shoes. I went from part-time to full-time at work (it pays to actually show up). I made peace with somebody whom I’d been fighting with for a while (forgiveness is always better than revenge). I realized I was in love with someone, laid my cards on table & told her so. In hindsight, I may have driven her off forever, but it was something I had to say. It has been said that the truth will set you free. I told the truth, and I’ll eventually be free. Whatever will happen from this, I will still wish her well. My former boss sold me his HDTV. So I had to get an HD DVR box, and considerably upgraded my cable service. And I also got a Wi-Fi capable Blu-Ray player. Did I mention the computer that died only after I put about $400 worth of upgrades into it? I’ve found the best way to kill a day off is to go to my former workplace, and order a pizza. My best friend in the morning can be my morning cup of coffee. If I don’t end up puking it at work… When I did Christmas shopping this year, I could actually afford to get something for everyone. When it comes to the Christmas tree, Subway Gift Cards are a hot commodity. And my 6-year-old niece can use Amazon…

This isn’t everything that happened this year. But it’s here that this year has been a long strange trip. And, now on the cusp of 2015, I think the next year will be another strange trip. But life is more about the journey. And I will plan on enjoying the ride…

Air the grievances! Prepare for the Feat Of Strength!

Ok, today was Festivus. There was a little bit of the Airing of Greivances, but I’m skipping the Feat of Strength.

Finished my Christmas shopping rather early this year (last Wednesday, to be exact). Due to my work schedule, I was working 6 days straight up until Christmas Eve, and working in retail, I definitely want to avoid the crowds. So this meant doing it on my last day off before Christmas. I did most of it through Spamazon and Wally World. Normally, in previous years the finances were sufficiently bleak that I didn’t give much for Christmas presents. But this year, I am employed full-time, so I got gifts for those whom I’d would’ve otherwise not given gifts to.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and there’s the big family reunion at Grandma’s house. Normally, I ask for an opening shift at work, so I can get out of there early and make the trip. This year (since current employer has paid vacation), I took a vacation day on Christmas Eve, so I can have the day off…

ANd I’m taking the day after Christmas off as well. Just so I can sleep in…

A Former Friend…

This song has been stuck in my head for quite some time. Too bad when it was originally released, it was a bomb. I’ve that it’s meaning is quite close to home. Every time it seems like a have a dream, and I seek to fulfill it, Reality has other plans. Dreams can be a good thing. But Reality always asserts itself. Sometimes you win, sometimes you can compromise, and sometimes Reality just crushes your dreams. But you can’t run from it forever. You can hide from it in your imagination and your day dreams, but eventually you have to face it. And the more you try to run from it, the less Reality will be willing to bargain with you when it’s finally time to face it.

You can have your dreams, but Reality will always temper them…

As the song says: ‘Please don’t ask me, ‘cause I don’t know why, but Reality used to be a friend of mine…’