The Purge Returns

Got up tonight, and I put grew tired of typing on my shoes just to get to the light switch. So once again, I started to clean my room. 3 bags full of garbage. Most of it being from around my waste basket. I'm not done by a long shot but my easy chair is now a chair again, all my Star Wars model kits are but away, and all the shipping boxes from my misadventures on Newegg are thrown out. And I have visible floor space again.

Next up will be my computer desk. I have a new coffeemaker arriving tomorrow... 

Windows 10 1903 is out.

Latest version of 10 is out. It didn't show up when I ran windows update, so I used the Media Creation Tool to get it. Tried to burn it to a flash drive, but it didn't take for some reason. So, I'm installing it directly. It is taking a while to install (currently on 25% of updates). But I've got a Tv to watch.

Ordered a new video card. My R7 200 is running perfectly fine, but Newegg had an RX 580 (IIRC) on sale abs I can always use a better frame rate in FSX. 

Trouble eating out…

Tried eating out at Jacking Off In The Box. Placed my order at 8:57 pm. Paid $10.98 for it. And ended up leaving 15 minutes later without my food or a refund (and no progress had been made on my order). Went to their website to complain, and jumped through all of their hoops. And was promptly ignored. A week later, I went to Twitter, and sent them a DM on Twitter. And was ignored again. Over  a week after my initial complaint, I was sent an survey spam email on behalf of Jacking Off In The Box. Eventually, I got a form letter DM back offering a certificate. I told them to go shove it, because:

1. I really doubt that the ‘certificate’s’ value will cover what I actually paid (for items I never received).
2. There are documented cases of Jacking Off In The Box sending gift certificates that are already expired! Meaning, that they pretty much never intended to make the customers right.
3. But the real reason why they can go shove shove their gift certificates up their asses is that to accept them would be to acknowledge that I’m coming back. In the time that I was waiting for my order form a supposed fast food establishment, I could’ve gone across the street to Shari’s, been seated, placed my order, and received it on a real plate with real utensils.

Last week, I finally got a reply from my original complaint. Basically, yet another form letter completely disregarding the fact that I never received the goods and services which I paid for, and only offering a ‘complimentary certificate’. But the only part that I can quote from it is:

This email communication and any attachments may contain confidential information which also may be legally privileged and is intended only for the use of the intended recipients identified above. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication, you are hereby notified that any unauthorized review, use, dissemination, distribution, downloading, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. Additionally, if you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify us by replying to this email, delete the communication and destroy all copies.

So, I paid $10.98 at Jack in the Box. At 8:57pm on April 12 at store #8305. I never received my food. My complaints were officially ignored (if it takes you more than a week to respond, then your response is irrelevant). And all I eventually got for my complaints were 2 form letters, a questionable offer for a meaningless certificate, my personal information sold to a third party, and a not-so-subtle SLAPP threat.

Hey Jack In The Box:

• Your food is shit. It never looks like it is advertised, especially the tacos. Usually the main ingredient in them is grease.
• You food is overpriced. Especially when I never received what I paid for!
• Your customer service is atrocious. It always seemed that whenever I go to Jack In The Box in general, and store #8305 in particular, I have to wait at the counter for an unacceptably long time. And then I have to wait even longer for my order. But hey, they know that you’re just going to ignore complaints, so they can get away with this.
• If you really want to make this situation good, I want my $10.98 back. In verifiable funds. I don’t want your worthless, pre-expired ‘certificates’. You’ve made it already quite clear that I’m not welcome at your establishment, even after I placed and paid for my order. And if I can’t trust you to deliver on said order, than I will not accept a company check, either (your word is just plain not good. Period).
• And you can also shove that confidentiality notice up your ass as well.
• But whatever. Just go back to ignoring your customers and go fuck off, thieves…

Been about two weeks

It's been about two weeks since I upgraded my phone. And I've reached the point of no going back. I deleted all the other ROMs that I had for my other phones (I even had one from my old EVO 3D which I don't even know where it is). I doubt think I'm going to be using my old phones anymore, if not fit anything else than that it costs me $36 to activate each time, each phone (it's not like I can just pop in the sim card, like my T-Mobile days).

I also got a wireless charger. And it works, even through my OtterBox... 

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I've found a new sport

I've been following cricket a lot lately. I guess that's a side effect of having a boss from India for the past 13 1/2 years who's really into cricket. But I've found out recently that Xfinity has moved WillowTV (a cable channel that covers only cricket) from a separate premium channel to a service tier that I already have. Ave the Indian Premier League is running. They've also staggered the schedule so that there is one match every morning (owing to the time difference between Parkland and India). But the my high point will be the World Cup coming in a month abs a half.... 

So, I've had my phone for about a week now...

So, I've had my phone for about a week now. I'm impressed with it. Some thoughts:

• The battery life. 4000mh. That's huge. When I had my EVO 3D, I had an external battery charger that was only half that size. 
• The power management. Yes it had a big battery, but it also uses it well. Even if I forget to charge my phone at lunch, I still have enough juice to go the distance. Whereas with my HTC 10, I had to charge it on my lunch. 
• The display size. Not a big as my old tablet (but quite close). I can fire up the Kindle app and actually read something, without struggling over the size of the display (yes, when I last went to the eye doctor, I had 20/20, but that won't last forever). And streaming will be a happier experience. 
• The security. My previous phone had just a fingerprint scanner. My current phone has one, too. It also supports iris and facial scanning. I like being to unlock my phone just by looking at it. Abs the fingerprint scanner is located where I can unlock the phone using it with only one hand.
• More ram. More ram=more stuff I can have running at once. Though this has a tendency to kill the battery...
• The storage space. My phone has 128 gB on it, not including the memory card. 

The rest of what I like about my phone is simply software related. Though I miss Sense. Abs the ability to root my phone. Though I can survive... 

Waiting....

Second day of my weekend here. Slowly 'moving in' to my new phone. Surprisingly, I can still use my phone without root, though I do miss the ability to dig around the internals, like my previous phones.

But that is not what I'm waiting for. I decided I want pizza for breakfast (owing to my inverted sleep cycle due to work), so I ordered Papa John's. And it should've been here 10 minutes ago...

Another first tonight…..

All the times I’ve had Windows 10 on my tower, whenever I’ve decided to wipe it, it was by my choice. Usually because I wanted to go back to a previous version of windows. My days of rendering Windows completely unbootable were behind me. I thought.

Until tonight. Somehow I successfully managed to make WIndows 10 unbootable on my Tower. Fortunately, I have two things going for me: A recent backup, and my laptop. So I’m now wiping the tower again. And I have a laptop that I can use until I get the tower ready (currently I’m restoring my Steam archive to my laptop)…

For the first time...

With the exception of 2 months in 2009, when I tried using a BlackBerry, all my phones have been HTC products, starting from my T-Mobile Shadow, all the way to my most recent HTC 10. When I paid the phone bill yesterday morning, I also paid off my phone, and so I became eligible for an upgrade. Sprint doesn't currently offer any HTC phones, so i decided on a Samsung. Unfortunately, Samsung has gotten really good at locking their phones. So I've decided I will not be rooting my next phone. The only reason why I rooted my phones anymore was so I could kill ads with a HOSTS file. There are ways of killing ads without HOSTS (like the adblock extension in Firefox.

So, I've decided to upgrade my phone. And rooting is out of the question for the moment. But it will be worth it. I getting a Samsung Galaxy Note 9...

And yes, I know the irony of writing this post on my old phone...

The Weekend Begins….

Normally, I took Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Nights off. Irregardless of what my schedule said, per management. I did lead to a lot of marks in my record regarding no-show/no-call, but when I asked management what I should be doing, they did confirm that my days off were Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

But there was a management change recently, and they new manager wants us to follow our written schedules. And so my weekend has been changed (to make sure days off are staggered). And so my weekend begins now.

Rather warm of late....

Tuesday and Wednesday nights are normally my nights off. Last night, I thought I was going to be off, but due to short staffing at work, I had to come in. But I've also been fighting a bug for the past week. Basically, the day before my last day at Mrs. Fields, the owner's wife came in, and said that her mother-in-law had the flu, and from the 2 minute conversation, I caught it. It's not really that bad, just annoying. And owing to the fact that we're short-staffed at my main job, I have to stay late with cuts into my sleep time. And that means that I can't NyQuil and sleep this off. So I'm averaging about 3 hours of sleep a night. And when I woke up yesterday, I could tell that the cough has taken it's toll on my voice. So I took a sick day. My employer has tightened up its attendance policies, and they can now affect quarterly bonuses, but I'm doing nobody any favors going to work sick.

So, I took a sick day last night. And I noticed that it's been rather warm of late. So I set my air-conditioner up again. It's was right were I left it. I just put the exhaust hose back up in the window. It's not even April, and I already have the AC on. Although once the current spell of warm weather passes, I'll probably take it down again, put up my window fan instead. For now...

Ok, it’s 2019 already…

Why are we still shooting up houses of worship? If you have to resort to violence to prove that you have a better invisible friend, then you’ve lost the argument. There is no place for hate. If you think that somebody’s life is forfeit because they worship God differently (or a different God), or they come from a different country, or their skin color is different, or they are otherwise different from you, then you really need to rethink your life and your priorities.

There is no place for hate. Violence is evil. Period. Any questions?

All good things…

It has been said that all good things must come to an end. Even vacations. Technically, I haven’t been on vacation. I only took time off from one job, so I could cover the owner’s vacation at Mrs. Fields. But the schedule and the duties have been sufficiently different that it seems like a vacation. But whatever it is, it is coming to an end. Tomorrow night is when I return to my first job. Though I could’ve gotten used to working the day shift. Seriously. But it’s time to go back to work. And it’ll be awhile before I get a vacation. For some reason, whenever I call in sick, it’s my vacation time that gets the hit (and not the sick leave)…..

The past week’s misadventures on my phone…

I finally decided to upgrade my phone from Nougat to Oreo. Since my phone is S-off, it just means flashing the Oreo firmware and then flashing the ROM. Which went well, without any complications. unfortunately, I didn’t like the Oreo ROM. I was so used to the options I had to customize my Nougat ROM. So I thought it would be pretty straightforward. Reflash the Nougat firmware, then the recovery, and then the ROM. Ok, so I did that. And then I didn’t have my fingerprint scanner anymore. Reflashed the Oreo ROM, and everything worked again. Repeated this a couple of times, and each time, I couldn’t use my fingerprint scanner. Finally I downloaded the Factory ROM (Nougat) from Sprint, and ran the execuatable, and it install everything back onto my like it was from the Factory. So I then reflashed my custom Nougat ROM again, and the hardware worked, but I had no LTE data connection. Fortunately, Pierce Transit buses now have WiFi. So, yesterday I reflashed the factory ROM and this time I let it run, which I should’ve done in the first place, as it had to do a hands-free activation again. Once that was done, I then reflashed my custom Nougat ROM, and everything now works again.

If it ain’t broke, then don’t try to fix it….

An ugly match…

I just finished watching LA FC vs. Sporting KC. LA had 3 yellow cards. Sporting KC had 7 yellow cards, and 1 red card. LA eventually won in stoppage time. Very scrappy play….

Day off on my vacation….

With the way the schedule was written at Mrs Fields, I have today off. Let me repeat this: I HAD SUNDAY OFF. Which means I had the Vizio 55” on with various and sundry Association Football matches on. Starting off with the English Premier League. Then I caught a Bundesliga match (Stuttgart vs. Hannover 96). The there was some Hockey. And Rugby 7s. And Cactus League (the Mariners won today, btw). And now I’m watching MLS (specifically LA FC vs. Sporting KC). The one thing that stands out with the match tonight is that it’s still only the first half, and Sporting KC already has 5 yellow cards. That will come back to haunt you when the ref starts handing out red cards.

I can now honestly say that I’m now a fan of another sport: Rugby Union…

On vacation….

Some I’m on day 2 of my vacation. I’ll be on vacation for 2 more weeks. With my current fulltime employer, I haven’t accrued two weeks of vacation yet, but they’re letting me take it as unpaid time off. But I’m not off work. The store owner at Mrs. Fields himself is taking a vacation out of the country (to India, to be exact), and I’m filling in. But working at Mrs. Fields is different enough from scrubbing floors and toilets at my current job, that it’s just like a vacation. And I could really get used to working on the day shift, and sleeping during the night, instead of the opposite (which is what I’m doing currently at my employer)…..

So what all happened on my weekend this week…

Basically, I got sick. My ‘Friday’ (what you would call Monday night/Tuesday morning) started alright. Then lunchtime came. I got a cheesesteak calzone from the deli, paid for it, and went to the breakroom and ate it. Then it came time to go back to work, so I resumed scrubbing the floors. A couple of hours later, I started feeling slightly upset in my stomach, but it wasn’t enough to even force me to go to the restroom. I had too much to do, so I ended up taking another lunch to finish my assigned tasks, and while doing that I didn’t eat anything (this was at 8 in the morning, and my previous dose of insulin was at 3:30am). I finished my tasks, and went to clock out, and I realized that my blood sugar was low. I don’t know how I missed the signs of it earlier (usually the symptoms come down gradually enough that I can address it before it gets too far along). Maybe the queasy stomach masked it. Anyway by the time I got to personnel to clock out, I was out of it. I was offered a ride home, so I took it.

I don’t remember much after that, just standing at the street corner, waiting for a bus that wasn’t going to come because I wasn’t at the stop. Eventually I wound my way home, and as my insulin dose wore off, my blood sugar went back up, and I came around. From a little bit past 9 am to 12:30 pm Tuesday, I have virtually no memory of what transpired.

So, I’m now home, and I’ve decided that my weekend has officially begun. Realizing that hypoglycemia was still an issue, I fixed a cup of cocoa, and sucked on a couple of mints. Remember that queasy feeling I was telling you about earlier in this post? This is when the calzone decided to come back up. And then 4 hours later, it came back up again. And it came out of the other end, too. So, it came time to take another insulin shot, and low and behold, I was so loopy when I left work that I had left my coat and backpack behind. Of course, by the time I realized this all the pharmacies had closed so I couldn’t just go out and by another vial. That had to wait until morning. So the following morning came, and by now I was puking because my blood sugar had gone up too high. I could take a sip of water, and be over the rail 20 minutes later. I eventually got to Wally World, bought my insulin, dosed said insulin, and 4 hours later I could keep stuff down again.

When I got back to work Thursday night, my coat and backpack were exactly were I left them….

Inslee is running….

Governor Jay Inslee has announced his candidacy for president. And he’s running on basically climate change. Al Gore, Mk II.

I’m not going to choose a candidate right now. Aside from the snippets on CNN, I’m not even following the race. It’s just started too early. The debates should be lively this election. Maybe Don King should hype them….

Cohen went before congress this past week. And he sang. While he did lie initially (and plead guilty to it), he did seem to come clean this time. At least he brought proof for at least some of his allegations. Yes, his credibility has been shot to hell, but he seems honest and sincere this time. Time will tell, and if there’s is corroborating evidence…

What President Cheetos-Face needs to worry about is less about the Mueller report, and more about the SDNY (the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York). I feel there could be a RICO indictment awaiting his departure from the White House….

Just to let you know….

Major League Rugby is in season. And the matches are on YouTube. And Seattle are the defending champions. Come to think of it, the Seahawks made it all the way to the playoffs in a rebuilding year. The Mariners had a winning season last year. And the Sounders FC have made it to post-season play for 10 years straight…..

When you look at the big picture, the Seattle sports scene isn’t all that bad….