Black Marshmallow

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:15:50 GMT

I have twitter!... welcome to last year Ian!

http://twitter.com/Krotoan

So far its me complaining and learning things the hard way.. but still a good way to find out what I'm doing.

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:00:03 GMT

ALRIGHT! time for an entry about my trip, with pictures! I've been putting this off long enough

So in january (holy crap its march already), I went to Reno to snowboard with some friends. Just to put this trip in context, the last time I went snowboarding was in.. 2002? I think. And it was for one day. I'm not really a sports type of person, but hanging out with friends is one of my top joys in life, so anything to go and hang around friends for a week with no interruptions is awesome in my book.

We flew to Sacramento and drove to Reno. I grossly overestimated the amount of entertainment needed on the plane and out of 40 hours of music and videos loaded on my PSP, 20 game ROMs loaded into my DS and 2 600 page plus books.. I got through about half a book and a couple hours of music. I slept most of the ride.

The drive into Reno was navigated by my friends semi-accurate GPS. I say semi accurate because it gave us WEIRD directions sometimes and other times could just NOT find the sattelites. Weird as in it would make us do a complete loop of an area instead of just one turn. And I know it does announcements when the name of the road you're on changes to make sure you understand that you're still on the right road.. but "Continue straight in .5 miles..... continue straight..... BING!!" is a really funny kind of direction for me, especially when the only other possible option.. is to drive off the side of the highway over a cliff.

Once we got to our hotel we grabbed some food and settled in.

The next day the snowboarding started. There was a special on Diamond Peak (about a 20 mile drive out of Reno) where you could get equipment, a beginners lesson and tickets all day for 2 lifts for about 34 bucks. Considering your average day would cost you $70+ this was a pretty good deal.

thus the saga begins:

First day. The lesson goes well and we learn the 3 basics of snowboarding:
1. Bend your knees. IF you dont you end up throwing your weight back and forth too much, and this causes you to fall. It's much easier to control with your calves than your hips, and a lower center of gravity helps you balance.

2.Look where you want to go. Its a strange thing, you are going to go where you look .If you look at somewhere you DON'T want to go, you will go that direction. We tested this theory extensively. Its very very true.

3.Weight on the leading foot. For every other board sport I've participated in this is wrong. Skateboarding, surfing, even boogieboarding (not that I stand up much doing that) you always have the weight on the back foot so you can swing around the front to where you wanna go. if you do this in snowboarding you start doing 2 things: going REALLY fast, turning around so that the foot with the weight on it goes first. This is bad. Weight on the leading foot gives you better control and allows you to swing your back foot around to help steering, essential for the quick stop.

Oh yes, STOPPING. most important skill in snowboarding. Everyone we met who didn't take the lesson for the whole trip asked us the same thing: how do you stop? Even the snowboarding regular guy who my friend talked to told us the thing he wanted to learn most was how to stop quickly.

The first day was spent on the "bunny" slope. Also appropriately named "Schoolhouse". It's about a football field length of gently sloping snow with a dip on the side and a teeny little lift to the top. This is also where most of my pictures were taken.
Pictures!

Thats the top of schoolhouse, it goes to the right and down, that insane drop you see going into it is an expert run named "O God".

Thats one of my friends! Taking pictures of me taking pictures! on the tiny lift!

ANd my other friend! Riding over on his snow board to the top of "Schoolhouse"

Top of schoolhouse, with the bottom of a couple other lifts.

We learned a lot of things on the small slope. Mainly that snow looks soft, but is basically cold rocks when it gets packed down enough. And it hadn't snowed for about 3 weeks by the time we got there so the snow was mostly artificial and VERY packed down. By the end of the first day we had bruises on every possible point on our bodies that could hit the ground and would honesly do ANYTHING to keep from landing on our butts. One of my friends had spotted some padded shorts in the shop earlier and bought them about in the middle of our session, his only regret: "I should have bought these before we even started" Bruised but entertained we then returned to the hotel. Snow is annoyingly made out of water.. this means if it gets in your clothes you get wet. on the way home it felt like I had been to the pool and had just put my jeans back on over my swimsuit. Bleah..

Day 2!:
Entertainingly enough I had made a comment about my friend spending 90 bucks on snowpants before we went on the trip. My exact words: "I just dont see spending 90 bucks on something I'm gonna use for just a few days." Guess what I bought as soon as we got to the shop on the second day? That's right. Snowpants. 70 bucks since they were on sale, but still. However I felt it was better to Swallow my pride and buy pants and enjoy having a non soggy bottom for the remainder of the trip. Day 2 was a lot of refining, we made sure we knew how to stop, turn and slow down. we also moved up to the "Lodgepole" run. To be absolutely specific the dood at the bottom of the bunny slope said to each of us in turn: "You're set, go up to lodgepole." so one by one we were sent up to lodgepole and by the end of the day we were all running down the supposedly still-easy-but-not-as-easy-as-schoolhouse run. The learning curve on the new slope was, not to make a horrible pun, kind of steep. Suddenly it wasnt concern over being able to steer anymore , it was just being able to stop when you wanted to. This is where I had my first major drop. Something you will encounter if you're ever learning to snowboard is that you DONT want your boards leading edge to dig in. When it does, it becomes a hinge to slam you into the ground. Depending on which side you're on, you either slam your face or back into the ground. Oddly enough I managed to slam my CHEST into the ground. I had forgotton how much it sucks to be punched in the body. Now I remember. .....

continued in next entry.. this is getting long.

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:47:10 GMT

STILL ALIVE!

no thanks to the attempts of Diamond Peak to change that status.

As some of you may know, I just went on vacation to Reno for snowboarding and other fun things I can't do in hawaii. I have pictures, I have stories and I have bruises to emphasize both!

I just got back so I haven't had time to sort and recover but as soon as I can find the camera in my overstuffed bag I'll have them up with the proper captions to explain whats going on.

Quick things I can tell you before I lie back down again to proceed applying needed medications and heating:

Do not grab trees when sliding down a mountain on your back, they will not stop you, only hurt you.

4 straight days of snowboarding sounds fun, but really, put in a day for resting.

I cannot, no matter how much I want to, handle more than 3 full plates at a buffet.

Ski pants = A dry butt is totally worth 70 bucks

Heated seats in a car are a very useful invention. I will not make fun of them in the future.

Things I overestimate on trips : length of plane ride. amount of warm clothes I need. amount of items a bag can hold.

AAAAnd that is all for now.. excuse me while I go bathe in bruise medicine.

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:07:38 GMT

I spent a bit of time wondering if I really wanted to post this online.. but hell, what's the worst that could possibly happen?

I am a sensual person.

No I don't think I'm sexy or I'm not writhing about in satin.. I just like to involve all my senses in everything I do..

When I drink hot drinks I like to press a napkin over my mouth after I've had a sip and slowly breathe out through it, feeling the warmth of my breath spreading through the napkin and warming my lips and hands. I do this a lot and now that I've mentioned it my siblings will probably point it out when I do it =]. It's gotten to the point where it's part of the hot drink experience for me. The warm cup, cupped in both hands. The exhale of extra hot breath into a napkin to catch it going out as well.. and trying to take alternating sips of cold and hot things so I can feel it when It goes down my throat and hits my stomach.

This is probably a lot more than anyone wants to know about me but it's one of the things I was observing about myself the other week.
I take a lot of what I do a bit far into a whole body experience.

Snow pants. I freaking LOVE snow pants. I will never get to wear them. But they make this great ZIP - ZOP noise as you walk. They're warm and poofy so when you sit down it goes FOOF. And if you run your fingers across the material you get a really neat sense of the warp and weft of the cloth , your hand slides easily one way and makes the ZZOOOOOP noise the perpendicular way.

I love the smell of cherry flavored things and I end up sniffing cherry lollipops as often as putting them in my mouth. I'm also pretty addicted to the smell of new cloth. I like wearing brand new shirts without washing them just for the smell.

I like sinking my fingers into deep carpet when I sit on it. I like to work my fingers down to make little coned (temporary) holes in the carpet. Toes too. Yeah, you're gonna watch me sitting on the carpet and seeing me do that too now.

Part of why I wear my trench coat is the heavy weight on my shoulders and the feeling of it pulling back in the wind.

cold metal on forearms is another one of the things I end up doing a lot. I like temperature transitions a lot. I suppose that's one of the most intense touch senses you can do. Doing something very strenuous and then walking into air conditioning turned down to freezing is probably my favorite whole body feeling ever. It's hot and cold at the same time. That edge to the feeling that could fade into intense heat OR cold is really neat for me.

alright.. enough creepy entry.

I also had the chance to reconsider my theological position in life.

I'm a pretty entrenched agnostic.

I'd love to say this is for extremely deep and mysteriously exciting reasons, but mostly it's because I am lazy.

The way I see it if there is a higher power there is no way we can understand it since everyone is biased for reasons of having a point of view. Not even a point of view as in opinion, but a point of view out the eyeballs of a human being. You are biased for reasons of having to breathe, having to eat, having a biological imperative to survive and seeing the world through two loose fleshy orbs that interpret the light bounced off matter as depth, width, thickness and color. Nobody can every be truly impassive until they become God, at which point any argument is moot since once you've attained that objectivity you have then proven there is a god.. you'd be it.

I choose agnosticism because I don't want to think about religion.

HOWEVER

I do like to reconsider my faith every once in a while as the proposed punishments for NOT doing so range in severity from being reincarnated again and again till you get it "right" to being forever boiled in a sea of oil. Forever is a long long time. I've tried to consider what it'd be like to suffer that long and since I really have no concept of forever that goes beyond 28 years all I've come up with is it's a pretty horrible idea to be boiled in oil for 28 years.

I was raised as a catholic. I am baptised and really all that means to me currently is I know that the bishop at the church I used to go to smells of strawberries (I remember food smells really clearly) and I have half a candle somewhere that I held as I was baptised. I have half a candle because I melted down the rest to make fuses when I went through a sort of pyromaniacal phase

What I learned as a catholic about religion was this: You need to go to church on sundays and pray to God. He expects worship and you have to get up extremely early to do this for some reason. There is a prayer that I burned into my brain and can still say today but until I was 15 I never really bothered to listen to what I was saying. This is the lords prayer. "our father who art in heaven.." and all that. Hymns and kneeling and body of christ and blood of christ and heavy organ music. And a church school teacher who really bothered me since she couldn't seem to see any perspective but the catholic one.

For a while I tried being a christian. Definetely weird for me. There was a lot of talk of love and acceptance but also a lot of talk about how people who weren't part of it were going to hell. It fell to us to show them the error of their ways and try to "save" them. There was too much contradiction in what people were saying at mass, or church or whatever (it was at school auditoriums?) and what they were actually doing at home. I am well aware of the hipocracy of the human race but it was a bit much to see people swinging so far between extremes.

Just for you christians out there, I know this probably isn't typical but this is what I saw.. not what you do.

after this I had a sort of break in faith and turned to agnosticism as a way to say that I was done with all that and it was all really just not a concern of mine.

However recently during a drive I had a moment of real uncertainty of what I had chosen. I was picking a stance that if ANY of them were right was nigh guaranteeing me eternal suffering or at least a trip back in the spiritual evolutionary process. The only way it could get any worse would be to become an Atheist. To deny any possibility of God or a supreme being at all.

Now heres where I started to really think. Atheism is a very scary choice. It's true responsibility and freedom at the same time. You don't have any reason to be good besides personal morality since there are no repercussions except from human law. You do what you can while you can because in the end thats all you've got. It's horribly depressing to think that your whole existence is just that, an existence

now that I sit here thinking about it, do atheists believe in an afterlife? It's quite possible even in the confines of not believing in an almighty that there may be an existence past the physical but somehow the image I get of atheism is that there is nothing but the here and now. We are human, we live human and when we die that's game over. You have your shot and you die.

Very final and it really makes my life look like a big waste of time and effort. Not something I like but perhaps I need a more motivating backing to my lifes purpose.
...

I'm not sure if I have a point.

..

er.. True responsibility is a scary thing and I think I may be going to Hell.

yup.

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:36:40 GMT

Today was the day to vote.. AND I did. I made a choice and although my choice unfortunately will very likely not matter at ALL in the end I did make it.

This is not an entry about political choices though.

I speak of everyday choices.

I hear it a lot: "You don't really have a choice", "we had no choice in the matter" , "it's not my fault , I had no choice."

There's always a choice. Sometimes the alternative is horrendous. Sometimes the choice is unthinkable, but there is still a choice. How strong you are reflects in the choices you make.

You make a choice every day, to get up and live your life. You could choose to stop it, to commit suicide but that choice goes against common biological imperatives.

You then choose to live that life as you always have. You go to your job, or school , or even just pick what thing you're going to fart around that day with.

As you live that life you choose to do the things you like/want/need to do. You are in total control of what happens that day, and while it may not feel like it, you are ultimately responsible for everything that does happen.

I like to imagine there are things out of my control. That when shit happens it's just the universe pooping on me and I'm merely a hapless victim.. but that mentality just doesn't feel right. Not in my core of thoughts.

I chose to do the thing that resulted in my mishap. Whether or not I understood the consequences is irrelevant, I am still responsible for the outcome because it was my choice.

I chose to park where I did. I chose to be where I was. I chose to do what I did.

Responsibility is always our own, and until people will admit just how much of what happens to them is because of their own actions, we are going to have professional victims.

There is, in my mind, a certain amount that can be forgiven. I feel pity for those who truly thought out what they chose and picked the logical action for optimal outcome. That , however , rarely happens.

They don't think past getting to work on time. They don't think past eating a quick lunch. They certainly don't think past advancing their own lives.

I hear them cry about how unfair life is or how unfair I'm being or how unfeeling. But if they'd just think ahead, they'd see that my reaction is just as much a result of their choice as anything else that happened. Indeed I DID choose to react that way, and their reaction to me is a result of MY choice. But I could not have had the chance to make that choice without their first decision.

I don't think I can hold my tongue anymore. I try to choose responses that are kind and sensitive, but the short sightedness of the people I see around me is telling me that I am not helping the problem. If I can change what they choose with my choices, I should. Otherwise I am merely a part of the problem.

Live and let live is no longer my choice. I choose to affect.

and I'll form the.. appendix..

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:28:46 GMT

This is going to be a pretty nerdy entry.. but considering it's me that's already to be expected.

Try to remember the giant robots in Transformers. The old 80's cartoon, not the new movie or the weird offshoots that came in the 90's. And I mean the GIANT robots, not the regular sized autobots or decepticons. Devastator and Menasor. Superion and Defensor. They were groups of transformers that merged together to make really big robots.

When I was little I loved how they needed each other and when even one was missing the whole giant robot didn't work very well at all. Missing a leg or a arm, they could not function. But together they were the beat all end all transformers.

what does this hugely nerdy reference have to do with my current status?

I don't belong.

I shouldn't have to depend on others to make me feel like I'm worthwhile but I think it's a basic human need to feel like theres somewhere that you fit in. If only in a small grouping , humans need to feel like there is somewhere that they are a part of something bigger and that something is better for them being there.

I've got friends and family. Good people who care about me and are supportive and accepting. I've never felt shunned or like an outsider around them. This should be enough right? Who could ask for more than this anywhere. By all rights I am just being greedy.

but I still feel like no matter what else I do I cannot fit. If I was a part of a giant robot.. I'd be a tumor.

I do tend to isolate myself I suppose. I wear odd things, say even odder things and apparently see the world a whole lot differently than the rest of my species. I'm not unique in a cool detatched, hipster way. More like a .. small child in a calculus club sort of bewildered uncomprehending way.

Every thing I try turns out to be wayyy more complicated than I'd ever would have thought. Not the actual task or activity though. Those I can pick up pretty quickly. I'm good at picking up new skills quickly, but not , apparently, social skills.

Playing in band I was never really a part of the cliques... high school either for that matter. I was good at playing tuba but after the music was over, I just went home.

I tried to be a part of the various guilds and alliances in my MMORPGs. I'd gravitate to the more social guilds but I never really felt accepted or needed in any of them. People would keep me around because I was dependable and kind. That was about it. I wasn't important, just furniture.

Even now at work I don't really fit in with anyone. I always feel like I'm trying too hard to be in the foreground but when I stop trying, I fade into the background so easily people forget I'm here.

There isn't really any particular reason for this entry, I'm not particularly sad or dissapointed with my lot in life. I'm just wondering if this is how other people feel... or if I'm just sort of slow in the belonging area. I'm supposing this is probably just like paranoia; everyone has it to some degree. But I wonder why I need it so bad. Why the one thing I'd sacrifice much of my life for , would be to feel like an important puzzle peice in someones picture.

Pretty needy there.

=[

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:02:57 GMT

Car fixed.. again..

lets see how long this lasts.

I was well aware that owning a car had many more costs than just gas and the price of the car. But I'm pretty sure that quarterly body repair isn't supposed to be one of them.

It also doesn't help that the promotion I was looking forward to, I would have gotten, had not the economy gone poop and scared my company into scaling back everything.

Someday.. Karma is going to swing back to me and I'm going to win the lottery and gain super powers at the same time. Until then I'd settle for people leaving me alone.

I need a shirt that says "Yes this is a trenchcoat..... just like that movie/show/person... shut up."

spore still rocks.

I really really miss playing music. I should do something about that.

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:54:45 GMT

The rant of the computer repair man in the big blue box:

Yes, I know how you got the virus. No you don't want me telling you exactly what site it was in front of your wife/kids. Yes it's going to cost that much. No it doesn't cost less for just one virus. One is just as bad as 200. The length of time you own a computer means NOTHING to a virus. I've had people exchange computers that were "acting funny" after a day. Guess what.. VIRUS!! but they're still within return period. You , good sir, are not.

It's rather obvious you have no virus protection and that little blinky thing that says "EXPIRED" is very nigh the same thing as having none. Don't act surprised, I am well aware that when you bought that computer 4 months ago you said that you'd "just be careful" to save 50 bucks for software. Seems like a deal compared to the 200 bucks to clean it now doesn't it?

No your friend/wife/son/nephew/niece/daughter/cousin/husband (or any combination of those titles) DOESN'T know how to do that. That's why you brought it to me. If you let them touch it, it'll get worse. If I touch it and things go bad, I have a multi billion dollar company that pays to fix my mistakes and if I made them very often do you think i'd still have this job?

I haven't been to school for this. But I've been doing this for 10+ years though and when it comes to services I'll take experience over certs anytime. Don't talk down to me if you think you're better qualified. The only thing holding me back from telling you the hell off is the fact I'd get written up for it, and you're not worth it.

As much as I do care about you as a person, I work for a business. We make money by doing things you don't want to do /can't do. This is how it works and no amount of sob story is going to make me change my mind. My friends and relatives get free computer work, I don't even KNOW you.

I can get RID of your password in 30 seconds, I'm only asking for it to save you the trouble of resetting it later. Don't act like I just asked for your bank pin number. its a windows password, seriously, completely a joke security wise. Your kids already know how to get around it when you're not there. And no, broncos1 is NOT a secure password.

I'm not going to tell you how to do stuff over the phone. If I did it in the store you'd have to pay for it. What makes you think calling waives that fee?

If I'm talking to you on the phone, I'm not working on computers. I don't have an operator and every minute you spend saying "umm" and "uhhh" is time I'm not spending on computers. Why should you care if it's not YOUR computer I'm currently trying to work on? Because maybe your computer is NEXT .. or more likely 4 computers down the line, however this still means I'm going to be that much LONGER to fix it because you had to tell me exactly how dissapointed you were that it's not done yet. No the irony does not escape me but you'd be impressed at how much I curb my tongue about it.

Yes I know "the sales guy" told you that. He was wrong. I am sorry. Really, I am. I dislike misinforming people. However telling ME about "the sales guy" saying this and that and promising the world, isn't going to change the fact that the job is going to take a couple hours. I can't change the way computers work and that particular task takes 3 hours. No possible way to make it faster. I tell the sales people the right things all the time, but they keep hiring new sales people. Go figure.

Hah.. yeah.. "you should hire more people". You have NO idea lady. I am not in charge of human resources. Nor should I be. But if I had any say you'd be SWIMMING in help. However it's not my dollar that pays the techbench. So you're stuck with me and my one coworker for the 10 people in line. Believe me when I say I am just as excited about that as you are.

That model number you just rattled off means absolutely nothing to me. I cannot possibly memorize the specs of every single computer ever made and you are an ass for expecting me to. You DARE to say the words "shouldn't you know this?"? Expect the part I fetch for you to be the most bloody expensive thing I can find. It'll work.. be assured. But that 5 dollar generic part that would have worked just as well? Yeah, we are so very out of stock of that one. This one will be 100 bucks.

You don't mess with people who prepare your food or drinks right? Why on earth would you mess with the people trying to save your unreplaceable pictures/music/documents? I may not be able to dip my... unmentionables .. into your drink. But I can sure as hell make sure you never see your precious spreadsheets again.

Don't lie about why you're returning stuff. As our return policy only states that it must be in resaleable condition, I don't need to hear some made up story about things it "was doing just last night" and now has magically fixed itself for now. I state this now and for the record. "I don't want it" is good enough for me. I will also accept "It wasn't what I expected" and "my wife said no". Perfectly fine. I know I won't ever hear "I couldn't figure it out" but I really wouldn't mind hearing that instead of "it's broken.". By lying you are wasting customer services time, my time and the other customers' time.

Don't make up stuff to get free services. You look like an ass and even if you get the free services out of my manager, I've marked you to be the LAST computer in the line for as long as I can manage.

Swearing will make me less helpful. I understand you're frustrated. But thats not the way to get me interested in your problems.

I can't possibly know everything about everything in the store. If they'd give me one of everything I'd be an expert. But they don't , so I'm not.

Bathrooms, upstairs and to the right.

Haha.. yes.. I play a lot of video games, haha no, i don't have a girlfriend, hahah yeah I'm a really stereotypical nerd. I.... have.... heard... it..... before.

Your baby needs attention. Stop letting it drool all over the place while it cries loud enough that I can't actually hear you. I will wait while you make it stop. I can state my wants and needs very specifically. Your baby cannot and something is wrong. FIGURE OUT WHAT.

I will not talk to you about complicated things like computer repairs while you are also on the cell phone. I'm going to stop talking until you get off the phone. It's not rude of me not to talk to you while you're on the phone, it's rude of YOU to not give me your undivided attention while I am explaining things to you.

Oh.. so you drove from that far huh? .. twice... .. oh excuse me.. THREE TIMES.... I live 5 times farther from the store than you do. And I make the drive EVERY GODDAMN DAY. I am not impressed and am unmoved. I am sympathetic if you were misinformed by workers, I am downright cold hearted if you just came down to "check status".

I know the sign above me says customer service. However , before you make that exasperated face at me, notice that the sign BEHIND me in 6 inch high letters has an arrow pointing to the OTHER counter and says "RETURNS AND EXCHANGES". Don't roll your eyes at me because you stood in the wrong line.

Do I not look busy working on 5 computers at once? I must not since you're acting as if I was ignoring you for nothing. If I have my left hand switching between 2 comptuters and my right flicking between 3, I may take a bit to get to you. Especially if you've got that "I want to return this item" look while you clutch an obviously just purchased item in front of you. I'm not returns as I've said, the sign behind me tells you where they are.

It has been a helluva week.

Flab, blab.. jacket blab..

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:07:36 GMT

round about Wednesday I saw my car alarm had gone off during the workday but there was nothing missing from the car and someone had put up one of my windshield wipers (one of my coworkers I was sure) .. I figured that had been it.. put the wiper down and drove home.

The next day I came out to the car to go to work and noticed something...

large gouges under lock mechanism. ...

....

Lock mechanism no longer turns with key...

....

lock mechanism is ... bent and twisted... door too..

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF&^*&^*^(*&^$%@#^&%$*&#@^%!!!

Its happened again..

Not even 4 months later and they've attempted to break in my car.. AGAIN.

Car was in a very visible place near foot traffic, and I think the ONLY reason It wasn't broken into entirely is my new alarm. However unlike most car theives.. they started by trying to pop the lock.. not by testing the car for an alarm.. or even apparently noticing the blindingly bright LED blinking in the dashboard.

Now... I spent the rest of the day quite a bit distracted and grumpy. I had just managed to get my finances back to normal and I even set some money aside to buy something nice later. Life had given me another lump just as the last one was healing over and fading.

but then again.. I considered the date... and the anniversary it represented. And I didn't quite feel so put upon anymore... "People have had FAR worse days than I on this date...perhaps I have no right to even be grumpy"..

As cheesy as that sounds.. it did make me feel better about the whole situation.

Now I am merely angry. Including mine, four cars have been broken into or vandalized these past two weeks. What has my employer done about it? ... not much. I am sure there are considerations that I am not privy to. Facts that I am ignorant of... but how much can it possibly cost to get a security guard to watch our cars? Just some dood out there, just to keep the crack smoking bastards who I KNOW are behind this to stay the hell away from our vehicles. My friends at work joke that it'll take one of the managers cars getting broken into to make anything happen. I really hope not.

I work hard and I do as much as I can to improve the image of my company.. but how can I concentrate on my job knowing that the largest investment I currently have is in constant danger of being violated? Not only that but during the christmas rush our cars (parked in the farthest lot possible) are not the only ones at risk. Every holiday season we get a few customers who come into the store in TEARS because their cars, full of christmas shopping, have been stolen/broken into. That one dood sitting out there with a flashlight and walking around could have stopped that.. but nope... can't have one.

..
oh the trials and tribulations of Ian... they never stop.

... there has been one ray of sunshine this past week though...

Spore!

I thoroughly enjoy the entire game! From start to almost end (not done with space campaign yet) it has kept me RIVETED to the seat. I've been playing from end of work to sunup pretty much every night since I got it. One of those nights was spent solely creating round eggy vehicles with tank treads and buildings with odd protuberances and turrets, no actual campaign progress at all.

If you like to make stuff, then this is a game for you. From creature to city you get to let your creativity go nuts and then watch it fill the world around you with your wild creatures and funky buildings and vehicles.

you can take any route to your goals but the choices you make effect how you look and how the other inhabitants of the world treat you. For instance if you eat only meat in the cell stage your creature can only make use of carnivore mouths in the creature stage. And if you only take over cities by attacking them in the city stage you can only make military units and other cities will automatically mistrust you.

So far out of all of the game segments the space one is the most involved. Cell stage takes around.. 20 minutes to beat. Creature stage a bit longer but only the first time since you have to go find all the creature parts to unlock them. Depending on your tactics the next two stages, Tribal and City can stretch out a bit.. but the space stage you have to play carefully since theres so much to manage. You can conquer by trade route, or military might, or even religous persuation but any way you choose you're going to have enemies attacking your planets while you explore the other stars, the only question is how MANY will attack at the same time..

My little Zabenium creatures were quite hostile little buggers in the beginning of the game. I conquered creature, tribe and city stages mostly by force, just overpowering everything in my way, but when I got to space I adopted a trade focus very quickly. The constant attacks from all around made it just to hard to warpath through everything.

I'm just itching to start another life form off, this time trying for an Omnivore , but I think if I do that I may just stop sleeping all together..

and thats about all I've been doing..

Car attacked again... playing with advanced virtual toys... yup.. thats it.

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:31:06 GMT

Not dead as you may have thought. just dealing with life and the fun it can throw at you.

updates:
Car is repaired and new radio installed... very fancy radio that may get me killed. It plays DVD's so i've had episodes of Invader Zim playing on it some days... distracting..

Economic stimulus check... was returned undelivered apparently. Called the IRS and they'll resend it.. someday.

Cooking discovery of the week: although it might SOUND like a good seasoning idea.. putting salt INTO the flour for fried chicken makes for UBER salty chicken. not bad in fried rice and stuff but hard to eat by itself.

also you can apparently buy food by the BUCKET

woo! bucket o food! EAT FROM THE BUCKET!

in other news I am very excited about Spore

I bought the creature creator.. and have been having enormous fun with it. I'm really excited about the building and vehicle editor in the full game as well.

ok.. sleep time now.

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:24:57 GMT

time to bitch about people!

Ok, so I live in a world where you try to do your best NOT to impose your problems on other people. You enjoy what you enjoy but you consider what effect it might have on those surrounding you and attempt not to ooze into their personal worlds.

This being said I have decided that were I to run the world , cell phones would not be allowed inside movie theaters. At all. I don't care if you're a doctor or whatever. No cell phones. I don't care if you aren't gonna actually TALK...

WHY?
Because people can't seem to realize that it doesn't matter if you're actually making NOISE or not.. its still distracting as hell to have a glaring pinpoint of light in your peripheral vision. I don't care if you shield it with your hands, now your hands are glowing making it WORSE.
PUT THE PHONE AWAY
whoever the hell it is can wait an hour for you to text them "poop.. hehehe"

"But what if it's important?" go outside and deal with it then. Everyone in the theater has payed nigh 10 bucks to see the movie and you are absolutely destroying the atmosphere. Have some freakin consideration for other people.

EVERY GODDAMN MOVIE I've been to in the past few weeks has had some inconsiderate numbnut in front of me doing this crap. Not like once or twice either. Throughout the whole damn movie.

and again.. work gripes..

heres the conversation I had.. with what i would have LIKED to have said in italics..
Cast:
M= me
DL= dumb lady
PDLH= poor dumb ladys husband

so there I am, it's closing time and I'm running around trying to make sure I get to leave on time. DL walks up to the counter with husband in tow and glares at me.

M: HI, can I help you folks with anything

DL: I'm here about my computer.... ..... .

M:... .most people are .... alrighty, uh, what name is it under?

DL: *mumbles name and glares again as if I just asked how her constipation was*

M: Got it, be right back with that.

after a brief search in the system for her name, I find the computer and note that it's been diagnosed as software corruption and needs an OS repair/restore. I walk back out to the lady with this info

M: It appears we're awaiting your authorization to repair it. It'll cost you 130 dollars for this repair

DL: So what are you going to do to fix it?

M: The files that the operating system need to function are either damaged or missing. We're going to first try to repair your OS, and if we can't we'll restore the whole computer.

DL: Why do I have to pay for this. I have a warranty.

M: Well, the warranty covers the hardware in the system, not software.

DL: Why not? *giant scowl*

M: We can guarantee we're selling you quality technology, but we can't guarantee the conduct of the end user .. translating to I can sell you a good computer but I can't guarantee that you're not an idiot.

DL: Then why did I buy it

M: I don't know, why DID you buy it bitchy mcbitcherson?I wasn't freaking there It's a very good protection against things like power surges, manufacturers defects and wear and tear, if you use your computer carefully those really should be your only worries.

DL: I'm not paying you guys to do something I could do myself
M: if you could do it yourself, we wouldn't be having this conversation I .. uh..

DL:Can you show me how to do it without me paying you?

M: why the hell would I do that? even if I was supposed to I don't want to talk to you anymore I'm sorry ma'am but as it is a service people pay for I can't just walk you through it for free.

DL: Why are you going to charge me 130 dollars for something I can do myself?

M: I believe we have already established you CANNOT, you idiot. Thats why you came to US. If you are capable of doing the process I described I have no problem with releasing the computer to you right now. I suggest if you feel like you can handle it, that you take the computer home and attempt the restore, the manufacturers customer service should walk you through the process for free.

DL: we brought it in a little while ago and you guys said it was broken and you fixed the hard drive, how do you know that's not the cause of it being broken now? If you didn't fix it correctly you need to fix it for free now.

I look up her previous tag and its from FEBRUARY! She had bad sectors on the hard drive and we used a simple scan to fix them. We didn't even charge her.

M: The last time we repaired it it was just bad sectors that needed to be corrected. The hard drive showed no other failed tests. Considering also the length of time that passed between then and now like four goddamn MONTHS I highly doubt this is due to any botched repairs we would have done. I can assure you we've thoroughly diagnosed this computer and there isn't anything wrong with the hard drive, it just has corrupted files. This could have happened for any number of re..

DL: *interrupting really loudly* I am NOT paying for you to do something I can do myself. What are you going to do about that?

M: STOP SAYING YOU CAN DO IT YOURSELF! YOU CANNOT OR WE WOULDNT BE IN THIS SITUATION I can.. give you your

DL:No, what are you going to do about it. I'm not going to pay for this repair. you should do it for free.

PDLH: Uh, so what are our options?

M: Option one, we can repair the software problems and it will cost you 130 dollars. Option two, you can take the computer home, call the manufacturers customer service line and have them walk you through the restore process. Option three you can call the manufacturer and see what they will do about your problem, however I'm pretty sure they're just going to make you restore it first anyway.

DL: *sneering* so what do you guys fix more, software or hardware problems?

M: Software ma'am. I see what you're planning you vendictive twat, don't you DARE...

DL: AHAH! so thats why your plan doesn't cover software, you guys make more money if you don't cover it.

M: Actually we get more software repairs because there are so many ignorant and uninformed people who buy shit and can't be arsed to figure out how to use it, so they screw it up royally and have to bring it in to us, and the easiest thing to mess up if you don't know what you're doing is the software, JUST LIKE YOU PROBABLY DID... Actually , we get more software repairs because people aren't aware of how easy it is to damage software through misuse and a lot of people would rather pay us to repair things than go through the trouble of dealing with it themselves. I will admit freely though that my store is first and foremost a business and does do things to make money, but I don't get paid any more or less depending on what I sell, so i only suggest what is necessary, not what will make the most money. The only reason I am suggesting the repair to you is because it is a service I can perform for you, it is , as I've mentioned a couple of times before, entirely up to you to decide whether or not you'd like me to help you with this. You can take your computer home at any point .

PDLH: Uh... what time do you guys close?

M: About a half an hour ago. But please take all the time you'd like to decide, i don't want to rush your descision. HOWEVER I DO WANT TO GO HOME SOMETIME SOON KTHXBYE!!!

DL: I'm not paying for you to do something I can do myself

M: what are you .. retarded? I heard you the first time and repeating yourself isn't going to change my mind. You pay or you take your damn computer and leave. If you can do it yourself... Ma'am... I can give you your computer right now. If you had paid for the repairs the first time and it was within 30 days of our work I could perhaps redo that work again, but we didn't charge you anything for that first repair and it has been a considerable amount of time since then.

PDLH: *looking at his watch and realizing that they are now the ONLY people who don't WORK here* er.. can we leave the computer here for now?

DL: How do you know that it wasn't your workers who messed up my computer I'm not paying for the repair!

M: I am going to kill your pets and stuff them in your EYES! Yes, that's not a problem at all. If you'd like I can provide you with the manufacturers customer service number so you can call them and discuss that option, and ma'am your problem would not have manifested after four months if it was something we did wrong. Your computer is currently doing what we call a Blue screen of death or BSOD, it's trying to load something and encountering errors. These errors are due to corrupted and missing files. There is almost no way that we could mess up something that would hold off ANY errors for four months and then spontaniously render your computer unusable. It is extremely unlikely that the one small fix we performed has any relation to the errors you're experiencing now. Four months is a very long time for a computer to be working "perfectly" as you said when you checked it in HA HA BITCH BET YOU REGRET SAYING THAT NOWand then suddenly developing problems. In my opinion, something was done to the computer to cause this problem. I'm not saying it was you yes... yes I am because it could have just been a power outage at the wrong time or even perhaps an infection, but it is not from any action we performed on your computer.

PDLH: Ahh.. cool. Thank you.

and they leave and I am now 45 minutes behind my closing because someone messed up their computer and didn't want to deal with the cost. ..

seriously.. do car repair people have this problem?
"Duhh, I disconnected the battery and connected it straight to the cars computer .. it smoked and now the car doesn't work. You should fix it under the warranty!"

I bet they do.

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:30:16 GMT

Highlights of the week so far:

Car is getting fixed right now. Sitting in the shop. Somehow it worked out that I have 2 of the 3 days it's gonna be in the shop as my days off of work. Alright.. so .. maybe the world ISN'T out to get me totally. Also, the car repair guy explained how paint would have to be blended into surrounding areas and since he was doing the door... he might as well fix the big scratch on the back fender that has been there since I bought the car. Wow. Thanks car repair guy. I'm totally recommending you to everybody I know now.
like now:
Auto Body Engineering Specialist Inc.
Roy Higashiya: Owner
808-247-7546

I found him through my moms suggestion since he was the one who fixed her celica when some doofus rear-ended her in a giant truck so I already had a pretty high opinion of him (my mom is really critical of... well.. everything so if she says he was nice, he was REALLY nice) and her car looks just as good as it did before having the back crumpled so in addition to being nice he does good work.

I've also found some...catchy music

a while ago my G7 mouse started to do this annoying thing where it would double click randomly when I tried to click anything. This meant if I tried to select stuff or drag things around the screen it would instead open them or copy them 2 millimeters to the left. So i contacted Logitech and went through their customer service to see if they could get my problem solved. After a short discussion about troubleshooting:

"yeah, I've reloaded the software, moved the receiver closer, changed the battery pack, and tested it on other computers"

the customer service rep told me he'd just have them send me a new one.

"huh?"

"we need your address so we can send you a replacement"

Wow, this is the second time logitech has just out and out replaced something I bought that has had problems. And this time I didn't even have to send them the old one.

hmm.. this is becoming quite an endorsing entry.

alright well I'll have to post a little bit of negativity.

Economic stimulus check: not received.
Unfortunately the financial help from the government I expected has not materialized itself. I'm kinda hoping it's just slow mail and not a lost check sort of deal but since I'm one to plan for the worst I'm buckling down to just eat the repair costs from my current funds. I'm gonna be calling my nearest tax assistance office tommorow just to check and see if they can do anything for me, but as its free money from the government I don't expect this to be any easier than dental work on a rabid shark.

There are a couple things on the internet that AREN'T webcomics that I want to share with everyone. If you haven't seen these things you really should.

First is http://www.gaijinsmash.net
a first hand account of going from being a newly injected english teacher in japan to his most recent adventures in marriage and work.
His descriptions of the sheer culture shock he experiences every day are stomach bursting funny.

second: http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/
this guy goes places and does his little dance. He really.. REALLY goes different places. His first video was just kinda randomly silly but the second one was planned out a lot better and seems to have more of a moral about it...
a good visit if just to see how many places there are out there to see.. and dance in.
He also has some really good tips on travel in the "about matt" section.

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:17:20 GMT

This is going to be beyond picture heavy.. picture obese? Picture morbidly obese..

yes I'll put them all under a cut for my dear friends..

So a .. couple months ago I went to vegas, mainly just to go on a vacation from everything but I did have some particular goals in mind. But I did manage to cram quite a bit into a weeks worth of arizona.

so here come the pictures. Most of these were taken by other people since I kept forgetting my camera in my bag.

Lets start with the hotel room. Our stay was split between 2 casinos, first we stayed at the golden nugget and later we moved to the plaza for cost reasons. I have since regretted suggesting the cost savings as the plaza casino turned out to be .. well.. pretty bloody ghetto. I will not be posting pictures of my room there in an attempt to forget It ever happened.

So..

We were split up into 2 rooms that were connected by a lockable double door arrangement, 3 guys on one side, 2 girls on the other. about 5 minutes after arriving the guys had substantially darkened our side as these comparison photos will show

and here for comparison.. is the guys side

that writhing mass of blankets on the floor there is phil. Phil slept on the floor the whole trip. thank you so much for letting me have a bed =].

OK so yes I gambled and did casino-ey stuff but really I didn't do it much. I lost maybe 200 bucks tops and considering how much people usually blow on these trips, I think thats chump change.

What I concentrated on mostly was enjoying the sights and sounds and tastes of vegas.
we went back to my favorite show in the whole strip:

way to flash them european "go fuck yourself" signs guys. though i think it was supposed to be peace.. oh well.

I'm just gonna post the stuff with me in it.. or stuff I thought was particularly cool since most people have already seen all the usual vegas neon lights and stuff. So here goes:

Ceasars Palace had an addition since the last time I was there. A large bunch of shops and stuff, one of which was a lingerie shop with the most annoyed looking lady standing in front of it. I didn't take any pictures of her since she already looked pissed off, and was wearing underwear only so I didn't wanna seem like just another leering jerk. what WAS photo worthy though was this

yup, this is me and phil freaking out because the escalator freaking CURVES. I'm not really sure how this works but it sure looks cool. Its like a moving spiral staircase.

There were also varios photos taken while wandering around:

this is from the walkway between the newyork and the MGM. We went to "coyote ugly" for our friends bachelor party.. but that place is really small and not all that much fun unless you're either hot, female and a heavy drinker, or you like standing REALLY close to other people and staring at hot, female lushes dancing on the bar. The rest of that night was spent following the brother of the groom ,who had purchased a pink monkey suit , down the strip and molesting various groups we came across. Really, if I ever hear someone say that I need to dress better, i'm going to point out that this man in a pink fur and rubber suit got more action in a couple hours drunken walk then most people get all year.

There were also the obligitory "HEY IAN" photos.

there was something in the new casino that replaced the aladdin, the mirage or something, that caught pretty much everyone in our little parties attention.

This thing:

Its a sphere made of little crystal spheres suspended on fishing line from the ceiling. It's pretty cool I'll admit.. I think everyone who had a camera took a picture of it..

We had dinner at the olive garden one night with all the friends in town for the wedding that was happening:
this is Ian trying to smile nicely and failing..

we also found out that if I stand in the front for night pictures I really freak out the cameras light sensor:

hey Ian.. go stand in the back..

thats better..

We visited the usual hotspots for tourists, among them the cocacola store

I love soda

there were some pretty disturbing mannequins in the store though. I know the tagline for a while is "have a coke and a smile" or something to that effect, but I'm sure you were suppose to have slightly more than JUST a smile..

These guys remind me of Izs from The Maxx

while we we're there I got me a HUGE icee. This is my icee is good face:

we also hit Krispy Kreme, and their doughnut making conveyer was out of comission. I was not pleased.

Neither was kelson when the full realization of no fresh hot KrispyKreme doughnuts hit him

I think this is possibly the only genuine smile picture of me that was taken:

OK ok... so I don't smile very big.

however I do give a good confused look

I don't think I'm supposed to be in this picture.. but I was tired.

Even though they were not strictly fresh, we still bought doughnuts. I had to try some of the varieties that I'd never had, and people LOVE taking pictures of me eating for some reason.

Really, let me eat in peace.

alright.. no hands IS funny.. but.. no sneaking up on me either.

alright. Enough doughnut pictures already, moving on.

Nearing the end of the trip we went to an "Ultra Lounge" on the top of the Rio Casino, It was pretty nice and the food was good. There were some odd little aquarium type boxes near some of the windows that we're full of fire for some reason. they didn't photograph very well, fire never does, so I don't have any pics of them. But the effect as you looked through them was that all of vegas was on fire. I'm not sure whether this was intended or not, but it did mildly amuse me.

heres everyone , ultra lounging around:

Then it was finally time to go home.. in the airport however there was one more curiosity..

vending machine that dispenses electronics! It has an Ipod theme.. but theres a lot of REALLY high end audio and video equipment in there. Digital cameras, portable DVD players. You can even hook your Ipot up to the machine and purchase music to take with you on the plane.

It was pretty enthralling..

you might notice the change of coat in that last picture. I made everyone drive all over the place looking for a store that sells leather trenchcoats since my old one wore holes in the arms. This new shiny one isn't quite as heavy but it's the style I like. It'll do for another couple years. The box under my arm is my new Top hat =]. I'll post a picture of me wearing it when I get around to taking one.

Why am I so excited about buying a hat? why did I go alll the freaking way to vegas to buy one?

A bit of explanation is needed there.
I have a big head. This is not a admission of a big ego, or bragging. My head is a little over 25 inches around. I'm not egotistical enough to think that this means I'm smarter than anyone with a smaller head. If anything I wish it was just a tad smaller. I know people with waists smaller than my head. 25 inches of cranium means that XL hats don't fit. At all. Finding a hat that fits me is quite rare. Finding a hat I LIKE that fits me is even rarer. So when I find a hat that I like, AND it fits. I buy it. No hesitation. This will not happen again for a LONG time.

The even more observant have noticed that in these pictures my hair is very straight. No I've not started ironing my hair out. In lower humidities that is what my hair does. Only in hawaii's 110% bloody humidity does my hair bend into the little superman spitcurl I know and hate so much.

ok so you may also remember I spoke of going to florida.. well it's now 5 am and I really don't have enough energy to go through that whole adventure right now.. so I'll just leave you with this picture I took while I was there:

Can you see it? Thats Dr. Doom.. playing airhockey =]

yeah, it was that cool .

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:56:05 GMT

So I've had a few days to consider it, and as I see it I can look at my situation in one of two ways:

A. I have been targeted once again by the shitstorm that is life, and yet again a large chunk of money that could have been used for something more productive or fun has been requisitioned for unnecessary stuff. Also I am about to get slaughtered with tickets and problems as a result of not being able to properly safety check my car. Pretty sure this is the pessimistic view.

B. This would have happened whether or not I had money on the way and I'm just lucky I happen to have an extra blob of disposable income to cover it. Viva optimism.

btw, I was made aware recently that some people dunno what a safety check is. In hawaii every car must have a safety check done every year. Personal vehicles must comply with a list of various standards. Things like "do you have a seatbelt that isn't ductape?" and "do your doors open?". For almost any car this is easy as hell to pass. Its 15-20 bucks to get the check done and some places it can be finished in a few minutes.

anyway, I think I'm going to go with B, because A is making me into someone I don't want to be. There is much to nitpick and negative out about in the world, and if I do that all the time I'm going to kill someone eventually.

so on to the part where I accept and deal with it..

Things I'm gonna be doing for the next few days :

Going to my insurance company to get a quote on how much they think it's going to cost to fix the car

Taking the quote to a bodyshop and seeing if they'll fix it for that amount.

finding out if I'm going to have to rent a car for the time it'll be out for repairs.

so if anyone has suggestions on where to go for the repairs I'd be grateful. I have no idea whatsoever what makes a good repair shop or where to start.

And as derailed as my plans for this month are, I still want to post a picture of some of the happenings and stuff from my two recent trips. Look forward to that at least.

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:00:58 GMT

I've had enough..

"well the world isn't fair"

well it should be. I've tried all I can to make it fair. Every judgement I make weighed out carefully and objectively. "Is what I'm doing fair? is what I'm saying fair? was that decision fair?

tonight it happened again.

I came back to my car after work and someone had twisted off the lock, bent the door and destroyed my dash to steal my radio.

again. .

and again I need a safetycheck but now thats fucked because my lock is missing.

again.

and now my nice shiny new car.. is broken and bent because some fuckface wanted my radio

again.

I've had it.

it doesn't matter how fair I am the world will continue to mess with me. It will attack the few things I have pride in and continue to beat me back down whenever I climb up.

EVERYTHING goes wrong for me. My friends all know this. When I tell them my stories of how fucked my luck is they don't give me disbelief. They just nod and laugh. Because yeah.. its funny. I know its funny. If it's not happening to you.

I've watched so many things I loved or cared about get taken away or destroyed by the greed and avarice of others.

why should I try so hard to be the exception to the rule when all it brings me is more and more pain.

sure I'm writing this because I'm mad and hurt. but it doesn't mean its not true. Nice people are idiots. You get nothing from being nice besides the title. Assholes and jerks get what they want, they take whatever they like and as probable as it is that there is no afterlife, they will never ever pay for it.

karma doesn't work

I need a hug or someone to talk to but its too late and I just don't have that kind of relationship with anyone.. ..

I am hurting undeservedly and nobody is going to have to answer for it.

I need to sleep for my meeting tomorrow and I can't because I'm so mad. I'm going to be a bitch tomorrow at work but really, I don't really feel like being nice for a long long while.

Take what you can and the rest get nothing. It works for so many people.

I really hate humanity.

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:03:43 GMT

So I've been a very busy (or lazy depending on how you look at it) person recently. I've been messing with different recipes since mothers day and I figured I'd try the stuffing treatment on mushrooms with some added seafoods.

The result:

Yeah.. there were more before I took the picture but ... well I didn't remember I had fixed my camera till after we'd kinda.. dug in.
each of those things is filled with scallops, king crab, bacon, cream cheese, garlic, sauteed onions and mushroom stems, all covered with mozarella cheese. Lemme tell you, they're pretty dang good.... something I've always noted about food though.. unless you tell people it's a picture of food they can look kinda gross.. which is funny. Your perception goes from "eww" to "wow.. tasty looking" as long as you know its food and not something else. Uh.. yeah so thats tasty stuff up there.. not gross. The only problem with those so far is you can only eat like two before your stomach says "holy crap.. thats rich." and you have to rest for a bit. A tip for those who might try the same recipie (sorry, i have no idea what the portions I use are. I just throw stuff in) when baking mushrooms it really helps if you brush them with some sort of oil first (I used olive oil) so that they don't shrivel.

I guess I'm on sorta a stuffed food phase right now. I think I'll try some things that people who don't eat meat can eat, like spinach instead of bacon or something, but considering the amount of dairy products I use in these things I'm not really seeing any moral or health advantage to switching that.

ALSO!

I put a new emblem on the car.. you may remember the last one was ripped off by some hooligan and it disheartened me enough that I sort of held off of putting a new one on while I figured out how to make it theft resistant.

well no more!~

Heres the new one, mounted and shiny!

you'll notice its the negative opposite of the other one, silver solid and black lines. Unfortunately I could not find this particular size and type of emblem in anything but this version. However this one is a bit larger and I think fills the grille space better. So what makes this one more theft resistant?

well this one is plastic, and hollow. It's been attached by FILLING the other side with epoxy and layering that epoxy around the mounting bracket. This means that if someone gets anything off the bracket, its going to be jagged shards of epoxy and plastic. Sure it'll destroy the emblem in the process but I have spares and perhaps it'll shred their hand enough that they'll learn something about stealing.

heres a closer look:

note the custom "expanded metal" grille replacement is still in place and .. I think .. easier to see than earlier pictures I took of it.

some people have expressed an interest in what my house looks like, .. some a little bit creepily but hey.. who am I to stand in the way of life goals.. heh.. .

heres the house:

the bottom floor is where I live, the landlord lives above, he's kinda stompy and clumsy but .. meh.

and this is the view from that porch you see on the left (my front door)

Things you can see in this picture: My cars normal parking space on the right. A huge mango tree taking up the middle of the yard. Various shipping containers on the right that have , according to my landlord, "parts and stuff" in them. The odd dome house thats down the street from me , where the kids like to have fires in the yard and people like to talk while standing in the road. Also you may see the various minty blue boxes throughout the yard... those are beehives. There's none near the house, thank god, but the landlord does keep a lot of bees. Fresh honey is nice, I'll admit, but when the bees find a flower patch.. say... over the fence, in the neighboring guava farm, that is in a line that goes over my car... well bees poop a lot more than you'd think. Perhaps I should find a car cover. ALSO, the blue horizon you see on the left, thats the ocean. I'm all of a 10 minute walk from that sucker. Not so great if theres a tsunami but at least the house is on a hill right? You can also see the little board near the middle with a target painted on it in white paint, I'm not sure why he has target practice since he shoots the chickens in the yard after they've been trapped but thats just another "landlord thing" I kind of ignore.

And I still have yet to post pictures of the stuff I bought in vegas and florida.. or even to relate my tales of adventure from those trips. But thats another entry entirely =]

Tue, 13 May 2008 06:35:40 GMT

A short update for .. well.. belated mothersday

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all of you moms out there that I know and even those I don't know. Being a mom is a tough job and it deserves more than just a day but this is the official one!

side note: Oysters are a pain in the ass to shuck raw but once you fill them with creamcheese, bacon and garlic butter and cover em in mozzarella it's so very worth it. New recipe added to stock.. I should write these down someday.

phone chronicles

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:38:14 GMT

recently I acquired a new phone and no longer needed my razr. I gave it to my sister but since I'm pretty sure she didn't want a bunch of random photos that I had accumulated on the phone, I downloaded all the data that was on it first. Well, almost all of it, sorry B theres a lot of weird ringtones on that.

I DID recover a lot of pics I had been meaning to post. ... hence a pic heavy post of bad resolution phone pics.. whee!

You may remember a while ago I had mentioned having to put together an extremely complex and expensive computer.
Complete cost of this unit: $7000
yeah.. I didn't hit zero too many times. Seven THOUSAND dollars. The big deal of this one was it had watercooling system and whats known as "Phase change" cooling on the processor. Basically its a tiny little refridgerator that sits on the processor and brings it to -50 degrees. Problem being they make condensation form on the motherboard or any other componant near to the cooler. This was the main problem. after 8 months of problems and ... uh.. stuff.. heheh the computer was eventually simply returned to the customer and the money refunded. well on with the picures.. woo.

This is the computer, assembled the first time:

That gigantic window in the front is the phase change cooler condenser. Theres watercooling on the RAM, hard drive, dual video cards and both south and north bridges as indicated by the neon green tubing. that HUGE black tube is the "Phase-change" cooler umbilical. I don't know if you understand how freaking huge this thing is. When it came in , none of that was in the computer. I assembled that whole mess.

close up of the tubes

You might notice there are some tubes hanging out of the case... what are they going to?

The radiator got punctured and while a new one was ordered I had to leave the computer in this odd eviscerated state. With a little baggie around the popped radiator.

and a final look, thats a 20oz bottle of coke in front of the computer. Its around 3 feet tall.

thus ends the saga of monster computer. ...good riddance.

now some really random things, mostly I took pictures of things I just couldn't explain without a picture.. like these:

Those are centimeter tall stalactites of dust. Each of them represents a hole that was on the panel that makes up the side of the computer.
BLEAH!... heres another angle.

THEY EXTEND OVER ONTO THE motherboard !!. BLEAAAAGH!

ok ok.. ... more computers.

The evil of people knows no bounds. the HORRORS they visit upon their computers.

and then theres the people who won't quite commit to cutting up their computer, but have NO idea what to do with the parts available to them:

The inside was no picnic either.

those poor things..

then again.. sometimes computers have problems communicating whats wrong with them:

then it could be that people just can't seem to keep away from porn and file sharing sites. Or at least can't use them responsibly. Check the amount of infections.

Then there was the fire at the store.. apparently someone disposed of some used charcoal briquettes in the dumpster. The resulting uh.. hijinks amused everyone. The store filled with smoke and everyone had to be evacuated.
The Fire department showed up and had the dumpster pulled out and hosed it down. Then they dragged the burning garbage out and hosed it again.

Unfortunately or, fortunately I didn't get to experience most of the excitement. I got a phone call in the morning from one of my friends who works with me. "Ian, come and get me, the stores on fire.". I thought "Haha.. joke." and I got ready to leave.

then on the way to get my friend I noticed I had a message on my voicemail. It was my senior telling me that there had been a fire and I may or may not be needed because the store may not be open. "... not a joke! Fire!"

aaand.. just two more pictures.. pretty random stuff..

number one.. this just makes my mind hurt..

yeah.. rich and creamy... light..

and last but not least.. Computer packaging would like to make sure.. that you do NOT ... .kill strongsad.

thank you...

and

Goodnight.

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:29:52 GMT

There was a customer today who just hurt my brain.. heres how it went down:
A woman walks up to the repair counter during an uncharacteristic Tuesday afternoon rush on my department.
First impressions give me no reason to fear speaking to this woman, she seems nonviolent enough and although she is wearing a frown thats pretty much the status quo for people who are coming to see me, nobody bothers me if things are working correctly.

"HI", says I, "What can I help you with?"

"I bought this computer , printer and broadband service and I tried for the longest time to get them all working but I can’t. I need you guys to come out and set it up for me."

"I’m sorry to hear it didn’t work right out of the box but thats what we’re here for, let me ring you up and we’ll get you scheduled for that right away."

"I have to pay?"

Right there.. like shifting a car into reverse while speeding down the freeway. that’s what my brain did.
"I .. uh... yes?"

"But it doesn’t work. You mean to tell me you are going to charge me to setup the things I purchased from you?"

"I.... uhmmm.. I.. .. Ma’am I apologize for the trouble you’re having setting up your new technology, but configuring and setting up our customers new purchases is a separate service we offer. If you brought the items to the store I can test them individually to make sure they’re working correctly but if we are to come out to your residence there will be a charge for that service."

"You mean to tell me that you aren’t going to help me with the items bought from YOUR store unless I pay for it. "

"Yes, thats exactly what I mean to say. It is a separate service from the actual purchase price. It is not included or implied by any salesperson to be part of the purchase price."

"How am I supposed to use the things I bought then?"

Sometimes I am very glad I have a good barrier between what I’m thinking and what I say to people or the phrase "Are you five years old?" very possibly would have left my mouth at that moment. I’m pretty sure that every human being that I have a regular interaction with has SOME idea of how to use the item they are purchasing, AND if they cannot figure out their new acquisition they will be willing to either pay someone to set it up for them or just forget the whole deal and return the damn thing.

back to the helpless wonder:

"I don’t think it’s right to make people pay to have the things they bought working correctly. They came out last time and set everything up for free"

"That may have been part of a packaged deal. We had a sale a while ago that included computer setup and data transfer but that has long since ended. As I said before, I can test the different items individually but I cannot in any way schedule someone to come out to your house without charging you for that service. "

"I want to speak to your manager"

"right away ma’am."

end of story was she got passed to a Manager who explained that while she could return her items... she could NOT return any services or software that was opened. HA to the freaking HA you stupid, entitled, professional victim.

perhaps I’m being mean.. oh well. .heres something cute and cheery to lighten the mood:

KURUTTO MAWATTE IKKAITEN

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:13:15 GMT

so its been..
what..

10 days maybe since i finished that emblem mounting.

today I found that someone in the past 2 days has ripped it right off.

good thing I kinda planned for this ... I have another one..

but how to attach this so it can't be stolen again? I've already considered mounting razors on the back of it, or just sharpening the edges. However the possibility of some small child hurting themselves on it will probably prevent me from carrying through on that one..

I DO know that there is a small defect on the old one though.. and if I find someone with it I am going to need a lot of control NOT to hurt them.

anyone know of anything with stronger adhesive properties than JB weld?

it annoys me that I called that so well though... bloody humanity.

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:22:39 GMT

possibly my favorite internet thing so far this year..

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:39:30 GMT

I just can't agree enough with the assessment of the generation below mine in the workplace in

THIS article

thats all for now

A horse is.. not enough.. of course

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:00:38 GMT

After 4 months of scraping out whatever time I could and some maddening losing of parts and inventive use of random hardware ..

ITS DONE!!

what have I done?

I put in my new front grille emblem!

Those of you who see me on a regular basis know that I've wanted to replace the mustang in the front of my... mustang for a while now. It's not because I hate horses... though I kind of do but thats a whole nother story that includes beehives and breaking branches.. its just because well..
THIS:

Not to bad, but just a little to like everyone else.. I have a taste for being subtle in my modifications to everyday things, I REALLY like when people have to do double takes to make sure they saw what they think they saw. Not just the fwish fwoosh look and look again ones either. The head turns... then turns back... and the eyes narrow to make it clearer. THAT is what I like.

That and cool and shiny stuff..

Mix these desires together and the obvious choice for my new emblem is a decepticon symbol! picked out in chrome and with black accents It looks like a normal car emblem but its EVIL! YAY!. It dawns on me now that I have no picture of the .. oh wait.. I bought it on ebay.. gimme a second to .. er.. borrow a pic.

ahh here we go.. THIS:

I am going to admit right now, that I bought this thing before I even knew WHERE I was going to put in on the car. I just knew I had to get it on there somewhere.

now so what do I have to do to accomplish this.. well first.. I have to remove the old grille. After long days of searching and extreme frustration that nobody would bother to post instructions or "how to"s of what i needed EXACTLY to achieve grille-less-ness. I found a forum that told me in order to do so I needed what was called a Grille delete kit. Oh.. alright. I'll just pop right out and pick up one of ... wow.. they're like 100 bucks for one of those. NO THANKS.

So after much comparison of pictures and delving into forums populated by people who were all very.. .. how do I say this politely... Very 'merican. I had found out that all I really needed was the plastic curvy piece of the kit that covered the holes left by removing the stock grille. With that I set off to ebay to pick up one of these pieces. Luckily someone seemed to be auctioning off just that piece for relatively cheap (20 bucks). So I ordered that and when it finally arrived:

I decided to take out my grille using the instructions the seller had so kindly enclosed with it.
Peggies on the bottom of the smile piece for fitting in the holes:

The weather however, had other ideas. Shortly after this picture was taken it began to rain. I stress that it wasn't very HARD rain.. just a little. But enough that i didn't want to be standing around outside with my hood open in it. It rained ALL day.. and the next day.. and pretty much every single one of my days off for the next 3 weeks.

Then , MY CHANCE! the sun was out! there were no clouds and I had a free day! So..
There were some interesting screws that had to be taken out:

see the mushroom looking thingie is pushed in first, then you screw the SOFT plastic screw into it so that it pushes the mushroots out and thats what holds the screws in place here here here here here and HERE:

The big fun part is that since the plastic is so soft it doesn't just screw back out. You have to push the screw up with something sharp.. then use something to brace and pull up the screw as you unscrew it.. It was entertaining. That and I was constantly afraid of breaking or tearing the plastic that makes up my front bumper cover. Luckily that didn't happen though. So the result was this:

a bunch of gross dirty holes left in the bumper and the grille has been removed
Old grille comes out:

not half as easy as I make it sound though. It took a lot of knuckle cutting awkward bending to get this sucker out. There are 4 bolts on the bottom (thats what the dirty holes are from) that need to be unscrewed from UNDERNEATH the bumper cover.

ANYWAY,
Wash up the dirty holes

and now you are ready to put in the smiley thingie!

hmm.. kinda cool looking but really I cannot leave it like that. So on to attaching the emblem to..

uh oh.. how am I supposed to attach the emblem to those holes and things coming down the middle. More research is needed. Soon I find out that once the grille is removed the "Mach 1" series of mustang, which comes stock with no grille, has a floaty emblem which fits perfectly in the space (and onto the revealed odd bits in the middle) using a couple screws and a little mounting.

Back to ebay to order one of these. I managed to find one for about 2 dollars (the seller didn't even know what it was really for) and soon it was in my grasp:

well .. that horse thingy has gotta come off it.

Pook!

oh look, it comes right off::

sorta

well .. er.. this isn't exactly what I had in mind. I was sorta hoping for something with a little less... horse shaped backing to it. Oh well .. first we test to see if this is really and truly what I needed:

Indeed! The mounting fits perfectly. But it still has that annoying horse shape on it which is going to stick out quite a bit on the sides of my nifty emblem:

can't have that , now can we? So how do we get rid of it? well I'll tell you right now that just trying to bend it the heck off with my bare hands did not go so well:

I don't have pictures of the results of the other thing's I tried.. but you can also cross melting, hammering , and torching off the list of possible solutions. So what eventually worked in the end?

a chisel and a dollar rubber mallet from marukai.

HORSE COMES OFF!. Or rather, semi-horse shaped metal backing comes off and leaves us with:

mounting! ALL BY ITSELF. This picture is a bit misleading, its the mounting after the horse has been removed.. AND I've spent a day hammering the bloody thing back into shape. it had been rather warped by the torch attempts.

hmm.. theres still.. TOO MUCH BACKING!

this is where it starts to get inventive. since these were actually PART of the solid metal piece that is the backing, they need to be cut off. luckily I have my dremel! And the cutting kit that wandzor was nice enough to let me have.

WE CAN'T FORGET SAFETY THOUGH. ALWAYS WEAR EYE PROTECTION KIDS!!!

yeah.. it was an excuse to reuse the goggles from my halloween costume.. but hey, they really were safety goggles.

A short session of teeth grinding metal cutting noises and PING!! the sides and the bottom come off..

the..

DAMMIT. The sides are what was holding the bottom on. .. well now I have this thing:

After staring at it forlornly for a little bit and considering where I was going to get a new one.. i decided to plow on with the project since

A. The emblem I was using was a hell of a lot lighter than the horse and probably didn't need the extra support.

and

B, It fit pretty much perfectly now

So with some double stick tape I mounted it in the position I wanted:

and decided to stick it in the car to see if this was really what I wanted.

And then it got interesting again.

To mount this thing required two screws and two nuts at minimum. The screws threaded through the holes at the top of the mounting, and through the two holes near the top of that thing you see in the middle of other pictures of the removed grille. The screws have to be long and thin and just held back by the nuts (huh huh.. held back by the nuts.. ) to hold up the mounting.

First I purchased two screws, two nuts and some copper lockwasherthingies. (forgive me I forget what they're really called. ) I even brought the emblem mounting in with me to make sure they were thin enough. What I didn't realize was that the holes on the mounting are wayy bigger than the holes in the frame thingy. I didn't find this out till I got home. .. strike one. Day wasted and theres no chance I'm driving 20 miles just to pick up less than a dollars worth of screws.

Next chance to buy screws. I JAM my thumb against the frame hole thingy so that the flesh stands out in the size of the hole (like when you lean on something for too long) and mark that with a permanent marker.Now I have a gauge I can carry around inconspicuously . I go inside the hardware store and spend a while holding different screws up to the dot on the end of my thumb. I find the right sized screw and nuts and pick up some rubber washers to hold them in place and prevent scraping, Right after paying I take them out to the car and measure them in the frame. They fit!. YAY!

I don't know what happened to those screws. When I got home they were gone. Not in the bag with the other things I had bought from the supermarket after I had been at the hardware store. Just GONE. .. dammit.

another couple weeks goes by before I have time and reason to go to the hardware store (still not going to waste 5 bucks of gas JUST to pick up less than a buck worth of screws.). I pick up the screws and nuts AGAIN.. I pick up some rubber washers AGAIN. I even go to the car part shop and pick up some double sided detail tape to stick down the plastic hole cover thing (it was raising on the front edge). Keeping the little bag of screws in my breast pocket I drive home. Right as I'm getting out of the car I get a feeling. Just because it's me I know exactly what it is.
I pull out the little bag of screws and nuts and washers. ... theres a nut missing. one... damn... nut.

GAH!!

Its another 2 weeks before i get another chance to go to a hardware store on the way home from work or near where I'm going. This time I hit a big name one. They've got EVERYTHING here. I buy a BAG of the nuts I need. I've got somewhere around 20 more nuts than I'm ever going to use on this project but I still feel antsy.

while I'm there I remember that although my new grille-less look for the car looks neat.. I am pretty much subjecting my radiator to whatever the road chooses to throw up into that hole. BIG rocks, big bugs.. whatever. when i walk back out to the car I take a look at the radiator fins. Sure enough theres bigger dents in it than I remember. Back into the hardware store, Ian has an idea. Ian is going to make his own invisible grille for the car..

what do you need for a grille really?

well you need some sort of screen..

steel "expanded metal" check

and it is probably gonna be kinda sharp around the edges so I'll need some way of covering them so they don't scratch the inner parts of the bumper cover..

vinyl tubing, check.

and I also bought a can of "spray plasti dip" to black out the screws and the new grille in a dull and "invisible" black. but I didn't take a picture of that because the camera ran out of batteries for the next couple hours. This also means you aren't going to get to see the in betweens of the grille, which is a shame because I did some pretty good work on it. more dremeling and quite a lot of spraying and measuring, bending and swearing.

Cut to valentines day morning! I was off from work and didn't have any plans till dinnertime. So the work continued. I lined and glued the emblem to the mounting like so:

thats JB weld holding it on by the way. Not just any old adhesive. That stuff dries to the tensile strength and heat resistance of steel, that sucker is NOT coming off.

I clamped that together, set it on the side to dry for 15 hours and set about putting in the new grille.

which I entirely forgot to take pictures of until I had gotten it installed... sorry. I was kinda excited at this point.

new grille looks like this:

can't see it eh.. alrighty that was kinda the point of painting it with flat black plasti dip. Luckily I did take a picture of it installed with the hood up and from a better angle.

Its a bit hard to see, but the bottom and sides are sitting in vinyl tubing cut down the side. which is keeping them from scratching stuff AND making sure the whole thing doesn't rattle from the car vibrations.

OK now for the last day!!

The screws are put in place!... I dropped the washers!!

20 minutes of sorting through gravely driveway for the lost washers...

FOUND! ...

ATTACHED!

And the final product!!

now admittedly it's a little dinky for the size of my car, but as I said, I like the understated look and you really have to be paying attention to notice that it's not a regular auto make stamp emblem..

All in all it was a fun project, and I'm looking forward to doing a couple more, but as I've shown myself, it will always be a bigger investment than I originally think .

Just in case any of you were wondering how much the whole project ended up costing me. I'll tally up the equipment.

Emblem: 10 dollars
Emblem mounting : 7 dollars (including shipping)
Grille delete cover: 30 dollars (including shipping)
Double sided auto tape: 5 dollars
Expanded metal: 10 dollars
Vinyl Tubing: 3 dollars
Screws: 5 dollars. ... should have been 1.
Can of spray Plasti Dip: 3 dollars
Rubber mallet: 1 dollar
JB weld: 3 dollars

Total: $77
not bad for a custom job that I'm pretty damn positive that nobody else in the world has. Even came out to less than that 100 dollar grille delete kit.

and now that I've been up for 2 hours typing and renaming and cropping pictures.. It's time to take a break. =] next entry should have a picture of my new computer.. but I didn't try to document it like I did the car.. so not half as picture intensive

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:03:45 GMT

to prove I'm not dead... an entry..

this comic:

VG CATS STRIP!
Is funny and says a lot about how ideas of womens place in society are still horribly skewed..

though I suppose cooking papa probably wouldn't have been as fun?

all that microwaving stuff..

OHH THE IRONY!! STEREOTYPICAL MALE GENERALIZATION!

yeah, I think I need to write some more too. I have a huge entry coming up when I finish putting that thing on my car that I've been saying I'm gonna do for .. well.. since I got the new car. Then I'll post some pictures of my new little Gameboxen I put together

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 11:45:23 GMT

Ahh.. my first post of the new year.. and look.. I'm gonna complain =]

First and foremost I want to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone I missed during the holidays. I was a very busy (and sick) person this year but I survived.

Resolutions:
New place to live
Exercise more
get out more

Pretty standard stuff there

There are so many things I could talk about, stuff that happened at work, what I got for christmas, what I really plan to do with my new year.

But I am going to start with something thats been bugging me for a long long time.

Tips.

To Insure Prompt Service is a commonly held definition of what it stands for. Also known as Gratuity, sounds a lot like Gratitude.

But the main point of tipping someone, is to show them appreciation for a job well done. A little extra on top of what they're being paid to show that you noticed the effort they put into serving you for however long it took. An indication that expectations were not only met, but exceeded.

    In the case of known "tipped employees" its a bit expected, and as such tipped employees are generally paid less (and employers are legally allowed to do so). Tipped employees include but are not limited to (I sound like a warranty) waitstaff, servers, valets and generally just people who's job it is to interact directly with people and turn requests and needs into realities. I begrudge these people no tips, if anything people will notice I am a bit generous when it comes to tipping because I was at one time one of those people and I know how much it sucks to put your all into being the best help you can and getting nothing in return. It's damn hard work to do that kind of job well and since so much of the pay comes from the tips I tend to try and be as generous as I can. Unless...

    Unless you are bad at your job. Perhaps it's not your fault. Perhaps you had a bad day. Perhaps you just have that kind of personality that grates on mine. The problem is I request very little from people who serve me other than quick service, and relative accuracy of information retention. when I ask for no olives, I mean I don't want olives anywhere near it. If theres just one olive in it, you have failed to complete my request. One or two mistakes will not cost you your tip, they probably won't even decrease it, but being RUDE about being corrected, or even just being brusque , will.

    The reason I bring this up is I've noticed a distinct lack of understanding in the younger generation (god I sound like a fogey) of what it really means to get tipped. They expect it. They think it's a minor detail that the customer gets served well in this interaction. I've heard complaints such as "That guy didn't tip me anything! it's not my fault his order was complicated, like I can do anything about it coming out wrong.". Funny enough this wasn't my waiter at all. he was standing by the door as I left and I had been watching him work. When the gentleman he was helping pointed out the mistakes, the waiter ROLLED HIS EYES and picked up the food without saying anything. He brought back the right order but NEVER APOLOGIZED. Alright DOOD, its NOT your fault that the kitchen messed up the order (and this is assuming he wrote it down correctly) but it IS your fault that you didn't take responsibility and politely fix the problem. It took quite a lot not to stop and bitch this guy out.
    The really sad thing is that these people are everywhere. They flop your order down in front of you and just expect you'll make with the extra money at the end of the transaction. I had a cashier look at the receipt and say "oh, you forgot the tip"... I had to tell her "no, your staff forgot to earn it." . I suppose that was unnecessary but at that point I was extremely frustrated with how I had been treated and just lashed out at the one person unfortunate enough to be talking to me.
    Hell I may be wrong. Perhaps tipping IS supposed to be done whether or not the service is up to par. Perhaps I was raised incorrectly or taught wrong. Maybe I'm some sort of inconsiderate jerk for not paying extra money to people who don't meet my standards of service, But I work hard for the money I have, and if you're going to take even MORE of it from me, you're going to work just as hard to earn it.

    And I have one more gripe regarding tips that may just make some people hate me.. but..

    If you work at a fast food restaurant such as McDonalds, or subway, or some cheapie sushi place. Don't give me dirty looks when I don't put anything in the little paper cup with "tips!" scrawled on it thats sitting beside the register. You get paid minimum wage.. I get it. But if you want more money, get a better job. Theres a very good reason for the stereotype of a teenager working at a fastfood place. It's a common starting/temporary job. No offense to those who make a living in the fast food chains as managers and such, but McDonalds is not a premium service industry. If you don't think you get paid enough to flip burgers there's some other shmuck who will for LESS money. You wanna be a tipped employee? Work for less than minimum wage. I'd love to see how cheerful you can be when you're getting paid 2 something an hour.
    Heck, if someone at a fast food place manages to impress me with a cheerful smile and exemplary service I MIGHT just press a few extra dollars into their hand, but so far I have NEVER had that kind of service when ordering. I've experienced enough problems to wonder what exactly they teach new hires exactly (it seems like a mix of "scowl all the time" and "if you think they might not notice, mess up the order").

    why am I so uptight about it? I work at a job where I have to adapt to each problem as it comes, almost every person I talk to is already mad and frustrated and I am their last hope for a solution. I won't deny I get paid well for what I do, but it's still nothing like i used to pull down when i worked at a bar. The thing here is I put just as much effort into making each interaction as pleasant and stress free as possible, making sure that the customer understands exactly what the solutions are and why I'm suggesting them and making sure I explain as politely and completely as I can as many times as needed. It's just as hard, if not harder to do my job than it is to take an order and fulfill it at a restaurant, but I have never ONCE expected a tip for what I do. I do get offers to tip me yes, but the day I put down a little jar with "TIPS" printed on it at the counter is the day I smash my own thumbs. I signed up for this job and agreed to the terms of pay, I will do my best to comply with my contract. Any expectation of EXTRA compensation is simple greed.

Final message here: Tips are for people who earn them, not for people who want them.