Sunday, May 11, 2008

A ringtone just for mom

In honor of Mother’s Day, and in light of her undeniable involvement in my worst vacation ever, I have assigned a unique ringtone just for my mom. Any of my readers who have followed my past rants about how high strung and bossy my mom is will completely understand and recognize how appropriate my song choice is.

From now on, when my mom calls me, I will hear this ringtone.

For those of you not familiar with it, it’s called The Imperial March, also known as Darth Vader’s theme song. He controlled people by using the Force, my mom contols people with Guilt.

Those of you who happen to be parents or will become parents, take this as a lesson. Don’t be a control freak with your kids, or you’ll end up raising someone with a bottomless pit of resentment and an innate fear of rejection. Those of you who are victims of overly controlling parents, feel free to download this MP3 to your phone and use it as your mom’s unique ringtone. Cheers!

Friday, May 09, 2008

Worst vacation ever

I should have never listened to my silly mom and her hairbrained idea to visit my sister. “Wouldn’t it be great for us all to get together?” Sure, in theory. In reality, not so much.

I’ve never stayed over at my sister’s place before ever since we moved out of my mom’s house. Before her move to Houston, we’ve always been about an hour’s drive away. I had no idea what a terrible host she and her husband were. The first night we were there, I was lucky if I got even two hours of sleep. Since my mom was in their guest room, they blew up an air mattress and had us sleep in some open area they had upstairs with their exercise equipment. There was a huge curtainless window in the hall with a street light shining right into my eyes. But that’s not what kept me up. It was the constantly crying babies. Oh my god, every two fucking hours, wah wah wah.

My sister says that they’re not normally like that since they’re one and three years old. But because they were sick it made them all snotty, clingy and extreme pains in the ass. The following morning my sister was nowhere to be found, so my mom said our breakfast choices were outmeal or cereal. That was it. My mom makes terrible oatmeal, but she wouldn’t let me do it. She’s always been fussy to the extreme, and if you say something, she takes it personally.

At that point I was seriously looking into shortening my stay to a few days instead of a week. Unfortunately to change my flight plan would have meant an extra $400 for the two of us. My sweety had to make a valiant effort not to remind me every day that we could be enjoying our time so much more hanging out at home. It’s been awhile since I’ve felt so much regret over a decision.

My sister’s husband worked during the day, and she’s a stay at home mom. I can understand that having two sick kids is very distracting, and a husband is usually like a third child anyway. They all got sick with whatever virulent flu the kids picked up at the birthday party they went to before I arrived. I’m so glad I brought a bottle of vitamin C with me. I loaded up on that stuff the whole time I was there, and fortunately did not fall sick myself.

Our stay became a bit more pleasant once my sweety took over and made dinner a few times (which peeved my mom for some reason, I guess she prefers the mother hen role). They also took us to a few places around town, but traveling with toddlers definitely limits the fun factor for adults. I probably sound pretty selfish right now, but I really am annoyed that I wasted so many of my alotted vacation days visiting a family who was very much wrapped up in themselves.

Maybe it was the way I was brought up, with an overly fussy mom and all, but do toddlers really need to have their own rooms? I remember when we were kids, my mom would have us both sleeping on futons in her room when guests came to stay at our house. Is this normal, or is it more normal to stick guests wherever it won’t inconveniece you? Anyway, you can be sure I’m not going to be visiting them again for a long, long time.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Houston, hopefully we don't have a problem

Well tomorrow I’m off to visit my sister for the first time in her new house in Houston. I’ll probably be jealous. Houses are a lot more affordable there than they are in California. Then again you’d have to put up with high heat and humidity. And the possibility of being covered by water should the country ever get ripped in half.

Okay probably not. I watched a really bad movie while my sweety was away, called 10.5 Apocolypse. What is it about the Sci Fi channel that attracts bad made-for-TV movies and me at the same time? The plot was so outlandishly contrived, and yet I watched all four hours of it. I must’ve been bored or felt some strange need to punish myself. Anyway, the whole silly premise is the continental drift suddenly goes in reverse, and by suddenly I mean like overnight and accelerating in speed. A gigantic dormant faultline appears in the midwest and starts to rip its way down to Texas. The U.S. is basically torn in half with the rift being filled in by the ocean. So yeah, Houston becomes Atlantis. The nation grieves, boohoo, the end. You know a lot of land owners are rejoicing over the new beachfront property they now own.

So anyway… um… my point… oh yeah, there wasn’t one. Sorry.  See you in a week.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Please explain these poop bag instructions to me

Last week I had asked about what I should use for picking up dog poop that would be environmentally friendly yet still convenient. Zoe helpfully suggested Poopbags.com. I checked them out, liked what I saw, and thought they were reasonably priced, so I ordered a sample.

The bags are made of corn or corn husks or something, but they totally feel like soft plastic. They’re not brittle either, so I don’t have to be afraid of it falling apart on me. According to the site, it doesn’t start to biodegrade until after it’s exposed to the environmental factors that cause things to decompose—dampness, soil, bacteria, sunlight, etc. So I can totally throw the dog poop I collect into the greens bin now.  (The city has three trash bins, one for recyclables, one for plant material and other mulchables, and one for everything else.) I feel more responsible already.

The only thing that completely baffles me about these bags are the instructions that are printed on them. First of all, what kind of a moron do you have to be to require instructions on how to use a freaking bag to pick up poop? I’m actually surprised it doesn’t have a warning label telling me not to put it over my head because it’s not a toy. That being said, maybe I am a moron, because I just can’t understand part of it.

It has illustrations and instructions in seven different languages on how to “properly” use this bag.  See for yourself:

(Click image for bigger version)

Step 1 - Put my hand in the bag, okay got it.
Step 2 - Collect the droppings, right, duh.
Step 3 - Push the top through the hole… uh… what?
Step 4 - Pull the tip through the hole… wait, the tip of what? Which part??
Step 5 - The bag is closed… no it isn’t, wait! What is this, oragami??

Okay… so it’s got this round hole punched through the top of the bag. I thought it was like a handle or something. But the intructions say it’s somehow used to tie off the bag. The only way I can get my bag to look like Step 5 is if I do the traditional yet simple granny knot I always tie on all the bags I use for dog shit. I tried stuffing the top corners of the bag through this little hole, and it looked weird. Step three seems to be the crucial point that I’m just not getting, and that diagram is completely unhelpful. I mean look at it… does it not look like he’s opening a bag of chips?

Don’t get me wrong, I still like these bio-bags and will likely order a bunch more. I just don’t like being made fun of by a set of deceptively simple instructions on how to pick up poop. I ask you, does Step 3 make sense in any language?

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Hey la hey la my girlfriend's back!

This past Sunday was a joyous reunion.  She finally was able to catch a flight home. Finally! I probably don’t have to include any details about what we did for most of the day after we got home. Let’s just say I had a few sore muscles the next day.

I tried to keep the house relatively clean while she was away, but of course my standards are far below hers. I didn’t do quite as well as I thought. However she said it wasn’t as bad as she expected, so that’s a good thing, right?

I’m so happy she’s back. I was half empty when she was away. Or perhaps I was half full?  Well I’m whole again, and that’s what matters. Now we can finally empty the queue that’s been stacking up in the Tivo. 

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

My sweety is still stuck in Miami

What was supposed to be a one week trip is turning out to be an unexpected extended stay.  She gets to fly for free thanks to her sister, but it has to be on standby, basically last priority out of all the passengers who need seats.  Getting over there was easy.  Coming back, however… what an ordeal.  American Airlines canceled thousands of flights, causing major delays for tons of travelers, not to mention jacking up ticket prices because desperate travelers didn’t have much choice if they wanted to go home.

I was curious why the FAA would order the airline to ground so many planes at once, so I read some news articles.  Basically they want them to inspect the grounded planes for correct wiring.  More specifically, to ensure that the wires are tied off in a particular direction.  ...Excuse me?  I don’t know much about engineering, but is it really necessary to ground hundreds of planes at once to make emergency repairs on… the direction some wire ties are facing?? WTF? Sounds to me like someone in the FAA is on a power trip.  Yeah I know, safety first. But come on, they couldn’t inspect them in batches?  Exactly how dangerous is a wire tie when it’s facing left instead of right?

Pardon my crankiness while I face my third week without my sweetheart.  I haven’t been away from her for more than a few days until now. To fill the void, I’ve been catching up on some sci fi shows, particularly Star Trek: Enterprise. It’s the only Star Trek series (besides the original series) that I didn’t follow. I rather like it. I just started Season 3.  I’d rather have my baby back though. (And I’m not talking about ribs.)

Monday, April 14, 2008

Environmentally friendly

If using paper bags kills trees, and plastic bags aren’t biodegradeable, then it’s been suggested you bring your own tote bag to the grocery store.  I actually do this (when I can remember to get the thing out of my trunk).  But what I wanna know is what do I use to pick up dog poop? I am not picking that shit up in a reuseable bag.  Gack.  I’m not that dedicated to the environment.

Actually I’ve been told that paper is really made from sawdust, not actual trees.  This makes sense because you don’t need slabs of wood to make paper, just the little fibers.  Just a side note.

But anyway, until I figure out this little dilemma, I’m just going to keep on using plastic grocery bags from my stockpile to pick up the dog poop.  What do YOU use? 

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Convergence

Take a deep breath, hold it, let it out slowly… that’s what I have to keep telling myself.

April is being very mean to me.  Too bad April isn’t a person.  This month seems to be an unexpected conglomeration of numerous blows against my financial well-being.  Allow me to summarize:

• I’m getting a modest refund from my federal taxes, but I owe state taxes double that amount.
• We have to pay the tax lady for doing our taxes.
• Car registration due on two vehicles.
• My sweety’s unemployment checks just ran out, and nobody seems to be hiring.
• There are still monthly payments to be made for one car, three credit cards and a fucking mortgage that just won’t go away even though we got rid of the fucking house (we sold at a loss).
• Oh yeah, and rent too.

Take a deep breath, hold it, let it out slowly…

I started to panic this morning.  It’s very rare for me to have any kind of anxiety attack, but the thought of being financially destitute can do that to me sometimes.  Or maybe I was just due for an attack. I don’t know. I was just made aware of some once-a-year bills, all magically due within a one-month time frame. It’s an uncanny convergence of events. Had I thought about these things earlier, I wouldn’t have bought those plane tickets to go see my sisiter.  I went to refund them this morning, but because they were a discounted special price, no refunds allowed. Fuck fuck fuck you Southwest.

Take a deep breath, hold it, let it out slowly…

My heart was just sinking as I drove in to work this morning, all this shit on my mind. I’ve always been horrible at managing money. I just figure if I’m a cheapskate then I’ll be fine. Doesn’t work like that. You actually have to plan things. Ugh, financial planning is one of the most distasteful tasks in the world to me. I wish somebody else would do it. But then I’d have to pay them. Bah.

Luckily I recognized my anxiety and the irrationality that tends to accompany it. So I sat down and added together all the things that needed to be paid this month.  Do I have the savings to cover it?  Luckily, yes, I’ve been doing all right saving up since the house fiasco. Okay, transfer funds then.  Next I added up all the month-to-month bills that we get and compared that to my income… am I covered? Why… yes!  With some extra to spare. So we’re in no danger of being financially destitute after all.

So why did I panic? I’m normally a calm, rational person.  All I had to do was think it through instead of going off the deep end. I guess it was the sudden realization that I was standing on the edge of what seemed like a shit storm with no umbrella. I tend to live in the here and now, only occasionally glancing at the future. So long as I don’t have to worry about being able to buy what I need, I’m happy. I guess this time I pulled my head out of the sand to look around and found that security threatened. I don’t like being off-balance. I’m a stable person, who likes stability. Sounds boring, doesn’t it? I’ve never denied it. I’m a boring person. That was established years ago.

But anyway, I’m okay now. I just needed to vent what was left of my frustration here so I could get my heart rate back to normal. And maybe do some work too. These people expect me to earn my paycheck, imagine that.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Big Ass Fan

The gym I go to is pretty decent. It rarely smells funny because they keep the air circulating well. I remember the first day I ever went in there, I was taking stock of what equipment they had and happened to look up. There, bolted to the high ceiling, was the biggest fan I had ever seen in my life. It was bigger than any airplane propeller. I remember commenting, “Whoa… that’s a big-ass fan!” It wasn’t spinning that day, so I got a closer look at it. In the center of the monstrous thing was its logo, “Big Ass Fan”. It was the funniest thing, it really was a big ass fan. Check it out for yourself: http://www.bigassfans.com.

I’m not posting a commercial for them or anything, I just love it when companies take risks with their name. Not everything has to be so spine-stiffeningly professional.

Monday, March 31, 2008

*sniff*

My sweetheart is gone for an entire week to attend a wedding and see relatives in Miami. I have to work, so I couldn’t go.

All I have to say is

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Don't invite other houseguests when it isn't your house

My mommy did a faux pas.  I got an email from her on Sunday. She said my sister (who lives in Houston) had sent her a plane ticket to go visit her and the kids, and would I like to go too?  My first instinct was, “Nahhh, plane tickets are expensive.” However the email went on to tell me about a deal that Southwest was having, which was ending that day. Curious, I looked up this special, and found that it would only be $81 each way. Nothing like a hard-to-pass-up deal to make you go visit your relatives.

We’ve been meaning to go visit her and her new digs, but the occasion just never came up.  So why not?  It’ll be like a reunion of some kind.  Plus I’ve never been to Houston and it’ll be nice to see a new city.  So I went ahead and bought the tickets to arrive the same day my mom was arriving, so they could pick us both up at once.

The next day, my mom calls me to tell me that she suddenly remembered that my sister’s in-laws were also going to be arriving that day… and staying at her house. Oh geez. She may have a large house, but it isn’t a mansion. “Oh, and by the way,” she said, “I havn’t told your sister yet that you’re coming, so you should call her.” Doh! Mooooom, how could you invite someone to stay at someone else’s house without even consulting them?? I wasn’t going to go if I was going to have to shell out for a hotel. I’d rather visit Seattle instead.

Lucky for me Southwest makes it easy to change your flight plans online. I changed it to arrive the day the in-laws left. Hopefully nothing else unexpected will come up. And for anyone else out there who doesn’t get it, when a home owner says, “Mi casa es su casa,” don’t take it literally and invite people without telling them. That’s just rude.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Dominique needs some humbling, and other Top Model comments

Isn’t it funny how I have a bunch of posts about laptops, and suddenly I switch gears to talk about America’s Next Top Model? Despite my geeky tendencies, I guess I do still have a few girly vices. I am totally hooked on this show. Anyway, I watched my Tivo’d episode from Wednesday yesterday. I just have to ask, why is it that the more arrogant a person is, the more they refer to themselves in third person? Dominique has definitely been taking annoying bitch lessons from Jade (from Cycle 6).

Another thing I find annoying is how a lot of motor-mouthed arrogant fools, who just happen to be a person of color, will toss up the race card whenever they are being challenged by a white person. In this case, Whitney (who also likes to run at the mouth at times) was telling off Dominique. I honestly can’t recall what the argument was about, but it certainly wasn’t anything race-related. They were basically two brick walls squaring off against each other (you can tell all the other girls are bored to death of this same conflict over and over). When Dominique ran out of comebacks, she decides calling Whitney a racist would be a great retort. Really it just made her look like more of a fool because there wasn’t a single remark made about her skin color or her cultural background. Well, her education was challenged, heh. But you can be a college graduate and still be an idiot.

Anyway, good show. Poor Marvita. Shouldn’t have given up on herself so early. Though she was a little mouthy too. Good riddance. Go Claire. Peace out.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

A few tips for future laptop shoppers

It’s been about 8 years since I last bought a brand new laptop. In researching for my recent purchase, I learned a lot of things. The best brands will always be up for debate, but there are a few universal gems of information that might come in handy for you when it’s time for you to go laptop shopping.

• If your laptop is going to come with Vista whether you like it or not, make sure you have at least 2GB of memory on there, otherwise the thing is going to crawl.
• If you don’t feel the need to shop for bargains or clearances, special order your laptop so you can specify all the hardware you’ll need, as well as which OS you’ll prefer. This way you’ll end up with a laptop you love instead of one you have to get used to. I know you can do this with Dell, not sure where else.
• Many of the laptop-producing companies offer a consumer line of laptops and a business line. Not sure why they think consumers needs wimpier, less reliable equipement, but you’re better off ordering from their business line if you can. Toshiba’s Satellite line is for consumers, while their Tecra line is aimed at businesses. My last laptop, which I got used, is a Tecra and I had no problems with it at all.
• If you plan on replacing Vista with XP, make sure you have all drivers available for the model laptop you are buying. Many manufacturers design their hardware to work with a specific OS (dumbasses).
• If you’re considering purchasing an open box item (like I did), do a thorough check for dead pixels. Many LCD screens, regardless of brand, ship with pixels that display incorrect colors or no colors at all. Look at the screen with an all-black background, then an all-white background. I forgot to do this and found that against black there is one pixel that stays red. However it works correctly for most other colors. I decided I could live with it, especially for the price I got it at.

If any of you have other laptop advice, feel free to comment!

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Wrestling with Vista

Though I was extremely reluctant to have Windows Vista on my new laptop, it’s kind of hard to avoid. All the new laptops come with it. If I wanted a different OS, I’d have to install it myself. I was a bit too hasty about it.

The first thing anyone notices after using Vista for a little while is it prompts you for permission to do every. little. thing. Are you sure you want to visit that site? Are you sure you want to rename that? Are you suuuuure you want to use Vista?? Seriously, what a pain in the ass. Everyone hates it. Luckily it’s easy to turn off. You go into the Users item in the Control Panel and uncheck the checkbox for User Access Control. I had to research online to find it. I also had to research online about how to turn off all the other annoying features, because Vista doesn’t exactly make it intuitive to figure out.

Perhaps it would be somewhat intuitive if I’d had no experience with Windows at all. But coming from a Windows XP and Windows 2000 background, I expect things to be in certain places. So when they aren’t, it’s frustrating. They completely scrambled things around. I’m getting used to it now, but it took awhile. At one point I said screw this, reformatted the whole thing, and installed XP on it. It was easy. Unfortunately I completely forgot about drivers. It booted up quickly like a dream, and then I found the screen resolution was crappy, it didn’t recognize the wireless hardware, or any of the other special features the laptop came with. Crap. Stupid me. Luckily the laptop came with a recovery DVD and I was back to factory settings in 15 minutes.

The moral of the story here… If you’re going to flatten Vista in favor of XP, make sure you have two important things:  1) All the drivers necessary to make your machine fully functional in XP, and 2) a way to revert back to Vista in case you completely botch the XP job. I decided it was way too much work to make this thing fully functional in XP, so I’m going to stick it out with Vista for now. It actually isn’t so bad now.

Afterthought: One thing I really like about Vista is I can now plug and unplug USB devices without having to “stop” the service first. Plug, unplug, and all it does it beep to let you know about it. No more annoying popups telling you that you “unsafely” removed a device - sometimes it has consequences and sometimes it doesn’t. It was so annoying and weird. So glad they fixed that. Finally.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Shopping for a new laptop

I’ve been shopping around for a new laptop because the one I have can only display a maximum resolution of 1020x768, and the colors look washed out at numerous angles. Not sure how much time I’ve spent moving the screen up and down trying to determine if the color displayed is actually the one I want… not very helpful for web design.

I take good care of my stuff and tend to keep things for many years, so I wanted to make sure the laptop I got was reliable. Needless to say I also needed the screen to show colors accurately and at multiple angles. I also hate the super-shiny screens that most laptops seem to come with these days. The ability to display brilliant colors is great, but having the screen double as a mirror is not. I don’t want to see what’s behind me while I’m working. Finally, it has to be affordable, like under $1000 if possible.

Those were my requirements. My “nice to haves” include a volume knob (I hate pushing buttons to adjust volume), and Windows XP (I’ve heard awful things about Vista and have no need for it). Not a whole lot, really. Unfortunately I got neither of them. Oh well, on to my shopping research and decision…

At the start of my shopping around I immediately ruled out Dell laptops. In one of my past jobs, the bosses and sales people had Dell Inspiron laptops. Those things had nothing but trouble. There was always something wrong with them, and they were always being sent for repairs. I hear AlienWare is nice, but they’re kind of expensive and I’m not using it for gaming. 

At first I thought Toshibas were among the best, but after doing a lot of Googling it seems the Toshiba Satellite models, their most popular line, seems to have a lot of people complaining about problems. Even worse are the stories about the awful customer service. Very disappointing, because most of the Toshibas have the volume knob I like so much. I decided that a Toshiba non-Satellite model would be great. Unfortunately all the electronics stores I went to—Circuit City and multiple Best Buy locations—all the Toshibas were Satellites. Phooey.

Sonys also seem to have a good reputation, but all their screens are ultra-shiny, I hate ‘em. Acers were often recommended by people as a good value, but there were also some complaints about hardware reliability. A lot of people love their Acers, and there seemed to be an equal number of complainers with bad Acers. Asus is a brand I had never heard of, but a lot of people seem to think they are really good. They’re supposed to be pretty reliable laptops, however I’ve never seen any of them in any of the stores. I could order them online easily enough, but I need to see how the screens are before buying. I’m very particular about that since I rely on that for my web design work. Lenovo and IBM were mentioned as really reliable laptops as well. Those two brands confuse me because I’m not sure if they are the same company or not. Whatever the case, I never saw any Lenovos in the store, and IBM Thinkpads are a bit expensive (like Sony).

I started to lose hope that I would ever find one that would fit my requirements, because I was limited to the ones I’m able to see and test out in the stores. Finally today I went into Fry’s Electronics and browsed around there and ran into multiple Fujitsu laptops. I’d totally forgotten about that brand because I hadn’t seen any in the other stores. These laptops looked good, and when I compared them to some of the Sony models, which are well known for their vibrant colors, I thought the Fujitsus were better! The screens weren’t so shiny. They were glossy, but not to the point of distraction. I found one Fujitsu Lifebook that was red-tagged at $699, with 2GB of memory, DVD burner, 120GB of hard drive space, and a bunch of other goodies. It sounded like a really good deal.

I was unsure of Fujitsu though, I hadn’t heard anything about it. Is no news good news? So I went home and did some research. Turns out most of the user experiences have been very positive, with glowing reviews. Apparently Fujitsu is one of the few laptops that are still built in Japan instead of China. Not just assembled in Japan with parts from everywhere else, but I think the whole thing is manufactured there. This translates into a more rock-solid product, and may be why there aren’t as many of these as there are Toshibas and Dells. Actually I have no idea where Toshibas are made, but that’s beside the point. So even though it had no volume knob and came with that bastard of an OS (Vista), I decided to go for it. I went back to the store and said I’ll take it. They had one left! Lucky me!

So here I am testing out this thing. I spent most of the day and all night fiddling with it, which is a whole other story. Windows Vista… what a time-suck.