Month: June 2004

Harry Potter; Personal

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Today was a day of mixed blessings. The first of which was that I did not know which of the pipes was distrubuting cold and hot water, so I let each of them run into a bucket for about a minute. Or course the one that was spewing out warm water turned out to be the “cold” water, a fact that I did not know until I went to see what was taking the thing so long, and noticed that the water line marked as ‘C’ was quite hot to the touch. You live, you learn.

The stalemate between my wife and my parents-in-law seems to be over as they were over at the house today. While she (the mother-in-law) was less than friendly, he (the father-in-law) was quite cordial and I did enjoy speaking with him. That is likely in a lot of families though, the public in general would like to villify the father of the bride while the reality is that the mother of the bride has so much control over him/the situation that it is always going to go her way no matter what. That is not a given fact so much as it is an estimation that I have come up with after seeing the reactions of numerous Mothers on the day of the prom, compared to numerous fathers on the day of the prom. After all, whatever happens on PROM night is sealed in a mayonaise jar on the front porch of Funk and Wagnalls so it can’t be disputed or conversed about, right…

• So I read the first Harry Potter book over the weekend. I suppose it would be more true to say that I read the first thirty pages of it while I was on the shitter on Friday and Saturday, then read the other 300 pages today. It was a pretty decent read.

I am not trying to imply that it is a literary masterpiece or anything of the such, just to say that it kept me involved to the point that I read the book (basically cover to cover) today. I have not been so involved with characters as this book makes you since the first John Saul novel that I read. Of course Saul continued to write the same story over and over again just to get a check.

The first two chapters of the “Potter” book, I was joking with my wife about circling the noun and under-lining the verb. Sometime between then and now I actually read damn near 300 pages of that same book.

Was it compelling? No. Did I feel drawn to the book enough to keep reading it? No. It was certainly a book for very young people. There were no complex sentence structures, even the ending had been telegraphed from the start of the book. At the same time the characters were wonderful and you want to read just a bit more to find out what happens to Hagrid, Draco, the Weasley’s and Ms. Granger. The story that this book told might not have been compelling, but the speculation of the next book is.

Bottom line, had I been in my teens, or pre-teens, when this book was released, I would have been all over it. Like a teen-ager to a new Harry Potter book, if you want to use an analogy. Why this thing, “Harry Potter”, is doing so well at the moment we may never know, but if it is getting kids to turn the pages of a book rather than stealing their daddy’s gun, it is certainly a step in the right direction.

Appliances; Feedback; Pogo

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This is going to be a pretty late post even by my standards. To the point that it will likely no longer be the 12th by the time I get it finished and uploaded. Not that I think anyone reading my site is actually looking for late breaking news or anything, just that I was going to skip the post today, but decided to go ahead and type something up shortly after 10p.m. That being said, this might not live up to the high standard of journalistic integrity that you have come to grow and love…somewhere…definitely not here, but it likely won’t even hold up under my, much more realistic, ideals concerning site content. Reading further will be your choice, not mine…

I got some feedback about the site today, but not in the typical fashion. Someone actually came into the store to tell me that he had felt exactly the way that I did when I took customer service to a whole new level. This was not a person who happened upon the site by accident of course, I had given him the URL a couple of weeks ago but had no idea that he was actively reading what I was posting. While I did enjoy the fact that he could relate to the story, I now understand why it is better to let people that you don’t know read the posts if you are going to be getting into stories regarding your work or other personal affairs.

Not that I am going to let that stop me from bitching about local events or anything, just that I am going to make sure that the actual names of the persons involved are not used. I mean if I were to quit bitching about the idiots I have to work with where would I find the same quality of idiot stories to tell? Dubya is too easy a target, btw.

The reason that I was going to be skipping the post today was two-fold. The first reason is that I have been playing yet another silly game over at Pogo.com. The game that I was playing tonight was ‘Tri-Peak Solitaire’. I think that every gaming site out there has a version of the game, I chose to play this one since it adds to my total token count. I have played the game extensively in the past, but rediscovered it after I got tired of Phlinx. So I had to clear the board six times to get the ‘bonus spin’, and I proceeded to do that about 4-5 times. It took a bit of time, time that could have been better spent doing other things, but then again that is true of most endeavors.

The other reason is certainly not something that I would care to go into in this venue, but something that was far more important than the silly game that I spent so much time playing. The immediate concern was for the happiness of my wife, which is priceless, but also shattered today by conditions that were ‘kind of’ beyond her control, but that she should have seen coming. Much like standing between two railroad tracks, you may not see the train when you take that position, but a train will eventually be going that way. There likely aren’t a whole lot of options if you are the one between the tracks either.

Sure the reference is pretty vague, but that is all that I am willing to commit to at this time.

So we got our new washing machine today. It sure looks nice, all sleek, like something that is very sleek, and white. It is much more streamlined than our old washer, but then one has to ask one’s self if they are going to base a washing machine purchase on said machine’s aerodynamic qualities. I am not going to throw the thing out the window, I doubt that my wife is either, even as sleek as it looks I don’t think it could fly. Even if it could fly it is not sapient and would likely just sit there in the laundry room, hovering. That would be pretty cool though; view the amazing, flying, washing machine.

I suppose the “Consumer Reports” mag. has been a bit lax in the last few years. I mean what, they didn’t even test the aerodynamics of large appliances? If and when I do decide to throw my refrigerator at the kids in the lawn, I want to know how well that sucker flies! If it is going to fall after ten or twelve feet based on the fact that that was the height of the window it was thrown from, that is stuff I need to know! If no refrigerator can be thrown that distance with a man of average strength throwing it, that is something that I also need to know. If two of the top body-builders in the world can not make the thing get air-borne, that is something that I should also know. Every appliance does what it is supposed to do, if they didn’t they would never be sold. I want FEATURES, like the refrigerator flying around and smacking the heads of kids who piss it off. Damn it, Features.

Also, I have taken the liberty of ripping off the latest “Guadalupe Squares” from 98KUPD. It seems that they get less and less funny the more that you listen to them. By that I am not meaning to listen to one over and over again, more that the originality of it is totally gone and they are redoing stuff they did only weeks before. It still is pretty funny, and you can hear the latest one by downloading this file. I think this may have been their longest game ever, and while it was humorous, I would not recommend you waste the tiem on it if you do not have a cable modem.

Reagan

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So the day of mourning for former president Reagan is upon us. I am trying to mourn, yet my mourning capacity is being overwhelmed by other, more important, things. For instance, our country (the U.S.) is currently engaged in a so-called war that less than half of our people are behind and judging by the support by other countries I would think that the “vast majority” of other countries are opposed to it as well.

Could there be any connection between the untimely death of former president Reagan, and the timely use of the death to show that our country can display National sympathy? Heck no, I mean that would be like using national power to try to shift the world view of our country, right? That would be dirty, under-handed and exactly what I think the current administration is trying to do.

Had it been George Bush Sr. that died there would have been a lot of sympathy for ‘dubya’ but there wouldn’t have been anything beyond the sympathy one would extend to anyone who had lost a family member. Had it been the death of say Clinton, that would have been quickly swept under the carpet. The fact that it was Reagan has somehow made it into world news, to the point that it is in top stories on international yahoo sites.

Why?

When it comes to the question of ‘why’, there are precious few undisputable facts. Reagan was a president of the U.S.A., that is an undisputable fact. Everything that happened while he was in office is certainly disputable, and there are various liberal sites that try to argue that to this day. Reagan is often attributed with the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall, whether he had anything to do with either result is not a fact so much as it is a faith.

The Socioeconomic climate under Reagan was far different than any of his predecessors. The U.S. had a booming economy (which Reagan can not be given credit for, as the economy usually runs a few years behind the legislature), Russia was fast running out of both money and support for communism, computer technology was approaching the absolute bubble that burst early in the new millenium, the time was simply right.

Now I am going to go into complete and total speculation. Would Communist Russia have ended without Reagan ever having served in the oval office? Yes. Would the Berlin Wall have ever fallen had he not been in office? Yes. It is no coincidence that the technology boom (which did start in the eighties) made people all over the world see that they, too, could have things…Be the lord of their own homes and the such. While I am sure that the U.S.S.R. never gave them that information, I am equally as sure that photos and stories got back to them.

Reagan was a president, also he was a recent president. I think that this quote, gleaned from the internet, is pretty accurate:

Many presidential scholars say presidents need to be out of office at least 30 years for historians to make an honest assessment of how their achievements hold up. Some glittering records tarnish, while other stained presidencies acquire luster.

That is about all I have in me as far as talking about Reagan, yet I have nothing else on my list for bitching today so I will end this.

Tomorrow will bring even less interesting reading.

washer & dryer; Reagan

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This week reverted back to the non-post on wednesday, I would have let the fact be known on Tuesday had I known it anytime before about 4p.m. on Wednesday. Sorry for any inconvenience.

I have recently realized that there are only two types of people in the U.S.. Yes, I have broken down every single race, denomination and class into exactly two groups. Those two groups are 1) People who own matched washer/dryer sets, and 2) People who do their laundry at a central facility in an apartment complex, or, worse yet, have to take their laundry to some laundromat in a really bad area of town where fear of life becomes more important than the quality of cleaning. Now, this second group of people (like me) are the ones that are happy to find a used washer or dryer at a favorable price, brand names be damned! Having your own machines makes it an experience that is not quite so intolerable, as the machine is just running in the background while you are doing your normal routine. No special trip to the laundromat, no changing in dollars for quarters, no having to question why the one guy has seven garbage bags filled with bloody towels, etc..

I do understand that in some apartment complexes, and particularly in condos, they really don’t want you to have the machines. That is likely the reason that most apartments/condos do not even provide a hook-up for the devices. I understand also that the space in an apartment is pretty cramped but they have full washer/dryer stack things that are made to fit in the space of a small closet and have all of the features of normal machines, though not the same capacity. Imagine that your options were to do a few small loads of laundry a week, or drag it all down to the public laundry at the end of the week, I know which option I would choose, but, as previously stated, many apartments/condos do not have proper ventilation for the dryer.

That little digression aside, I was meaning to explain why washers and dryers can start out as pairs yet end up as singles. The reason for that is pretty simple; the washer just lasts longer than the dryer in about 90% of the pairs. The simple reasoning behind that is that the washer is a big tub that spins with a direct drive, while the dryer is an enormous drum that is belt-driven and relies on little wheels to keep it on course. The wheels on the dryer are likely to give out under a large load, that is, the bearings will begin to disentegrate and the dryer will sound like it is spinning a piece of lumber in it. When that happens, the people who own the matched set of laundry appliances will likely call a repairman. The dryer can be fixed for about Eight dollars retail in parts, anything above that is them being screwed by the manufacturer.

The dryer is the first casualty in most every case. While the dryer could be repaired for less than a week’s worth of quarters at the laundromat, it is very rare that a ‘set owner’ would actually call the man to repair it (since that would cost more than the value of the dryer in many cases) and so another dryer ends up on the street, soon to be picked up by a local “re-seller” of such items. Said ‘re-seller’ will pay the eight bucks for parts, fix the dryer, and then sell it for fifty. Hefty chunk of change for such a quick/easy repair, and having picked the dryer up from the side of the road, he had no investment into the machine.

The fate of the washer then goes into a kind of limbo. Some may sell the washer, some may gift it to a friend or relative in need of that appliance, it is just a bit strange that the washer never seems to hit the side of the road.

I have had to replace the wheels on a few dryers in my time, I don’t think I have ever had matching laundry appliances in that time either. Yet, when the washer starts to leak, I have no idea how to fix it. I am sure there is just a hose that is broken somewhere inside that porcelain machine, where it is I do not know. It is for exactly that reason that we will continue to use a Kenmore dryer once we get the Maytag washer. The old Gibson washer will be pushed to the curb, and likely someone will pick it up and throw a two dollar piece into it, then sell it along with a random dryer for 150 bucks for the set.

This one just goes to prove my point that while technology has advanced, if you do not know the exact type of technology necessary for said operation, you will pay whatever they ask.

• Random Thoughts on Reagan

I found out today that there is going to be a Federal Holiday (day of mourning) for the loss of ex-president Ronald Reagan, who passed away on Saturday. I was not old enough to understand a lot of the things that happened while he was president and I likely remember his successes more than his failures, even with that in mind, what did he really do?

The first thing, the one that comes immediately to my mind is the Iran Contra Scandal. Trading weapons for POW’s may seem like a good thing at the time, but in the end it is just wrong. Reagan introduced a tax cut that went across the board, low, medium, high class, the tax cut affected you immediately. Then he signed legislature to raise the same taxes many times over his presidency. It is not my intention to belittle him, but it is just so easy.

I am pretty liberal, very democratic, and I still think that Reagan was possibly the best negotiator that we have ever had when it comes to foreign policy. Some of his Kooky ideas, site “Star Wars” for example, were a bit over the edge, but he did preside at the time that communism was ending and for that I will respect him. Could the same thing have happened if there had been a different president at the time? I think the more relevant question is could it not have happened with another man in charge.

I suppose we will start calling this “Reagan Friday”. What is to stop the national rememberances from having a “Biggy Tuesday”? Biggy died for “gansta rap” and should be remembered…Where is his monument?

The ultimate in customer service; silly games

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My wife and I went out to dinner yesterday, and it was nice. There was a bonus in the fact that the establishment did not have any grenadine syrup, which is one of the three ingredients in a Tequila Sunrise, which was the drink that my wife ordered. So the guy who was tending the restaurant’s bar (who actually runs the joint) gave her the unfinished tequila sunrise (which was just O.J. and tequila) and a different drink that he thought she might like, which was just coconut rum with pineapple juice, at no charge. Aside from the that the food was quite good, as always, the service was great, it usually is, and I likely gained three pounds by eating all the food.

The reason that I bring up the dinner story is that I wanted to talk a bit about Mario. I am not sure who technically owns that restaurant at this point, but I do know that Mario is the guy that handles all of the day to day operations of the place. In addition to that he also runs a bar at the other end of town, again handling everything on a day to day basis. Can you imagine how many hours a week he must spend at one place or the other? That must be a tremendous amount of work and stress, I don’t know how he does it. When I say that he is running the place I don’t mean like a supervisor, he actually does whatever needs to be done. Last night he was tending bar while also dealing with customer complaints and the such. That is a level of dedication that I don’t think a lot of people really ever have, though it is true that the more money the places make the more money he makes, but at some point you would think that he would just get tired of being there eighty hours a week.

His dedication to both of the establishments is probably a huge factor in why they both remain busy all year while other restaurants and bars end up going out of business the first slow season (which is now). I am sure that like any good P.R. Guy he knows just how to talk to each customer to make them feel like whatever problem there may have been it had been completely resolved. To the point that they will not only leave happy, but recommend the place to friends even after a potentially bad experience that was taken care of. Whatever good fortune comes his way it is going to be based 100% on his dedication and understanding of the customer. I know that I could never do that.

There was a particular incident where I am working now that would prove that, or at least it did at the time, though I have gotten a lot better at keeping a level head when people are being belligerent since then. Without going into too much detail I will just say that there was a guy who was screaming like we had shot his wife when he was overcharged by six cents for something. He would not accept the six cents in return, he would not accept a full refund for the item as a courtesy for our mistake, he just wanted to yell about the damn six cents. He wouldn’t leave the store, there were a lot of people watching, I was barely 21 I didn’t really know how to handle it. I explained to him that all I could do was refund his money, he would not take it, he just wanted to yell. After ten minutes or so of this I told him I was going to call the police to have him escorted from the property.

This was the exact moment that I got really, really pissed off. When I went for the phone to call the police, the man in question made a very quick, very quiet exit. In fact when he saw me reach for the phone, he ran out the door. I proceeded to NOT call the police, I gave my name tag and apron to the cashier, reminded her that I was not actually on the clock (which was true, I came over since the boss was on vacation and someone needed to make this guy go away,) and chased after him. When I confronted him out front he seemed a lot more agreeable than he had been while he was inside the store and for some reason that just pissed me off even more…

The actual details get a bit vague at this point. I remember a bit of very stern dialogue, I remember giving him five dollars, I remember punching him in the face so hard that it probably ruptured his appendix, beyond that I remember nothing. He apparently never called the police on me (I thought he wouldn’t since he bolted when I tried to make the call from inside the store, that was likely why I did what I did) and I never heard another word about the entire thing again. Well, truthfully the cashier did ask what happened when I went back into the store and I told her what happened, but I never said anything to the owners, nor has anyone come around looking for the guy that punched the guy in the parking lot all of those years ago. I never saw that guy again either, which was unfortunate since I really would like to have apologized for what I had done, either that or I really wanted to see how bad a shiner he had, I mean I hit him hard.

Now that I am a bit older I know that I would not have handled that situation the way that I did then. When you work in customer service or retail for any amount of time you simply learn to mask your emotions with a happy smile, while you are thinking about doing something like that. I guess it takes a lot of years to develop sufficient patience to handle people like the guy that I dealt with that day, but I would also think that no matter how patient you are there has got to be a limit. Fortunately I have not found occasion to actually bring a fist against anyone since then, though I have really wanted to a few times.

For the record, that story was just that, a story. There are only two people in the entire world that know the outcome of that particular altercation, if you happen to find the other guy, please kick his ass, he deserves it.

• There is a game that I have been playing a lot of recently, it is called “Phlinx”. It is one of the games on Pogo.com. I think that you have to be a “club pogo” member to play it, but as I recall there is a free trial period for the club if you really want to give it a try. The game is very similar to Snood. It is also very similar to Dynomite. I am not sure why I have such an obsession with this one, but it probably is due to having high scores by the hour and by twenty-four hours that you can check after every completed level (a level being four games).

The graphics and sounds in Phlinx are a lot better than the ones in Snood, while it doesn’t have an actual puzzle mode like Dynomite. Also the different difficulty levels in the game actually make a difference in your ability to solve it, as opposed to just having more blocks to start with. You can not necessarily ever “win” the game since it will just load up and start over, but you can marvel at getting ever higher scores, particularly when you set it on expert mode, to see how many of the day’s high scores you can get.

The game certainly isn’t for everyone, yet for some reason I play it a couple of times before I actually get into playing any of the actual games that I have installed on my system. Why? I guess to just make sure that I can still at least get on the top 5 high scores in the last 24 hours. I know that is a pretty empty goal, but it is all mine.

Mastercool

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Well, yesterday’s post went all to hell. I wrote a paragraph or two, but it was so damn hot in my house that I was no longer able to take it. It was around six when I asked my wife to provide transportation to the nearest Home Depot so that I could buy a new pad for our evaporative cooler. We have a MasterCool cooler in our home, and it works pretty well. It can normally keep the interior temperature thirty degrees colder than the exterior while providing a nice breeze. The MasterCool is a lower maintenance system than your average evaporative cooler as it only has one pad (as opposed to the eight on the ones at work) and can be easily cleaned/repaired by a layman. The major problem with the cooler is that the cost of that pad was $97 yesterday, and at least that high the rest of the days of the year (even higher if you are not at the home depot), while the “aspen” pads for normal evap. coolers are usually a couple of bucks each. 97 is a larger number than say 12 (which is what the cost of the 4 pads would be if I had a similar size cooler that was not a MasterCool.)

The MasterCool system does certainly work a hell of a lot better, but the difference in prices is pretty considerable. MasterCool does offer a five year warranty on their pads, but that warranty does not cover damage due to water, calcium, lime, hell anything that the pad might be damaged by. I guess they are saying that if you leave the box on the shelf in your shed for five years it will still perform as if you bought it new, since the warranty doesn’t cover any of the things that could actually happen to the pad if it was in use.

I have always likened the warranty on the MasterCool pads to the people who sell stuff on eBay with a “guaranteed not to be Dead On Arrival” guarantee. So the second that you touch the thing you broke it. If you say “but it never booted.” They will say, “it powered up, didn’t it?” If you try to say that you really don’t know, but a light came on, that means that it did power on and therefore you broke it…

To use the same logic, I have a PC that totally works, it will boot right up and run without any problems. Well the fact that it has a boot-sector virus and can not actually do anything might be mis-interpreted by some as a problem, but I can certainly guarantee that it will start when you push the button…

• *sigh* . I had a direction that I was travelling here, with my thoughts, but instead of that happening I totally lost that track after having been on the phone with my wife until the very second she walked in the door after work. Good, bad, indifferent, whatever thought I lost is just that, lost. Not that I write anything that could end world hunger over here anyway, just that I sure needed something other than a *sigh* to signal the formation of a new thought.

• Lollipops and Pentagrams, if one could combine the two they would be quite a wealthy person.

Links circa ’04; D-day; Puppies

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First I just want to mention that I updated the music lost to history feature on the side bar. The previous song that I had on there just went so extremely long with my comments that I felt compelled to write more than I wanted to to try to make the actual text of the site at least as long as the side bar. That led to a lot of half-assed stuff towards the end of the posts. Sort of like adding the “very, very, very, very much” to your report to make it meet the minimum number of words. Also I recently listened to the Megadeth song Hook in Mouth again recently and it was not nearly as cool as I remembered it. Not that the Alice Cooper one that replaced it has been nominated for any awards either.

• When I log on to the internet I go through a little routine. First to check my local email, then to check the website email. After that is done I go to BlackChampagne to check for updates, as he can be as erratic as me when it comes to a posting schedule. The next click is only a few days a week that I go and check out DiabloII.net the frequency of my visiting that site has dwindled down to almost nothing as the content no longer seems to matter by the time it is posted, I do still enjoy the guest articles on occasion. Once I have done all of that, I start to do my “real reading”, that is reading for the sake of finding things to spark my interest and make me want to write a post. Political Animal is the next site that I visit. It is a liberal political blog that often has a lot of interesting information both on it and linked to from it. After that there are numerous news sites that I will hit looking for something to set me off. By now I am sure that you are wondering what the hell all of this has to do with anything. I will get to it soon enough.

Today on the aforementioned political blog site, I saw this particular headline, “CLICK THIS….Via Unfogged, Microsoft has been granted a patent on double clicking.” Now that really seemed to be just a tad unbelievable, and as I found out with a quick news search, it was. Not that I can fault anyone for linking to sites that don’t quite have the whole story, especially when the story is just breaking, but in this case it just seemed wrong. From what I was able to understand about the actual patent that was issued it was about portable devices, such as PDA’s and the software’s ability to recognize very specific actions done with the user interface. It seems to have absolutely nothing to do with a mouse, as the headline would lead you to believe, whether that was the intention of the author or not. That is exactly the reason why I mentioned that I do go and read news sites before I post anything here, I do not want to go into a rant about a half-assed rumor, as I certainly would have done on this issue had I not educated myself a bit about it before I started writing a post.

• Tomorrow is the sixth of June, besides the obvious reason that people will remember the date, that being that it is the date in the fabled song Convoy by C.W. McCall, it is also my other brother’s birthday. No, they were not twins that were born an agonizing 48 hours of labor apart, they were actually born three years apart, the fact that their birthdays are only two days apart just means that ma and pa were often frisky in September, while my birthday is in july it seems that the friskiness kept on for a month or so. In the interest of journalistic integrity (or something), I just called my mother (at damn near ten p.m.) to ask if the september date might coincide with their wedding anniversary (a fact I would likely know had they not divorced when I was like seven) and it turns out their anniversary is actually in August. So my next assumption was that September was when children go away to school, but as the oldest brother would only have been two when the other brother was conceived that theory went down faster than Monica Lewinski.

Also, the sixth of June is the anniversary of “D-Day”, when the beaches were over-run at Normandy and the tide of WWII began to change, thus leading to the eventual defeat of Hitler. All that is fascinating reading, and likely great for the world as a whole, but had it not been for C.W. McCall’s song “Convoy”, we likely would never have had the movie Smokey and the Bandit. Now you just have to ask yourself which was more important, the fall of Nazi Germany and the end of World War 2, or the release of Smokey and the Bandit. I have made my choice…

• Now that I have exposed myself as the trailer trash that I am, which is unfortunate as I never really called a trailer a dwelling for long, I guess I must move on to bigger and better things. Of course having nothing bigger or better to move on to, I will just continue with the same mindless dribble you have grown accustomed to. That being puppy stories.

Now that the Zelda puppy has overcome her previous problem, she has gone right back to the intimidation/ass-kicking thing that she is known for. Yes, she is constantly whipping Warlock’s ass, despite the fact that he outweighs her by a good twenty pounds. Of course he doesn’t have any testicles, but still, he outweighs her by like 1/3rd. He is about fifty-sixty pounds while she is in the 30-40 pound range. I suppose if Warlock had some male dogs as peers he would be a bit more interested in trying to win the fights as it would look really bad for any male entity to get their ass kicked by a girl that is smaller than them (unless they know martial arts), but man, it is usually ‘no contest’ type stuff. He will just admit defeat and run away. He then will lay down to sleep in a closet or under a desk (as he is currently) so that mean old Zelda can’t come and beat him up again. Of course after the death matches (where no death is involved, so that might not be the appropriate term), they can be seen licking tongues within five minutes. Strange thing the differences in interaction between humans and interaction of animals.

Java game; Dog toes;

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As stated above it is the fourth of June. This is my eldest brother’s 34th birthday. Though I do not have any way to contact him, nor do I know where he is even living, I will say Happy Birthday here. Just in case he has caught word of this site through one of the relatives that actually know the URL. However unlikely that is, I made the gesture. Fifty years down the road, you know when I am dead from stress, smoking and alcoholism, he will be able to read through the stuff that is saved to my hard drive and see that while I don’t know where he is, or how to contact him, I actually thought about him on his birthday. Of course in that scenario it would be his 84th birthday when he reads this and the odds of him making it to 84 are no better than mine. Perhaps this entire paragraph is a moot point?

This is just a random curiosity that I have. Why do the colors of a dog’s toes dictate the color of the toenails? I am sure that I could google around a bit and find a very scientific response to that question, I am just wondering as a layman without so much desire to know the answer as to go and look it up. I mean sure the skin pigment would be passed to the nail, since the cuticle is what actually makes the nail grow, right? If that is the case, why don’t black people have black fingernails? As I said, that is just a curious thought that I had today and am not so intrigued by that I actually want to spend the next hour reading articles about cell composition and the such. If you happen to have the simple answer, in layman’s terms, you know what to do.

• There is a bit of trouble brewing on the home front. I am not going to discuss that here because, 1) I do not have any intention of airing my family’s dirty laundry on this site, and 2) You would only be getting my side of the story. As with everything there are at least two sides to every story. Perhaps you are better than I am at separating fact from fiction, but I tend to believe the story that I hear first. I suppose that I would be bad in a jury for exactly that reason. The prosecution gets to go first, they make you believe that the guy did it, then it is up to the defense to make you switch your opinion. If this country was truly based on the legal ‘innocent until proven guilty’ premise, shouldn’t the defense go first? Paint the guy as a simple painter who got flim-flammed into something that he didn’t understand…Not that the trouble on the home front involves anyone actually being put on trial or going to prison or anything, just that it would be a bit unfair for me to put my side of the story here without giving the other people involved equal time to voice their view.

This damn democratic society has infected me!

• I wrote about the popularity of the little java game Lightz Out back on March 19th. I am still getting emails at my old email address requesting the source code for the game. I really wish that I had known what I was doing as I programmed that game, as I think that everyone is going to look at that code in ‘what the fuck’ mode, but I am still getting requests for the code. For my ease I am going to go ahead and link to the file that I uploaded to this site previously, just in case someone searches for it. That will happen when I get around to it of course. Until that time, you can find the link to the source code Right Here. Just keep in mind that I have absolutely no idea what I am doing when I program Java. I know some of the basic arguments and I use them and guess and check until it works. Why the damn Lightz Out game has such staying power is totally beyond me.

• The little puppy Zelda seems to have overcome her malady. She is running and barking just like she did before she was stricken with the…problem. The thing about her little problem is that it may have been caused by the fact that she lays on the floor with her hind legs in very odd positions. My wife and I have talked frequently about how they seemed to be out of socket (some of her joints I mean) while she is casualy laying on the floor. She is back to laying in exactly the same manner now. My wife wants to give her Glucosamine for joint flexibility, but I am starting to think that we probably shouldn’t do that since she likes to sit in postions that would likely break the legs of most canines.

The Glucosamine, as well as children’s aspirin, helped her to get past the pain of her injury, but giving her the drugs to promote joint flexibility will only make her lay in ever more awkward positions. The fact that you only have ten or twelve years to live with a dog should really make you want to make sure that they are happy and playfull for the entire time that they are with you. If she(Zelda) thinks that she is flexible again, she might injure herself again. There is no worse feeling for a pet owner than to see their pet suffering, and she did suffer considerably when she was stricken with her…problem.

Nirvana

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I have nothing slated to write about today. There are a couple of subjects that I would certainly love to get into, yet I am inhibited by the fact that I do not want to name any names (or even imply them through description). If you are reading this post and wondering if one of the inhibited stories was about you, I can assure you that it was not. The inhibited stories were regarding people other than you, and stories other than the ones that you spoke to me. I am aware that the previous does not make for a spectacular opening statement, yet, I also know that someone, somewhere may continue to read.

• This is going to be a very unpopular post, I am sure. I am going to talk a bit about the band Nirvana. I can not find a definite link to an “official site” for the band so you don’t get one here.

I have absolutely nothing against the band Nirvana, I was one of the many millions of people that bought their album NeverMind when it was first released. My purchase of the CD was likely fueled by the constant airplay on MTV. They certainly did smash the Hair-Band type stuff that I was listening to into the ground. Nirvana was fresh, crass and angry. They were trying to piss people off with their music, and they did a good job of it. The more the parents got pissed off, the more the kids listened to it. Nirvana was like a drug that you would do in your basement when your parents weren’t home, just to get the fix.

I am the type of person that thinks that your name should only appear in the paper/local news at three times; Birth, Marriage and then Death. When Nirvana ‘hit’, it made me think that maybe there was a bit more to teen aggression than anyone had ever told me about. I followed Nirvana faithfully for the first few albums, I was paying to see shows as well as paying for albums and t-shirts, I was totally into the message that they spoke (whether that was intention or not).

The thing about it is that my infatuation with Nirvana only lasted for a couple of months.

Metallica, who had been releasing albums since about 1982, and who I had also followed pretty religiously, released the “Black Album” later in 1991. I was pretty damn sure (even at that time) that there were going to be no more glam/hair bands, but I was not sure which tangent of music to follow. I tried to get behind Metallica, since they had been keeping me in a cervical collar for the better part of a decade, yet the grungy sound of Nirvana stuck in my head. I do not mean to imply that the one was better than the other, just that I had been listening to the one while I was damn near in diapers and, as such, unlikely to change my musical views.

I went the way of the grunge only until everyone that I was hanging out with started to smell really bad. No offense to the whole ‘grunge scene’, but you can buy a bar of soap for like fifty cents, and in most cases you really should.

What happened next is that both Nirvana and Metallica started to release a bunch of crap that even my fireplace would not have. Is there something about success that makes you think that you can do anything you want, or do they just get so high that they think they are releasing stuff as powerful as their earlier stuff? The world will never know. The reason that the world will never know is that Cobain killed himself, if you can believe What you see here.

At least Cobain can fall back on the excuse that he is dead, Hetfield continues to write lyrics that are increasingly annoying, and less and less important to anyone. When Hetfield can no longer think of new lyrics, he rips off old songs like ‘whiskey in the jar’ or ‘turn the page’. Metallica then contiues to do horrible re-makes of the songs.

It is kind of funny, to me, that I started this whole thing with the intention of bitching about Cobain’s band Nirvana. Yet, as I write it I am talking myself into bitching about the later releases of Metallica.

At least Cobain had the good sense to get out while he was still a superstar, Metallica has gone the polar opposite direction from there. I will not be surprised to see Metallica playing show-tunes the next time I visit Vegas.

I know that I am no one to be bitching, I own only a piece of digital real-estate that is rarely visited, but, truth be told, if the Macarena had been released in 1991 it would have broken the country’s grip on glam rock. We didn’t need a Super-Star, we just needed an alternative. That is why, I think, we labeled all of the Seattle bands as alternative. They were the alternative to the crap that was on the radio.

Dogs; Dubya

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The puppy problems persist. Well, I don’t think that the problem really persists so much as the puppy is afraid that it still does and is walking quite carefully on the recently injured appendage. I base this assumption on the fact that when I got home to let the dogs out, after they had been locked up in the arizona room all day (which most canine companions would consider a spacious abode at about 160 square feet…Hell I have stayed in smaller hotel rooms), Zelda was jumping up and licking just like she did before she had the injury. I am sure that she is still not completely healed, but she is certainly doing a heck of a lot better. As I said previously, she still does tread a bit lightly on the leg that has the injury, but now it seems that it is more to make sure she doesn’t hurt the still tender tissues as opposed to the inability of a couple of days ago.

The one really unfortunate side effect of Zelda’s malady has been in the interaction between her and Warlock (the older dog). Warlock has been our dog for a couple of years now, and is a very clingy sort of dog. He is a happy, wagging, in-your-face type of dog all the time. Having had Zelda as a playmate all these months, Warlock has been tiring himself out playing with her rather than being so needy of us (my wife and I). With the injury to Zelda, Warlock is not able to go outside and frolic like he would with Zelda. That has led to him being a bit (saying ‘a bit’ is a real stretch) hyperactive around the house.

Zelda is healing but is still in no condition to go out and play with Warlock in the faux death match type playing that they normally engage in. This leads directly to Warlock not being happy, and whining a lot. I have tried to take him out and do the whole throw a ball thing, but he invariably will just run out to the ball, then stop, then look at me and walk back. I know that he is thinking, “But where’s Zelda”. Of course trying to explain anything to a dog is much like trying to swat flies with a hammer, so I don’t even try. He seems to know that there is something wrong with her, but he is not in a position to understand that her condition requires much rest and no ‘Dog Wars’.

There is also the fact that we do not know what the two of them do once we leave the house. Sure we know that they are locked in that little room, but what happens while they are locked in that little room? They both seem to enjoy each other – as I began to write that line, Zelda just went ballistic on Warlock.-

Zelda is much smaller than Warlock, yet she owns him. Even in her injured state, Zelda just handed him his ass, and he walked away happy that she let him have it. This makes me think that she is certainly getting better but that she knows that she is not totally healed yet. I really must get a video camera before she makes it to 100% healthy, ’cause I bet she is really going to give him a thrashing for picking on her while she was injured.

• In other news, or what passes for it here. Does anyone other that Dubya think that he is going to spend four more years in office? Having read a lot of news sites, then a lot of blog sites, I am not sure that he has a chance. He has pissed off everyone that is remotely liberal, he has pissed off a lot of people that are staunch conservatives, he has pissed off the rest of the free world as well as pissing off the rest of the world who are ruled by dictatorships. Who, if sober and not doing it as the result of a bet gone bad, is going to vote for him? He (Dubya) is trying to compare the ‘War on Terror’ to WWII. While I can understand that he needs to drum up some support for his agenda, I still think that he should go ahead and take the blame for leaving the “War on Terror” behind when he left Afghanistan and started attacking countries with better oil reserves. I would like to blame this on the American people for electing him as President, but as you will recall he was never elected to be the president. Sure he got the presidency through some hundred year old loop-hole, but he was certainly not elected.

I sure hope that if he is re-elected has enough corporate backers to buy him in again, he will look at the world rather than looking at his own bank account. Of course I could site my earlier quote about trying to kill flies with a hammer, since neither will ever happen. This is going a bit too political for me so I will end it here.

• There is one other thing on my mind tonight, but I can’t remember what it is. If I remember by this time tomorrow I will add some info about it, if I don’t you should just cherish this moment.