Random Access Memories

Dave and crew were playing Civilization today.

Seven players in total and the game has been going for about eight hours now.

Been taking some down time lately to try and clean stuff up here.

Had a good time with Dave, Cecile and everyone else Saturday. They had a “meeting & games” day since Dave’s sister was in town.

I’ll babble more when I think of something to babble about.

So lately Rowling is inflamed over a fan publication “The harry Potter Lexicon”.

Does she really think this will impact her wealth? all 1.9 BILLION dollars of it?

If I recall right she came from very poor beginnings, but seems to have totally forgotten that fact.

It seems once a person gets ahead they do all they can to stomp on anyone trying to ride their coattails.

Sure, the guy might be plagerizing her content, but she was all in favor of it when it was online, the least she could have done was bought his Lexicon site or the rights to the book, not sue the guy.

So I bought a Garmin 60cs before I headed from AZ to WA to make sure I could get where I figured I wanted to go, and it’s been working great.

The problem recently has been that the keypad is coming apart.

Here is a link to a photo of the problem:

So I called Garmin to see how much it would cost to get a replacement keypad. I’m good with electronics, i’m sure I could replace it without any trouble. Except they don’t sell parts.

So, I asked how much to repair it, and was aghast to find out they wanted $129.00 to fix it.

I mean seriously, it’s already a damned expensive unit to begin with, but that much just to replace a faulty keypad? Absolutely ridiculous.

So for whatever reason my Moto Q9m has gone dead. (White screen on boot, then shutdown)? I changed batteries to my backup and it came up fine.

Beginning to wonder if one of the installed programs is sucking battery life away somehow.

Or perhaps it’s original battery is bad.

Either way i’m going to need to sort it out ASAP.

So recently I ended up in this hellish argument with some folks up here about fertility treatments.

They thought that no matter the cost or the pain it was the right thing to do to keep trying time and time again to have a child of their own. It’s probably pretty obvious but I don’t agree. I think it’s a pointless exercise in futility when there are so many children out there needing to be adopted into a loving family.

As one doctor said to a patient after 3 miscarriages, “Is the point to be pregnant, or to be a parent and raise a child?”.

Unfortunately folks these days can’t seem to accept that being a parent is the important part.

Well, I started my new job Wednesday at Real.com.

It’s not bad at all, I hope it goes well. I’m making almost double my best previous pay rate (And finally making more than Sarah, tho it’s not like I feel I have to, heh. Frankly she should ALWAYS be making more than me considering how hard a worker she is).

The place is really nice. It has a 2-lane bowling alley, a pool table, a ping-pong table, a nap room and a no-fee atm.

It’s also nice that most of the guys in the area i’m in have no idea what the words “Politically correct” mean, heh. And the boss is dryly sarcastic (Except when you screw up).

My commute is about 0 minutes, but I add on 20 minutes just in case I miss a bus. It’s pretty nice to not have to drive. (I never had the option of taking a bus in Phoenix). Tho it seems i’m the exception not the rule, most folks drive (Given that we have non-standard hours because it’s a 24/7 operation it makes for a reasonable commute).

Drawbacks? There are limited options for food in that area, especially given the odd hours. Since i’m a temp I have to buy my own bus pass (tho it’s only 54$ a month). No dental care. Things get insanely stressful when some of the feeds die (I think that’s only really stressing me out now because I feel useless while learning what i’m doing).

All in all it could be far worse.

I only recently found out about the ultra-slim bluetooth keyboards from iGo.

It also seems recently they are completely discontinued.

Today I asked a question via support and got this response:

“The keyboards have all been discontinued and there will be no further updates to them or the drivers. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Best Regards,

iGo Product Support”

Doesn’t really make sense, they seemed to be incredibly popular.

Who would have guessed that the downfall of the Fundamentalist Mormon Church would come at the hands of the Texas Child Protective Services.
They’ve hauled away hundreds of children and arrested one adult. It’s definitely not a public relations win for the FLDS church. And it probably removes one-third of their cult members.
The cops are still digging for evidence, i’m dying to see what they found in the place.
I’m also wondering what other juicy bits of information and new cases they’re going to gain from all the children they took into custody.
Time will tell.

I noticed the following on my news feeds this morning:

“Faced with attempts by anti-Chinese protestors to breach the cordon of security surrounding the procession, the torch-bearer was repeatedly ordered to retreat to the safety of a bus, when the flame was extinguished for safety reasons.

Although the “source”, which is kept in a protective casing similar to a miner’s lamp, remained lit, thus maintaining the flame’s unbroken passage from Ancient Olympia to China, the symbolism of the torch being deliberately put out for the first time ever was the biggest PR disaster of an already deeply disrupted relay.

While the flame had remained alight even with protestors trying to wrench it away from the torch-bearers in London yesterday, the French acted pre-emptively to avoid scuffles.

Pro-Tibet activists trying to reach the foot of the Eiffel Tower had already been driven back by police using loudhailers to demand that protestors carrying Tibetan flags leave a security zone.

Similar demands were not made to those carrying French or Chinese flags.“

From what I read this story is correct, and this marks the first time EVER in the history of the modern Olympics that the torch has been intentionally extinguished.

I think it has been an awful decision by the Olympic committee to hold the Olympics in Beijing, but I guess it’s too late now to change that, the only hope is it’ll cause some change in things as this mess unfolds.

For those of you that are curious, it has gone out a few times in the past:

“When the Olympic flame came to the Panathinaiko Stadium, stadium of the 2004 Summer Olympics, to start the global torch relay, the night was very windy and the torch, lit by the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, blew out due to the wind, but was re-lit from the back up flame taken from the original ceremonial flame at Olympia. This was the second time that the Olympic torch flame was put out.

The first occurred at the 1976 Summer Olympics held in Montreal, Canada. After a rainstorm that doused the Olympic flame a few days after the games had opened, an official relit the flame using his cigarette lighter. Organizers quickly doused it again and relit it using a backup of the original flame.”

Well, I found out this morning that starting next Wednesday I will be gainfully employed.

**cheers**

Making around 50k a year doing techie stuff. Shouldn’t be too bad.

Spent most of today over in Bellevue doing endless paperwork. Ended up coming back right at rush hour, I don’t think i’ll ever be working on the easy side of Lake Washington unless I live there too, traffic on the bridge was awful.

Noticed this as I was out walking today.

Definitely not a car I would park on the side of the road in Seattle.

Seen on a large Toyota Land Rover, I think it fits perfectly.
One has to wonder what meaning the owner gives to it.

It’s fuzzy, but this shows the signal I get in the “accordion” section of the bus. I kinda stumbled onto this fact by accident.

Normally I’m lucky to see 2 satellites, and that’s holding the unit up against the windows.

Here I have 8 solid signals, and the location is to within +/-16 feet.

Looks like Google has a good one going with their new “Gmail Custom Time” Service. It supposedly allows you to backdate up to 10 emails per year.

Google Custom Time