Tires, Tebow, Jesus, and Hemingway

My Scion xA's been needing an alignment and a new tire for a few months now. The one tire was worn along its inside edge down to the threads. It was pretty bad. I amassed enough money over Thanksgiving weekend to finally afford the needed repairs. I figured it'd cost lost than $150 and it did. I wasn't sure how long it was going to take so I took a couple books with me:

I went to Vannoy's on 9th and had an excellent experience. I was immediately greeted upon exiting my car. The lady was friendly and informative. It didn't take long for one of the techs to come into the waiting area and inform me that I needed a new pad on the front driver side. I'm on a tight budget so since it wasn't of immediate importance I declined to repair it. Next time. I was afraid they'd be pushy as far as getting me to buy more tires than I came in for or to pay for miscellaneous other services I didn't know I needed. The tech only mentioned the brakes because what he was saying was true. I need front brake work. Once I said I'd pass he was courteous and back to work on the car. The alignment and tire mission took less than an hour and cost less than I'd expected. Sweet.

While waiting I first flipped through a magazine called Autoweek or something like that. Interesting. Sweet Porsche on the cover, of course. Then I turned to the books I'd brought. The New Testament was in my back pocket. I'd gotten it from a coworker over the weekend. I saw him catching a moment during the shift to glance at some lines in the prep room. I think he thought I was going to make fun of him but I asked him what it was and then told him I used to have one just like it that was green. He asked me if I wanted one because he just happened to have another in his bag. Cool, yeah, I'll take it.

The first Bible section I went to this morning while waiting for my car was Hebrews 12:12. Tim Tebow had something like that on his face when they played FSU and I was curious as to what it said.

Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees;

Um. What?

I tried to find something meaningful in it and gave up. I flipped through some more sections, ones indicated in the front of the book for explaining things like love, charity, courage, trust, et al. Then I'd had enough and turned to the Hemingway book. The first thing I see there is:

On the booze boat Harry had the last sack over.
"Get me the fish knife," he said to the nigger.

DOLP!

Talk about a change in tone. It was too jolting. I only finished the chapter because it was only a page and a half. I was done with Hemingway after that. I don't mean done forever. It was just too big of a jump after piously reading scripture.

While preparing this post I realized that Tebow's face didn't say Hebrews 12:12, but Hebews 12:1-2.

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

That makes a little more sense. Keep the faith. Play hard. Jesus is Lord. Go Tebow.

Don't slaughter your finest impulses

I don't want to be one of those people who used to do a lot of things but doesn't seem to do much of anything anymore.

Things I used to do a lot but don't do anymore but would like to return to doing a lot: causing mischief, playing basketball, driving aimlessly, writing, reading, playing tennis, playing in the woods, drawing, fomenting dissent, studying anarchism, crashing my computer from messing with it, long walks...

One thing I used to do a lot but didn't for a long time which I've recently returned to my life is bike riding. Julie and I got a couple cheap Huffy cruiser bikes and while we don't ride them every day, we do ride them somewhat regularly and it always feels great.

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.

From Sexus by Henry Miller

GreenPunk

Julian strode through the forest as if he owned it, which is ironic because he believes no one can own the land.

Pensacola Junior College has horrendous customer service

Way back when I first attended Penn State, I was warned by more than a few people that in such a large university I'd be nothing more than a number. Well, I never felt that way. I never had a problem reaching a faculty or staff member who could provide answers and help. My instructors and professors knew who I was. I have my issues with academia but when it came to good ol' customer service, Penn State never let me down. Whether it was questions about what courses to take or financial aid, answers were quick and easy to come by.

About a year and a half ago I began taking courses at Pensacola Junior College, and I've had nothing but headaches from the financial aid department. 3+ hour waits, phone calls transfered back and forth from office to office...heck, I can't even get a human on the phone right now. I mean, I can but she transfers me to uselessness. WTF!? Yesterday I drove to campus, waited in line for a mere 20 minutes and then was told they couldn't help me. "You didn't hear my announcement," the lady at the financial aid "triage" desk informed me. Pardon my language, but, NO FUCKING SHIT! If they knew they were out of short term loan funds, just put up a sign and save a lot of people from wasting time standing in a useless line. I can't just call and get an answer so I have to drive across town only to find out something that'd take 2 seconds to announce or even post on their freakin' web site.

I never had trouble with my funds at Penn State. I always just registered for classes and things were taken care of. No trouble with my Stafford loands. At PJC, though, I have to wait weeks for my funds to be dispersed so I have to take out a loan to tide me over until I get my Stafford loan. Fees are due at PJC over a week before classes start. That seems back-asswards to me.

People laugh when I make comparisons between Penn State and PJC and I feel a little ridiculous about it, too. There's no reason, though, that PJC can't do a better job serving the people who pay for its existence. Train the people who answer the phones. Train them better. Make it possible to talk on the phone (or IM) with a person who can answer questions about financial aid. PROVIDE MORE TIMELY INFORMATION in a variety of formats. It's easy to do.

And to the financial aid triage lady, some words of advice: people waiting in line tend to be edgy/grumpy; think about what you say before you say it. I wait tables for a living so I deal with hungry, impatient, grumpy people all the time. If someone waited half an hour for a table and then ordered the dinner special, which we ran out of an hour ago, I wouldn't say, "Oh, you missed the announcement." I'd simply say, "I'm sorry, we're out of the dinner special." In the first instance, I blamed the guest. In the second I simply provided information.

a letter to my constituents

Funny how in my last post I mentioned Live search. A month and a half or so has passed since then and Live is done, stick a fork in it. 

Now, if you go to www.live.com you get bounced to Bing. WTF is Bing? It's Microsoft's latest attempt at contesting Google's dominance of web search. I've used Bing a couple times. I can't say anything bad about it, but I also can't say that there's anything special about it that gives me reason to use it over Google. Millions of people are in the habit of googling. How will Microsoft convince them to stop googling and start binging (not to be confused with bingeing).  Maybe some of them wonder if you can google on Bing. Is Bing a better googler than Google? Will Bing become a verb? How will Bing conquer the internet?

As I type this, I'm watching the national soccer teams of Spain and the USA in the first period (or half or however soccer's split up) of their match in the FIFA Confederations Cup, somewhere in South Africa. Neither team has scored yet, at 11:45 into the match. I'm not a big soccer fan but I like watching it sometimes. I'd rather watch soccer than hockey, that's for sure. It's hard not to be drawn into the crowd's enthusiasm for the game. Soccer fans are maniacs, and I mean that as a compliment. I love the intensity. It reminds me a lot of college football.

The last 3 days I had jury duty. I was grumpy at first that I'd be taking a pay cut for a couple days (I don't get paid if I'm at jury duty) but I soon got over it and started to enjoy my civic duty. I figure it'll be one of the few times in my life where I'm directly involved in a government function. Or maybe it's blown my mind and I'll go on a quest to be the next John Adams.

I will say this, I feel a little more patriotic than I did before serving in that jury. It also gave me a little more faith in my fellow Americans. And I'd say I feel a little more compassionate towards human beings in general. I'm a better person for having served in that jury. I'm glad the founders of our country laid out such an excellent system. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it's pretty bad-ass. My fellow jurors and I were the center of the universe there for a few. Everything hinged on what we decided. I had moments with dim recollections of Kafka and Dostoevsky. Sometimes I thought I might go insane with boredom and break out of the courthouse screaming with several sheriff's deputies sprinting after me. But mostly it was an awesome experience that improved me as a man and as a person. I'm glad I didn't labor over ways out. I'm sure I could've imagined up something to get out of jury duty, but why? WTF is wrong with people that they want to get out of it? Those people should be sent to countries that don't have trial by jury.

Storms moved through the Pensacola area yesterday. They were a welcome relief from over a week's worth of heat indexes over a hundred a couple record-setting days...

USA SCORES!!!!!!!!!!! (around 26 minutes in)

...there's nothing like waiting tables outside in over a hundred degree temps and worrying that the sweat which has built up all over your face just in the brief time since you wiped it off before walking to the table will drip off your nose and disgust the guests. That sucks. Mostly I don't mind the heat (sometimes it annoys me) but I did welcome yesterday's rain. It'd been too long and we needed a break from the heat. I'm pretty sure most of the plants liked it, too...well, except for one of my fellow juror's tomatoes. He said he was going to be having a bunch of fried green tomatoes because the rainstorms damaged a bunch of his plants. Oops. Collateral damage.

Cheers,

mitchell

Lazy Man's XP Optimization

I recently did a Live search for the terms "optimizing xp in older machines". The first link Live gave me was Optimizing Windows XP on an older machine. The link led to a useful page. That's all I ask for from a search engine.

From there I chose Eric's first link, A faster Windows XP? Here's how. I followed the instructions to disable indexing services. Cool. I just learned a little about how Windows XP works, and I sped up my computer a little.

Afterword
The more I learn about how computers and operating systems work, the more I realize that they use a significant amount of resources doing things that most people don't care about or need. I'm also surprised by how much is required of a computer's processor(s) to just deal with the increasingly graphics/video-centric Web. I wonder how many computer crashes are caused each day simply by going to MySpace.

Web browsing showdown: old Toshiba versus not as old Apple

If you read gadget and tech blogs you'd think that you can't even open Google's home page without a brand new quad core laptop with 4 gigs of RAM. Thing is, most people who use computers on a regular basis aren't using the latest equipment.

In preparation for the A+ exam, I've switched to using my old Toshiba laptop as my primary computer instead of my iBook. When it comes to browsing the Web I've noticed that there's almost no performance difference using this Toshiba Satellite (1.8 GHz Celeron, 256 MB RAM, Windows XP Home SP3, Chrome) versus my iBook G4 (1.42GHz PowerPC, 1 GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.4, Safari). It surprises me that a 7+ years old Windows laptop plays just as nicely with the Web as a 3 years old Apple. Using Chrome helps a lot. Also, I'm not running anything other than Chrome. Whenever I'm using the iBook I almost always have iTunes open and running and maybe Adium.

For browsing the Web and checking email, an old PC works as well as a not-so-old Apple. When it comes to start-up and waking up the computers, the iBook smokes the Toshiba. When it comes to opening up applications, the iBook is faster. If I'm viewing an animation laden web page, the old PC starts to bog down and the iBook is markedly superior. But as a general Web machine, both computers operate at pretty much the same speed and have the same functionality.

Apollo Group Profiting from Bankruptcy

In an article in Yahoo! Finance I noticed that the Apollo Group is behind 3 of the significant bankruptcies mentioned.

Are they bad at business or do they know what they're doing? I don't know enough about business to say how one might go about sinking a business and profiting from it, but I'm sure it can be done.

tracing Israel controls stupid Americans article

My normally pleasant morning cruise through the intertubes was disrupted by a disturbing feature on Truthed. I don't know much about the site. I'd never been there before. I'd only happened upon it because a Twitter friend posted a link from Truthed to a video of a woman who was beaten by a police officer. I clicked to the home page and was immediately irked by the first image of their feature marquee (or whatever it's called). It showed an Israeli flag and said, "Israeli Spokesman Says We Control Stupid Americans".

The image linked to a forum post by one of the forum moderators. The post was a quote of an article from a site called Pakistan Daily. As it appeared this morning, Thursday, February 5, at around 6:30 AM Central time, the article's byline says "WRITTEN BY WWW.DAILY.PK". It's dated Sunday, 01 February 2009. In the article, it says:

You know very well, and the stupid Americans know equally well, that we control their government, irrespective of who sits in the White House. You see, I know it and you know it that no American president can be in a position to challenge us even if we do the unthinkable. What can they (Americans) do to us? We control congress, we control the media, we control show biz, and we control everything in America. In America you can criticize God, but you can't criticize Israel.

There's no context for the quote. Was it from a press conference? An interview? The source is someone named Tzipora Menache, allegedly an "Israeli spokeswoman". We'll see what we can find out about her later.

My first thought, after being disgusted, was wondering what the Twitterverse had to say about the article. I did a Twitter search and found that the article was older than claimed on Pakistan Daily. The Twitter search led me to a post on Uruknet.info, which is subtitled "information from occupied iraq". That article was very similar to the one on Pakistan Daily. In fact, the only difference is that some of the paragraphs were shuffled. The article on Uruknet.info clearly links to the original at thepeoplesvoice.org. The original article is titled "How to Kill a Palestinian" and is written by Dr. Elias Akleh.

My point here isn't about whether Israel's Gaza attacks are right and wrong. My main beef is with Truthed.com. Their post is followed by a post from the Truthed administrator which attempts to disclaims the anti-Israel, the Jews control stupid Americans article by stating:

Pakistan Daily, so take it with a grain of salt. Everyone has an agenda.

Apparently Truthed.com has an agenda, too. A forum moderator posted a dubious anti-Israel article and the SITE ADMIN said to ignore it...BUT THEY FEATURED IT ON THEIR FRONT PAGE.

WTF?

A site apparently dedicated to truth FEATURED an article which apparently has little to do with truth and everything to do with inciting people with vaporous claims meant to slant Americans and the world in general against Israel and the Jews.

Hardware Blizzard

Last night I dreamed that I was snowed in by computer parts. Peripherals, motherboards, connectors, and cables. Chipsets, jumpers, expansion cards, and power supplies. RJ-45, slave, master, and , SATA drives. A droning voice dully intoned IDE, AGP, VESA, and USB. DDR, DIMM, CRIMM, and active matrix. WTF?

There were green circuit boards all around and falling down from above. There were black memory chips endlessly slapping down on my dome. There was the smell of PCBs, electronics, and silicon dust.

Remind me not to go to bed right after computer hardware class.

Return to Restaurant Land in the Redneck Riviera

Today begins my return to Restaurant Land. I haven't worked since Nov 1. It's hard to convey how thankful and relieved I feel to have a job again, especially in today's job scene. It wasn't my intention when I quit my job after October to return to waiting tables, but I think it's my best option at the moment.

I love the hustle and bustle of restaurant work. The social aspect meshes nicely with my personality. I feel at home when I'm working in a restaurant. I love meeting new people and interacting with the ones I already know. I like food. I like sweating a little and being in almost constant motion. I like goofing around, too. For me, waiting tables, bartending, expediting, and managing have been like salvation. There is nothing like restaurant work. It's amazing, annoying, taxing, and fun. I like working on the water and being able to enjoy the scene while clearing dishes from a recently abandoned table. The sun like hot glowing brass dipping into a smooth sea and the night steaming and nary a gentle breeze and someone needs some fucking sweet tea.

Waiting tables in the Redneck Riviera is kinda like being on vacation for life, but you have to work, too.

Cheap Phone Chargers and Predictive Texting

In less than a month I've gone
through three mobile phone chargers.

The first one to go kaput on me
was a wall adaptor for an LG
KE970 Shine. To be fair, it's not the charger the phone came
with. The AC adaptor shipped with my phone came from another planet
or something so I bought the only one I could find at Target. It
worked fine for about a year. Then the metal piece that goes into the
phone became loose. It would move inside its little black plastic
housing. I swear I didn't beat or mistreat the thing. Being a budding
electronics technician, I decided to open up the housing and see
what's up. Basically, one of the tiny plastic holders inside broke. I
still used that charger for a few months. I just had to open it up
every time I wanted to use it and get the insides resituated. Right
around New Years, the wires inside the charger came loose from where
they were soldered. I don't have a solder iron and I don't really
know how to do it so that charger was retired.

Fortunately, I had a back-up
phone, a CECT
P168 (iPhone clone) with adaptors for regular outlets and car
cigarette lighters. The home adaptor lasted maybe a whole day. Once
again, I don't think I was being rough with it. I missed the outlet
when trying to plug it in and its plug became loose and unusable.
Whatever. I still had the car charger. That one lasted a few days
before I accidentally yanked the cable and the USB socket it plugged
into became loose. I pried it open and saw that the circuit board had
snapped. Great. I returned to the wall adaptor to see if I could fix
it. I unscrewed it and opened it up nice and professional-like and
had a look-see. Like the adaptor for the Shine, an important little
piece of black plastic had broken. I tried to tape it (!) but my
pathetic attempt was mocked by reality.

So I returned to the Shine. I
went to Best Buy and bought a Rocketfish
USB charging cable. I'm satisfied with its quality. It feels
solid. It's lasted a few days. It seemed to charge the phone faster
than the wall adaptor did. I hope that doesn't lead to my phone
exploding.

While going through my phone
charger travails, I was switching back and forth between the Shine
and the iClone and I got to thinking about the merits of predictive
texting. The iClone's touchscreen worked quite fine. I might even
say it impressed me. I can't compare it to an iPhone's because I've
never used one. I found it a pain in the ass to use versus my Shine's
conventional keypad. It wasn't just a matter of not being used to
using touchscreens. The touchscreen requires more effort. There are
the 26 letters, plus keys for 0-9, and punctuation. The Shine has 12
keys. I don't need separate keys for every number and letter. It's
fine when I have both hands to use as on a conventional computer
keyboard but I don't need all that on my phone. I just need the bare
minimum of big fat keys to press. Qwerty keyboards on phones seem
silly and I prefer the feel of real keys versus touchscreens. I'm
happy to be back texting with my LG Shine. I missed the vast library
of personal and ridiculous words I've loaded into its predictive
text.

And I was thinking about the size
of various phones out there. The Shine is big enough. That iPhone
clone was even bigger. I want a phone that fits easily into the front
pockets of my jeans.

Author's Note: This post was originally created in NeoOffice. I wanted to try cutting and pasting it to see how it'd turn out. I'm too lazy to fix the formatting.

Infinite Changeability

I use browser-based email applications because they look better than Apple Mail, Outlook, Eudora, and every other conventional email app that I've seen.

Customizing one's computer experience should be at least as easy and have as many options as one's MySpace page.

I'm not saying Gmail's appearance is as changeable as a MySpace profile page but with the introduction of themes, it's showing itself to be on the right path. Maybe when I check my email I like to see a little anime raccoon raking sand in its Zen garden. I can do that with Gmail, but Apple Mail has no such option, that I know of.

MAKE explains LEDs

In honor of this being the first day of classes at PJC, I'm sharing this video from MAKE:



MAKE presents: The LED from make magazine on Vimeo.

My class tonight is called Digital Fundamentals. According to the online course description, the course's "Major Learning Outcomes" are:

At the end of the course the student will be able to:
Use basic trouble-shooting equipment such as the DVM, Logic
Probe, Logic Pulsar, Current Tracer, and the Oscilloscope.
Covert from decimal to octal, hexidecimal, BCD, and Gray Codes
and vice versa.
Analyze and develop a basic understanding of the basic logic
gates circuit operations and functions.
Design basic functional logic circuits given a Boolean equation
or truth table.
Define basic terms and terminology used in logic circuit
operations.
Identify logic symbols used in logic circuit diagrams.
Analyze the operation of a logic circuit diagram.
Identify the characteristics of the major logic families.

Sounds like fun! (Seriously.) Thanks to the electronics class I took last semester, I have at least some clue about what'll be going on.