The 3-day weekend so far... (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

I am still happy I passed that exam. SRSLY. We had sushi afterward to celebrate.

Saturday I went out with lohquesse and moliarity to Brickfair 2008, and let me say that while I was sort of expecting a kind of small, 100-200 TCEP crowd, I was amazed not only that there were quite possibly a thousand or more people there, but some of the demonstrations of skill were AMAZING. Seriously, at $10/head, it was a bargain. In the back of my head were tons of whiners about "specialized pieces," which I always said, "A creative mind does not depend on the medium." Well, this Saturday I had PROOF, because so many builders used "specialized pieces" to do things with Lego bricks that were absolutely incredible and amazing. In fact, it occurred to me that many people who whine about "specialized pieces" never do anything with their "regular blocks," and so they can all suck it. I saw TALENT, and best of all, KID talent. The kind of kid talent you don't get by sending your child to gymnastic meets 4-5 times a week. The kind of talent that only the artistic mind could do. And they competed with adults. If you have a couple of minutes, and want to see raw talent in the art medium of Lego building blocks, check out my Flickr set.

Sunday I hung out with stodgycat, aksident, Rob, and later cyaneyed. Most of us played "The Order of the Stick." I got to meet a guy named Michael. Scarlet helped me pick out some Halloween treats for this year. Posted in: brickfair , heares , lego , lpi

A late weekend review, some whining (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

I don't remember much of the weekend. Saturday I really dug into the finances, and was pleased to see my Federal Return had already come in, so I paid a lot of bills that had backed up. I also straightened out my desk because I am *still* moving from my old den to my new, and it's caused some backup where stuff I can't categorize just ends up laying around.

Citibank bought my home loan. Dammit. I liked American Express PPH. I knw I have said this before, but when we first got the house, there was a problem where the bank accidentally split the house into two loans: a main one and a micropayment balloon loan. Those loans got bought and sold like four times in two years and it was hard to keep track of who to send the bills to for the current month. When we first refinanced, we consolidated it into PPH, and they had been our home loan ever since. When we had to get a second mortgage to fix the desk and parts of the roof, we went with... I forgot who we started with, but that was bought out by WAMU, and THAT was bought out by Wachovia. And when did I get that loan, 2006? Now I have to pay Citibank for my primary mortgage. I am not... all that happy with Citibank. I have had a bad past with them, although I haven't had much trouble with my current Citibank Credit card, which was once a different bank, I forget who. Even my local back, First Virgina, was bought out by BB&T;, and they replaced the decent staff they had with the typical minimum wage drones like every other bank.

There's like no concept of customer loyalty. These mego-conglomo-corporations treat us like a commodity, like how we'd treat cash that comes and goes from our wallet. You ever form an attachment to a $5 bill? No, and the banks don't know you from anything, either. And all your personal information gets sold to another company. No wonder identity theft is so rampant.

On Sunday, I went out with the Heare kids and aksident to the DC national Zoo. I had a lot of fun, and I think they did, too, despite it never getting warm or the sun coming out. Poor aksident was freezing her legs something awful in these shorts she had. There were many reasons I took them out to the zoo: exercise (for me), the company, talking with them.

Scarlet is still 9, and already she's got a Bohemian streak in her I wouldn't have suspected just a few years ago. Her clothing choices are very unique, for instance, and her outlook of "pink and pretty princess" has faded away. I found she likes comics, and while I don't really get into them, boy has she found a good contact to someone who can hook her up. :) I wonder if I can get her some Tintin? Hey, my fellow comic book nerds, is there like a Tintin-like comic or graphic novel that has a female protagonist you'd recommend that's not like, "The Bratz Dolls Break a Nail" or "Hello Kitty Bakes a Cake" or something?

CR was supposed to come with us, but he had an emergency operation on his toe, and has been bedridden until yesterday. He has now been sick too many days, and it's official: he is not graduating this year. I haven't really spoken about it in the LJ because there was still hope for a while, but because of the way they do English, he's not going to pass. The options are he goes to summer school to finish English, or repeats his senior year and graduates in 2009. Both have advantages and drawbacks, but in order for CR to stay on our health insurance, he has to be in school. There is NO way we can afford his medical bills if he doesn't have insurance. He either has to get a job and get his own insurance, or stay in school full time. We're pushing for him to repeat his senior year to buy some time, but the school is resisting this because it's only one class. We have a meeting Thursday because I want everyone on the same page before we make a decision.

We can't afford to pay for his college, short and simple. I never had illusions otherwise, but our family's finances are stretched very thin, and we don't have any liquid assets. Haven't I played this record before? takayla is working 2 jobs, I have my job, and the bills keep piling up. Most of them are medical, because even with the insurance, we're spending several hundred a month on prescriptions and co-payments. Then there's gas prices because we both work very far away from home. The irony is our family is making more a year than we ever had, and I am still paying bills like I did in 1995, before I got my first tech job and I was making only $19k/year. A lot of stuff is leaning on our credit cards, so we're paying buttloads of interest, and the balances keeps climbing because, on average, we spend $200-300 a month over what we take in. And then there's the incidentals, like house repairs, unexpected costs like anyarm changing her wedding from here to Vegas, plus whatever else is "oh, we have to pay $300 for this thing..." This is ludicrous. So if we can stretch another year, CR will be legally an adult in July, and he'll be available for better financial assistance. The current plan is an electrician trade school of some kind, so we're looking into that. The pressure is on me to try and get the money under control, or I estimate we'll have to sell the house and move out by the end of this year. Right now when the housing market is collapsing. My emergency plans are to cash in my 401k in October so we can afford to live for maybe another year, but I really, really, really don't want to do that for obvious reasons.

But it's not all hopeless. Don't give up on me yet, guys, and don't give me free loaves of bread and jars of discount Mormon peanut butter out of pity. There are some rays of sun through these storm clouds, many which I can't mention yet, so I hope some favors I have in the world of karma come back to me. Posted in: banks , cr , heares , house , kids , loans , school , zoo

Brain droppings (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

There have been MANY times I have had some odd thoughts I want to share, but they make poor one-liner blog posts with no purpose. Finally, after getting a ton of recommendations from various people, I am trying out Twitter.

http://twitter.com/punkwalrus/

I wouldn't recommend that you subscribe for instant updates, unless you want my sporadic "gee whiz" thoughts throughout the day. But you don't have to do anything if you read this blog because thanks to Loudtwitter, I am posting a cumulation every day in my blog.

In other news, I was at aksident and stodgyspike's combined birthday party yesterday, and I had a great time, despite being paged constantly about how hot my data center is, and what machines are overheating. Not much I could do, they had building maintenance working on it. Posted in: heares , twitter

Weekend wrapup (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

So I spent most Saturday cleaning with CR. My house is now clean... er...

I swear, I'll never get a glass-top range again. Holy hell, that thing is hard to clean. I have used all kinds of cleaners on it, from mild soap to "only for glass stovetops" cleaner. I have used oven cleaner, and even scraped it with a razor blade (which worked the best, but it really hard since the surface is slightly bumpy).

I then spent the evening with Bruce and the Heare kids at Chuck-ee-Cheese. Bruce had never been to one before. And he will never go to one ever again. Poor Bruce. But for those keeping tabs on "where are they now?" Bruce finally has left his hell-job at Bethesda Medical Labs. Now he's working for [censored] working with [censored, but rhymes with stromatolites], where Cheryl works.

And I have just heard from Eden Miller. That may only means something to some of you. It makes me VERY happy, And her resume is now very impressive. http://www.edenmiller.com

Sunday, takayla and I celebrated our 20th "meeting" anniversary by getting massages at a local spa. The actual date was April 1st, but we're both working Tuesday. Because of this date, I can tell you Balticon in 1988 started on that date. We spent the rest of the afternoon eating Chinese food and playing "Mario Party 8" on the Wii.

Asian pears, by the way, are awesome. We're doing more shipping at Super H Mart recently. Hello Kitty cookies are also surprisingly good. They are shortbread... so, they are a little high in calories. In fact, I have never seen a small box of children's cookies over 500 calories in my life. Posted in: anniversary , bruce , chuck-ee-cheese , eden , heares

I hate doing bills (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

I am in a mental war whether to do bills, or not. I have to do them, but another part of me resists, and the whole thing is making me very depressed. It's 1am, and I am barely doing anything but staring at a pile of bills. I don't understand what the problem is, and I seem to be unable to force myself to do them, which means I will be up all night until I make myself do them.

This weekend was an odd mix of being on call, getting paged, and all kinds of silliness. I had a very relaxing time babysiting for the Heare kids on Saturday. It was the first time I really bonded with "SR," as she will be known in my blog, because that's what aksident calls her over IMs (the others are K-Man and Spike). She's nine, very astute, and also a lot smarter than she lets on. Fandom teaches you many things, and one is the measure of true intelligence and wisdom versus arrogance or personification, because we get assaulted by a lot of examples of all those qualities in their various exaggerated forms. SR is damn smart and has a scientific bent she shows from time to time, but keeps this card folded close to her chest for reasons I can only guess at.

So on Saturday, I introduced her to a non-Newtonian fluid mix of cornstarch and water. She was mesmerized and played with it for almost an hour; describing out loud the experience as she experimented with doing different things. Like the mind of a scientist, and not the pink foo-foo Barbie model we thought she may end up as because she was very pink foo-foo Barbie girly at a young age.

I didn't get home util 1am, and then I had to do some online work until 4:30am because the new DST time change has fucked up computers (the OS is usually okay, but the software we use never got a patch when the bew DST changes were made by Bush, so they all crashed).

Then I got invited on a spur-of-the-moment thing and ended up at Hooters with a bunch of erotic toy and sexual aid distributors (long story, har har). I am not really a fan of Hooters, mostly because I am not into sports or ogling girls. While our company was nice (we're all going to new Orleans next month), I was still a little creeped out by the single men who eat there. People who look like "Larry the Cable Guy" sit there, eating and drinking alone, watching the skinny and busty women like lions watching elk. Yeeesh.

Then I got a migraine, got really depressed, and now I have to do bills so here I am. Posted in: bills , heares , science

OLPC Part 10: More software tests (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

I still steal some time to work with the OLPC software. I also got a chance to let two of the Heare kids, Scarlet and the K-man, work with it. Scarlet , who is 9 (and a half) took to it very quickly. Her brother, age 6, took a little longer. SR immediately started with the Paint program which I had not actually given a strong look at yet. While I found a lot of Linux controls familiar (like the color picker), SR didn't grasp that right away. Most of the time she was drawing lines and filling them. Also, like everyone else, she found having an additional mouse to be essential.

I also tested this as a "working laptop" at Katsucon, and found the laptop to really be lacking in these kinds of features. Speed is the biggest problem, especially when switching applications. Also a mouse is even essential, and with or without a mouse, the XO Sugar frame, which is activated when you touch near corners, keeps showing up because it's kind of trigger happy. But that's like claiming a child's trike is ineffective as a hauling device; it's simply made for a different purpose and target audience. But this is for those people who think this would make a great laptop for writing a novel and browsing the web at Starbucks. Get an Asus EEE PC, or even better, save an older laptop from being tossed, load Linux, and have fun.

Make no mistake, this is more of a "toy," or a tinkerer's delight, for me. That being said, let's look at what I did with my cool-ass toy in the last week.

Turtle Art:
This reminds me of the old "Logo" program I worked with way back in 1981, and then again in 1988 when I got my AtariST. You have a figure, or a "turtle," who leaves behind little lines. You get the turtle to move and leave lines via commands, and thus draw shapes. But it's got a modern twist: the steps for the OLPC are arranged like puzzle pieces (it used to be command line only back in the day, like "forward 4; left 5; run" and so on).

I have found this to be kind of fun. The biggest issue I have is you only have two variables (Box1 and Box2). I recall my "peak" with this program was with the ST, when I made a spirograph-like series of steps. I still have not replicated this with Turtle Art, but I just got a spiral, so I am a few bored moments with the OLPC away from making one.

Speak:
This is fun, but gets old quickly. The accent is British English, so it says, "Heh-loh SCAH-Lett" instead of "Hel-lo, Scar-let." You can adjust the pitch, speed, and face. I recommend the slower speeds and lower pitch, otherwise the British English is almost indecipherable.

Some other things I did:

Using Google Mail is slow. Also the cursor does not appear in the text boxes, so you are not sure where you will start typing. Paint is extremely slow and jerky when drawing circles and squares, often making you create a square or circle bigger than you intended. I finally got my 8gb HCSD card to "stick" in the slot and not loosen itself, so it shows up upon boot.
Posted in: computer , heares , olpc , scarlet

A Day with Scarlet (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

Well, in my attempt to get a family with four kids to have individualized attention, I took Scarlet-Rose out to Tyson’s Corner Mall. I had a really good time. Speaking with Scarlet is always a good exercise in understanding the minds of children. I always tell people you shouldn’t speak down to kids; they know. That being said, she’s smart for her age. I have to say, a lot of young girls are kind of ditzy at that age, but already I can sense a deeper set of feelings and thoughts developing in that brain of hers. I have never had a daughter, so this is always a good opportunity of “what if I had one?”

Some highlights and thoughts:

Tysons Corner is where my mom took me a lot when I was young. I have a lot of good memories attached to that mall, although it looks totally and completely different than it did in the 1970s. I liked taking Christopher there for the same reasons. And aksident. And now Scarlet.

Scarlet’s “girly princess” phase is almost over. She’s still clinging to a few points, but it’s evident she’s advancing to a more mature state about such things. We ended up at “Libby Lu” which... I cannot describe without having a streak of horror. Yes, I *know* I am a boy, and girly stuff is supposed to be icky-poo, but the whole place has a hint of “prosti-tot.” I am guessing the demographic target of this place is aged 6-11, but it was evident Scarlet was feeling a little uncomfortable after a few minutes there. The store seems to be one of those “girls are glamorous” and “wannabe adult or at least older teen-aged sister” places. While I did detect some direct influence of her older sister (13) on her, Scarlet is surprisingly different in a lot of basic ways. We discussed how beauty in advertising is screwing up a girl’s image about herself. I told her how they use computers to make a woman look a lot different than what she looks like in person. We discussed makeup, and with some of what anyarm taught me, we discussed how makeup is supposed to accent what you already have, not cover it up.

I also wanted to make sure she understood that I would never ask her to hide secrets from her parents. I think it’s really, really unfair when an adult does this to a kid. When I was a kid, it was fairly evident to most adults who cared that my parents were not very good parents. Usually right after meeting them, most teachers changed their attitude, and when I got a copy of my school records, I saw a lot of notes in margins by teachers suggesting social workers needed to get involved. That being said, whenever an adult said to me, “Let’s keep this a secret between you and me,” THAT felt terrible. I can’t quite explain why, but when I went to those foster classes in the 90s, that topic was brought up about adults that use children to hide secrets they are ashamed of.

On that note, she said that she wanted to go into Victoria’s Secret because they were having some promotion on their “Pink” line of products. I laughed, partially because I used to tell this joke where if you want to get thrown out of the mall, go into Victoria’s Secret and ask if they have children’s sizes. Man, I even get creeped out going into “Limited Too.” “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “A big guy like me talking a nine year old girl into Victoria’s Secret. They don’t have anything in children’s sizes there, I assure you.” She agreed it was a bad idea, and later admitted the store was a little scary.

One of our discussions was about witchcraft. Ha ha ha... [nervous laugh]. “Do you think there are real witches...?” she asks. Yes, Scarlet. Yes there are. :) I explained a little about witches I knew, how they didn’t look like or act like they did in Hollywood. The usual, “So, what is Wicca?” speech I was given way back in the days when I discovered like half my friends were Wiccans... and again, I feel unqualified to give such a speech because it’s not like I keep up with rituals.

I got Halloween earrings from Claire’s. I got diamond spiders and a small post set with pumpkins, ghosts, and black cats. There just seems to be a lack of interesting earrings for men, but I think this will do. I love my diamond spiders...

We saw dagopher and Tammy, of all people. Somehow, despite his best wishes, dagopher is still employed at his... place of work. He wants to leave there, but every time they have a layoff, he never gets canned. He said morale is at an all-time low, and everyone is giving the company 1-2 years tops before it vanishes as a memory of the dot com era. Tammy was just in a car accident (she was rear-ended on the beltway; no serious injuries), and this was her first day out. It was a weird coincidence: while Tammy was in the hospital waiting room waiting for painkillers, Scarlet was also in the emergency room for antibiotics for a bout of strep she had. If I can read the universe gears correctly, this means that her and Scarlet have a link of some kind. Posted in: heares , mall , scarlet , tysons corner

Saturday - Part 2: Stodgycat's Party (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

I forgot how old he is, but he's sore about it, so I think... 50? 75? maybe even 80, that old fart. He's got like a bajillion kids, too. I was invited because they needed someone FAMOUS to attend, to get more draw.

Okay, enough with the ribs. Truth is, I was so tired when I got to his party, a lot of it was a blur. The night before, I babysat his kids, and I had some of the most amazing conversations with aksident until like 1am. I got to his party early and ended up helping clean as well (I did dusting and vacuuming). Then I went with stodgycat to pick up ninjacooter. We got food.

Then the party guests started to trickle in. There were a LOT of ex-AOL employees there. stodgycat said he pretty much emptied his address book. Many of them I hadn't seen for a long while. One of them was my former boss, "El Korbo," as we used to call him. He was a old-school computer geek (1970s tech) I think a fish out of water at AOL, but he's thriving as a photographer these days. I got him introduced to Anime conventions a while back, and now he's running Digital Cosplay. I hung out with the likes of Rich Anderson, Ray Catabay, Brian Symmes, Benu Bhargava, and even John Patterson was there.

But I was winding down fast. My feet hurt so bad, they were swelling. I got a ride back with moliarity and lohquesse, and had to leave during the cake part (I tried to take pictures, but my batteries died).

And spent Sunday sick. In fact, I am not well as a type this, and probably did not give the party a decent review that it deserved; I DID have a lot of fun, and want to thank stodgycat and cheesy_reads for having me. Posted in: aol , birthday , heares , party

Happy Birthday, Scarlet (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

My friend and small leg-gripping pal Scarlet turned 9 last week, and we celebrated her last era of having a single digit age with a small barbecue (thanks, cheesy_reads, for cooking). It was an interesting party. I got to see Lanning, again, whom I have known since he had long hair, way back before we worked at AOL. cyaneyed nicked a roommate's car to make it. After a ton of gifts and Target gift cards (to her way of affording a new bike), she was whisked away for an all-expense paid vacation in Virginia Beach, courtesy of Pop-pop Travel and Lodging.

I also got to hang out with aksident and her cousin Jessica, which is always enjoyable. I know Jessica has been through some rough times in the last few years, and I am always rooting for her and her mom to make it through.

takayla was in Baltimore over the weekend, although she came home Saturday and Sunday nights. She was planning and working her friend Jamie's going-away party, where he's moving to Japan to work with JET. She's in Baltimore all this week, too, but for business. At least they are putting her up in a hotel: two weeks ago she had to drive back and forth to Baltimore every day, which cost us over $120 in gas money. Jesus. The reason she's in Baltimore so much is that they are losing employees, notably management, in droves. takayla, who is head of IT, HR, payroll, and who knows what else; it's a small company. She's also in the middle of a huge office move and a VoIP install, which she's going to have at our house, too, and one of the reasons I had to upgrade our home network to GB.

Sunday, I hung out with anyarm and Brian to Potomac Mills. I also wanted to go to Ikea, but my back started to hurt for reasons I can only speculate that I must have slept on it wrong. I went to my Mecca: the Lego Outlet there. Sadly, my back hurt so damn much, I was unable to bend at the waist, so I didn't get everything I wanted to (or might have wanted to get; I couldn't even see what was on the lower shelves). I ended up getting a Lego plate, and a bag of assorted windows and doors (for my RHDA training, explained a little later in another post), a bag of axles and connectors (for a project I am doing this week: build a working 5-speed transmission and clutch out of Legos), a large green plate (RHDA), and some brick keychains. Hardly a haul. One cool new thing they have there is "build your own mini-fig." They have a box of assorted Lego mini-fig parts, and you can build yourself or others for $2.99 each. A bit steep, but I think I may do this for Christmas this year.

My back is fine today. Reminds me of a bad pun:

A Tibetan woman, smelling something burning in the kitchen, complains, "Oh! My baking yak!"

[rimshot] Posted in: baltimore , heares , legos , scarlet , work

Kam sa needa! (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

I feel better today. I have to admit, Friday I felt like dog meat, but got better in the afternoon despite the fact takayla left for the whole weekend to be with her sister Debbie for her birthday. anyarm and Brain went with her, so that meant someone had to stay home with the dogs, and CR is still 16, and wasn't feeling very well anyway.

I was resigned to spend the whole weekend alone catching up one housework, but luckily, aksident came to the rescue, and she stayed Friday into Saturday morning. She was having a very bad Friday the 13th, and needed some company not related to her, so her and CR and I went out to Starbucks, hung around until close, walked home, and was up until about 1am when we all crashed.

Saturday brought more fun as I was invited to a cookout with the Heares, Bruce, and Cheryl which is kind of symbolic because the Heares and FanTek are like surrogate families in a way. It ended at a trip to Super H Mart, which I had been told was the major Asian supermarket one anime fan MUST go to. For YEARS people have been telling me to go there to pick up the latest of Asian cuisine, but everyone flaked. And I live like 4 miles away.

I thought it was nice, but I have to admit, it wasn't a very clean place. It was far bigger than I thought, even though I had passed by it before. There were THRONGS of people of ALL nationalities crammed into that place, which was as big as an average supermarket here, but more packed full of customers than I have ever seen around here except just before a winter storm. I say it wasn't clean because they had a minor fly problem, some of their fresh produce was rotting (I couldn't find ONE bag of oranges, for instance, that didn't have a molding orange in it), and a lot of stuff was worn, dented, and poorly labeled. Maybe I am a spoiled American snob, so I tried to tell myself it seemed like a Hong Kong market and a little germiness or limp brown leafiness never hurt anyone.

Their seafood section was wide open. Assorted things from the sea, some of which didn't look very nice, lay in open pans of ice. They had mottled gray "Korean Squid," which looked larger than the white squid I am used to. I don't know what makes it Korean, but they also looked angry, as if to say, "What are YOU looking at, bub?" stodgycat actually took a picture of them, which I thought might be rude, but I was also thinking of doing the same thing. I looked at some kind of small pink eel, which looked like a disturbing combination of sliced erect penis, earthworm, and a carrot, and wondered, "How does one cook this?" I thought that a lot at this place. I recalled Anthony Bourdain's trip to South Korea, and how the seafood stew had some of these fish and bivalves I was looking at.

They had a poor Pocky selection, but WOW, made up for it in the rest of the candy. They even had some Swedish brands there, which was a little surprising, although the only Marabou they had was the small bars with hazelnuts (I am not a hazelnut fan). I got some Anna's Gingersnaps anyway. And some Giant Strawberry Pocky. I got a lot of Ramune, in flavors I have never seen, including something only labeled "Children's flavor." I have never eaten children before, but I imagine now they are quite mildly sweet with a hint of coconut milk. I also drank something awesome that was green tea with brown rice. It tastes like strong tea with a Shredded Wheat aftertaste. This may not appeal to some, but it certainly appeals to me.

They also had a huge kitchen section, with personal rice cookers (yay) for $100 (boo), but I bet I can get cheaper elsewhere, or even there if I am not holding up my pants with one hand. They also had an anime section, which I got a gift for takayla.

I could have spent hours there, but I have lost so much weight since last summer, my shorts weren't staying up. I'll go back, but only if I know how to select fresh squid, and have a recipe ready. Posted in: anime , food , heares