Personal Dork Assistant

Do not taunt Happy Fun Cube

From the brochure that comes with every GameCube game:

• WARNING - Seizures
• WARNING - Repetitive Motion Injuries
• WARNING - Electric Shock
• CAUTION - Laser Device
• CAUTION - Motion Sickness
• CAUTION - Projection TV Use [ed: Dangers of burn-in]

Not to mention the seven Game Disc Precautions / Maintenance and the thirteen Hardware Precaution / Maintenance tips. Plus statements of FCC regulation compliance. Do make sure to stop playing if you or your child has any of the following symptoms:

Convulsions	Eye or muscle twitching
Loss of awareness	Altered vision
Involuntary movements	Disorientation

I'm pretty sure another brochure came with the WaveBird, to warn me of all the dangers of RF energy. Me, worry?

Eight more hours out of

Eight more hours out of my life spent on the lovely Interstate 5. Actually, a couple hours of that was on State Highway 57 and Interstate 210, since I stayed overnight at my uncle's house in LA. Diamond Bar and the whole eastern San Gabriel valley is really growing fast. Almost all the lots in the uncle's gated community are filled in now. Mostly custom builds, so no cookie-cutter houses here. Too bad some of the custom builds are kinda tacky looking. Corinthian columns, mini-turrets, faux-stone facades, thankfully not all at once. The houses sure are big, though. Thank goodness for uncle's architecture training, which keeps his house from being just another McMansion. Outside the gates, every little ridge-top along the edge of the valley are being flattened and graded for new construction. Not cheap houses, either, 4-6000 sq. ft., $500K+. Unfortunately, the commercial districts are the endless procession of mini-malls characteristic of the LA suburbs. You can't beat the Chinese food in the area, though.

Shameful secret to staying awake on the road: singing along to the iPod.

MVP: Old Spice Cool Contact Refreshment Towels. Sure, it's just an oversized alcohol wipe with some funky scent, but it helped in the depth of the Central Valley when the (leaking again?) AC couldn't quite keep up with the heat.

Take advantage of your Bank of America credit card for a fast, convenient and easy way to obtain cash!

So promised the BofA mailing with the "convenience checks" linked to my credit card. If I can use the extra cash, I can deposit or cash one of the checks now. "It's an easy way to keep funds on hand." I can use these checks to pay bills any time. After all, "it looks just like one [check] from your checking account.*"

*For a reminder of the contractual terms associated with your account, please see the reverse side, where in small print it says: For ATM and convenience check advances, finance charges being on the date of the transaction. Now how fucking evil is that? Anyone who uses a credit card convenience check for "extra cash" might as well as slit their own throat and let the bank suck them dry. At least they can't collect if you're dead.

Mall Crawl

Went to the mall to pick up a Wavebird from Electronics Boutique. Of course, it was selling for five bucks less everywhere else three days later, but there was something to be said for instant gratification. Plus it was cool to snatch the last one off the shelf, in its own tawdry, acquisitive way.

Talking about tawdry acquisitions, went by the Gap... just because. It just seems like such a mall thing to do. Flipping through the "Made In" tags was like taking a trip through Southeast Asia: Bangladesh, Laos, Cambodia, China, etc. Even with globalized labor practices, the clothes are still too damn expensive, IMHO. Clearly, they're paying the factory workers too much. Did grab a shirt off the sales rack for ten bucks. Made in China. Hey, gotta support the home team of exploited garment workers.

Boba Bliss is suppose to be coming soon to the food court. There's well over a billion people of Chinese descent in the world. Am I the only one who doesn't want large tapioca blobs in my iced tea?

Electronic wedding registries are great. You punch in the name of the lucky couple and the computer spits out what they're registered for. There's even one at WalMart. Why the fuck would you register at WalMart? Since Michael Wang is such a generic name, I can go up to one of these machines and punch it in and almost always get a result. Tried it at the Crate&Barrel and thought about buying my lucky doppleganger a set of Elite Chardonnay glasses, or perhaps some Tuscany flatware placeset (5 pcs). I'll have to check the WalMart registry next time I go.

I just realized that Krispy

I just realized that Krispy Kreme chocolate-iced donuts also has the sugar glaze on it. Better stick with the original glazed donuts. They're healthier.

What's this world coming to?

What's this world coming to? Peet's is now offering flavored syrups in their coffee. I didn't really care when they started offering the sugary ice-blended drinks, but 50 cents for a glob of artificially flavored sugar syrup is upselling at its worst. You know that it's all Starbuck's fault. That and lard-assed Americans begging for a case of diabetes.

Of course, I did order a large mocha, so who am I to talk. Hey, it was a freebie for recharging my Peet's cash card, so I might as well as get the shot of choco syrup.

Geekery

Fry's Friday ad (the primary reason I subscribe to the paper) advertised 120 GB Western Digital 5400 RPM hard disks for $109. So it's not the fastest hard drive out there, but that's actually an advantage when it comes to upgrading Tivos, which doesn't take advantage of super-high transfer rates anyway. Had been tempted to pick up a Maxtor from NewEgg, but you can't beat 90 cents a gig. Picked up the hard disk and a screwdriver set for the Torx screws in the Tivo. After that, it's just a matter of following instructions, although knowing the meaning of the Linux incantations does help, especially when one wrong move can turn the Tivo into a boat anchor. So now I have 49 hours on Best video quality instead of 9, and I have a backup of the system software to boot, in case the hard disk ever bites the dust. Just in time for those World Cup games.

Had been running a pirated version of Windows XP on a VMWare virtual machine to make sure it was safe. Everything seemed to work well enough, so I decided to give it a shot on the real machine. Quite the adventure it was:

• Try to upgrade directly from the CD. Get a boatload of warnings about obsolete drivers and the setup program bails.
• Uninstall the offending drivers. XP Setup is satisfied and starts chugging.
• Setup locks up halfway through the installation. That's not good.
• Reboot off of the CD. Doesn't seem to be any major damage. Install directly off the CD and it seems to go well.
• Oooh... XP pretty. It even automatically setup a dual-booting configuration with the original NT installation. The problem is that it didn't pick up any of the previous settings and installed programs.
• Reboot into the old NT installation. Try the XP Upgrade option again. Hey, this time it works.
• So now I have an upgraded XP installation with all my old programs and settings right there. The problem is that I also have a fresh installation sitting there taking up space. Dual booting two copies of WinXP is not very exciting.
• Scour the Microsoft knowledge base and the web for details on how to remove the extra installation.
• Perform the surgery by deleting a few folders and editing a few config files.
• Phew, didn't wipe out anything important. Also found out how to get rid of MSN Messenger, so let's kill that, too.

So that was 2.5 installations of XP, which is no fun with the ancient CD-ROM drive I "salvaged" from an old machine in the lab, more reboots than I can count, plus a few scary crashes. Makes Linux look good. Well, maybe not, considering what my office-mate has had to deal with. The spiff new interface features is making the old Voodoo 3 seem a little slow, but I don't want a video card with a fan, which makes the Zalman fanless GeForce4 Ti 4400 seem pretty sexy. Too bad it also seems pretty expensive, although I do like Zalman's quiet cooling products.

OMG Die Die Die

"If i were to pay for the cable version of radio i would want to get: techno, goth, industrial, anime and RPG soundtracks, and J-pop"

—Slashdork

Good to see that it's

Good to see that it's possible for parents to help send their kids to MIT without turning them into self-immolating psychopaths.

One can almost entirely subsist

One can almost entirely subsist on food from Trader Joe's. It's got pasta, dairy, canned goods, sauces, some produce, frozen meats, lots of junk food, and plenty of alcohol. But it just seems like such a freakishly yuppie thing to do. Nevertheless, I was stoked when I found a new product in the cooler case: pre-peeled garlic cloves. Not the mashed garlic in oil, but honest-to-goodness garlic cloves, all separated and peeled. A six-ounce jar for $2.25 is about three times more expensive than buying regular old garlic bulbs, but laziness won out this time. Hey, this is way better than sliced bread, in my opinion. I've never been much for sliced bread anyway. There was also peeled and sliced mango for $3.10. Okay, I'm not that lazy.

Lights Out

Picked up a carnitas burrito from Roberto's and was on the way back when I ran into the blinking red traffic lights. Just a glitch? Turned for home and noticed that the Hilton tower was dark. Uh oh. I've never noticed how many lights there are in the apartment complex until they're all out. Fumbled in the dark for the keyhole and stumble in. Fire up the mini-flashlight so I can at least see what I'm eating. Let out way too much cold air from the fridge so I can grab a Coke.

Hey, I can finally justify the laptop! The backlight lights up the room well enough and it should keep me entertained until bedtime or until the battery runs out. And it's got a built-in modem, so I can just unplug the phone line from the DSL modem and get online the old-fashioned way. Funny how the Mormon temple still has their lights on. God works in mysterious ways?

Sign on Truck

Independent Contractor
California Shopping Cart Retrieval Corporation

The truck was at the apartment complex to gather up all the stray shopping carts that people have schlepped from the mini-mall down the street. Is there no limit to the reach of the corporations?

World Cup Update

You know, even with a Tivo, it's going to be awfully tough to keep up with three games a day. That's almost six hours of game time, and with real football that makes a solid six hours, with no stupid commercial breaks every other play. Makes keeping up with the NCAA basketball tournament look like child's play. Am curious to see how China does in its opening game tonight. Saudi Arabia certainly didn't do much to carry the flag for Asia.

• England - Sweden: England was brilliant in spurts, listless at times, and had one single awful moment. Need to be consistent. Whatever you may say about Sweden, they certainly are consistent the whole game. Is Beckham the man or what? Now if he'd only put a few in Owen's direction...
• Mexico - Croatia: Mexico really ran Croatia ragged as the game went on. They'll be a tough out if they make it to the knockout round.
• Brazil - Turkey: Brazil was brilliant, as expected, but sometimes they seem a little selfish on the attack. Of course, most of them earn big bucks by being selfish and backing it up. Turkey played them tough, though, and they really deserved a point. The keeper was unbelievable against the best attackers in the world. Couldn't do anything against the penalty kick, though, where Turkey got jobbed on the call. The red card was deserved, the spot was not.