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| SCREW UPS!From now on, I will ONLY ship USPS for anything and only request things via USPS.
Ordered 2 things on Thursday at 5pm, both shipped by 6pm, one went through USPS and the other UPS.
The USPS one arrived in Saturday's morning mail, the UPS one is STILL at the hub where it was dropped off. Oh, one more thing, the USPS one came from California, the UPS one is from Dallas... .
Estimated delivery per UPS's website: Thursday. That is just ridiculous....
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| Curious Case of Benjamin ButtonJust finished watching the newest "Brad Pitt" flick, the curious case of benjamin button, and let me tell you....get your ass ready for sitting. I also suggest NOT getting that soda and popcorn, although you will probably need it for how long you will be sitting. just make sure to go to the bathroom prior to the movie (after the credits to allow most amount of time) and go slow on the drink. the movie is almost 3 hours long...
I won't put any spoilers out there, it was actually a decent story line and I love the plot idea, it's been "thought of" before, but never really put into action. the acting was good as well, except I didn't think the daughter acted very well. another thing that bothered me was the way they talked in the 80's, they still had the proper courtesy/speech as when the movie first began. incase you hadn't figured out, its a "biography" of benjamin button.
The thing that interested me the most about the story was the way they made Brad Pitt look. when he was "20" he looked like the Pitt we knew from Thelma & Louis, it was impressive.
The ending was quite sad. if I wasn't a guy, I would've cried no doubt. I don't know if it was because how we got to know the man or just the way he passed (yes, passed, he wasn't killed in some horrific, sudden way). I don't doubt Pitt will win some awards for this movie, he did VERY well.
My Overall review of the movie is, see it at home with love ones, but make sure they are all adults, there is some "sex" scenes (no nudity) as well as some cussing (which I hardly noticed minus one near the end). Definitely not a "date" movie, more of a "appreciate what you have" movie.
Would you be able to live your life as "Benjamin Button" does? how would you handle the situation had you been his parents?
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| Another Day Done and Gone, and nothing to showseems I have a ton of readers (*looks at "views=1"*...and I think thats just ME), but I will continue on. If only for myself in the future to look back and say, "wow, I really sucked at writing", or maybe for my daughter one day who will be surfing the web when shes 16 and say, "user=IkeRay, hmmmm I wonder what shannigans my dad got into."
So the person who I bought the CPU from sent me shipping information, it'll be here on the 13th, which isn't so bad considering the weekend. I'm going to have to get some thermal paste in the morning from Radio Shack, since Fry's was all out tonight, and I'm going to pull the CPU out tomorrow to check for any bent pins or fry marks. I don't know what else to look for if these things are working fine, if it continues I'll just have to say "screw it" and build a new one (when we get money).
Speaking of money, this month is going to be rough. we aren't allowed to eat out at all, well maybe once a week tops, because we have to drop a pretty penny to the home owners association. What do they do with this money? lord knows....$500x1000 (estimating, may only be 500) = $.5 mil, subtract $200-250k for trash service (what a business) for the neighborhood and another $100k for the supposed cops we have patrolling, and that leaves us with at least $150k that nothing is done with. to answer your questions, no we don't have a pool or club house, so I can't figure what else they might be covering. now, if the neighborhood IS only 500 houses (which would be hard to believe) thats only $25k left which can be dismissed as administrative costs, but I'm fairly sure we have more than 500 houses.
My question to leave you on again goes into "fantasy" or future predictions if you will. after playing KOTOR, it makes me wonder, will the earth ever become like the planets in the star wars universe, most planets consist of 1 or 2 major cities which take up half of the planet or more. when we do start getting visitors from other planets, what will earth be known as? will it be the vacation home like Hawaii, will it be a warzone like Israel, or a historical city like Rome?
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| Well, thankfully UPS delivered it last night, of course the courier didn't even ring the door bell... if I hadn't gone outside to take out the trash just as I saw the truck rounding the corner, I wouldn't have known it was here...
This part was supposed to solve the problem I have been having which is random restarts/crashes if you will, I thought it was a PSU problem since I replaced the RAM already and did a memtest on the ram, it came out completely clean. The PSU was still stock and getting to 8 years old, but apparently that wasn't the problem either as I doubled the PSU power with this new one and I'm still getting crashes. I just dropped another little bit on a new processor, just $10 with free shipping. This is why I don't mind buying a couple generations old...I'm running windows XP just fine and most of the upgrades for the hardware are $25 or less. The power supply was a touch more, but after rebate fits. I had to pocket $50 up front though (free shipping was nice, saved me $10-15 since its heavy), and a rebate of $30, but that takes 2-3 MONTHS to process . It would be one thing if it was through someone other than the manufacturer or the seller, but when its either of those, it should be an instant rebate, or processed within a month...oh well, the company seemed good about rebates according to all the reviews, I'll just have to wait.
If it still crashes with the new processor, I'm going to have to assume its the motherboard, which I can probably get for $10-15 after shipping, but by then I think I might as well be upgrading that to a 470-socket (P4) computer which would actually be a HUGE upgrade.
Speaking of computers, I recently downloaded a beta (or is it still in alpha stage) or Windows next release Windows 7.0 (or just Win7). Let me tell you, if you hate Vista, you will LOVE win7. I installed it already on my pentium4 machine (a machine mind you from 2003 or even 2002) and it is BLAZING. Windows failed miserably with Vista, but Win7 is the osX of windows. Whats best is you can upgrade your old computers, I'm going to try the Celeron machine when the new CPU comes, and if a 1.4ghz machine with 512mb ram can handle it, I'm almost tempted to try it on a 286  (j/k).
It seems windows is really good about this though, they release 2 good or decent systems and then come out with a huge flop trying to do too much. 95 and 98 were decent OS's, they didn't bog down a lot and ran programs nicely, then they had ME, you will never hear anyone speak highly of ME. So they recovered with Windows 2000 (or Win2k as I call it) and it was a terrific OS (based on the WinNT which is great in itself) and followed that up with XP. Win2k was so good, not only am I still using it, Shell corporate is still using as well as a slew of other companies. (more on that below), so then they FLOPPED with Vista despite telling everyone its a success, yeah in THEIR pockets. so expect 2 good operating systems in a row, first Win7 and then whatever they want to call win8 (or 8.1 like they did with XP or vista).
Shell is stupid though, they are upgrading to vista which means they probably won't upgrade to Win7. Vista is a stupid move because A) win7 is less than 12 months from launch (most are expecting it before christmas), B) they have to upgrade ALL of the their computers for vista where Win7 would've handled just fine on the computers they have, C) their IT department can't even do what they need on Vista, so they aren't able to teach their employees. During one of their intros to vista for the employees, my wife asked a task they do almost daily, heck almost hourly, and the tech took 20 minutes to find out he didn't know how to do it. the next meeting, he told them its impossible to do what they needed and they would need to find a new way to do it...they are also having to wait more than 6 months to drop vista to all the computers in the building simply because they can't get it to interface with their network like win2k is doing now. they got a handful of computers, but the security from vista is limiting them.
ARG, Vista frustrates me. why can't microsoft just out and say, "we messed up more than with the zune and the 360. This is yet another project we forced out the door prior to finishing it, and our service packs haven't been able to fix the issues we thought". Finally, steve ballmer (new CEO of Microsoft) came out and told companies its ok to not upgrade to vista if they haven't already, meaning he has admitted its fault.
Well, sorry for the computer rant, like I said its my most recent hobby addiction and I've taken to it like a pig to mud. I used to really like apple simply because my dad told me to, and my brother who majored in computers in college raves about them. After my own research, I am very much so a windows fan (or more so linux fan), simply because its easier to interface with it, Mac has limited itself from so much software and although you can make most work with linux, its just that much more user friendly on a windows. The biggest thing I have learned though, build your own machine...You can build a machine that dell sells for $550 for ~$150 (minus operating system, which with winXP will run you another $100).
hmmm, have to leave you with something interesting after this dull computer nerd talk:
I'll mix some history with some "fantasy", If Hitler didn't die and the axis had a chance to rule the world rather than the allies, do you think the US would've been easily overthrown. take into consideration our separation from the rest of the world (you have to cross an ocean on either side), and if the americas (canada as well as south america) was independent from communist rule, do you believe we would be able to spread democracy like we are doing now?
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| Inconsideration (especially using RACE)I would just like to open up by saying, I am NOT really a racist. Thats is to say whenever I see a person of a certain race, dressed to stereotype, acting to stereotype, I say "what an ass", but it isn't until after his actions that I judge him. Note, this person could be white (my race) and I would STILL say, "what an ass" if he acted a fool...
SO,
2 separate instances of inconsideration and using race as a "i'm allowed to" card. First happened just yesterday, I went into burger king to pick up some dinner and the drive thru was packed with cars, didn't have the kid with me, so decided I'm well enough to go inside. If you have kids, you know what a hassle it can be to get them out of the car and back in, especially if its just a short trip. So, anyways, I go inside and the place is a ghost town minus a feel diners. I approach the counter (which involved following their lay out which weaves you around) and when I approach there is a 3-4 year old girl (mexican, and this does matter) who is trying to get the cashiers attention (also mexican). finally the cashier acknowledges her and all she wanted was a cup for water, and then I see an older mexican man approach from the direction of the drinks (not walking through the line) and approach the cashier. I immediately just assume he was with the little girl, being the same race, but NO, he whispers to her in spanish (loud enough I could tell the language) and orders a whopper meal and hands her money discretely. as you can tell, I had NO problem with the little girl, or if that man also wanted a cup of water, I don't think you need to wait for something so small, but the audacity of this man to assume because the cashier is spanish looking that he gets "cuts"? He KNEW he was in the wrong, else he wouldn't have been so sneaking whisper and passing the money. Thankfully, they messed up his order or something and my food came out faster than his...it STILL upset me.
secondly, a woman at McDonalds, maybe 3 months ago. I went in for a McGriddle breakfast, and I'm waiting in line, like everyone else. It's the woman's in front of me turn to order and she looks at the lady, who happened to be black, and then peer around the back of the restaurant. she asks the girl, "espanol?" and the woman says, "no...nobody here does right now," sure enough the back was whites and blacks working (a rare sight for no spanish speakers working the back of a McDonalds, but I digress), and the manager was a portly black man and the other cashier was a spanish looking teen, who didn't look like he knew spanish either. The woman throws a hissy fit. instead of trying to communicate with the people, she is going off in spanish about how nobody in the restaurant speaks spanish and all she wanted was a hamburger happy meal, and they we're only serving breakfast. It was one of those situations where not even the customers spoke spanish and everyone was looking at her funny. I ended up ordering and don't know exactly what happened with her.
Now, I would just like to say, I'm not racist and understand some of the older generations who come to the country it is harder for them to learn english at an older age. I do have problems with the ones who come over illegally and complain about nobody speaking spanish for them, or the ones who flat out refuse to even learn a few words to get by. And before anyone goes off about how USA doesn't have an "official" language, we do have an official-unofficial business language. It is to be understood that the universal business language, even in the whole world, is English; if you want anything anywhere it is more likely there is at least one person who speaks english no matter where in the world you are.
I don't want to end this on a sour note, so I'll leave you with something that really surprised me. I was at wal-mart a day or 2 ago, and these 2 skateboarding kids were sitting by the side door (I don't use the auto doors at my wal-mart, I always park near the side door. Anyways, I'm heading out the door with my little girl, carrying her, and its cold out so I'm holding her tight. the kids head out the door the same time I do, and ONE of them had the consideration to look back and hold the door for me. I do have to say, I initially judge these 2 kids because I saw them crawling on the ground near the coke machines and checking the phone for coins, plus their attitude to one another. I also got to hear the exchange after I walked out which was,
kid who held the door: "dude, you don't pay attention, the door almost hit that dude and his kid"
kid 2:"he can't open a door himself?"
kid 1: "you're a douche..."
on a personal note, UPS upsets me some times, they have been sitting on my package now for 2 days almost 3, arrived at their warehouse sunday night. I ordered something from Newegg.com (computer parts website) and they are usually good at shipping, but I ordered on the 31st and they were doing inventory on the 1st and 2nd, so the package didn't ship until saturday night. I applaud UPS for picking it up on saturday and freighting it from Nashville, TN to Houston, TX in 1 day (24 hour period) but that they have been sitting on it for 2 full days upsets me. I have seen the UPS truck in front of my house the past 2 days, just tempting me...they were both times packages for the neighbor across the way :(
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