Autumn 2001 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2001 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2002 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2002 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2002 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2002 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2003 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2003 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2003 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2003 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2004 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2004 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2004 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2004 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2005 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2005 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2005 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2005 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2006 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2006 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2006 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2006 (Dec-Feb)
The ''Xmas'' season passed by outta here almost unnoticed, many mahalos, God! (I hate it every time this phony assed ''holiday'' which pretends [just like political ''Conservatives''] to honor Christ-- or use him and his name [just like political ''Conservatives''] as a convenient excuse to be gluttonous & hypocites --comes around.)
Matinee tickets for movie tickets have now increased to $6.00 -- a half-dollar away from my imposed maximum limit before I discontinue going to movies altogether (once they hit $6.75, that's it! ...''Wallace Theatres'' will either have to take up the slack or I'll simply become an ''Exclusively DVD'' partner.
Began reattending Sunday religious services at the ''Kingdom Hall'' in February.
''Karen'' has been exceedingly quiet throughout most of this period, having received only one terribly brief email from her the whole time.
And except for what the hellatious rainstorms which kicked our asses throughout December and parts of January contributed to, the winter season here was a considerably warm & uneventful one.
Unmentioned Highlights From Previous Quarter
March 7, 2004 (Sunday)
Received both tax return checks a couple of days apart earlier in the week (still waiting to be cashed); also received my latest ''eBay'' DVD order-- the original ''Juon'' video productions (of which I'm hesitant to believe that these editions are ''studio authorized,'' judging from the lack of any ''legal'' information on the discs themselves); received word yet again about another job assignment after we lose yet another contract (to an underbidder -- you know how the Government operates); and just yesterday evening nearly received yet ANOTHER ''collision-related'' nightmare on King Street, a few blocks shy of Kalakaua, when some jackass punk in an SUV (what else?) cut directly in front of my path when (s)he decided to make a right turn without (a) looking and (b) having the consideration and decency to let others know where the hell (s)he was going with a simple use of the turn signal-- which drivers on Oahu seem to have an aversion to using anyway (...although, granted, about a third of the blame lies with my own stupidiotic assumptive activity of riding in the ''available space'' in the right-hand lane which also serves as vehicle parking for the local businesses along the strip) --and by some miracle I managed to both avoid running the motorcycle into or scraping it against the side of the truck (because my body was literally pushing up against the vehicle) and by some even greater miracle still managed to avoid laying her four hundred plus pounds down to the ground.
had also learned during this time, to my disappointment, that ''Risque/Esquire'' was either NOT the last remaining porn shop in Chinatown or that the place called ''Mel's Arcade''-- which I had believed to be closed prior to the fire --had been reopened to fill the void. Having not paid any real attention for so long, I really cannot recall what ''Mel's'' status was before the other shop got cooked out.
Nearly all of my free time was spent trying to get everything set up for the big 'file transfer' & 'system scrub' on these two computers, and now everything is about ready to go. (I'm dreading it.)
((Previous Week In Review))
March 8, 2004 (Monday)
Canceled yesterdays religious services, mainly because of my typical last-minute preparations and running late. Used the time off to try to get everything situated for the big (and hopefully final) restructure & transfer, working on it, after another dead-to-the-world sleep attack, just as day was beginning to break.
The fresh scrub of the ''Jade Succubus'' revealed that the blown internal speakers were as a result of a ''hardware'' problem, and not one of software. Because of this discovery, I went out to CompUSA to purchase an independent set of speakers.
23:05, Hawaii Standard Time.
March 19, 2004 (Friday)
Did something I honestly did not want to do this morning, but I had to rat out my co-worker for his habit of hiding away and sleeping, later then later doctoring his time to make it appear that he is fulfilling his duties when, in reality, he's been leaving it to me to do most of the heavy lifting. It wasn't until he started blatantly recording dishonest time numbers that I felt that I should be the one to call it in, as well as offer a suggestion to our supervisors to curtail future abuses.
A pleasant surprise in my email this morning (as if to make up for my 'M&Ms/NASCAR' Kenny Schrader #36 holiday tin not selling on ebay for a second straight time)... a (very, very, very) short email from Karen, lamenting her newly established entry into legally recognized ''adulthood,'' saying, basically, it's not all butterflies & daisies (like I was telling her earlier).
12:05, Hawaii Standard Time.
March 22, 2004 (Monday)
Everything, except for yesterday morning's worship services and a renewed attempt to get my dwelling quarters back in order, took a back seat to my restructuring my iMacs over the three day break, resulting in MANY sleepless hours (I don't even know how I managed through Sunday, let alone up to now). There were actually few complications this time around (as opposed to prior endeavors in this regard), but it was (is) still horrendously time consuming. Much of the time was taken up by my deeper exploration into the ''iTunes'' program... arranging my current audio files, learning how to manipulate the controls, etc. -- it is very likely now that I will no longer be looking for ways to deliberately avoid using the application, now that I have had the opportunity to become better acquainted with it and have come to appreciate its benefits and practicality. I still have to finish setting up a few things in the ''OS X'' portion of both ''Snow White'' and the ''Jade Succubus,'' including some internet browser preferences, as well as compile my ''iTunes'' files on the G4. I am damned tired, and my neck and back have become stiff & aching terribly these last couple of days.
23:55, Hawaii Standard Time.
March 29, 2004 (Monday)
My lesson in futility took a nosedive by midweek when, thinking that I had everything pretty much under control and 'matched-up' between the two machines, I had to rescrub BOTH of them all over again: The G4 because the security applications I'd restored would not recognize my passwords and locked me out of their system; The G3 because during attempts of trying to figure out why the G4 was now refusing to launch Microsoft ''Internet Explorer'' version 4.5 (which included attempting to rip it from the old orange OS 9 install discs... which I was eventually able to do), the System Folder somehow reverted back to OS 9.0.4 from its upgraded 9.2.2, go figure.
On the follow-up reinstallation of the G4, I chose instead to transfer only my personal files and reloaded all of my other apps from their original discs & downloaded installers. (The most recently updated ''VideoLAN'' multimedia player, though still on the 'problematic' side, seems to have offered a number of significant improvements over its predecessors.)
During a break in where I was very close to completion of the preferences set-up Saturday morning, I took the time to redeem the Pepsi/iTunes ''promotional'' bottle caps I managed to scavenge out of the trash cans around the community college campus at work a couple of weeks ago and downloaded some choice songs (mostly by Bjork), but only to find out that not only did I have to go to ''Mac OS X'' in order to access Apple's iTunes ''Music Store,'' but that I could only replay them on my computer using the ''OS X'' based version of iTunes, and that I could not use the ''OS 9'' based application. Sneaky assholes!
Anyway, I was able to finish up setting the G4 to my preference specifics early yesterday afternoon. The last item on the plate was to peel off version 4.5 of Internet Explorer from the old 'fruit-bat' OS 9 system disc. It would seem that the software is designed to hold its desirers hostage by insisting not to operate unless it is also accompanied with its companion ''mail'' program Microsoft Outlook Express, whether the user wants it or not.
In the end, I've somehow miraculously managed to endure almost two weeks of very little and often haphazard sleep, equally spotty dietary habits, and two whole days without any internet access whatever! (That last part was somewhat curious, because I had placed an online auction bid on four available copies of the ''Planet of the Apes'' 35th anniversary edition DVD in hopes of acquiring one of them without having to get into a heated bidding war with anyone, especially since the highest bid I was willing to place was $7.75, on top of the $5.00 [supposed] ''shipping charges.'' But as it turned out, I had miscalculated the ''end of auction'' time to be later in the afternoon, Saturday, but an email alerted me early that morning that the auction was already over, yet it still turned out that my original opening bid on one of the four went unchallenged. The only problem was that the guy selling the items refuses to accept ''PayPal'' or any type of ''online'' payments.)
The only thing left now to do is to re-establish my internet bookmarks in the G4, transfer as many files as I can from the G4 over to the G3 and 'mimic' it as much as possible, then set up the G3 for either a validation that the firmware CAN be safely ''flashed'' to transform it into an all-regions DVD player... or for an undignified electronic death and a quick trip to the garbage dump.
((Previous Week In Review))
March 31, 2004 (Wednesday)
The first day of the so-called ''Liberal Talk'' network-- Air America Radio --still has a few internet streaming bugs to work out, but it's nice to be able to listen to daily talk programming again that's not Right-Wing Hate-Speech. It was especially nice to hear my girl Randi Rhodes again! (I hate to say it, but Al Franken's program does not sound too promising. I hope this network gets a clue and offers Mike Malloy a position on their program line-up.)
* Update - (21:25):
14:15, Hawaii Standard Time.
Found out now why ''Napster'' was such a popular way to download music -- In my attempt to redeem my last remaining ''iTunes/Pepsi'' promotional download credit I discovered that on top of all of the many other unavailable artists/songs they post absolutely NO Led Zeppelin outside of a couple of ''tribute'' albums (and who the hell wants that?).
April 7, 2004 (Wednesday)
Saw and had my very first encounter with the island scorpions early in today's pre-dawn hours on the KCC campus behind the maintenance shack. I almost didn't notice them, because they are quite small and skinny -- the larger of the pair encountered being only about four centimeters in length from pinchers to tail. I don't know about the larger ones most of us think about, but these had the ability to crawl all about as effectively and nimbly a any spider, putting to rest my preconceived notion that all scorpions were strictly restricted to ground running.
Received my ''Juon 2'' (theatrical version) eBay order today -- another strongly suspected ''pirate'' disc which not only refuses to play on the Mac OS 9 player but whose English subtitles are simply awful and frequently inaccurate. I responded by placing an order for the ''Region-3'' double-disc Korean edition. I have no idea if I can sell this Taiwanese edition off onto somebody.
20:35, Hawaii Standard Time.
April 14, 2004 (Wednesday)
I did not realize until just as I was pulling onto the worksite that I had arrived at my job a full hour late last night because I had incorrectly set my alarm clock to awaken me an hour later than I should have. (I knew something was oddball when I rode all the way to work encountering next to no traffic on the roadways.) But that's not the kicker. Normally, whenever I'm en route to any job location, if I am running so much as two or three minutes past ''check-in'' time they're leaving messages on my telephone answering machine asking me where I am. On this particular night (you're already way ahead of me, aren't you?), however, the person in the office waited almost an entire hour before any call was made to my house... and I know this because after she told me she had indeed tried to contact me I called my own number from the jobsite and retrieved my messages from the answering machine and took note of the ''time stamp'' on the message she left (which turned out to be less than ten minutes prior to my pulling up onto the job location). When I hit her with this detailed information and asked her why she had not tried to contact me much earlier, she claimed she was to busy to get to it. The fact is, they do at times get pretty busy in the main office, but so busy that she couldn't find a free minute and a half somewhere in there to alert me to, or inquire about, my time status? I found that very hard to believe and told her as much.
06:45, Hawaii Standard Time.
May 23, 2004 (Monday)
It's hard to believe it's been over a month since my latest journal entry, but besides just being lazy (or in the case of the past weekend, not feeling in very good health) and/or having nothing really worth reporting on as it occurred, I was actually spending most of that time in trying to get these two Macintoshes set up for that big file transferring thing I've been wanting to get over & done with... but I got tied up primarily by finding new media files to download (mostly mp3 music) and learning more ways how to manipulate & set-up iTunes, as well as downloading numerous other applications I'd like to work with in the near future. Of course, I had to go through my files and try to get most of them reasonably organized in some sort of a controllable fashion before having them make the big move across to the ''back-up'' computer.
I moved the ''G4'' System Folder plus a few ''OS X'' applications over to the ''G3'' over the weekend, then concentrated on loading individual programs from the original installers this morning and afternoon. I then spent the subsequent time doing set-up work, trying to make the ''G3'' as much of a ''clone'' of the ''G4'' as possible ... both as a ''file back-up'' system and as a ''just in case I need'' or a ''have the opportunity to take with me'' computer to work with. (And, of course, I'm STILL griping about ''Mac OS X''!)
Of course, as always, any time I set out to actually begin ''executing'' the ''Big Job'' I get hit with a plague of other curiously convenient ''coincidences'' ... and this weekend was no exception! As I've stated earlier, I was very tired and worn out Saturday, feeling ill on Sunday, and today experienced one technical mishap & disruption after another, including RealPlayer deciding it wanted flash-out on me and force me to ''re-register'' & have to reset my preferences (ironically immediately after having set-up ''RealPlayer'' preferences in the ''G3''), the sound volume inexplicably shutting itself all the way down (causing me to nearly panic into thinking that I was now going to be COMPLETELY without sound in the ''G4,'' as I could not get any sound whatsoever from any set of speakers ... it later did this same exact thing in the ''G3'' in ''OS X''), and before any of this took place I was greeted once again to my telephone answering machine blinking out on me once again, forcing me to yet again reset the date & time and re-record new greeting messages, which is always a major pain in the ass! I'm honestly convinced that someone in the metaphysical world really hates me!
(Side Note: Regarding ''RealPlayer'' stripping out my preferences, I've attempted to use the ''fix'' someone on Apple's ''Tech Support'' Discussion Board suggested I try when I asked late last month about how to bitchslap that cursed ''Upgrade'' pop-up dialogue box from QuickTime Player, which involved advancing the date on the machine ... only time will tell if it'll prevent ''RealPlayer'' from similarly ''effing'' with me.)
This all seems like some sort of icing on the cake for what took place at work Friday: My ''working partner'' for that night came to work reeking of alcohol and chose that night to act like a nagging little bitch, constantly bringing up an incident that had taken place place almost a month to the day and occurred only that one time, as well as nitpicking about not informing him about every little detail, which was all compounded by (you've probably guessed it) his refusal to listen, both as I tried to get him wean off of dredging up the old crap and as I tried (repeatedly and repeatedly and repeatedly) to clearly explain why it was not always to keep constant tabs on each other as we were trying to do our jobs. My guess is that all of it really stemmed from the fact that not only is there a ''new method & routine'' we're expected to follow in our job duties, but is also deeply rooted in the fact that I am considerably more conscientious and ''detail oriented'' and assured in the job duties I perform, and he (and I'm assuming others) feel they are being ''shown-up'' and worry that they are being made to look as if they are not doing their jobs properly -- which half the time is true, but that's beside the point.
((Previous Week In Review))
May 28, 2004 (Friday)
After yesterday's seeming success with getting the G3 pretty much set up identical to the G4 (with the few exceptions of the ''QuickTime'' & ''iTunes'' updates, and a non-activating ''Safari'' browser) and loading the third party software apps, which apparently launch & work as they're supposed to, I'm about ready to load everything up onto the G4. Only time will tell if everything takes hold and performs properly.
07:15, Hawaii Standard Time.
May 29, 2004 (Saturday)
Was pleased to learn that the downloaded audio recorder WireTap works to specification (...or so it would seem thus far, starting with a small streaming file from an archive program of ''Earth & Sky'' Radio-- a program about the naming of stars --then proceeding on to record the audio of last year's ''CSPAN2/BookTV'' Expo presentation featuring Al Franken's smack-down of ''Bully O'Liar,'' b.k.a. Bill O'Reilly, and I have yet to replay the entire recorded file). The .aiff files it produces, though take up LOTS of disk space! Even when converted to a .mp3 file the size was still close to 100 Megs.
Got a little cocky later in the evening and downloaded a few additional game demo programs, as well as installing the ones I had already had on my hard drive in compressed files, and got a little bit of a ''I Told Me So'' moment when the finder application would repeatedly quit on my after restart. I had to once again remind myself that such possibilities were the reason I keep the ''G3'' as a ''back-up'' and ''testing'' unit.
23:30, Hawaii Standard Time.
May 31, 2004 (Monday)
Finally decided to give in and order all three ''Matrix'' movies on DVD separately instead of trying to hold out for the release of a ''trilogy box set,'' not because of any impatience on my part, but because of the official word on the ''official'' box set indicates that they are planning on saturating us with a ''9-disc'' so-called ''ultimate collection'' ... and I am not putting forth the money and effort for such overkill, when all I want are the three movies.
17:00, Hawaii Standard Time.
Autumn 2001 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2001 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2002 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2002 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2002 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2002 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2003 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2003 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2003 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2003 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2004 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2004 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2004 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2004 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2005 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2005 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2005 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2005 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2006 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2006 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2006 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2006 (Dec-Feb)
