June 23-25, 2006 (Friday-Sunday)
= Weekend In Review =

This was the most unusual and the most trying weekend I think I have ever had to deal with, and almost all of it revolved around  ''work.''

First, after my Honolulu Community College gig Friday morning, I rode directly back out to the Country Club Village condo site where I worked back in late 2003 and finally reclaimed my other bicycle which had been left locked in the same place all this time, unmolested. After a few difficulties, due to their having become misshapen over the two and a half years' time, I managed to get the (completely flat) tires reinflated at the gas station next to ''99 Ranch.'' Fortunately, my greatest fear in this reclamation-- that the vehicular traffic would be heavy and dangerous --really did not turn out to be much of an issue, so that I managed to transport both bicycles together over the long distance: I'm not sure if it was just a matter of ''right timing'' or if this was normal for traffic flow so early in the morning and I had just allowed fear & uncertainty prevent me from making any earlier attempts.

Anyway, almost immediately after I returned to the apartment I received a phone call from the office asking me if I could come in later in the afternoon to work at my other job site, Kapiolani Community College -- before I had even gotten a chance to get any rest, before I had a chance to wash a load a laundry, etc., so I explained that I was unprepared to come in. But I had received a follow-up call which sounded as if it were a near-desperation plea, telling me that they couldn't get ''anybody'' to cover (for a workshift that was part of our ''regular'' schedule), so for the first time in several years I agreed to do them this favor and cover for them -- without having gotten any rest at all, plus doing rush job on my laundry.

Of course, as soon as I arrived on site, it turned out that the dweebs at the main office had created another ''SNAFU'' ("Situation Normal, All F***ed-Up") -- since no one was communicating with anyone else, one of the other office workers had decided to call someone else in several hours later who was supposed to be on site to be trained by one of our on-the-road guys who was already waiting there when I arrived. Not only was the other guy running late, but he had no choice but to run late, as the second office worker scheduled the other guy to start work at the ''KCC'' location right at the time he was ''pau hana'' (''finished with work'') over at the University of Hawaii main campus miles away!

During all this time I was impressing on the the office worker who called this other individual in that I had absolutely no intention on returning home to give up my time slot to someone else when (1) I had already gone through all that effort to be there, (2) I was already set to go to work, and (3) the other guy was already running close to a half-hour late (she was hoping to ''placate'' me by crediting me for two hours work not done as a means of absolving herself of her major ''eff-up'' -- big wow). On top of that, our road guy, who is now a single parent as a result of his wife having relatively recently passed away, could not keep standing around waiting for someone to arrive to be trained ''in two hours,'' since he had a 10-year-old daughter who needed to be picked up, so he was likewise upset at the whole situation. It wasn't until our ''boss'' who works directly for the campus showed up at the office, and after having the situation explained to him, that finally got the dim-bulb at our office to let-up and allow me to work the shift, as the ''big boss'' then requested, since I was already on site and ready to go. Even so, she STILL wanted me to train the guy she had called in for the two hours she thought it would take to train someone for that jobsite.

You think the story's over now, don't you? Guess what... It Ain't! It gets better (or rather, ''bitterer''). It turns out that Miss ''Loopy'' don't like it when somebody calls her on her $#!T, so she (in an undisguised bitter tone) went on to tell me that if I insisted on working that shift, she would remove me from one of my regularly scheduled work days in order to prevent giving me overtime, and I told her in no uncertain terms that such action was NOT ACCEPTABLE! -- and that she could not use the ''no overtime'' excuse with me since one of the other co-workers scheduled at KCC makes beaucoup overtime working extra-long hours covering wherever they have trouble calling somebody in to cover a jobsite. (Keep this last clause in mind, because we'll be coming back to it very shortly.) Even more irritated that I refused to budge an inch, she said she would talk with our operations manager in the office, probably expecting to get him on her side. I waited a while before I decided to call myself, using the direct contact number from the cellphone of the trainee who had since arrived on site no less! When I explained how I did not feel appreciated for my stepping forward as I did when the company needed such an important helping hand, as it were, and that I did not feel it was fair that the main office should try to penalize ''me'' for what was essentially ''their'' ''FUBAR'' ("F***ed-Up Beyond All Recognition"), he agreed with me and said he would handle the situation in my favor.

My regular schedule on Saturday wasn't all that much better, since I started out being matched-up with another brand new temporary partner who was just as much of a 'do-nothing' and more incompetent than the person they had me train Friday night.

Anyway, back to the ''honorable mention'' I made regarding our top ''overtime-getter''.... She gave me a good earful Sunday, letting me know that because of my mentioning the fact that she's been sucking up on so much overtime (which everyone in the office already knows, so why would they suddenly be trippin'?), they have  just now???  been putting her scheduling under the microscope. The main thing that is upsetting her about that, though, is the fact it has now resulted in her no longer being able to take unfair advantage of scheduling at KCC. The set-up is supposed to be this way: Each scheduled workshift is supposed to have a partnered pair -- but at shift change-over, as long as ONE worker for the next shift arrives on the jobsite, BOTH workers from the previous workshift are supposed to leave. Instead, she would routinely stay on as the following shift's ''partner'' until the second scheduled person (or a ''call-in'') showed up to take over, sucking up all those extra hours as overtime as a result, and I truly must admit that I did harbor a great deal of resentment at her getting away with that so much of the time.

June 30, 2006 (Friday)
17:20, Hawaii Standard Time.

I finally managed to get my ''customer review'' of the DVD of  ''Left of the Dial''-- the HBO documentary that followed the start-up of the  ''Air America Radio''  network --reposted back up on Amazon.com, where it held the ''Spotlight Review'' position and received the most positive votes. I have no idea how long it had been knocked off of the review boards, but they kept refusing to repost it after two-&-a-half weeks of attempts after I first discovered it quite by accident. They FINALLY got around to putting it back up once I submitted it along with a review of the American edition (''Region-1'' release) DVD of the original (1954)  ''Gojira''  (''Godzilla''). So now it's back up with all the original typographical errors I was too impatient to correct before resubmitting it, and it's had all its ''helpful votes'' and ''Spotlight Review'' status eliminated.

Well... it looks like my predictions are still valid... it's just that my  timing  was somewhat ''off'' -- the ''Non-Straight Marriage'' and the anti- ''flag burning'' amendments were debated (and rejected), but there's still the ''school prayer'' issue that has yet to be raised.

Speaking of ''police states,'' I'm beginning to experience a little of what that is like now that surveillance cameras are being posted throughout the apartment complex, which I'd originally had no objections toward until they made the decision to exchange our main building access key with an electronic device which, again, I had no real problem with until I inquired about it and learned that each ''fob'' is coded to individual apartments! Yes, ''Big Brother'' indeed is WATCHING!....

July 13, 2006 (Thursday)
22:00, Hawaii Standard Time.

Woke up this morning with severe dizziness attacks that lasted for several hours; I am still feeling considerably lightheaded. It seemed to be connected with a bout of digestive discomfort I was also experiencing, which leads me to suspect that it may be contributed to the carton of orange juice I purchased about a week ago. I thought that it was also connected with the nearly incapacitating headache & digestive pangs I had experienced last week, but when I decided to do a ''follow-up'' consumption to test the theory I had no problems whatsoever, which then led me to believe that the culprit was one of my boxes of cereal. Now that this has happened I am again led to believe that the orange juice is possibly involved, suspecting that perhaps it is interacting with dairy in some fashion, since I drank the juice along with the cereal I mentioned from last week and somewhere close around the time as I was consuming ice cream last night.

July 15, 2006 (Saturday)
23:10, Hawaii Standard Time.

Discovered something amazing about rainbows this morning.... It turns out that rather than being some visual phenomenon that arches across the sky at some great distance, I saw that its distance from the viewer is measured in only a matter of yards or metres -- only about a half of a football field away, if that.

July 28, 2006 (Friday)
19:40, Hawaii Standard Time.

This afternoon marked the end of my regular movie house attendance, as the local ''Regal'' (nee ''Signature'') theatres chain have crossed over my self-imposed ''$6.50'' matinee price limit, which I discovered when I went there in hopes of catching  ''An Inconvenient Truth.''  This falls right on the heels of my being made aware days earlier, when I tried to eatch the 'second chance' showing of the latest  ''X-Men''  movie that the ''dollar theatre'' is now strictly a ''dollar'' theatre -- no more ''half-dollar'' matinees! (In both of these instances, I arrived to the ticket booths with only the exact amount of the pre-increase ticket prices.)

August 6, 2006 (Sunday)
13:10, Hawaii Standard Time.

The morons at the scheduling office put me in the position of working past schedule a few hours last night because neither individual of the next crew that came in to relieve me had ever been at the jobsite and had received no amount of training whatsoever, so the responsibility for familiarizing them with the area and duty details fell upon my shoulders. Regrettably, I used that as an excuse not to attend worship services this morning.

August 11, 2006 (Friday)
12:30, Hawaii Standard Time.

Apparently some sort of major rumble took place outside a place called the ''Tonda Tonda'' Bar and Grill on Kohou St. very early this morning. I  ''sort of''  witnessed it, but thanks to the B.S. involving my left eye, along with the fact that it was ''night time'' and that I was located at & restricted to the Honolulu Community College campus on the opposite side of the Kapalama Canal where I was still ''on duty,'' I really could not make out much in the way of details. All I could tell with some degree of certainty was that a large gathering of what appeared to be mostly Polynesians were involved (as to how many were 'participants' as opposed to 'spectators' I cannot safely assume), and that the incident sounded like it had escalated from something which I interpreted as car/truck windows being smashed. Things progressed for a while before police were dispatched to the scene; and when they did arrive, over a dozen mobile units responded to the incident, followed later by an EMS unit. At the end of my workshift I ventured over to inspect whatever physical evidences remained from the incident. It was verified that car windows had indeed been shattered out by someone, and judging from the blood-stained articles of clothing found on the ground around the area it had appeared that at least two people were badly hurt -- one of them possibly a female; the other, obviously male, having been so badly injured that it had required his having to have had his clothing (including his thick belt!) cut away from his body before his being lifted into & transported in the ambulance. I'll find out how long it takes before any mention of it is made in the daily fishwraps.

August 28, 2006 (Monday)
21:20, Hawaii Standard Time.

Felt what I think  may  have been the tremors of an earthquake a little over an hour ago while playing a computer game. If it was, I'll definitely hear about it later on.

August 29, 2006 (Tuesday)
15:10, Hawaii Standard Time.

Re: last night's ''earthquake'' --

Minor earthquake shakes Isles

A minor earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 3.2 hit off the western edge of Moloka'i at 8:10 last night but was felt throughout the Islands.

People on O'ahu reported feeling the quake from Sunset Beach to Hawai'i Kai.

One caller to The Advertiser said the quake "shook the whole bed" at her home in lower Nu'uanu. Others said their windows and dishes rattled.

No damage was reported.

There was some confusion last night about the location of the quake's epicenter.

Dr. Robert Cessaro, a geophysicist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in 'Ewa Beach, said the epicenter was at 21.5 degrees north by 157.4 degrees west, off Moloka'i.

But the U.S. Geological Survey Web site showed the epicenter between Maui and the Big Island, at 20.25 degrees north by 156.3 degrees west.

Officials with the tsunami warning center, reached late last night, stood by their analysis.

Although the quake shook up O'ahu residents, there was no concern or risk of a tsunami, Cessaro said.

"We don't get too excited about ones this size," he said. "It's way, way, way too small."

Dianna Solatorio, a cashier at Molokai Wines 'N Spirits in Kaunakakai on Moloka'i, heard about the quake when her daughter called from Kane'ohe, saying "the earth was rolling under her feet. Weird, huh?"

"Nobody's talking about it here," Solatorio said.

"Usually if something happens, we hear it."

Solatorio then called her granddaughter about 20 miles away in Maunaloa on the west side of Moloka'i.

"She said it felt like a pressure was pushing on the house," Solatorio said.

The last measurable quake to hit the Islands occurred earlier last night when a "negligible" quake struck at 7:41 p.m., preceded by a magnitude 2 quake at 6:40 p.m., Cessaro said.

"We have them all the time," Cessaro said.

"We don't feel them here (on O'ahu) because most are on the Big Island."

(As reported in the Honolulu Advertiser early this morning)

. . . and . . .

Quake off Molokai measured 3.7

The U.S. Geological Survey updates information on last night's temblor

A small earthquake shook Oahu and Molokai last night, but there were no reports of damage and no threat of a tsunami, officials said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said today that the quake struck at 8:09:56 p.m. and was centered under the ocean north of Molokai. The quake had a 3.7 magnitude and was centered 22 miles north-northwest of Maunaloa, Molokai and 25 miles east-northeast of Waimanalo at a depth of 6.2 miles.

The magnitude and location of the temblor was significantly different than the initial USGS report last night.

Many residents felt the quake throughout Oahu, including in Kaneohe, Kailua, Hawaii Kai and as far as downtown Honolulu and Mililani.

“I was sitting on my rocker chair, and it slid on the floor,” a Kaneohe resident said. “It felt like a car hit the house.”

The USGS posts automated measurements of quakes worldwide on its Web site at usgs.gov. After last night’s quake a posting said the quake measured 3.2 magnitude and was centered west of North Kohala on the Big island.

But Paul Okubo, seismologist with the Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory, said today that “it was posted without the advantage or disadvantage of human review.”

After analyzing the data geologists believe the quake occurred between Oahu and Molokai.

(As reported in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin later in the day)

August 31, 2006 (Thursday)
15:10, Hawaii Standard Time.

I just got hit with a bad case of sour stomach. I just learned only a few minutes ago that ''Air America Radio'' turned sissified-punk on us and canceled  ''The Mike Malloy Show''  right 'out of the blue'! Guess I shouldn't be all that surprised, though -- it only proves the consistency of my ''curse,'' where ANYthing I take a particular liking to will eventually be discontinued in timely fashion (...think I'd be used to that sort of thing by now....).

---

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