In the past I got very lucky one time and as much as I try I keep failing to recreate that situation. Truth be told I don’t think I want to recreate that situation, or at least not to the “t”. Finding someone to love is hard and nothing I can do will ever make it easy.
Writing Mojo.
It's funny. I've never been the sort that can just sit down and write day in and day out for weeks on end. My stile of writing is to sit down and write a chunk at a time. A few hours writing on one story, a few on another. As of late I've done more writing and I think I'm getting better. I hope to have something finished to the point that it's worth publishing. I want to publish a compilation of my works on Amazon Books.
The hard part here is that I have poor spelling. Given that I spend a few hours writing at a time and switch stories, I end up spending some of the time correcting or altering what I've already written instead of writing more new stuff I end up correcting my mistakes and/or rewriting things.
The example of my first story, Breakdown. A story I started writing in 2009 and despite my deciding this past month that I have Finished It, I have yet to proof read and correct some of my spelling and grammar errors. That a short story of under 20k words that I've been writing off and on for close to a decade.
Well I'm working on all of my writing once more and hope to publish them, so if need be I may just hire a proof reader.
I do admit getting back to writing I've made some good changes. Parts of my stories that didn't seem to fit the situation getting enough background detail to bring them inline being the most important.
Airsoft
Airsoft is fun. It's not for everyone but it's fun for me.
Good by Futon!!!
After over a decade sleeping on a hard as a rock futon I'm finally sleeping on a nice factory fresh mattress. It doesn't help me get to sleep as much as make my sleep more restful but that's all it needs to do. Well more rest full and less painful. I had knee and back problems from sleeping on a hard futon that didn't conform to my body at all.
People need to have good beds, just a fact.
Why does the world hate my car?
I've had my current car for little over a year and a half now and I love it. It's far and away the best car I've ever owned and I take good care of it. This past few weeks though have told me that something somewhere wants it dead.
I've driven it to and from L.A. twice on i5, driven well over 15k miles since I got the thing and after having it and driving it this long I got a crack in my windshield. Cost me $100 with my insurance covering the rest to get the windshield replaced. That was a pain but it's what Insurance is for so no big deal... This last Monday I was driving to an on site location and wam a rock about an inch and a half in diameter cracked into my windshield just to the lower right of my eye-line. I could see it as if in slow motion and reacted to it as if there was no glass to protect my face from it. The glass did it's job and saved me but well damn it now there's a chip in my two week old windshield. Took it back to the shop and they patched the chip free of charge.
Yeah so that all sucked but I got it dealt with and was done with car problems until today when on another on site job a guy with his pickup truck's took box open blocking is rear windows and his truck bed gate down backed into my parked car. The door's are bent in just under the front passenger side handle and the front lip of the back door. That's going on his insurance but fml this is the third time my car is damaged in three weeks and it's getting old fast!
Sleep... Need sleep...
It's on days like this that I remember the number one reason people should get out and about once a day for a long walk, a jog, to the gym for some sort of work out or else work a job that keeps them on their feet moving around most of the day. The reason is that Humans need to burn off energy so that at the end of the day they can fall asleep. I've been having nights where I just cant fall asleep because I'm full of pent up energy and it's pissing me off. I can't get out because it's fucking cold and wet, I don't have a gym membership anymore and even if I did I found it uncomfortable working out at the gym close by to me...
I need to figure something out because the last thing I want to do is start using sleep pills to knock my ass out for the night.
The Value of Vacation
I've been working my current job about 4 years now and for three of it i've had paid vacation to use. It's sad but statistically Americans are some of the least likely people to take payed vacation because of a stigma that taking time off makes you look bad and could get your fired for slacking off. I once had that feeling, but long ago I found that taking a week off just helps and my missing that week won't kill my coworkers.
I've been taking at least one full week off each year and having paid vacation to cover makes it far simple to relax. I'm on my second vacation of the year flexing the full of my 14 PTO days a year.
If you have PTO, use it. Don't just cash it out on a check if that even an option given you you should really take it and get out and away for some time.
Why I love the Internet
It's so simple that people don't know they are on it. Oh wait a tick... I hate that about the internet!!! I have to deal with people that have problems and don't understand that they have slow internet and that's whats wrong. Why is my Email not working when I'm getting Windows Updates? Because you have 3mbps DSL and Updates are eating it up. Can I get my email while I'm waiting for a new DSL modem to ship to me while my old DSL modem is dead? NO!!! It's aggravating...
What i do love about the internet is I get to vent about things and then zone out playing games, watching videos and listing to music. I get to use the internet for all the things everyone else but I do understand what I'm doing so I don't have to deal with the simple problems that others have to deal with.
That's it.
Cheap is Cheap even if it works.
So when I got my S6 Edge I got a pair of Qi Chargers. One stays at work, the other stays on my desk at home. When I need a quick charge I set my phone down and easy as that I get a top off. The thing is I didn't get the chargers with the intent to have on at work. I got one for home and the other I wanted to magiver into a car dock.
I took the magnetic plate mounting dock system I got, put the plat that was inside the case of my old phone on the back of the Qi Charger and then put a rubber stick pad on top of the charger pad to hold my phone to it. This actually worked at first, but the fact that the Qi charger had to push power through the almost 1/8" rubber pad and my Otter Box case it didn't charge all that well and pushed up the heat output hard core.
I gave up on using that setup because it kept disconnecting and the rubber mat stopped gripping because it got baked too much in my car. I could have just put the mag plate inside my case and took my phone out of the case to charge if I wanted to use my Qi Charger(The mag plate blocks Qi charging) but that is just too much effort.
The other week I decided to give a cheap combo charger on Amazon a shot. The M.Way Qi Wireless Charger Dock Magnetic 360 cost less then $10 and contrary to its name uses an adhesive backed rubber grip pad in the center of the white denoted charging ring to hold a phone. I checked the charging specs and its rated about the same as the Qi chargers I got before so it should do the job of charging my phone or as I intend it to provide charge to the phone so I can use it for GPS and Music without having to plug and unplug it whenever I get into my car.
I got the charger and found a few things odd in both the good and the bad.First the good. It works as a charger and the adhesive grip of the rubber pad on my phone was so grate at first that I could hold the dock upside down and shake and my phone wouldn't come off. I wouldn't try that any more because to test the charger I lest my phone docked to it charging while I watched a few videos at my desk. The result of the charging was heat so great that adhesive holding the grip pad onto the dock melted causing the rubber pad to come off the dock stuck to the back of my phone.
Cheap adhesive isn't all. The rubber grip pad was so stuck to my phone case that it molded to it. I pealed the mat off my phone and stuck it back onto the dock. Now it doesn't grip all that strongly and I'm not sure I can trust it holding my phone at any steep angle for fear of it shearing off the dock.
The second problem I found was the other adhesive pad on the dock meant to hold it to my dash or god for bid my windshield. It's a 3M foam type adhesive that's so week it couldn't hold the phone and dock on a flat surface with the phone angled. I pulled it off and replaced it with some home mounting foam tape I got at the store and not it sticks very well. The stuff I'm using is meant to hang pictures on walls so holding a dock and phone is nothing to it even with about one square inch of the stuff.
Now I will admit that the dock came with spares of both the 3M base pad and the grip pad for the phone so I could just replace them if needed with the same sort of stuff that came with the dock if need be. The fact that it's a working Qi charger for less then half what I paid for my BestBuy brand Insignia chargers is something worth noting. I'll post back on how it holds up over time later.
Phone Fun...
I've only had a few phones in my lifetime. The first was a very cheap basic flip phone with less features then my Palm Zire 31. It was a tank of a phone and lasted me a few years until the third time I forgot it on my car's roof. Thankfully I've not done that ever sense.
My second phone was a short lived second hand unit from my brother. He'd upgraded to the HTC G1(Hero) and gave me his old flip phone. It had a micro SD slot and could play video which was cool, but there was a reason he upgraded other then wanting the newest phone for himself. The battery life sucked hard.
A few months on from that I finally came out of my contract and with my brother's help (At the time he worked for T-Mobile in a call center in the Retention Department) I got my first Nice phone. I say nice because it was nice, but it also was the most basic cheap nice there was. I couldn't afford anything like a G1 or iPhone so I picked out a Blackberry Pearl Flip.
That phone was so slow it hurt. It had the newest version of BB OS, but had a generation older Chipset. The Curve my sister in law had at the same version of the OS but it ran way better. Even with the slow OS it was the best phone on offer and I fell in love with its keyboard. If you haven't seen a Pearl Flip, it used a five wide keyboard with functions on either side of the number pad. As part of this layout they gave each key two letters in the QWERTY layout making the phone a compromise in function without a really keyboard but with the layout. I got so good with that keyboard layout that I turned off autocomplete and just used double tapping to text.
That phone lasted me a good while. I didn't see much reason to change it until I got a new job and had the money to look at a upgrade. Looking around I found a deal with Sprint to get a full Unlimited Plan with a Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch. Yes they branded the GS2 as the Epic 4G Touch which was dumb, but it was also a massive step up from the palm pilot.
I still have that phone and use it with my car's ODB2 Bluetooth Dongle to get some cool info in how my car's working. Back when it was my primary phone though it wasn't all perfect. The Epic 4G wasn't LTE. At that time Sprint had merged with Clear and focused on using the WiMax system running on 2.4Ghz band for high speed Data. I could get 16Mbps but the high band meant I had to be in line of site of a tower to get it.
Thankfully I found the world of Rooting and was able to download a Stock Rooted version of android for my phone. With it I was able to alter the WiMax Modem settings to make it connect with a lower signal and improve the power management. I was happy with the phone for the most part as it was by far the nicest phone I'd ever had. Samsung even rolled out a version of Android 4 aka Ice-cream Sandwich near the end of its life that updated the TouchWiz Interface a lot.
To be honest the only real drawbacks with that phone had to be the Screen and battery life. After the ICS update the S2 started sucking down battery like it was nothing and even after a patch to fix it it was no good for my daily driver. I started looking at my options and with my contract coming to an end I had a few good options. I wasn't as crunched for cash as I had been in the past I wasn't looking for the best value so much as the best deal on the best phone.
When I got my S2 it was discounted because the S3 had come out and was the hot new model. A year and a half on from then the S4 had come out and the S5 was only a few months out. This fact meant the S4, at the time still the top of Samsung's model on offer I found a deal at BestBuy for a 16GB S4 on a renewed contract for $50 + Line Transfer fee. I was so hyped at getting a new phone that I combined getting it with a Magic the Gathering Pre Release event that weekend.
I placed the order for the phone at the local BestBuy for Saturday, the day my contract came up for renewal, then pulled an all niter at the local card shop for the pre release event. From there I went to WalMart and got a new case for my new phone and then to BestBuy where I napped in the parking lot until they opened. Again this was a big thni gfor me as I was getting the best phone I could for the first time. I got the phone and drove to work napping again before I had to start a full 8 hour shift.
The sleep I lost was made up for in the fact that the S4 had everything the S2 didn't and then some. The Sprint version packed a Samsung Exynos SOC just as the S2 from Sprint giving it a bit more raw power then the QualComm SnapDragon based models but with fewer LTE bands supported. Even with the fewer LTE bands the signal was far better and the data over LTE vs that over WiMax was more then double. In a memorable case I was visiting my girlfriend in California and was able to download the HD version of The Avengers: Age of Ultran from Google Play in a matter of minutes while at a mall with her.
In any case I found no draw backs to my picking the S4 when I did. Even when I found out the reason for the deal being so good was a new Tri Band Modem model with faster LTE being shipped ahead of the S5's launch I still loved the phone. I was able to Root it just as I'd done with my S2 before and by moving my 32GB SD card over I had enough room for all my stuff on the 16GB model I'd gotten.
By the time my plan was up for renewal again i'd found no flaws with my S4 and to be honest I didn't have much of a reason to upgrade. The only things that stood out with the S4 as needing improvement in my book and others was the screen. OLED Displays are lit by the Pixels themselves and don't have back-lights. Making each pixel color correct, bright and long lasting is a challenge that Samsung and others hadn't cracked as of the S4.
Enter the S6 and S6 Edge. My co-worker at the time had upgraded from his HTC One M7 to the S6 giving me a chance to see the phone in person. The screen was so much nicer, the build of the phone itself felt way better, and to be honest it juts looked sexy. The only draw back I could see was the fact I was going to have to give up my 32GB SD Card, but as long as I got a model with 32GB or more of storage on it didn't really matter all that much.
I started looking at the options and around 12:30am, the Sunday my plan came up for renewal I chanced a look on BestBuy's website. They had an offer that I didn't think could be real. A 32GB S6 Edge with a contract renewal for $1 plus the line change x-fer fee of $25 and a $100 BestBuy GiftCard. In other words the phone would cost me -$74. The only catch was the deal was only for the Edge and that the only stores that had the deal happened to be in Portland. I placed my order and after about 6 hours of sleep I drove the 2 hours up I-5 and I-205 to get my sick new phone.
After some bouncing around at the support desk trying to get my phone Activated and the line transferred by myself I went to my car and sat in the parking lot downloading the Samsung app to transfer my phone settings and stuff from my S4 to my new S6 on the S6 then sending the APK to my S4 so I could install it and do the X-fer. After I figured that all out I found that happily everything I had including the music on my SD card had been copied over.
Just as I'd done with my S2 and S4 before I Rooted my phone, this time though I kicked myself because one of the cool new features of this phone was broken forever the moment I did the rooting. Rooting my phone tripped Samsung's Knox, a TPM unit that once tripped can't be reset. Without it I can't use Samsung Pay. The idea of just holding my phone out to any card reader to pay for things sounded really cool, but it's not going to happen so dang it all. Google Pay does work, but it's NFC based and doesn't work with my Credit and Debit card.
With the $100 gift card I got with the phone I ordered a pair of Qi Chargers and a new phone case. Now I just set my phone down to charge.
Well that's my phone history in a nut shell... I could go on but this is long enough.
Writing is fun but frustrating.
It's a pain to be a writer that sucks at spelling and has a short attention span. So often I find my writing going from good to meh to good again in a matter of paragraphs. Keeping my writing consistent is hard enough without having to go back and spell check my writing with google because OpenOffice.Org's spell checker can't understand some of my spelling mistakes.
When I do go back to spell check I start reading what I wrote and end up rewriting it making sections that then invalidate later parts of my stories that then themselves need rewriting. I've been writing the same stories for years now and haven't yet finished a single one.
I do know the stories start middle and end, but putting it all of it to text on a page is a bitch. How do I link up years of in universe time with charters from around the world? How do I make character interactions believable? How the hell am I writing such a complexes set of stories when I flunked out of or simply quit freshmen Lit in high school twice and had to take it in summer school to make up?
I say I flunked out, but really what happened was I didn't focus first semester and spent more time drawing up-scaled free hand pencil versions of Yu-Gi-Oh cards for my friend. Then second semester I dropped the class for reasons. First off I hated the teacher after she gave my writing a D. I wrote a short story about a Battle Mech with a prototype A.I. that had been left as a sentry unit guarding an abandoned Star Liege R & D Facility for centuries. When I told her about the source material I based my story on she said I had to make my own story up not copy someone else.
The second reason I quit was the results of the Vocabulary Placement Test we all took. I was one of two kids in my year to qualify at the highest level. The teacher didn't think I'd passed with such a high score for real and made me take a second test before she would issue me a book. I told my parents and they filed a complaint. After that it was a month before they gave me the okay to drop the class.
Well that's the past, but fuck if I did need help with my spelling all the words I knew and know. I've developed my vocabulary phonetically and don't know how to spell much of it for that reason. Sounding words out only helps to a certain extent. I've tried things like Dragon Naturally Speaking, but there's a real disconnect when I try and speak as apposed to when I type.
When I think I can hear what my characters are thinking ans saying in my mind as if it was that charter. When I speak I'm unable to replicate my internal monologue with such detail as it's me doing the thinking and speaking not the character in my head. If that makes sense to anyone then good.
All of what I've typed here has come from my mind as fast if not faster then I can say it out lowed and far more fluidly. I'm no orator, I don't have a grate voice and I don't read out lowed nearly as fast as I can silently.
Well if you've read this far then thanks, I'm venting/ranting in type form.
My IT Tool Box
Every Tech has their own Tool Box. I doesn't matter if you're a Mechanic wore a Computer Tech, you have one and it's special to you. You've built it up peace by peace, tool by tool and only you know just what all of it's for. Some tools are used once in a blue moon while others are used so often you have to replace them over and over again.
I'm posting this as a sort of brief look into what I call my Tool Box.
Two USB Flash Drives with Windows 7 x86/x64 Universal Images on them, one with Windows 8 x64, one with windows 8.1.1 x64 , two with windows 10.1 x86/x64. All of them include copies of the most common software I install on client computers so I don't have to download programs over and over again such as Adobe Reader DC.
To go with the OS Flash Drives listed above I also have four other drives that pack tools such as the Kaspersky Rescue Disk, Ophcrack, Memtest and more long with more software geared to diagnosing and cleaning up systems. On all of the drives I include a set of Batch files that I can run to automatically deploy most of the software and tools I'll need for a given task. One such batch file is used to deploy my QuickPack Tools.
My Quick Pack is a catch all Tool Package meant to simplify my job. Here's a list of the software in my Quick Pack. AdwCleaner, JRT(JunkwareRemovelTool), ComboFix, SC-Cleaner(ShortCut Cleaner), MalwareBytes-Anti Rootkit, MS-FixIt Portable, Autoruns, Repair Windows, SpyBot Portable, tdsskiller, GMER-AntiRootkit, Revo Uninstaller, and CCleaner. Not all tools are needed every time, but having them all deployed in a single click of a batch file, or via a single command in command prompt saves time every time.
Some of the programs listed above are free, but others do have paid licenses for Commercial Use. Most if not all can be found at BleepingComputer.com
I hope this has helped you in some way. My tools are always changing to fit the needs of my job and take a good bit of effort to keep up to date, but it's worth it for sure.
My Computer as Priced by PC Parts Picker
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/zW8WXH
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/zW8WXH/by_merchant/
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($297.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Nepton 120XL 76.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($150.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($29.99 @ Adorama)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($29.99 @ Adorama)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($238.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($317.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB STRIX Video Card ($259.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 450D ATX Mid Tower Case ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($49.67 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit ($129.88 @ OutletPC)
Monitor: Acer XB241H bmipr 24.0" 144Hz Monitor ($394.99 @ Amazon)
Keyboard: Razer Blackwidow 2014 Stealth Edition Wired Gaming Keyboard ($74.99 @ Other World Computing)
Mouse: Logitech G602 Wireless Optical Mouse ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $2150.34
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-07-06 17:59 EDT-0400
This system has been years in the making. In order of acquisition here's the build.
CoolerMaster Nepton Cooler, 600W PSU, ASUS Strix GTX970, Samsung 500GB 840 EVO, Razer Blackwidow Stealth Keyboard, Razer Naga 2014 Mouse, Corsair 450D Case, Logitech G602 Mouse(Naga Died), ACER Predator XB241H Monitor, ASUS Z170-A + Intel i7-6700 + Crucial 2x8GB DDR4, Samsung 512GB 950 PRO.
The above replaced the following
Scythe SCKTN-3000 Katana3, Sparkole 600W PSU, GTX650ti, 500GB WD Blue, Generic Microsoft Keyboard, Rosewill Line-M, Razer Naga 2014 Mouse(Died), 32 Insignia TV, ASUS M5A78L-M-USB3 + AMD FX8350 + Crucial 4x4GB DDR3, Samsung 500GB 850 EVO
This system was built over a 2 Year Period and I hope not to touch it for some time to come.
Another day, another Upgrade.
I love building computers, second to that is upgrading them and behind that it's simple rebuilding them. Often I get computers in that just need a dusting out and end up taking them apart and rebuilding them with re-dun wire management just so it looks good. It may make little to no difference to performance but there is a lot of pride in artfully managing the way things fit together in the limited space of a case. Some cases let you hide wires, others you're stuck crossing them up over and around everything else, but with enough work I've found good wiring can be done in 99% of Cases. (Pun intended)
I just now had to rebuild/upgrade a system that packs Four HDD's, an Optical Drive and an SSD into the venerable Antec Cenota. I'll post Before and After here to make clear how much more thought goes into my Cable Management then most. Check out my Instagram for examples of this. I posted a Before and After of the Antec Upgrade. P67 Sabertooth, i7-2600, 16GB DDR3 RAM, Antec 500w PSU and a GT720 Graphics Card come out. Z170-A, i7-6700, 32GB DDR4 RAM, EVGA 500w PSU and 512GB Samsung 850 Pro SSD go in.
Sad that the parts coming out are still worth over $350 and still perfectly good. Sometimes Customers let us have their old parts after upgrades but here I think they'll want them back. I don't need them myself, I just did my own upgrade with the same Mobo, half the RAM and a 512GB Samsung 950 Pro NVME SSD so I'm set, but I know of many places that Sabertooth and i7-2600 could go.
First Blog EVER!
No joke this is the first time I've ever blogged anything. Well this is the first of what I wan't to be regular blogs. I may rant on here some times, but mostly I'm just getting stuff off my chest and letting those out there that wan't to read my words do so.
As far as this website goes, I'm going to use it for anything and everything I do online that I feel is worth sharing, that includes my Youtube and Twitch stuff, my art and my writing as well as my girlfriend's art if she'll provide it. My sketch work is good enough for place holders, but there's no doubt that she's the truly gifted artist not me. I'm just a Computer Nerd that can draw Dragons, Landscapes and anything I can see. She on the other hand can draw what ever she wants.
I'm also working with my father to start producing some joint content. The last PC game I remember him playing was... Actually I can't recall at this point. He may have played some Doom in the 90's, I mean he didn't have it just so my brother and I could play it when we were like kids.
Well in any case the first step in setting this site up is done thank's to SquareSpace I'm back online with my own domain and woot for that. This is my 3rd website, the first was a failed fan site for Mobile Suit Gundam and the second was a failed website for a free lance Computer Tech Support Service. I gave up on the first site for lack of traffic and the second I let go after I got hired full time at a Computer store and signed the No Compete Contract saying I can't free lance* while I work there.
*The one exception was a Church I was helping with their network for years before I got hired.
R.C.Halter