Shirley: Shut up, Leonard; I found your YouTube page. What's the point of reviewing frozen pizza?
Leonard: You're talking about it.
Shirley: That is true...
I'm using the above quote from Community to argue that the following entry is not entirely irrelevant. You can decide for yourself whether or not the argument works.
Sometimes I don't feel like going upstairs for a sandwich during my lunch break, and I won't eat from anywhere in the food court other than the sandwich place, so I just skip lunch or grab a pretzel from next door. Yesterday was one of those days. I ate my free pepperoni pretzel and then told myself I'd go across the street after work for some tacos. Del Taco has a 3 for $1 deal on Tuesdays, and tacos always sound good to me. I texted my boyfriend saying I'd bring him lunch too.
As it turned out, the deal is a "Taco Nights" deal. I panicked for a second, but at Del Taco it seems night starts at 3, which is luckily when I get off work. I noticed that the "regular tacos" were 3 for $.99 and the "classic tacos" were 3 for $1.99. The only difference is tomato. I don't know why Taco Bell and Del Taco charge extra for tomato (but the Taco Supreme at Taco Bell has sour cream too, right?) but I bought three of the classic tacos for my boyfriend because unlike me, he likes tomato. I still got six tacos for $3.19 total, so I don't really care. That's a deal even if their sauce is a little spicy for my taste.
Then at home we had chicken fajitas for dinner. Tacos and the recipe we use for chicken fajitas are two of the few Mexican meals I actually enjoy, so it was a good day. I ate the leftover fajita chicken while watching MasterChef. That show makes me hungry for some weird reason. As if it's about food or something....
Tonight I worked the closing shift which ends at about 9. I told my boyfriend I wanted to try to get out of there as soon as possible and make it to Pie Rush at Village Inn. If you have a Perkins in your town, you probably don't know what a Village Inn is, because they have a hard time existing in the same area. Same basic place though. Breakfast and pie. Village Inn does this thing where you can get a free slice of pie every Wednesday between 10 and 10, but it's only good for their fruit pies and the featured pie of the month. This being the last Wednesday of the month, I wanted to try the Peach Supreme before it was gone. It was a good idea, but they were out by the time we made it. I had Lemon Supreme instead. The one failure of this pie is the whipped cream on top. You give me lemon pie, I want meringue. Enough said.
To sum up, I really like food. I also had a delicious grilled Italian Sub today from the sandwich place in the food court. The girl whose name I don't know makes the best sandwiches.
That's all I have for today. I hope you like food too.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
The Darkness Rises
I'm not the kind of person to complain about the violence of video games and movies or to associate that violence with the real violence that happens in the world around me, but a few nights ago some guy walked into a theater and killed some people, and I couldn't help but see the connection.
You've all heard about it by now. It was the premier of the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, and this guy just started shooting during the film. Lots of confusion. People thought it was part of the movie or something. The whole thing reminds me of the opening scene of Scream 2, when that lady gets stabbed to death during the film, and the audience thinks it's some gimmick, and the killer is dressed exactly like so many other moviegoers.
It also reminds me of a character in the previous Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Anyone remember Heath Ledger as The Joker? He had no real motives. His game was chaos for the sake of chaos, crime for the sake of crime, murder and death for the sake of murder and death. The character was so disturbed, Ledger had problems getting to sleep at night.
I don't know much about what went down at that theater in Aurora or what the authorities have determined as far as motive, but I did hear the guy didn't even resist arrest. He didn't turn the gun on himself like so many other crazed shooters we hear about on the news. And that's why I think his motive was exactly this: He thinks he is The Joker. He wanted only chaos. There was no more rhyme or reason beyond this.
This is just my opinion. I'm not saying movies should never have violence or even that this movie was entirely responsible for the recent tragedy in Aurora. All I'm saying is I believe this was not at random, that this occurred at that specific movie for a reason, and that the violence in a movie filmed years ago has a direct and deep connection to an act of violence at the movies just the other night.
You've all heard about it by now. It was the premier of the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, and this guy just started shooting during the film. Lots of confusion. People thought it was part of the movie or something. The whole thing reminds me of the opening scene of Scream 2, when that lady gets stabbed to death during the film, and the audience thinks it's some gimmick, and the killer is dressed exactly like so many other moviegoers.
It also reminds me of a character in the previous Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Anyone remember Heath Ledger as The Joker? He had no real motives. His game was chaos for the sake of chaos, crime for the sake of crime, murder and death for the sake of murder and death. The character was so disturbed, Ledger had problems getting to sleep at night.
I don't know much about what went down at that theater in Aurora or what the authorities have determined as far as motive, but I did hear the guy didn't even resist arrest. He didn't turn the gun on himself like so many other crazed shooters we hear about on the news. And that's why I think his motive was exactly this: He thinks he is The Joker. He wanted only chaos. There was no more rhyme or reason beyond this.
This is just my opinion. I'm not saying movies should never have violence or even that this movie was entirely responsible for the recent tragedy in Aurora. All I'm saying is I believe this was not at random, that this occurred at that specific movie for a reason, and that the violence in a movie filmed years ago has a direct and deep connection to an act of violence at the movies just the other night.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Challenge Accepted
Hello again. I've been away for quite a while, and I do have some good excuses and some poor ones, but I don't see any reason to list those. The point is I was gone and now I'm back and I'm jumping back in with another challenge. My friend at 13:13 blog decided to do a 30-day challenge, and he asked if I wanted to join him. Of course I couldn't turn him down. So for the next 30 days I will find something and anything to say, long or short, profound or insignificant (but mostly insignificant) once every day. I hope it's fun for everyone involved.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for reading!
Monday, March 5, 2012
I perform brain surgery
As most of you probably know, my precious 120 GB Zune tragically crashed several weeks ago. Has it been a month by now? Time goes by so fast when I'm here.
Last Thursday, I purchased a new hard drive and a tool kit online from gadgetmenders.com. Their site had a nifty repair video, and I thought, "I can do this! I don't need to send it in."
I received the package today and almost immediately realized the process of repairing the device would be much more simple than the video made it look. Here, I should post the video in case you want to see it. I'll refer to it enough times anyway.
Last Thursday, I purchased a new hard drive and a tool kit online from gadgetmenders.com. Their site had a nifty repair video, and I thought, "I can do this! I don't need to send it in."
I received the package today and almost immediately realized the process of repairing the device would be much more simple than the video made it look. Here, I should post the video in case you want to see it. I'll refer to it enough times anyway.
So there's a little blue tool they use to take the device apart. They included three in the repair tool kit I ordered, which puzzled me at first. Why would I ever need more than one? Well, maybe because the space is so tight I shredded off a good deal of the plastic on those things just trying to wedge them in there? Maybe there's another reason for it, but personally I'm glad I had three to partially destroy instead of just one.
After spending a good twenty minutes prying the case apart, I finally was able to get a look inside the device. I peeled the tape off the hard drive as instructed, but I didn't understand the concept of lifting the small black latch. The guy says to "lift it upwards in the vertical direction." I thought that sounded redundant, because up is a vertical direction. So as I struggled with that, I popped the stupid latch right off.
I fumbled with it, called my uncle for help (what could he have told me?), cried, and then kept on going. It would be ridiculous to have to replace the hard drive cable too, but the old hard drive just wouldn't let got of it. I ended up just mutilating the white piece with a screwdriver until the cable came loose. No harm in breaking a broken piece of equipment, right? Now, how would I get the cable attached to the new hard drive if I couldn't figure out how to get it loose from the old one?
That was actually a lot easier. The guy in the video says to restore the latch to "its horizontal position." Oh! So flip up to release, flip down to secure. The difference between the terms "direction" and "position" was crucial here, for me. Now the whole latch idea made much more sense. I managed not to break the latch on the new hard drive.
I snapped the device back together, which was almost as difficult as taking it apart. Then I plugged the device into my computer to prepare for the software update. The screen lit up.
I was so excited to see this again. She was alive, right?
Nope, this image popped up next. The original error message. But I refused to be defeated. I took apart the device again (much easier once it was loosened, and once I knew what the heck I was doing), and saw that the hard drive cable looked a little askew. I flipped up the latch, pushed the cable in again, flipped down the latch, praying the whole time it had just been inserted wrong, and I hadn't damaged the cable somehow in this stressful process. Popped the device together again. Turned it on.
It just gave me an error message (3 or 4, I don't remember. It's possible both showed up at different times.) Another error, really? What more did I have to do? Not too much: soon the screen displayed Error 2, which is lack of the proper software. Finally, my baby lived again!
It took some time to get the software on my computer to recognize that I connected a new device, and then installing the software onto the new Zune and syncing all my files seemed to take forever, but now she works just as well as before the crash. Except I don't have the default Zune photos anymore. I don't know what happened with that, but now I'm just using one of my personal photos as a background image. It will serve as a constant reminder that my Zunebug contains new hardware, and I don't know yet how I feel about that.
And that's the story of my day as a brain surgeon. Don't ever call on me to perform a brain transplant again, on technology or on a living thing. I'm pretty sure this was a one-time deal.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
The Shadow
There once was a land filled with light, and this land knew no darkness. The ground was bare and even, smooth as steel, and no creatures populated the area. A cloud had never appeared in the sky of this realm. All was pure and true, but the land was bare of texture and of life, and this was lonely.
Then one day an event occurred in this land. and the ground became inhabitable, and plants sprouted from it, and to support these plants there had to be rain. And when the rain came, there were clouds. For the first time, the land knew darkness. but the clouds cleared, and all was light again. For a short time.
The sprouts from the ground became trees and bushes, and all varieties of flowers, and animals came to inhabit the area, and soon a small lake appeared as well. And again, the land knew darkness. For the light came from the sky, and could not penetrate the mighty trees or the smallest insects. And some days it would rain again, and there would be no light in sight. And even on days when the light shone bright, the trees and bushes, birds and flowers, and every living thing cast its shadow. And all these creations were beautiful. but there was darkness in the shadows, and darkness in the depths of the lake, and darkness on the cloudiest days.
The land now was full of life, and no longer so lonely and barren as before. But with life came this darkness, and the land was no longer pure and true. The plants and the creatures and the lake made the land beautiful, but ugliness crept in the shadows and the darkness. and there was nothing to be done about this, for where there was life, there must be shadows.
Then one day an event occurred in this land. and the ground became inhabitable, and plants sprouted from it, and to support these plants there had to be rain. And when the rain came, there were clouds. For the first time, the land knew darkness. but the clouds cleared, and all was light again. For a short time.
The sprouts from the ground became trees and bushes, and all varieties of flowers, and animals came to inhabit the area, and soon a small lake appeared as well. And again, the land knew darkness. For the light came from the sky, and could not penetrate the mighty trees or the smallest insects. And some days it would rain again, and there would be no light in sight. And even on days when the light shone bright, the trees and bushes, birds and flowers, and every living thing cast its shadow. And all these creations were beautiful. but there was darkness in the shadows, and darkness in the depths of the lake, and darkness on the cloudiest days.
The land now was full of life, and no longer so lonely and barren as before. But with life came this darkness, and the land was no longer pure and true. The plants and the creatures and the lake made the land beautiful, but ugliness crept in the shadows and the darkness. and there was nothing to be done about this, for where there was life, there must be shadows.
Friday, January 13, 2012
My World Just Got a Little Smarter
My mom and I recently switched to Sprint and are now using our very first smart phones. Our device of choice was the HTC Evo Design. The Evo 3D is supposed to be a better device, but one of the reasons for that is its larger size, and that's more of a drawback for me. Also, I just don't care for the 3D feature at all. So we went with its less expensive little brother, the Design.
The Transfer
We transferred from another network, and we ordered the phones online. So we had to wait for the phones to be delivered, then wait even longer for our own phones to lose service so we could power on the new ones. For me, this happened at 11:30 Wednesday night. I was still texting a couple people, so I felt obligated to switch over to the new phone, but I also had an appointment in the morning and didn't want to stay up too late. Oh well. Sleep usually loses in these situations.
For me, the transfer was clean, sudden, and obvious. My old phone no longer had any bars and no longer said "AT&T" at the top of the screen. My mom's phone wasn't as nice to her. She was still making receiving calls on her old phone, but text messages wouldn't go through. Finally, around 12 hours after I had activated my phone, Dad called me to say Mom's phone wasn't working. When he called her number, he was redirected to a Sprint voice mailbox. It was time to make the switch.
Even then, though, Mom's transfer wasn't quite as clean as mine. This morning, her old phone received a text my dad had sent. I don't know what's going on with the whole thing.
And I was dumb enough not to have saved my contacts onto my SIM card, so the guys at Sprint couldn't transfer them. Guess I have to do it manually. Yay.
My Favorite Features so Far
1) Apps
One of the first things I did after basic setup was download an alarm clock app. Sure, the phone has one built in. But I didn't see a "Vibrate Only" option, and that's what I really wanted. So I downloaded an app that did provide that. Today I downloaded an app that monitors my battery life by percentage, because the bar just wasn't accurate enough. Overall, what I like most about apps is if my phone doesn't do something I want it to do, I can probably make it do that just by looking for the right app. Also, I think I like the Android market. It's easy enough to use.
2) Texting
One feature I've been looking forward to for a while now is text messages stored in conversation threads, rather than an inbox and a sent box. Now if I forget what I said last (which I do surprisingly often) all I have to do is look up. Because switching back and forth between inbox and sent box got old pretty fast.
Another feature I really like, but wasn't expecting to be so crazy about, is the vertical qwerty keyboard. On my old phone, if I held the phone vertical, it gave me a numerical keyboard like the one I used for dialing. This one, like many others, gives me a smaller version of the qwerty keyboard. I used to just think this would be annoying, that the letters looked too close together, etc. But holy cow. I love this thing. It is so much more convenient than I expected. I can text with one hand!
3) Front-Facing Camera
This is an excellent tool for anyone in a long-distance relationship. Enough said.
I could ramble more...
But I won't. This post has gone on long enough, and you need to get back to your life. I just wanted to share the newest exciting addition to my life. Thanks for reading!
The Transfer
We transferred from another network, and we ordered the phones online. So we had to wait for the phones to be delivered, then wait even longer for our own phones to lose service so we could power on the new ones. For me, this happened at 11:30 Wednesday night. I was still texting a couple people, so I felt obligated to switch over to the new phone, but I also had an appointment in the morning and didn't want to stay up too late. Oh well. Sleep usually loses in these situations.
For me, the transfer was clean, sudden, and obvious. My old phone no longer had any bars and no longer said "AT&T" at the top of the screen. My mom's phone wasn't as nice to her. She was still making receiving calls on her old phone, but text messages wouldn't go through. Finally, around 12 hours after I had activated my phone, Dad called me to say Mom's phone wasn't working. When he called her number, he was redirected to a Sprint voice mailbox. It was time to make the switch.
Even then, though, Mom's transfer wasn't quite as clean as mine. This morning, her old phone received a text my dad had sent. I don't know what's going on with the whole thing.
And I was dumb enough not to have saved my contacts onto my SIM card, so the guys at Sprint couldn't transfer them. Guess I have to do it manually. Yay.
My Favorite Features so Far
1) Apps
One of the first things I did after basic setup was download an alarm clock app. Sure, the phone has one built in. But I didn't see a "Vibrate Only" option, and that's what I really wanted. So I downloaded an app that did provide that. Today I downloaded an app that monitors my battery life by percentage, because the bar just wasn't accurate enough. Overall, what I like most about apps is if my phone doesn't do something I want it to do, I can probably make it do that just by looking for the right app. Also, I think I like the Android market. It's easy enough to use.
2) Texting
One feature I've been looking forward to for a while now is text messages stored in conversation threads, rather than an inbox and a sent box. Now if I forget what I said last (which I do surprisingly often) all I have to do is look up. Because switching back and forth between inbox and sent box got old pretty fast.
Another feature I really like, but wasn't expecting to be so crazy about, is the vertical qwerty keyboard. On my old phone, if I held the phone vertical, it gave me a numerical keyboard like the one I used for dialing. This one, like many others, gives me a smaller version of the qwerty keyboard. I used to just think this would be annoying, that the letters looked too close together, etc. But holy cow. I love this thing. It is so much more convenient than I expected. I can text with one hand!
And the last cool texting feature: Auto-correct. Yes, it's annoying sometimes. Yes, it can get in the habit of correcting to things I don't want to say. Yes, I have to teach it some "words." But that's actually easier than I expected. And mostly it helps more than it hinders, and I use the backspace key a lot less than before. So Auto-correct is my friend.
3) Front-Facing Camera
This is an excellent tool for anyone in a long-distance relationship. Enough said.
I could ramble more...
But I won't. This post has gone on long enough, and you need to get back to your life. I just wanted to share the newest exciting addition to my life. Thanks for reading!
Friday, January 6, 2012
Welcome to the world of Zelda
The Zelda video game series is one I've been casually wishing to play for maybe a few years now. By "casually wishing" I mean I decided I'd have to try it out someday, but I wouldn't go out of my way. I wouldn't buy any of the games before trying my hand at one, and I wouldn't even beg a friend to borrow their copy. But if the opportunity fell into my lap, I wouldn't hesitate to give these games a whirl. Just recently, an opportunity fell into my lap. Due to circumstances I don't want to explain fully, involving a borrowed game that was never returned, a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition ended up at my house a while ago. I found out about this yesterday and was pretty excited. This disc includes some of the earlier games, including the one for the NES that I assume is the original. Don't ask me; I just got into this stuff today.
Anyway, I decided to start at what I assume to be the beginning, because it just seemed right. And let me tell you, ouch. I played for over an hour before I had any clue what to do, and that was a mistake. The whole time I was trying to figure out where to go to get to the next stage of the game. Well, I had the wrong idea...
This is called the Overworld. There are nine dungeons to be found here, which have their own maps, but basically this right here is the whole game. And I was trying to get off of it. So much frustration resulted. Honestly, if I hadn't searched the internet and found a map like this, I would have given up on the game and counted myself a loser. Thank you, internet.
But my lack of an idea for the objective of this game was not my only problem. This is one of those games in which the player starts out with just three hearts as a health bar and can gain hearts later (so far I think I have five) but no matter how many hearts your max health is at, you restart after every death with only three hearts. This wouldn't have bothered me so much if it wasn't for the fact that, when your health is full, you can throw your sword at enemies. Now, I'm a sucker for a good ranged attack, so the whole three-hearts-to-start-with thing really ticked me off once I worked myself up to five. How was I supposed to refill my health when I'm useless without a ranged attack?
Simple: use the bow, silly. So the bow can be found in a secret chamber in the first dungeon, and I missed that memo the first time around. Then when I got there and couldn't figure out how to equip the bow, because of course you have to buy arrows first. And apparently every time you shoot an arrow it costs one rupy (Zelda's unit for money, if you're not familiar), but I still think it might be worth it. With finally a reliable ranged attack, I might have a fighting chance with this game.
So far, The Legend of Zelda has been little more than a huge and frustrating waste of time for me. However, I still see a lot of potential for this game. I'm determined to see if I can finish this game, and then I'll move onto the others. Legend of Zelda, I accept your challenge!
Anyway, I decided to start at what I assume to be the beginning, because it just seemed right. And let me tell you, ouch. I played for over an hour before I had any clue what to do, and that was a mistake. The whole time I was trying to figure out where to go to get to the next stage of the game. Well, I had the wrong idea...
This is called the Overworld. There are nine dungeons to be found here, which have their own maps, but basically this right here is the whole game. And I was trying to get off of it. So much frustration resulted. Honestly, if I hadn't searched the internet and found a map like this, I would have given up on the game and counted myself a loser. Thank you, internet.
But my lack of an idea for the objective of this game was not my only problem. This is one of those games in which the player starts out with just three hearts as a health bar and can gain hearts later (so far I think I have five) but no matter how many hearts your max health is at, you restart after every death with only three hearts. This wouldn't have bothered me so much if it wasn't for the fact that, when your health is full, you can throw your sword at enemies. Now, I'm a sucker for a good ranged attack, so the whole three-hearts-to-start-with thing really ticked me off once I worked myself up to five. How was I supposed to refill my health when I'm useless without a ranged attack?
Simple: use the bow, silly. So the bow can be found in a secret chamber in the first dungeon, and I missed that memo the first time around. Then when I got there and couldn't figure out how to equip the bow, because of course you have to buy arrows first. And apparently every time you shoot an arrow it costs one rupy (Zelda's unit for money, if you're not familiar), but I still think it might be worth it. With finally a reliable ranged attack, I might have a fighting chance with this game.
So far, The Legend of Zelda has been little more than a huge and frustrating waste of time for me. However, I still see a lot of potential for this game. I'm determined to see if I can finish this game, and then I'll move onto the others. Legend of Zelda, I accept your challenge!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)