| Dear California |
[Nov. 16th, 2008|03:56 pm] |
Dear CA,
Put out yer god damn fires
It's making it really hot here
I had to turn on the AIR CONDITIONING again today and it's MIDDLE OF FREAKING NOVEMBER
Dear rest of the country,
Enjoying your crappy fall weather?
I wear shorts and sandals on a regular basis
This is the reward for putting up with the awful heat in the summer
Not sure if I could go back to a 'normal' climate. It would be too cold in the summer. What do you mean it's only 85?
Dear myself,
You better figure out what the HELL you're gonna do about clothing at MFF. Shorts and sandals aren't going to cut it in Iceboxistaninois. |
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| iidx goooooold x2 |
[Nov. 14th, 2008|05:34 pm] |
  
Gameworks has beefed up their rhythm-gaming selection as well as their prices! Eldar & company all went to GW Tempe last night just for kicks. I haven't been there in a while, so why not/you should.
First off, the place is under HEAVY construction. They completely tore out their vertical shooter tower game, rearranged most of the machines, and partitioned off large chunks of the game areas. They're also sporting some new games:
IIDX Goooooold: official monitor, e-Amuse readers (that don't work), unlock/timing patched, works great A+. (But couldn't you at least have gotten Troopers or waited 5 weeks for Empress or something?)
Pop'n 15 Adventure: Missing speakers, still playable. Can barely hear anything.
Rhythm Tengoku: who f'in cares
This is in addition to:
Shaka to Tambourine: the most annoying music game ever
Shamisen Brothers: Guitar Freaks on LSD
DDR Supernova 2: Excellent condition
DDR Extreme: Borderline unplayable
PIU NX: There's a guy here that can clear Bemera CZ D:
Taiko no Tatsujin 9: This game actually exists?
Now before you Bemani dicks pack your bags, keep in mind this IS a Gameworks. Their summer special of "everything's 50 cents" is over, and they're back to their ambiguous credit system. They DID keep the "4 credits/dollar" thing, so each credit on your game card is worth a quarter... but IIDX is still 10 credits. $2.50 a game? I don't think so. Even with unlocks and timing patch and a sweet monitor, that's still really steep. That's what time cards are for. Especially when they think they can get away with $1.00 for their beat-up EX and $1.50 for Pump and SN2.
But who else can say they live within 10 minutes of two different arcades that both have an expensive, obscure, ridiculously difficult Japanese rhythm game? This brings my total to four Golds I've played on: BZN's test, SVGL, MGL, and GW.
Okay, that's enough bs filler for this entry. |
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| Mildew Towels |
[Nov. 14th, 2008|01:05 am] |
Any advice for how to get that nasty awful mildew smell from towels? I'm seeing all sorts of nonsense online like bleach, vinegar, ammonia, Oxyclean, hang-drying...
Here's the deal: we had some towels that sat out in a bucket outside for a couple months, so they're REALLY bad. I think they got circulated back in with the regular towels, so I have to sniff-test about a half-dozen towels just to get one that doesn't smell like a rotten library book.
We have a top-loading washer, but it does smell funny most of the time. Bleach in an empty cycle should take care of that, right?
I'm half tempted to just go out and buy all new towels, since some of the towels are pretty much ancient and ratty. I love Goodwill's prices, but I just can't see myself buying towels there. Too vivid of an imagination.
Aaaaanyway, advice? |
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| Public Service Announcement |
[Nov. 12th, 2008|09:35 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Tempe, AZ | ] |
| [ | Current Cardi Mood: |
| |  serious | ] |
First of all my thoughts and good wishes go out to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) leobluewolf and his baby husky girl. This should never happen to anyone. I do not even know why they are allowed to sell this shit. http://leobluewolf.livejournal.com/4701.html
This product that caused this is called Sergeants: http://www.sergeants.com/animals/flea_tick/fleas_ticks.asp
...but on another note:
NEVER EVER USE OVER THE CONTROL FLEA AND TICK CONTROL ON YOUR DOG. If I had a dollar for everytime someone ended up hurting their dog by trying to save a couple of bucks and use that shit (Harts, Zodiac, etc etc) I wouldn't have to work anymore. That stuff is shit. Flea collars don't work either, I have seen dogs come in covered in fleas and have a flea and tick collar on - they just wont be near the collar. Here's a safe bet - if you can buy it in a pet store, like petsmart or petco, DON'T USE IT. Only use what the vet gives you! Reactions from OTC products ranges from severe skin reactions, seizures and even death.
I recommend;
Advantix (Awesome for Med-Lg dogs -DO NOT use this ON or IF YOU HAVE cats)
Advantage (Best for cats)
Frontline (Best bet for smaller breed dogs)
Promeris (New product, seems to be working well from what I heard)
Revolution (Safe, but sometimes I question it's effectiveness)
In that order
It's still "OTC" - you just have to buy it at a vets office - no office visit required.
Also, do not SHARE medications with your animals. Advantix is a good example - it works wonders on dogs - but if you put that on a cat - you WILL KILL YOUR CAT. It says on the box DO NOT USE ON CATS - but you'd be surprised how many people think they can save a buck and share medications between their animals. Weight is also important - make sure you have a current weight on your pet so the vet can prescribe the right size. You don't want to be giving the 50-100lbs dose to a 25lbs dog.
You'd also be surprised that people have tried to apply these medications rectally or orally instead of along the shoulders and back.
Just a public service announcement. I know we are pretty much out of flea and tick season in more of the country - but it'll be back before you know it and this will be some good information to keep in mind.
But seriously - there needs to be some kind of movement to get this shit off the shelves.
-Sema |
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| Tread lightly! |
[Nov. 12th, 2008|06:55 am] |
Since I had the day off yesterday, I managed to put it to good use! In the early morning, I took Annee-bitch to the vet for a dental all the way up in north Scottsdale. It's a little chilly in the mornings here, hah.
Immediately afterwards, gotta do homework. It wasn't too horrible, except for the fact that I don't remember ANY of it from class since it covered topics from a month ago. Calculating standard deviation by hand is fun!
That more or less ruined my morning, so the rest of the afternoon was spent on fursuit stuff. We've got one suit that's 99.999% done, just needs some touch-ups around the feet. When I get back from class today, that's going down, as well as Far's body suit. I have a ridiculous amount of stripes/markings sitting out to be added to that.
Furring up the feet and sewing up a neck is tedious, so I went to unwind at Golfland. I came about 15 seconds away from clearing Para Bros EX, one of the two courses from Extreme I haven't cleared. I more or less comboed the first four, then blew it in the last slowdown in PSM. Beat Paranoia Hades Oni with 833k. I have NO idea how the designers expect people to clear the Boss Rush SN2 course. Pluto Relinquish Oni, fifth stage? Are you serious?
Anyway, ITG was on too once I got warmed up. I'm not sure what's going on with my thumb drive. Normally it works fine for customs, but last night, it would read all my stuff, and then give me a "Cannot read USB: Bad Address" error. Then it would do the NoName thing. Rebooted the machine, and VERY first round, did the exact same thing. I bet it's because I used it on the hacked machine, and it messed up the score table/XML files? I don't really care about my scores, so maybe I'll just format it and replace everything with an older backup.
I went home after that 'cause babinz semjay required medicine. Can has Cepacol? It didn't work. I think we're out of options, unless I can go back in time and get that "magic mouthwash" from when I had mono. It had lidocaine in it and felt sooo good.
Hopefully today goes a little better than Monday did. I don't understand how it takes three hours to teach a 50-minute class. Sure I stayed after to help students, and sure the bus ride home isn't exactly super-speedy, but geez. I'm SO done with teaching after this semester. No Regrets.
And finally, a lol for you. I can't find any info on this, so here goes:
Yesterday, somebody had spraypainted one of the speed limit signs on a highway through town, changing the 55 to 65. What makes it HILARIOUS is that it was situated right in front of a speed camera trap where the speed limit drops from 65 to 55, so the camera was going CRAZY shooting everyone for doing 11+ over. But then to really top it off, it was the top story on the TV news all freakin' day, second only to the Vet's Day parade. Well, it beats another drop-house segment, I suppose. |
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| Solitaire stuff |
[Nov. 10th, 2008|01:07 am] |
Hey skuffcoyote, I figured that thing out for ya.
The other day, Skuff showed me an interesting solitaire game. The rules were simple:
- Start with a shuffled standard deck of 52 cards.
- Flip over cards until you have at least four cards and add them to a stack.
3) If you have at least four cards, look at the topmost card and the fourth card from the top.
-- If they match suit, remove the second and third cards from the top of the stack.
-- If they match rank, remove the top four cards from the stack.
-- Repeat this process until neither condition is true or you have fewer than four cards.
- Add a card to your hand and go to step 3.
- If when you run out of cards your stack is empty, you win.
http://superwailingbonus.com/stuff/solitaire.java.txt The java file I wrote is here if anyone would like to see.
After 10 million simulated plays, the win ratio was around 00.930% to 00.932%, or about 1 in 107.
Funny thing is, neither of us knows what this game is called. Does it sound familiar to anyone? |
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| dancing crap |
[Nov. 9th, 2008|12:16 pm] |
Here are some videos from my outing with skuffcoyote!
| This is at Mesa Golfland. Usually it's a great place to go play R21 for super-cheap, but somebody decided to invest in these monolithic speakers that are so loud you can't PIZZA READY FOR ORDER NUMBER 52 hear yourself ARCADE ATTENDANT TO THE GOLF COUNTER PLEASE think straight.
Next time I go I'm going to enable +12dB all of my music files. Christ.
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| So we said fuck it and went to Kyrene Lanes in Chandler. Something was wrong, though. The preview song was Pandemonium, but the slow version of it that's not on ITG. Put in a credit, and now it's R16 instead of 21? What's going on? Surprise! It's a hacked ITG2!
But whoever hacked it forgot to turn off the timer, so you've got about 50 seconds to wade through about 1500? songs.
I'm not sure how I feel about having a hacked machine. ITG3 and Rebirth stuff is nice (isn't half of it technically unofficial?) but some of the extras get reeeeally sketchy. The song Skuff picked in the movie was... pretty awful.
Pros:
-Lots of songs, including official DDR stuff and ITG3.
-If you hit the coin box just right it gives you free credits.
-Dedicab, so nice nice nice pads.
-They turned up the volume a lot.
Cons:
-Timer enabled
-Can't play custom songs (or in my case, marathons)
-Lots of crap
-I could play all of these songs on an R21 anyway with the right files.
-YOU CAN ACTUALLY HEAR THE MUSIC
-Did not have the BG video for Disconnected Zeo |
Plaguefox, if you see this, how much of 4-panel ITG3 actually got 'finished'? I could have sworn Hasse Mich was 11/13, but on this machine it's 9/10 with a bunch of edits. And I've seen 9' and 11' charts for Stop&Go Expert... eh, whatevs.
Eh, that's about it for now. |
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| To Whom It May Concern |
[Nov. 8th, 2008|12:45 am] |
Dear Arizona,
I know you're in a budget crisis and all, but I have concerns that the solution may not be to litter the highways with speed traps to increase traffic fine revenue.
Sincerely,
Disgruntled Driver
I was driving home from Lucky 'n Skuff's place and ran across no fewer than EIGHT photo radar traps in a 40-minute period. Peoria to Tempe/Mesa. Four of those were placed in a ten-mile stretch on the western 101. Ridiculous!
And it's likely that these are all new cameras, too. The SR 51 now has three traps when there used to be none a mere two weeks ago. Some have been around forever like the three in north Scottsdale, but they're popping up like hits on the sex offender website.
What a bunch of baloney. Anyone else noticing this stuff too? There ought to be a way to petition to get them removed because I think they do more harm than good. Remove cameras and raise speed limits and you'll solve a lot of problems. After all, the speeders aren't the ones you want to penalize- it's the drunks.
Sema also brought up a good question: what about individuals that object to having their picture taken for religious reasons? To my knowledge, you have to have your picture taken in order to get a driver's license, but passengers don't.
Anyway, time for bed. |
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| The fleecing of furrydom |
[Nov. 6th, 2008|03:29 pm] |
I've been seeing this kigurumi phenomenon more and more- large customized character pajamas. I've always been on the fence about taking on this challenge. I have some stretchy material lying around that I want to use for the wrists/ankles, but I've never had the time to attempt one of these projects yet.
I've had multiple people encourage me to make these. Given my track record with fleece hats, this would be a walk in the park, right? Not to mention all of the body suits I have done or am currently doing. It's like puttin' peanut butter 'n jelly together!
I just don't know what the market is like for these guys. Is there sufficient demand for these outfits to make the endeavor worthwhile? I'm also concerned about pricing. What would people be willing to pay for a pair of pajamas? There's some stiff competition out there already. Fleece is relatively cheap to come by, but a majority of the charge would be labor.
Don't mind me, just throwing ideas out there. I gotta get through my current commissions before I start anything crazy! Would anyone like to throw me a design? Maybe I'll make one on the cheap as a prototype for somebody. |
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| Hahaha Crow you're hilarious |
[Nov. 6th, 2008|08:09 am] |
Since I am both a student and faculty at ASU, I got President Crow's email twice last night. It was essentially the same email, but written two different ways. Fascinating!
Message to ASU Students - ASU Fiscal Information Resources
Following up on my recent video message about the potential impact of Arizona’s serious financial constraints on ASU, I want to thank you for the feedback and the constructive budget suggestions that many of you have sent me over the last few weeks. The university leadership team and I are reviewing them carefully as we continue to think through contingency plans for ASU’s future. I appreciate your proactive efforts to help identify solutions to the challenges that lay ahead.
Many of you have also posed questions about ASU’s financial operations and specific plans for responding to the state’s budget problems. It is important to have a basic, factual understanding of the fiscal complexities of the institution and there are multiple existing resources available to you that outline the university’s ongoing budget, tuition and operation plans. I encourage you to access this information for a better understanding of where ASU stands, and also to visit the News and Updates section of the Planning and Budget web site for timely and accurate updates on budget developments on the state and university level. You may also find this recent radio interview on state budget issues to be of interest.
Going forward, I will continue to communicate with you on budget issues and your cost-saving ideas will continue to be welcome. I hope that these comprehensive resources will be helpful in providing a heightened awareness of ASU’s plans and financial status, as well as the sizable issues it faces as the State of Arizona works to address its current fiscal shortfall. | Message to ASU Faculty and Staff - ASU Fiscal Information Resources
Following up on my recent video message regarding the potential impact of Arizona’s serious financial constraints on ASU, I want to thank you for the support and the many constructive budget suggestions you have offered during the last few weeks. The university leadership team and I are reviewing them carefully as we continue to think through contingency plans for ASU’s future. I appreciate your proactive engagement in identifying solutions to the significant challenges that lay ahead.
Many of you have also had questions regarding ASU’s financial operations. It’s important that our university community have a basic, factual understanding of the fiscal complexities of the institution and there are multiple existing resources available to you that outline the university’s ongoing budget, tuition and operation plans. I encourage you to review the information there for an enhanced understanding of where we stand and also to visit the News and Updates section of the Planning and Budget web site for timely and accurate updates regarding budget developments on the state and university level. You may also find this recent radio interview on state budget issues to be of interest.
Going forward, you will receive additional communications about budget developments and your cost-saving ideas will continue to be welcome. I am hopeful that this comprehensive information will be helpful in supporting an enhanced awareness of ASU’s plans and financial status, as well as the sizable issues it faces as the State of Arizona works to address its current fiscal shortfall. |
What interesting choices of wording. I'm not even going to point out that the first paragraph should end with "LIE ahead"...
New American University, you guys. FEEL IT. |
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| Let's keep moving |
[Nov. 5th, 2008|05:48 pm] |
Ohhh I'm gonna get shit for this, but here goes. The "getting political bullshit out of my system" post.
This morning, on my way to school, I overheard an interesting conversation on the bus. About halfway through the route, a black man got on. He was somewhere around 18-25, not too old, not too young; I really didn't get a good look. He talked on his cell phone about the elections, saying such gems as, "It's our country, it's our world", "Times are changing", "He won by a landslide last night", "We've finally made it to the White House", "I'm from the south side of Chicago too", and "I'm so proud to be an American right now, it feels so good."
Some of those might not be exact quotes, but it was something along those lines. I didn't quite catch it all. Either way, it doesn't take a lot to figure out what he was talking about. Let me spell it out for you: "I'm so happy a brother got in the White House"
This bus was almost at capacity, which is about 15 people, so I'm sure political views ran the gamut among the riders. Finally, somebody broke the ice. A man, who also happened to be black, sitting two seats to my right put his Bible down and confronted the guy on the cell phone. "He may have promised change, but it's up to the people to enact that change" and "What was stopping a black man from taking the office forty years ago?"
The first guy had NO idea how to react to this. A black man that could look past the candidate's race? But... but... he's black! It's a historic election! Historic, I tell you! "This opens up the door to Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans," he spouted. "No it doesn't. There was nothing stopping them from running before."
I'm not afraid to say I voted Republican, primarily because I don't agree with his plans for taxes and health care. Once I heard his plans for government subsidization of college tuition, that was the last straw. That's what FAFSA is for already! My views are probably best characterized as "Do whatever you want as long as it doesn't affect me/my wallet," which some call Libertarian? I don't know.
So I guessed wrong, big deal. Come January there will be a black man in office- okay, let's see how he does. I'm actually kind of excited to see how this turns out- will he hold up his feel-good promises of Change, or will he flake out and become a mere figurehead for special interests and big business?
What I don't want to hear about is the fact that he's not white, and the fact that it's such a big deal. Yes, it's a first; yes, it's historic; (no, it was not a landslide victory) but that doesn't change the fact that he still has to live up to all of the responsibilities of being President. I don't care what color your skin is; it's still the same job.
If you want to be proud of anything regarding this election, take pride in the fact that he could and did run for President, without anyone or anything holding him back, and that he won in the exact same way that everyone else has, using the same democratic process that has served this country well for over 200 years.
I think this episode of South Park sums up my feelings about the whole thing: Chef Goes Nanners.
--
Now there are two things I'd like to rant about.
Here in Arizona, Prop 102 passed with a pretty large margin, effectively banning gay marriage with an Article enumerated "XXX." Oh, the irony. I don't understand this issue. Is it important because of partner benefits, or just for the sake of recognition? In this state you can get pretty good domestic partner benefits and don't even have to get married. You can still live together and do the nasty, basically everything but a little piece of paper saying you are legally wed. Is there something I'm missing here besides the little piece of paper? What's stopping you from making up your own religion that only weds gays and declaring yourselves that way?
I'm all for gay rights and equality and such. I don't see man and woman; I see person and person. Whatever you want to do is awesome as long as you're happy together. But why is this so controversial? It's going to be a long, long time before any society fully marginalizes gender in determining social roles.
The other thing I'd like to rant about is the Electoral College. Why does this still exist?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this system fudges numbers. The popular vote was within a 10-point-or-so margin this year, yet our future President won 2-to-1 with electoral votes? If you still don't believe me, read this. It's an archaic system that needs to be abolished. People might not be able to wrap their brains around millions of votes, but it's better than knowing that your vote was reversed and counts twice as much against somebody else's.
That is all. |
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