Author Archives: ZealotOnAStick

Stuff of the Day

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Update: So damn tired today.  Dunno why really. Didn’t DO anything last night, was home alone, watched TV, did a little laundry.

Plans for tonight are similar, except no laundry.  Just want to crawl up and get intimately acquainted with the insides of my eyelids.

Got a date for Saturday night.  Something I’m looking forward to – should be fun.

Link of the Day: This is just too cool. Needless to say, I want one.

Spam of the Day: “Teach your baby to read!”

Funny of the Day: This is why templates exist.

Pic of the Day: “Free dog souls with conversion”

Quote of the Day: “(214): I think she just tried to waterboard me with her vagina.” – someone from TFLN

Stuff of the Day

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Update: Yesterday was a rough start to things for the week.  Did something I haven’t done in quite a bit: managed to go totally zombie and apparently shut off my alarms and oversleep.  Woke up to a text message at 8:18 a.m. from James asking if I was planning on coming in to work.  Eek.  Yes, but late.  *sigh* Symptom of the sleep deficit I was running on from the weekend I guess.  It was a Good weekend, though.

After work yesterday, I ran by HEB to pick up the second half of my Androgel prescription.  They of course didn’t have it ready, despite my calling in on Friday and using their automated system to request the (half) refill.  Which was supposed to be ready by 11 a.m. on Saturday.  I was really not very pleased.  Got it eventually sorted out, got my meds, grabbed some Atkins stuff, some eggs, and got out of there.  I’m a poor, poor boy until payday – and that paycheck is going to have to stretch a whole bunch of different ways already.

Said “yes” to a “want some company” message last night.  Ended up watching Yes Man with Mummy Chick – I was a tad amused, because if I hadn’t said yes to her on a general sort of “sure, might as well” basis, I wouldn’t have seen that surprisingly excellent movie.  I like the core concept the movie is based around a lot.

Link of the Day: My Jello Shocks post made it onto Mancouch – It’s so nice of them to repost my entire article there, but use my bandwidth for the images. :/

Spam of the Day: “Grow Giant Snake in Pants”

Funny of the Day: Hmm.  Maybe some sort of ass-garter system?

Pic of the Day: Uh, maybe not?

Quote of the Day: “My next cast is going to have shag carpeting.” – Kara

Jello Shocks: Caffeinated Jello Shots

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It had been planned for a while now, at least a week and a half or so, if not longer, that the Gamer Club 4th of July party that was to be hosted at Kara and Matt’s apartment this past weekend would have Jello shots.  I’d offered my experience with this particular creation some time ago, and thusly I was going to help party prep with these lovely bits of delayed-effect intoxication bliss.  Then, Friday afternoon, I receive this text from Kara:

“Mountain dew and everclear jello. Figure out how to make it happen.”

Easy.  I’d already read about Everclear jello shots thanks to the lovely and useful My Science Project (check out their informative and entertaining site, with multiple pages documenting their jello shot experiments) – and the Jell-O packages themselves make it clear that you can use soda instead of cold water.  After some texting and chatting, the plan evolved a bit more, to make the jello shots even more potent, not using merely Mountain Dew, but Rockstar energy drinks.  Caffeinated Jello Shots, for a party in which a bunch of geeks/gamers would be getting together on a holiday.  Yes, the potential for chaos was great indeed.  After polling the attendees of the party for ideas for a good name for these caffeinated, strong Jell-O shots, the one that stuck was: Jello Shocks.

After some more communication and plotting planning, ingredients were acquired and assembled – Kara’s cat Oscar indicated he wanted to be helpful – or at least involved.

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Stuff of the Day

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Update: I was lazy last night.  I watched a lot of Neil Gaiman.  It was good.  Started watching Secretary later on in the evening, but was nodding off before I finished it, so I’ll have to pick it back up tonight or something.

Today started off sucktastically.  See my previous post about my lovely tire/wheel surprise.  That’s it for now, on to linkage:

Link of the Day: Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization: Seems to be Working.

Spam of the Day: “How the silly frog does talk”

Funny of the Day: Leg!

Pics of the Day: Patriotic Body Paint

Quote of the Day: “I’ve been putting my nuts in the salad bowl . . .” – James Cross

Venting. Because I Need More Air Loss Today.

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So, after I bought my Saab, after getting screwed over by the inspection company (if you ever talk to Rob at ASR, tell him to burn in hell, give me my money back, and then report his ass to the FTC), when I had it checked out at the Saab dealership in Fort Wayne, IN for some problems that cropped up, one of the things I was told was that 2 of the wheels (both Passenger side) were “slightly bent.”  It wasn’t bad, I’d probably be ok for a year to a year and a half or so.  That was . . . concerning, but I’ve dealt with it.  One of many little background niggling worries that I’d, eventually, deal with.  Part of my recent plans have been to get the wheels checked out locally (probably by Midland Frame and Wheel, as I was very pleased with them on the rear brake job, and they come highly recommended by a mechanic I trust, and they seem competent), and see what options I’d have for repairing or replacing the wheels.  Hopefully, repair would be viable.  I kinda like the stock Saab wheels.  I’ve looked into some stuff online for them, though, and repair (remanufacture), or replacement would be . . . costly.  Probably at least around $125 a wheel, possibly more.  Eeesh.  Then a full new set of Good (not super, but Good – probably Falkens or maybe Pirellis) tires.  This would happen in, hopefully, 2-3 months down the road, or possibly sooner if I got a sizable bonus from the software deployment at work.  Well, plans changed there, having a bonus at all is questionable, and when I might ever get a raise here so I can afford all of this necessary stuff is mystery as well.

This morning, an auspicious, lovely start to my day, I head downstairs, and notice, hmm, that’s funny . . . that (front passenger) tire looks low.  No, actually, it looks bloody flat. I hobble the car to work (thankfully it’s a very short drive), go tell James I’ve got a flat and am going to the tire place (Discount Tire, also, thankfully, very close by).  I hobble it there, park it right in front, apparently smack in the way of practically everything.  They were really busy.  I spent probably 10+ minutes waiting just to get talked to.  Told it’ll be 45 minutes or so before they can look at it and give me an assessment.  I call James, get a ride back to work.  Get a call a bit later.  Verdict?  Wheel is badly bent, they’re doubtful a new tire on it will even stay inflated.  ~$190 for a new wheel and tire.  Oh, and also, the rear passenger wheel is pretty badly bent.  It should really be replaced too.  Except I can’t right now.  I simply don’t have the money.  MAYBE I can swing getting another wheel (hopefully I won’t need another tire with it too) next paycheck.  The timing on this sucks ass.

So, went and picked up my car – $190.64 total – during the process of writing this post.  I’m past being angry now, and am just sort of weary and demoralized.  All by 10:15 a.m. today!  AWESOME!

Stuff of the Day

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Update: So, really scraping by super-tight right now, monetarily.  The 10th just can’t come quick enough for me.  I’m having to delay getting medication prescriptions refilled, and eating until then while trying to stick to my diet will be extra-challenging.  I thought I was going to be ok, but I realized yesterday that I had failed to account for the check to the dermatologist last week – which cleared this morning.  Meh.  Talked to a friend to see if I could borrow a little bit of money until the 10th, but he’s not able to help right now (which wasn’t surprising to me, he’s going on a vacation next week – to Vegas, which I really wish I could manage to join them on).

Tried to be mostly lazy last night.  Semi-succeeded, Mummy Wrap Chick came over, we hung out, watched Vexille, fooled around.  Mixed feelings there.

Chatted online with a good friend until probably slightly too late – I’m tired and cranky this morning.  But it was worth it, very enjoyable chat.

Link of the Day: Fancy Fast Food – via @kpereira

Spam of the Day: “Kelly Clarkson brutally raped”

Funny of the Day: Well, it IS a valid point.

Pic of the Day: Just Plane Awesome.

Quote of the Day: “just fyi, Sneezing while on the phone with TXU’s bill pay system Will get you put into the spanish speaking menu.” – Kara

Stuff of the Day

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Update: Not lots of anything interesting to post about for yesterday.  Worked.  Ate food. Sockeye Salmon for lunch, which was actually a bit better than some of the other salmon I’ve had before.  Thankfully went home at a normal time, not having to work late.  Aside from laundry achievement, I was pretty well lazy.  Sat/laid in bed, watching tv and chatting with folks on my laptop.  I’m planning on something very similar tonight.

Link of the Day: The Pirate Bay sold, goes legit?

Spam of the Day: “And when he came to observe his feet”

Funny of the Day: I’ve been known to have this effect.

Pic of the Day: “Mouser?  That’s for AMATEURS.”

Quote of the Day: “lol, i actually had sauce running down my chin a sec ago, my bangcock roll exploded when i tried to take a bite” – Kara

Stuff of the Day

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Update: I had a very good weekend.  Fun times, enoyable time spent with people I like.  Couple of annoyances, like having a headlight on my car go out Friday night, and having to replace it Saturday ($17.51 for the bulb, which isn’t bad, just an unexpected expense with shitty timing), and how freaking HOT it was Friday and Saturday.  Stressing out over money – I’m on stupidly tight funds until July 10th.

Saw The Proposal on Friday night.  It was cute, funny, pretty good.  Despite the whole “chick flick” stigma, it was a solidly enjoyable movie.  I was previously misinformed, however, as to the amount and extent of Sandra Bullock’s nudity in the film – definitely could have used more of that, IMO.  😉

Additionally, saw The Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen yesterday afternoon on/as part of Kara’s Birthday celebration.  It was OK.  Some of the Bayhem-isms on the film annoyed me.  The spinning camera around Shia and Megan in one scene was really, really irritating.  It downright made Kara queasy.  The massive, excessive overutilization of Shakycam also bugs the crap out of me.  It’s not limited to this film, or Michael Bay, it seems to be used in practically everything now for action.  Such a horrible blight on the film industry.  That needs to either die entirely, or be relegated to very limited, “special” usage when it’ll actually accentuate a scene and give it more impact due to its rarity.

T2 is worth seeing.  Especially on a matinee if you can.  Does it have flaws, problems?  Oh hell yes.  It also has giant robots fighting, and a few very funny moments (Sam’s mom at college was great).

Link of the Day: Interesting and unusual car paint jobs

Spam of the Day: “Best oil for pork motor” – Seriously, I don’t make any of this stuff up.

Funny of the Day: I’m tempted to try this one, but I am skeptical of the results I’d get.

Pic of the Day: Too soon?

Quote of the Day: “(972): they say celebs die in threes. leave it to billy mays to throw in one extra COMPLETELY FREE!” – Someone from TFLN.

No Stuff This Week

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Been busy the last three days.  Today . . . meh.  News I’m not altogether happy about in the short term.

Nothing serious, don’t freak, just kind of a bummer.

So, not in the mood to write stuff.  Since it’s already Thursday, I decided, screw it.  I’ll just take the week off, other than the post on hacking Carrier for the Yahoo change.

Quick/Dirty Yahoo Fix for Carrier 2.5.5

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So, lots of people using third-party IM clients noticed last week that their Yahoo connectivity broke.  This is because Yahoo discontinued older versions of their client protocol, and this broke a lot of third-party apps that used those versions of the protocol, notably multi-IM apps.  Pidgin and Carrier (a branch of Pidgin) are notable examples of cross-platform open source multi-protocol IM apps that were broken with this.

I’ve personally gotten spoiled and lazy from Carrier (and Trillian before that), having one app that I can use for most of the IM services I use all together, not having to hassle with multiple seperate clients (though occasionally I’ve loaded up a distinct client for specific features that Carrier doesn’t support – but for just general, chatting with people, having 1 app to use is nice).  Having one of the core points of functionality broken on Carrier has been an irritant for me the last several days.

Pidgin already released a 2.5.7 upgrade, which fixes the Yahoo issues.  Carrier has a 2.5.7 release in work on the SVN, but for most people, trying to checkout/download files from the SVN, get all the stuff together to compile the code yourself, build the installer, etc., is just way too much work.  There’ll probably be a new installer for Windows out for Carrier 2.5.7 sometime this week.

Until then, if you happen to use Carrier and want to fix your Yahoo . . . there’s a pretty simple fix – you can snag the new libyahoo.dll from Pidgin 2.5.7 and overwrite the one in Carrier 2.5.5, and it seems to restore Yahoo functionality.  Here’s a download for just the libyahoo.dll, zipped up for easy management (since you can’t easily install Pidgin to get it out without messing up your Carrier install): libyahoo.zip

Unzip the libyahoo.dll and overwrite your current one (the new one Will be smaller than the one in Carrier 2.5.5), in your Carrier/plugins/ folder – make sure Carrier isn’t running when you do that.  Start up Carrier, and you should connect to Yahoo again.