Category Archives: Shiney!

There is no Quantum of Solace

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Because the Bond movie was so unerring BAD, that it even beats out Roger Moore’s worst days as the jet setting spy player.

How bad was it? Think Episode 2…now very carefully insert a writer’s strike in there.

Yes, that bad.

They rewrote Casino Royale characters, they butchered the plot (plot should NEVER happen off screen), they didn’t do any research and EVERYONE was evil…making you hate everyone.

With some hope they can fix this. The writer of QS was the same writer as CR…but the directors and producers wouldn’t wait for the strike to be over. So what you get is a very large pile of dogshit. Only you can’t tell it’s dogshit because someone went in there and played with it until it looked like ravioli.

So that pretty much ruined our Friday.

Saturday was the day of J.’s sprouting full form into a crotchety old man. Or so he says. We had a great dinner at La Central. I spent the day nanoing…all very good. M.’s laptop is dying in a horrific way. Hopefully she’ll get that sorted out.

Sunday was more of the same….I realize I haven’t been updating my word count on the website…need to do that…I’m past 30,000 words.

Other than that I’m populating the Genghis website with all kinds of goodies (re: games) for February.

A Day in History

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Yes we have a new president. Yes it’s historic. Yes I wish we could kick out Bush now. Obama is change for good or ill, change.

But I’m here to talk about Mochi.

Mochi those stick gooey rice cakes filled with bean curd. I love them. You would too if you try them. In Colorado you can get them premade, ready to back and filled with ice cream.

Pacific Mercantile is generally the place to go for Japanese grocer items. We have a lot more Vietnamese and Korean grocers in Denver. They don’t have Mochi. Of the 7 I’ve checked including too of the largest, neither had mochi.

Pacific Mercantile is great…except it’s downtown, parking sucks and you can miss it on a one way street.

There another huge grocer with all the mochi you could want. Plus a lot of stuff. It’s on Alameda just before Federal. It’s Pacific Ocean Int’l Supermarket. For $20 I came away with 8 trays of premade mochi. Later I’ll get some of the ice cream. I suck at cooking it so I’m not going to buy any ready to cook.

But yeah mochi. Bad for my diet, yes. But I can only really stand one at day at most. I bought little ones, so far chestnut is my favorite out of the flavors I tried (strawberry, cranberry, pear, and plum).

Now that you’re staring at me cross-eyed. Time to hold our breath till January.

The Gallery is Back, The Links are Gone

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I’ve started my gallery again. I also now have a Picasa account for photos. Go me.

I removed the links…mainly because I kept links read folks stuff…then you all got RSS feeds. Now I read everything on Google Reader.

Honestly, if you still want your link up here, let m know…I’ll put it back.

I’m having a problem with Wordbook…Hopefully that will be fixed soon and I’ll have a the Facebook update working again.

Vegas

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I’m sitting in Blondies, a sports bar in Planet Hollowood Las Vegas. J managed to get them to put on the Penguins v Devils game. So it’s drinks till dinner.

We drove to Green River last night. The Ramada we stated in was smokey in hall but the room was nice. The idiots in the next room watched tv all night as loud as the could. We stopped at the black dragon in Utah to take pictures.

We drove through rain and snow today. It’s actually 60 degrees in Vegas. Our room in Bally’s is nice. J is sitting here comparing his drink to the ass sweat of a samurai.

I know you didn’t need to know that but I had to share the pain.

The Saga Continues

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LED lights on the Dell XPS M1710 notebook. Spe...
Image via Wikipedia

I try not to blog about drama issues until they are complete. This is true especially when money or valuable objects are on the line. In this case I’m holding all the cards at the moment and I want to get this off my chest before go to Vegas.

This all started when my beast of a laptop got funny lines across the screen. I called Dell, since it was still under warranty. They sent out a tech who replaced the lcd screen. Once he did that it no longer started up at all. He came back a few days later and replaced the motherboard, video card and processor. He then started up the machine and it appeared to work fine. He shut it down and left.

But later that day when I started the system it froze on the Dell screen. The next tech I talked too had me send the laptop in for repair. A box came, and I put the computer in it.

It came back the next week with a note saying they replaced the memory and that I needed to reinstall the operating system. I’m not stupid, I got Dell back on the phone and told the tech to walk me through the process. Had this been an out of warranty machine I would have had this baby open and gutted, checking connections and probably would have replaced the hard drive too. But under warranty I’m going to get my money’s worth.

The tech walks me through the process. We get as far as the Copying files screen where it happily sits at 0%. The tech has me shut the computer off. When we attempt to turn it back on, it does nothing. Not a sound or a flicker. I have a $3000 paperweight.

After I explain to the tech what has happened he tells me that he’s horrified that I had to send it in and that never should have happened. (shoulda, coulda woulda) He tells me that Dell will now replace my system with a new machine.

I get this verified a few days later. Yesterday, what appears on my doorstep is a refurbished machine. With newer parts and more oomph than my last machine I have a XPS m1710. It runs great it’s nifty, I’m sad I didn’t get a new one but at the same time I’m happy with this.

One thing niggles my brain, my warranty. I get on the phone with Dell this morning and explain that I will gladly keep the refurbished machine if my warranty is FULLY transferred.

And Dell complies. Really it was in their best interest too. I did buy that XPS with the snazzy lights and all, and Dell probably doesn’t want to just give me the new snazzy light XPS for free. I’ll settle for slightly newer, with an upgrade path and warrantied service for another few years.

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My New Computer is Here!

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And it’s shiny.

I’ve got nearly everything installed on it. I have re-download poser and Spore is giving me grief…but so far its running not only well but extremely well.

Vista is different. I have 3 gigs of ram in this one…so I’m pretty okay with that. I will upgrade to 4 gigs eventually.

I left it downloading ipod updates and ripping my new glam rock cd. I will be in Vegas for rest of the week…so communication will be low.

Starbucks, thank you for keeping me on the diet

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I gave in today. I headed for the Starbucks next to my work. I intended to get a grande raspberry white mocha.

But unlike last week that Starbucks no longer existed this week. Bad economy affects so far: keeping me on my diet and $3.20 a gallon on gas.

Anyway, I’ve mentioned before that my big beautiful computer is dead. It’s not just dead, its limited to the Paperweight 2008. That’s right, it’s unrecoverable, and totally gone. On the verge of tears this Saturday, I sat on the phone pushing the on button again and again at the urging of the tech support guy. He finally said he’d send a tech out with new parts to try that.

“Okay,” I said. “What are they going to replace? The LCD, Video card, memory, harddrive, processor and motherboard have all been replaced already.”

“Give me a minute to talk to my supervisor.” He put me on hold. I kept thinking thank gods I bought that passport drive. My data lost is minimal and nothing I really need. Then he came back.

“Miss you qualify for a computer replacement.”

“What?” I asked him what he thought he would be sending me. Images of old refurbished m170′s rattled through my brain.

“No,” he said. “Dell policy is VERY CLEAR on this. You will be getting a new computer, the same specs or better.”

Needless to say I told everyone I saw that day.

So yesterday I had a mild panic attack and called techsupport back. Was I really getting a new computer? The answer: Yes. It was approved Monday. I should see it in ten to 21 days. HFMOG. It’s a wait. I will have been without a computer (large, to do big things such as game) for two months. But then I will have a new computer.

I’m sooo gonna keep buying Dell.