Think I need to go on hiatus for a bit

Wow, I sort of realized how screwed up I’ve been being toward some people on some forums I frequent.

Mainly my girlfriend’s troubles have been fueling my attitude lately.

For one, her brother is being a complete asshole, while at the same time promising her the world and then failing to deliver. When my girlfriend got a job, she was told that she’d be able to see me whenever she wanted on her own time. Pretty good, right? And my girlfriend works 10:30 PM to 6 AM, so she wakes me up in the morning. Perfect!

…Not so. Unfortunately, when she got the job, her brother totally failed to deliver the goods. When she asked to see me, she got it–for an hour.  And later on, she got yelled at for seeing me too much, and talking to me too much. Time for a commonly used acronym known as WTF.

Getting even deeper, her brother attacks me for not having a license nor a job. I for one am not getting a job right now because I don’t have a license (which should be handled around the 19th of sept.), and I am going to college.  He says I can’t give my girlfriend a ride because I have no license. The funny thing is, he doesn’t either. So he cruises in the same territory as I do on the issue.

But what REALLY irks me, is the fact that they then tell me, to my face, that my girlfriend will NOT be freed until I get a job of my own. Uh, WTF does my work status have to do with her freedom under their roof?

It seems like they are trying to use her against me. They know I care for her a lot, and know that she’s also my weak point. Doing something to her will cause me to react. And honestly, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. Getting a job, while netting me money, will totally screw up my college plans.

This is almost as if she had lived with her mom. While she was under her mom, she constantly held her hostage, saying stupid crap like “She’s yours if you marry her, otherwise she’s mine and she isn’t going anywhere.”

In this case, she’s being held hostage once again, this time by her brother. The price? Throw away all my plans and go to work.

…wow.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m stressed to the point where I’m saying stupid shit, and I didn’t even know that I said it. It’s like, taking over me right now, and I have no idea how to cool off. Usually my anger toward one person goes away after a few days at the most, but this one is lingering…I’ve slept on it and it’s not going away at all.

What a horrible week.

Apologies to readers about the lack of good posts. Lately I’ve been fighting back some stupid crap that has been happening the last week. Let’s look at the week in review:

First and foremost: My car breaks. See http://phorium.wordpress.com/2007/08/24/borkd-car/

Second: My girlfriend’s brother trying to get over on her. Her brother is trying to sell her a 2001 Chevy Impala for 5,000 dollars. Not bad, but when you consider that the front end is totally destroyed, and then look at blue book value, it kind of seems like a not-so-hot deal. Considering that the car is being priced at EXCELLENT blue book value, and that her brother won’t let her see the car nor drive it before buying it. BULLSHIT ALERT

Third: Girlfriends and credit cards. My girlfriend’s sister-in-law tried to guilt my girlfriend into getting a credit card. Uggh. She actually did it too, but thank whoever it got declined.  The story? My girl’s sister-in-law tried to claim that her dog will die if she doesn’t do it for her, that she’s not her brother (who’s known for fucking up people’s credit), and that she will pay the money back. When asked WHEN she’d get said money, my girlfriend answered “When she gets it”. Erm, that could be in a matter of months, and in the mean time creditors are coming after you for payment and collections.

This is my week in review. Hopefully things get better so I can resume some quality posts.

Blizzard Sorceress Strategy v.8

Because GameFAQS cannot seem to be satisfied:

Blizzard Sorceress Strategy v.8

Bork’d car

Today got interesting. I had to pick up my girlfriend at 6:45 AM this morning to bring her to my house for the day.

I did it like every other time I went over there. I went over this big hill, parked behind her house, and picked her up. However, the trip back was a horror.

I went back down the hill. Now, my car is right on empty, so I pop the car into neutral and let it cruise downhill to the gas station at the bottom. It worked for years, so what would be so different?

This time, however, when I shifted the car into neutral, instead of cruising smoothly, the car balked at me, instead stalling and then jerking wildly. The car died, while still jerking like mad. And I failed to mention that I’m unlicensed, going down a curvy hill, and the DAMNED STEERING WHEEL IS LOCKED.  Uh-oh.

Girlfriend freaked almost instantly while I tried to regain control of the car while it was going out of control. I managed to turn the key into the On position which released the steering wheel, and got it to the side of the road. I sat there for like ten minutes, and started the car again. Started right up. I thought nothing of it, besides that the transmission may be on the way out. (It’s a 1998 Chevy Prizm–not worth that much)

So I got it home safely. Hell, I even drove to the store a couple times in it. But the problems didn’t start rearing their ugly head until later on, after I dropped my girlfriend off at home.

I decided that I’d go the roundabout way home, because I felt like taking a cruise. Bad bad mistake. As I neared the police station (absolute worst place to break down), I began smelling this putrid burning smell. It smelt like plastic or silicon burning, and it was getting strong. So strong that I began feeling really sick. Then something confirmed my fears–the dreaded “check engine” light came on.

SON OF A BITCH.

I pulled the car over immediately. Nothing seemed to be wrong with it–it still ran fine, but that smell, I just couldn’t drive with that smell.

I called up my mom, and she didn’t answer. I dialed my girlfriend, told her the story, and she managed to get my mother over to where I was to pick me up.

So now, my poor car is rotting away in some parking lot in downtown Concord.

Figures.

Well, shit.

Seems everything’s breaking nowadays.

The G4 breathed it’s last for a bit, so I shelved it and brought out my PC.

My mom destroyed her new phone.

And now, my car decided to totally fail me.

I’ll update later, just posting so everyone knows where I went.

Sorceress Strategy Guide v.7

Worked away on v.7 since Gfaqs didn’t like 5.

Sorceress Blizzard Strategy

Dear Microsoft

If you are going to continue selling your already crappy OS, please, for the love of god

Include a half-decent word processing program. Please.

I was really appalled when I typed out a complete guide in WordPad for GameFAQs, and only to find out that it only inserts automatic line breaks in the program itself.

Opening the document in anything other than a MS-branded text program, such as Firefox, will disable the line breaks, making the text look like total crap.

In order to circumvent this, I had to install my old copy of Word 2000. Word did things right, it inserts the linebreaks automatically. Problem solved.

So Microsoft, give us something we can use that isn’t broken in any program you guys didn’t make. Look at Mac OS X. It comes with TextEdit, which is much better than word, is more featured, and is free!

Strategy guide on GameFaqs

I submitted a guide on Diablo 2. I hope it makes it. You can see it here:

Sorceress Strategy

Okay, let’s dispell some stuff about iPods.

It seems Apple has come under criticism lately on this one forum I frequent. I would wish to answer the criticism in my blog.

Let’s begin with one:

Apple just uses iTunes DRM so they make profits off the Music Store.
Purely bull. Apple doesn’t make a dime off the Music Store sales. Those go to the artists (yeah right) and the record companies. If Apple made any profit off the Music Store, it would be very little.

Apple’s iTunes is the worst program ever from a coding standpoint.
I don’t think so. It definitely isn’t as bad as Windows Media Player is. iTunes is stable, supports MP3/AAC encoding, and has a better library system.  WMP, however, locks you in to WMA, and unless you buy a codec, it won’t encode in any other format.

Hope this answers some questions.

If it ain’t one thing

It’s another.

I figure out of my lineup of stuff, what’s the next to break? My RAZR was taken, my MacBook Pro stolen, my car’s front-end screwed up. So naturally, my iPod was next in line.

Today, disaster decided to strike after a trip to the beach. I spent some time on the beach, lying in the sand. On the trip back, when I fired up the iPod to listen to some music, I noticed something really wasn’t right.

The iPod earbuds sounded a bit off. The left one had some heavy static in it. To be sure, I tried wiggling the wires, to no effect.

I then tried connecting the iPod to my stereo to make sure the problem can be isolated to the earbuds. Sounded great on the stereo, so the problem lies in the earbuds.

What happened? They were perfectly safe. I didn’t go in the water, and nothing touched the earbuds…

Tools of my trade

A moderator, ArcticStones on the macosxhints.com forum, had an idea for everyone to post how they use their computers in their work environment. I decided to go along and post mine there.

So I present, the tools of my trade: Post-high-school graduate.

Mainly, my sets of applications are pretty tame. I don’t run many at the same time. Since I’m just a student, I have some free time, so I wander into other trades, such as graphic design and audio production, and I also administrate two forums.

For my graphic design projects, I use my Power Macintosh G4 (Sawtooth) with a copy of Photoshop/Imageready CS. I don’t do that big of projects, however, I only do forum graphics, like signatures and avatars (small, easy, and I learn photoshop by experiementing), and the occasional site graphic. I also like to use the G4 for my administration duties on forums, because the G4 is a solid system, my MacBook Pro was usually carried in a backpack, and could be very easily damaged or stolen (the latter actually did happen, goes to show).

For my audio foolery, my tool of choice would be a mix of GarageBand ‘06 and Audacity. I used GarageBand to record, and Audacity whenever GarageBand wouldn’t let me get too detailed with the audio I was working with. Not to mention that Audacity would leave a lesser memory footprint.

And then, what’s a 18-year old student like myself without some audio playback? When I’m at home, I prefer to offload the work of audio playback to the G4. It can handle it perfectly. When I’m on the road, I use either my fourth-generation iPod or Macbook Pro with it’s normal speakers.

I’d like to close this with something I ask myself sometimes: Why did I get a Mac when a $500 bargain basement Dell can serve the purpose? One: Because my grandfather insists on buying top-grade equipment, and two: Because I can’t entrust my work, papers, and important emails to a Windows PC. I know from experience that they aren’t very stable. So mainly, reliability was my reason for a Mac. But in case I do run across the occasional Windows-only trinket, I’d always keep a Boot Camp install on my MacBook. This was another draw to the MacBook; it can run both Windows and Mac OS X for maximum compatibility.

Well, I hope you guys have somehow benefitted from my description of how I use my computers to get things done and get an education.

It’s dead, Jim

I posted a day ago about how my mom’s Motorola v323i took a trip in the washer.

Well, after numerous attempts at reviving it, sacrificing my toothbrush to brush away the corrosion on the PCB, and emptying a ten-dollar can of PCB cleaner on it, it still won’t turn on at all.

I connected the battery (the old battery that went in with it, and I think like the v262, the phone won’t operate without a battery), the wall charger, reattached everything, and tried to fire it up.

Nothing. The mini screen on the front flashed on once, then it was lifeless.

I doused it with PCB cleaner again, to no effect.

So I guess I’ll have to chuck the phone. But what to get now? A cheap Nokia? There was this black one for only $120 that had bluetooth and stuff. I may go for that, I’m not sure. All I know is the phone I wanted (The RAZR) was replaced by a newer model, and costs THREE. HUNDRED. DOLLARS.

Yeah, right, as if I’ll buy that. I’m thinking on investing in a Nokia or a Samsung, but if not, I may go for another v323i.

Dude, iTunes’ Gapless Playback = NO.

Alright, let’s get two things straight.

1. I use iTunes 7.3.1, which supports Gapless Playback. Big whoop.

2. I use an iPod photo 30GB with my Power Mac G4, which only has USB 1.1.

These two things make iTunes totally bomb on my computer. Why? Because Gapless Playback wants to analyze the data on my iPod (3.29GB worth) for gapless playback.

Well, that’s all and good, but my G4 is slow enough (450MHz), and can’t take the processing. And all this processing going over USB 1.1 doesn’t help the situation either.

I wish I could stop it, yet every time I plug in my iPod, it does this. EVERY TIME. Even if I let it finish. What’s the point? My iPod doesn’t support gapless playback, and I don’t have any albums that really take advantage of this feature.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to shut it off.

Apple, come on, respect the people who have sub-1GHz machines and USB 1.1, and give us an option to shut this feature OFF.

Otherwise, sure a lot of people beating a hasty retreat to iTunes 6.

Destroyed a v323i

My mother took away my phone for a very damned stupid reason.

“I washed my phone in the washer and I need a phone”

Argh, screw off. But nonetheless, I lost my RAZR, so I had to make do with this broken v323i that I had acquired.

First thing I did was vacuuming the moisture out. Tried firing up the phone with nothing. I figured this was going to take more, so I invested in a T-6 Torx bit screwdriver and some PCB-cleaner.

Opening the phone up with the screwdriver, and seperating the halves, I saw that the display cable was heavily corroded. Wow, these things corrode quick.

I sprayed some cleaner in the cap and let the display cable rest in there for a bit. Hopefully that would take off most if not all of the corrosion.

While that was happening, I went to work on the PCB itself, which had some heavy corrosion on the battery contacts, USB port, and some of the various little components. I was able to remove 90% of the corrosion from the PCB, and with that done, I fanned off the PCB, made sure it was dry, plugged the phone back in and tried again.

Nothing. No sound, nothing.

I’m going to let the phone try out a bit, maybe douse it again with some of the component cleaner, but personally, I think the thing’s toasted.

Well I’m appalled

This was interesting today, when I ducked into the #icechat channel to see if a long lost friend had shown up there at all. Me and Snerf were pretty cool with eachother (Snerf being the developer of IceChat), and I had even tested IceChat 7.5 on Vista for him.

So when I went in there, I was instead greeted with this:
* Received a CTCP VERSION from Snerf
* Snerf sets ban on *!*@adsl-69-236-93-156.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net
* You have been kicked from #icechat by Snerf (Anticitizen)

Well, that’s nice. Kicking me for not using icechat? I had been in there with Xchat before and he didn’t mind, why now? Add that to the fact that there’s no Mac version of IceChat…and what if he doesn’t know if I’m using a Mac? to see, I CTCP’d myself:

>Anti< CTCP VERSION
* Received a CTCP VERSION from Anti
-Anti- VERSION X-Chat Aqua 0.16.0 (xchat 2.6.1) Darwin 8.10.0 [Power Macintosh/450.00MHz]

Nice going dude, tactics like this will drive your potential users away, not bring them closer.