People You Can't Stand

Are there people in your life that you’re forced to interact with that can’t seem to say anything to you that doesn’t constitute bitching about something you do? Well I have two of them and unfortunately I have to see at least one of them almost every day. One is this guy that works at the cafeteria where I eat. He’s relatively new there so that might be the only reason he is the way he is. He’s been bothering me about not signing in every time I get something from the cafeteria. The way the food system at the school works is that you purchase a meal plan at the beginning of the semester that has X number of meals you get per week. I think I have 19 or something per week. Anyway, you’re supposed to go up to the counter in front of the grill and give the person there your name which they check off on a computer. It’s basically to make sure they know when they can charge you money for exceeding your meal plan which has never happened and will never happen to me. After that, you can order something from the grill or get something lying out on the opposite wall like pizza or salad bar. That’s the way you’re “supposed” to do it. The way it’s actually done, (over the two years I’ve been there), is you go order/get what you want and eat it. The person at the computer either sees you or doesn’t see you doing this and signs you in… or not. Its not Arma-fucking-geddon if you aren’t signed in. Since there’s food that’s already out why not just get it and eat it instead of walking past it to go wait in a line just to say your name and then go back to get a slice of pizza or a drink? That just waste’s *everyone’s* time. I always saw it as a method of regulating gridlock at the grill.

So he came up to me on several occasions while I was eating and told me I needed to sign in. He knows my damn name. In the time it took him to accost me he could have signed me in himself like everyone else does. It takes more time and energy to leave the kitchen, harass me, and return then it does to press two buttons on a touch screen monitor. So what… he wants me to go with him back to where he was just standing and watching me from to get signed in? If he knows my name and he knows I’m eating, what more information does he need? He doesn’t need me to wait in line at the grill and *prompt* him to sign me in so that I can go get a cup of juice.

I actually failed to sign in so many times, (3-4), that he wrote me up for it. I don’t know what that means for me but for him I’m pretty sure it means he’s anal-retentive. He’s the only one that gives a shit about what I do in the cafeteria and if he wants to fill out papers to uphold his subscribed bureaucratic protocol then that’s his prerogative. I just don’t know why anyone would expend so much time and energy to be a pain in the ass ultimately. Recently he’s been bothering me about how much salad I put on my plate and I can’t decide if it’s more or equally as trivial.

The other guy that won’t stop harassing me works in the IDS shop. Huh, both of them stand behind counters; weird. Well it’s not like there’s a specific thing he gets on me about, it’s anything and everything. It’s something new every time. Actually it’s often about cleaning something. Any time he’s in the room I feel like I need to stop whatever I’m doing or else I’ll be provoking him in some unknown way. Most of the stuff he says is small but he hounds you about things so constantly that it wares down your resistance and after a certain point everything he says just seems to set you off. Clean these tools off. Put a clamp on that. You’re going to clean this up right? Don’t use that. Why aren’t you cleaning? Turn on the dust collector. It’s nice that they have a sign on the band saw and a shop-tec to yell at you to turn on the dust collector but that still doesn’t tell me how to turn it on. Assuming you know what a dust collector is, the switch is still behind another machine. I saw a guy using a chop saw and he yelled at him to turn on the dust collector. Of course he had to ask where the switch was because it’s not at all apparent. He told him and then he asked “which one, there’s like four.” After all of the oblivious students they’ve had asking about the switch you’d think they’d make it a little less ambiguous. Or maybe it’s just too much fun haranguing them about it.

Another time he pontificated on this girl and I about not doing our part in clean-up time. At random intervals during the day a shop-tec gets on a megaphone and informs everyone in the shop that it’s time to clean up. If you’re unlucky enough to drift in during clean-up time, you get unjustly burdened with it like we did. We never heard the announcement but that doesn’t make us immune to being scolded for not doing what it said.

Yet another time, (after I had switched from using one lathe to the one next to it because the speed controls wouldn't stay where I put them); he came up and asked if I was going to clean up the other lathe. Would it be OK if I finished making the mess before I start cleaning it up? Son of a bitch! Just leave me alone. I hadn't even done anything wrong yet.

The time he pissed me off the most was when I lost the needle to my paint gun inside the gun washer. I usually take my gun apart and put it in the washer and it’s fine. There is a mesh metal sheet at the bottom of the washer to let thinner drain through and keep your gun from falling down. There are a few holes that are larger than the rest on the mesh and can allow the passage of a loose needle. On this occasion was when it happened. My first thought was to just remove the mesh and fish out the needle. The mesh isn’t secured in place at all. It’s just sitting on some pegs. Then I thought I should get a shop-tec to get it out because I don’t want to mess around with the washer. I should have just ignored that thought. When I went up to the counter the only tec there was… that guy. Oh goodie. I can’t wait to hear this one. I reluctantly went up and explained to him that I lost a gun part in the washer. As soon as I mentioned that my gun was disassembled while in the washer, it seemed to activate his big fat lecture mouth. He starts *complaining* (he never actually sounds like he's just requesting or advising), about how you're not supposed to put a disassembled gun in the washer. That's just stupid in my opinion. The inside, (AKA the important part of the gun), will not get cleaned at all unless it's disassembled and cleaning the outside of the gun is unnecessary. If I don't put the gun in the washer while it's disassembled there's no point in putting it in the washer at all. Anyway, he starts acting skeptical that he can get the needle back. He opened a panel on the side of the washer and confirmed his own suspicions by briefly glancing at the internals of the machine. Then He basically said that he couldn't get it out and to go ask so-and-so if they could do anything about it. I knew I should have just gone with my first instinct and done it myself or at least left *him* out of it. I waited for him to leave, removed the mesh in the washer and retrieved the needle. After reassembling my gun, I walked out of the room and passed the shop counter where he was. He asked if so-and-so got it out. I lied and said he did. Then he gives me this look and says, (emphasizing the word don't), "don't do it again." If there was ever a conversation in my life that required a crass rebuttal, that was probably it. A nice *go fuck yourself* or a *shove it up your ass* would have been most efficacious. I know it's never a good idea to have verbal altercations with someone I'm going to have to interact with several times from now until I graduate so I just walked away. I just wish I could have let him know that I managed to do the task that he couldn't, in less than 30 seconds.

Movie Soundtrash

In hell, this is all you get to listen to.

Codec City

Why does this world need so many media compression file types? Why can’t we just have one compression type with limitless resolution and aspect ratio settings? Instead we have an endless array of meaningless acronyms that have to be dealt with individually. If you want to open the file Pokemon.SKXEECGJSAQ-43783, then you have to get a codec that decompresses SKXEECGJSAQ-43783 files, (wherever that is.) Why should you have to do that? The files all do the exact same thing so what’s the point of having each one have it’s own stupid codec you have to acquire to open it with? That’s like if every time you got a letter in the mail, you had to use a specific letter opener to open it. If it’s a bill, use the bill opener. If it’s a Christmas card, use the Christmas card opener. Don’t have a Christmas card opener? Then throw that Christmas card away because you can’t open it. They’re all paper envelopes with letters inside. You should just be able to use anything sharp to open them with but no.

Having four or five file types is one thing but we have: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, RealVideo, AVI, DivX, XviD, OGG, OGM, Cinepak, WMV, MID, WAV, MP3, WMA, and M4P/AAC among many more. And in my opinion, WAVs are needlessly large files; MPEG-4s don’t work; and M4Ps were created by the Prince of Darkness. An M4P is a compression that online music stores use. The only difference I can see in it from an MP3 is that You can only play it through whatever service you bought it through like Napster or iTunes, which is just a pain in the ass. M4P was literally created to be less useful for it’s consumer. OGG is something I find popping up more often then it should. I remember I had to scour the internet for days to actually find a program that would play them. That’s another thing, if I have to research a file type in order to find a way to play it then the type in question just shouldn’t exist.

Who keeps making all of these file types anyway? Did it really seem to them like a good idea to make new stuff for an, (already polluted beyond use), universe of compressions? It’s like a handful of people creating new languages and then expecting everyone to use them. We don’t need any more languages. Languages get in the way. Here’s a good rule of thumb if you’re thinking about making a new compression type: unless your compression is going to make files 1/10th their original size, it’s worthless and no one will give a shit. Have a nice day.

Mortal Kombat Movie Marathon

The Mortal Kombat franchise was created when co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias stayed up all night watching kung-fu movies… at least that’s what *I* like to believe. There are so many MK characters that look like movie characters it’s weird. I’m certain there are a lot more than this but this is just what I’ve noticed. Inspired by, ripped-off from, or total BS from my head… You decide.
*SPOILERS*

Starting with the most obvious, we have Bruce Lee from “Enter the Dragon” and Liu Kang. They’re both trained as Shaolin monks. They don’t like wearing shirts. They also go WHAAAAAAAA!! when they throw a punch. Still, it’s a very common fighting game character archetype. What’s more interesting is that the plot of Enter the Dragon is very similar to the “plot” of the first Mortal Kombat. I.E. the main bad guy throws a tournament on his island inviting fighters from all over the world.

The main bad guy from Mortal Kombat is Shang Tsung. His movie equivalent isn’t from ETD though, it’s Lo-Pan from “Big Trouble in Little China.” They’re evil and impossibly decrepit-looking. They sit on their asses until it’s absolutely necessary to stand. And they steal people’s life-force to regain youth

Speaking of Big Trouble in Little China, here are some Raidens from said movie. OK they are actually called Thunder Lightning and Rain. That’s kind of weird, there’s also an MK character called Rain but he looks nothing like the other Rain. Actually he was supposedly named after Prince’s “Purple Rain” which makes a very silly visual pun.

Anyway, aside from dressing exactly the same and using lightning attacks, they also have the same moves when charging their lightning, if you compare it with an MK cut scene like the intro to MK Deception.

The three cyborgs, (Sektor, Smoke, and Cyrax) were actually said *by Midway* to be based off of a favorite sci-fi character. No name was mentioned but I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s the Predator. The Predator is a high-tech hunter from space that just likes hunting people with lots of cool traps. It’s been a while since I saw the original but I know in AVP he has this net he can shoot at prey. The cyborgs are all assassins which is almost the same as a hunter right? Cyrax, (the yellow cyborg) also shoots a net to trap people in, which is like the most annoying thing in the game. Still Predator looks most like Smoke, (the blue one.)

So Blaze and the Human Torch from “The Fantastic Four…” If I cropped the pictures a little more you wouldn’t even be able to tell which is which.

Here’s an interesting one; Kenshi and Neo from “The Matrix Revolutions.” They were both blinded by their worst enemy but still see with some kind of extrasensory vision. They have psychokinetic powers. Over their eyes they wear red headbands. I guess physically they look similar too. Also Neo stopping bullets and Kenshi’s “Telekinetic Push” have the same, (fun to practice in the mirror), stance.

Neo actually does this once or twice while outside of the matrix so it’s a legitimate power and not just “bending the rules” of the matrix. The weird thing is that Kenshi first appeared in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance which was released in 2002. The Matrix Revolutions was released a year latter so I don’t know how to explain that one. Maybe The Matrix copied Mortal Kombat?

I’ve saved my favorite for last. It’s Kobra and Johnny from “The Karate Kid.” Look at that, they’re wearing the exact same gi! (If you’re using Kobra’s alternate costume.) Kobra also uses karate and Johnny is on the Cobra Kai Karate Team. Cobra… Kobra… Get it? They also both have cobras on the backs of their gis. I like to think of this as what Johnny looks like as an adult... with a big knife.

My Cynical View on Holidays

Well it’s almost Valentine’s Day and that just means another opportunity to throw money away. I’ve had a beef with this holiday forever. Actually most holidays I think are a complete load. Well, some more than others…

Valentine’s Day - A day where, for whatever reason, you are obligated to reassert the presence of the love you possess for significant others. Well that’s all well and good for people that are loved but for everyone else it’s a punch in the face. And another thing; I don’t want The Man brainwashing my significant others into believing they’re absolutely entitled to receiving flowers and candy every single year on February 14th.

St. Patrick’s Day - Another holiday with “St.” in the title. What, are we all Catholic? That’s bullshit. If the government wanted to make a Vishnu or a Quetzalcoatl day, it would get picketed and/or voted down. But if you staple an excuse for alcoholism onto it, the public can probably overlook whatever random deity or saint is attached. Does anyone even know who St. Pat was? Well no they don’t, but they *do* like being plastered-ass drunk. If people were required to go to mass to drink on St. Patrick’s day, do you think it would still have the same amount of observance? It’s a mockery. Maybe if I’m lucky enough, some bitchy atheists will complain about the name and get it changed to something more appropriate like Alcohol Awareness Day or Get Wasted Day.

Easter - I don’t really know what the point of Easter is. It has something to do with the resurrection of Christ, bunnies, and hiding shit in the backyard. Makes perfect sense. I’ll admit it has a quirk factor in that you’re hiding eggs that you may or may not see again. Then one day you’re mowing the lawn and there’s a thud followed by a fountain of shredded multicolored plastic and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

I only have one clear Easter memory and it involves an Easter egg hunt orchestrated by my dad. Instead of hiding a bunch of little eggs all around, he had put one big Easter basket cache somewhere for me to find. I looked around for like half an hour without finding anything. After being highly demoralized from this, I inevitably looked up at some point and found that the basket was in a damn tree. It wasn’t even below eye-level let alone within my reach. Ever since then I couldn’t wait to have kids so I could do the exact same thing to them.

Independence Day - Well how could I have anything against something that feeds my lust for unchecked pyro madness?

Halloween - Halloween used to be a big thing for me. I used to carve like half a dozen pumpkins, decorate the house, watch The Nightmare Before Christmas, and go trick-or-treating. Looking back I have to ask the question; what was I thinking? You see I’ve lived out in the country for most of my life, in a community with houses that were an average of 50 yards apart and then the driveways themselves would be like another 50 yards to the actual house. When you’re 8, the promise of free candy can easily cloud your judgment, (what little there is.) Is it more economical to walk through rural hickville for four hours to get two pounds of saltwater taffy and pennies, or to just go to Costco and get an $8 box of Milkyway bars? The decorations and whatnot I put out every year never got seen by anyone not living in the house because it’s the most secluded house in the neighborhood. It’s down a hill surrounded by a poison oak grove. You can’t even see it from the road. On the rare occasion that a trick-or-treater passed by, do you think they would go down the creepy road going God-knows-where in the woods? Fuck that, that’s where Michael Myers hangs out. I can seriously only recall one party of kids ever visiting the house for
Halloween. Jehovah’s Witnesses show up more often.

Eventually I wised up and started trick-or-treating at subdivisions in town. But I still decorated the house for some reason. One time I was going to go with my friend in his neighborhood but he got his hand slammed in a car door and decided not to go. It wasn’t broken. It wasn’t even sprained. He just got hurt and skipped out on trick-or-treating. Oh, I felt pain in my hand an hour ago so I don’t want an ass-load of candy now. Boo-fucking-hoo. What are you, a communist? I ended up going with his little sister who I never talked to. Thanks a lot.

The last time I went was when I was about fourteen. I went with friends and I swear every other house we went to had an occupant that would make some comment to me like “Aren’t you too old for this?” No, I’m the same age as my damn friends you fucker, I’m just tall. After that shit, I never went trick-or-treating again. I didn’t decorate either.

Thanksgiving - I’ve heard my mom say that Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday. I used to not really care about it but it seems that the older I get, the more I enjoy it. I like Fall. I like having a break from school. You get to see family you like that you haven’t seen in a while. You get to eat lots of good food. And you don’t have to fucking buy shit for anyone. This is funny because three seconds after Halloween is over, all of the stores are decorated for Christmas and it’s almost another two months to Christmas. Thanksgiving isn’t a consumer holiday and therefore unimportant to stores. For me, any holiday not developed and administrated by Hallmark, and Macy’s is worth celebrating. The down side is the school break is ruined because my school feels it necessary to completely encompass any sort of free time you might have by giving you extra homework. God forbid I actually get to interact with my family on Thanksgiving. The suffering is multiplied exponentially because the kind of homework I get involves thousand dollar 3d modeling programs, table saws, drill presses, compressed air generators, and disk sanders. Needless to say, I don’t have any of that shit so it makes it a little difficult. This alone makes me want to stay at school. The other thing is that with the people that you want to see come the people that you *don’t* want to see. Then the drama. Oh hell, the drama.

Christmas - Every time someone asks me what I want for Christmas I draw a blank. I can never come up with anything I actually want that someone will buy me. I hate trying to figure out what to buy people and who to buy for. It’s just highly aggravating for me. Come to think of it, Christmas is like a holiday built upon layer after layer of chores. Go get a tree. Set up the tree. Decorate the tree. Decorate the house. Find a parking space. Buy X number of presents for X number of friends and family. Now wrap all of those presents. Etc. Etc. But gift procuring is what really bothers me. What if they hate my presents? What if I hate there’s? What the hell am I even going to get them? This may sound silly but wouldn’t it make more sense for everyone to use their money to buy themselves presents that they want? Then everyone could wrap their own presents and put them under the tree. And all December people would wonder what you got for yourself. Then when Christmas comes everyone opens their presents and acts very surprised and elated over what they got themselves. They will turn to one another and brag about what they received and whoever gets the most expensive presents wins Christmas.

New Years - St. Patrick’s day with pointy hats and half-hearted promises to yourself to change in some way. Definitely not cause for celebratory fanfare.

iPods

Ipod is still an unbelievable phenomenon even after being released like seven years ago. I haven’t even gotten to my main point yet and I’ve already found another thing about iPods that annoys me. The Way you’re supposed to write the word iPod is “iPod.” What is that “i” even for anyway? Is it supposed to be referring to “you” in first person like the pronoun? If that’s the case then it should never be in lower-case. Then after that, the P in “pod” is capitalized. Have you ever seen a word with only the second letter capitalized? And then if you use it as the first word in a sentence like I did, what happens? Does the P remain capitalized creating two capitalized letters in a row? i.e. IPod is still an unbelievable… Do you make the P lower-case so that, that doesn’t happen? i.e. Ipod is still an unbelievable… Or are the laws of basic grammar overridden to correctly state the word? i.e. iPod is still an unbelievable… Oh God, it’s horrible! I can’t look at it!

Anyway, what I was really going to talk about was how iPod has a monopoly on the portable mp3 player market. It has such a large presence you’d seriously think it was the only mp3 player in existence. Why is that? I’m 99% sure it’s the advertising because if it’s the quality then the rest of the market must be lightyears away from creating a functional product.

When I first got my iPod mini, (in ‘04 I think), I thought I just got a defective one or something. The battery’s lifespan was drastically short, (about 45 minutes.) It also had a tendency to freeze. I wouldn’t even be able to turn it off. Sometimes plugging it in to my computer would reboot it but not always. A couple of times I had to wait for the battery to die so it would shut off. Also sometimes when I paused it and tried to turn it off it wouldn’t turn off. I’d have to wait like 10 seconds for it to get ready or something and then it would let me turn it off. I got a Nano for Christmas over a year ago. I thought this would be the end to all the problems. Well… the battery actually worked which was more than I could say for my cousin’s. His Nano’s battery was defective and had to be sent in to get a new one. The rest of the problems however, remained. It still freezes and still has that 10 second delay shit that drives me crazy. My old iPod mini became a mass storage device for a while until it decided that it didn‘t want me to have any of my files back. So now it’s a useless piece of junk. I guess I did get a defective one. They’re all defective.

My roommate came in a while ago and said his Nano was frozen and it was. The backlight was stuck on and everything. It stayed like that for a couple of hours and then just turned off by it’s self. What the hell? Why is this such a big problem still? Is it just so damn popular you don’t even have to fix the problems? How much more simple does it need to be for it to not do this. It has one function; play music, and it freezes. It’s not rocket science.

House Creatures

Well all of our pets died/disappeared so that means my family had to get a new generation of pets. (AKA one puppy and one kitten)

The puppy is the newer addition. It’s an Australian Shepard with fur white like snow, eyes as blue as the sky, and teeth like a motherfucking piranha. She lives in the kitchen and outside. Whenever you enter the kitchen she bounds out of the pantry tackles your feet and begins to bite them. Rest assured that this is going to occur for the entire duration of your stay in the room. She literally *will not* stop biting you until you leave. It’s occasionally punctuated by her trying to jump up on you or rip the cuffs off your pant legs but that’s about the zenith of interaction you’re going to achieve. This would be less annoying and a little more cute if it wasn’t so damn painful. You have to wear shoes if you go in the kitchen now but even then, her tiny teeth still go through and get your foot anyway. And not only that, she just starts biting your ankle. It’s not like she just wants something to chew on , she actually seeks out your vulnerable spot and bites it. She *wants* to hurt you.

There’s not even anything you can do to stop her either. Moving around makes it more fun for her. Staying still is a surefire way to get wounded. Kicking her away makes her do it more. I hope she grows out of this before she gets big enough to reach my face.

The cat has been around since before Thanksgiving. When I came home for break he avoided me at first but after everyone in the house went to sleep he would come into my room because I stay up late. He would hide under my bed and I could actually pet him sometimes. But since I came home for Christmas break he won’t give me the time of day and it pisses me off.

This is about as close as I can get to him before he runs away. (Yes
I’m aware of the resemblance to Ceiling Cat.) You can get closer if you aren’t male. (however that works) He’s constantly hiding and most of the time the only way you can tell he exists is by observing how much food is left in his dish. But then again that’s a variable because the stupid dog eats it too. What’s the point of having a cat if you can’t go anywhere near it? It’s a waste of money. I want companionship you bastard!

Recently I was given charge of the animals. Night came and it was raining so I brought the dog in. She basically lays right outside the door so she’s easy to find. The cat was there too, right next to the dog as a matter of fact. As I stipulated earlier, the dog is a sadistic maniac that no wants to be around. When I opened the door the dog ran in and the cat ran away. This leads me to ask the question, what does the cat think I could do to him that’s worse than what the dog is already doing to him? Unfortunately I was supposed to get the cat inside too. Fucking cat. You don’t have to let me touch you, just go in the house. After about ten minutes of *here kitty kitty* I finally got some food and lured him close enough to capture and bring in. I set him down and he promptly ran away under the staircase.

Can’t you get pets that are in between annoyingly violent and boringly reclusive?