More sci-fi sleepytime here.
ALSO: Vader Got Served
Max’s play doh sculpting
He’s in the zone!
Fake Kingston Flash Drive
I went to the annual Chinese festival in downtown Maha Sarakham last month; this is one where they host Chinese opera at the business association meeting hall (I uploaded crappy vids of the opera this year here and here). Aside from the performance, which I generously bear for up to three whole minutes every time I go (once every couple years), I also like walking the wide area of stalls filled mostly with unimpressive yet numerous food vendors.
At the end of one row of stalls was a memory card/USB thumb drive vendor selling at very low prices. I picked up this 8GB Kingston stick for a couple hundred baht with the intention of filling it with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Yo Gabba Gabba episodes for the kids, which they can use with our DVD players at home and in the car.
Unfortunately, the plastic case of the flash drive separated into halves within a week of unpackaging, and most of the files stored on it were corrupted or lost even after low level formatting. I had noticed that the packaging looked a bit suspect just after buying it, but had used fake name brand USB sticks before and hadn’t had any problems… I took a closer look at the packaging:
Lesson: If you buy fake crap, sometimes you will be burned.
Like bugs
Nam took the babies to see their old nanny. Her new house is almost complete, but is out in the sticks. At night, the house is apparently crawling with all sorts of bugs, frogs, and who knows what else. Max brought back a couple to play with at home.
Why are we not equal?
Living overseas, you might be surprised how many websites and web services (in the US and Japan especially) are closed to the rest of the world. Of course, there are easy ways around this, but if your personal blog is denying me access because I’m visiting from another country? You, sir, are a dumbass, plain and simple.
Happy Painter
Bob Ross was like jack bauer – he assassinated a syrian diplomat with a Dragunov sniper rifle.
(apologies to all, I needed a Google result)
RIP Google Buzz
As my Google Buzz feed slows to a trickle and GMail incessantly reminds me that Buzz is going away, I’ve already begun to miss it. Google+ is a layer removed from my e-mail inbox, and that’s the only thing I check every day. Fuck GP, fuck FB, and and fuck anything that makes me categorize contacts. I miss Buzz.
Mina turns 2 today
We shall have cake.
We shall think about our blessings.
We shall be merry.
Online again.
So I’ve been recovering for a month now. Wasn’t hurt too bad in the accident, but it flipped a switch in my head. Didn’t feel like blogging or writing or working at all, really. Of those three things, though, only one was really necessary so I did do a lot of extra work lecturing and speaking here and there.
As I type away on this dirty keyboard, it slowly feels like I’m coming back to a place of comfort. I was angry for a long time. Specifically, I was angry at the shop that almost killed me through negligent automobile repair. When I last wrote, I was waiting to hear back from them for a repair estimate for my car. All I thought about for three weeks was how I was going to get back at them – three weeks is a very long time for a devious mind to concoct intricate schemes. I even dreamed about it a few times, standing on a battlefield under a tattered flag, watching crows pick at the corpses of my slain enemies. Or standing in a courtroom at the moment of winning an all-or-nothing class action lawsuit, showered with applause from others who had shared similar experiences. Like I said, three weeks is a long time.
As it turns out, though, I may end up accepting the shop’s offer to pay for just half the damage, because the estimate ended up being about 10 to 20% of what we thought it would cost. The son at the shop ended up being cool about it and called in some favors at a body shop so we could get it done cheap. It’s still not ideal or just in my mind, but I’m willing to let it go now – it’s not enough money to stress about. Plus, I can leave it up to the shop to make sure shit gets done and not have to deal with details every day. And most importantly of all, karma’s a bitch. Motherfuckers who do bad shit get bad shit in return. That’s just the way it works. Believe that.
—————
Just before I finished the restoration of my car I had somehow amassed a stable of three 100-150cc scooters. One cruiser, two two-stroke sport(ish) bikes. When I started parking my car in the garage again, I had to move them out and thought about what the hell to do with them. I moved them to temporary spaces around the outside of the house and covered them with tarps, using them about once a week on rotation to keep them maintained. So when I got in this accident, I was lucky enough to have transportation ready. I love old bikes, and two-stroke engines are awesome because they are so powerful and no longer produced. Pics to follow, sometime.
Breaking the silence
I’ve been away from blogging just taking it easy after the accident, mostly just playing with the kids and waiting for an estimate for my car. We haven’t decided what to do with it yet, it depends on whether it’s worth fixing or not. As I wrote about before, the shop that screwed the brakes wants to pay only half for the repairs… I’m not willing to let them off so easy, but am waiting for the estimate to continue negotiations.
Meanwhile, this is the best thing I’ve watched in ten days: