I’ve been coming across these interesting videos on the net of makeup application tutorials. I am not in the target audience for these (being a guy who does not wear makeup), but their quality and pacing help to make the subject matter fascinating. Basically, a cute girl demonstrates how the use of a wide variety of makeup and tools can have a stunning effect.
Turns out this girl has posted a great series of similar tutorials on YouTube. So what’s the story? It turns out that Michelle Phan (aka RiceBunny) is a Florida art student that uses her own face as another medium on which to apply her talents. Visit her Xanga site and you will see that she has garnered such a reputation that many makeup manufacturers now supply her with free product, hoping it’ll be used in one of her videos.
Michelle is not the only one doing these types of videos, but she is certainly one of the most popular. Another good one I’ve found in that category concerns a skin care method. It’s refreshing to see the contributions to YouTube are turning from weak attempts at entertainment to helpful lessons of education.
When I was young, my family unwisely moved from the Chicago suburbs to central California. Amongst the many adjustments we had to make was a loss of four food staples not available on the West Coast; Marshmallow Fluff, Coco Wheats, Cock Robin Ice Cream and Jays Potato Chips.
Fluff actually comes out of Massachusetts while Coco Wheats is produced in Indiana. They are still readily available (but still only online in California). But the true Chicago brands have now been eliminated. The last Cock Robin diner closed last year, and Thursday was the last day for Chicago’s Jays Potato Chip factory.
The closure was part of a bankruptcy buyout and theoretically the brand name is supposed to live on under the ownership of Snyder’s of Hanover. But the online availability of Jays Chips has suddenly dried up, their own site’s purchase links have all been unplugged while another distributer reports the brands as “discontinued.” The last bags of Jays I can find are at Amazon’s Grocery Store,
It’s depressing, as the simple round logo of Jays will forever be embedded in my childhood memories. Back in the day, the potato chips were packaged in boxes, like oversized cereal packages. I could find the snack aisle at the Jewel Market simply by looking for the stacks of jumbo white boxes. One could always find a supply at my Grandma and Great Aunt Helen’s house. When Aunt Helen was my daily babysitter for a couple of years, she would often enhance my lunch with a few Jays on the side ~ Yum. The brand identification was further enhanced by the neato Jays pencils they occasionally included in the boxes. Also, Jays produced other favored snacks, including shoestring potatoes as well as a delicious caramel corn packaged in a unique plastic-lid container.
A few years back, I special ordered a couple cases of Jays Potato Chips from their website to give to my ex-Chicago family members as Christmas gifts. In consuming them we realized how incredibly greasy and salty they were, a powerful flavor from a tough city (and a perfect companion to Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer). Over the years our taste buds had become accustomed to the bland offerings of Laura Scudders here in California (more suited to wussy wine coolers).
But it seems Jays will drift into history now, another victim to the continued corporatization and homogenisation of American culture. Thanks Jays, for being there for the good times with family and friends! Your unique greasy presence will not be forgotten.
My Dog Kitch: March 1995 – October 29, 2007 R.I.P.
0 Comments Published October 29th, 2007 in General
Yeah, my dog died today. I wasn’t there since she lived with my Mom, me living in a no-pets apartment and all.
She was a very smart and friendly dog, kind of a Scooby-Doo type. Kitch seemed to comprehend a lot of english, you could tell her a great variety of things that she seemed to readily understand and react to.
I visited my dog at least once a week, but of course now I wish I had done so more often. She started come down with a mystery ailment a couple of weeks ago. My Mom took her to the vet then and the staff were astonished to see such a large dog over ten years old, so I guess we took good care of her for her to last this long.
The vet could not offer a specific diagnosis (without a lot of expensive tests), but Kitch recovered somewhat thanks to a prescription of pain pills. But this weekend she began falling ill again, and today she took a turn for the worst. She was returned to the vet where the staff reminded my Mom that Kitch was a very old dog, after all. So Kitch was “put to sleep” today.
But I didn’t know about Kitch’s worsened condition this weekend until after the fact. I saw her for the last time on Friday when she seemed to be doing okay. I had considered dropping in yesterday, but didn’t get around to it. I wasn’t doing anything particularly important and certainly could have spared the time. Now my frivolous activities of Sunday seem bitter now that it cost me one last visit with Kitch.
I just didn’t expect her to be gone so fast. I guess life is short, and death changes his time-tables for no one.
So I’m training for a new job that has me outside in the hot summer weather a lot. They suggested I bring a good supply of water. Last week I had a six-pack of my favorite water, Evian, and it really helped get me through two hot days.
Last night I remembered I didn’t have any bottled water for today and went shopping at the supermarket by my house. There was no Evian (I notice a lot of stores have trouble stocking Evian, does the spring in France dry up seasonally?). So I figured I might as well try some new waters, since I will be drinking a lot of it for a while. I pulled down a bottle of Coca-Cola’s Dasani, a bottle of Arrowhead, and then I saw something I’d never seen before:
It was Gatorade’s Propel Fitness Water. The label defined it as “Vitamin Enhanced Water Beverage.” What really attracted was the sale price of only $1 per bottle. It came in a variety of flavors and I got myself a Mango, Grape and Lemon.
So I’m today I got a little surprise when I chugged on the Mango Propel…it tasted like Kool-Aid! Instead of a refreshing drink of water, I got a sickening-sweet dose of kid syrup. Thank goodness I at least had the Dasani (really delicious after that stuff). The Gatorade made me queasy. I suppose it might be good for kids if they’re too bratty to drink water or take vitamins, but I really hope there aren’t too many adults out there who would prefer this liquid candy over drinking real water.
Sorry if this posts rambles a bit. I had a major life event and wanted to get something written about it right away.
I ended a long-term job last night. I’d been there 9 and 2/3 years.
I wouldn’t say it was a great job, so to speak. It was a data entry center that employed hundreds of people. The work was extremely monotonous and repetitive, typing in front of a computer monitor all day. After doing it for a few years your brain adapted so that you didn’t have to pay attention anymore. It’s alarming to realize I could unplug from a section of my brain and not pay attention to what I was doing. I stressed this phenomenon was affecting me during my personal time, that I might be running on automatic. Another surprising drawback was the pay. The pay scale there was above average for the area, making it difficult to walk away from.
A major plus to the job was that you were allowed to wear headsets and listen to audio all day. Over the years I enjoyed massive amounts of audio entertainment. I would go through phases. I remember first enjoying my large CD collection much more than I had before.
Then I went into a period of enjoying old-time radio shows. I have listened to the majority of episodes from radio series like Fibber McGee and Molly, The Great Gildersleeve, Lum and Abner, The Jack Benny
I listened to many books on tape. I heard a few more of Charles Dickens
Oh, and I can’t forget enjoying thousands of hours of both Loveline and Coast to Coast AM from the radio.
In the last few years I really took to mp3 netcasts. I really dug The Daily Source Code at first. My enthusiasm for it lead to me getting a co-worker to start her own netcast which still has a following even if she hasn’t posted since last year (and her program got a mention on The Daily Source Code).
Most recently I’ve been enjoying a lot of SEO netcasts like Shoemoney and SEO Rockstars. They really got me thinking about how I could improve my websites. But already being employed to sit in front of a computer for 40 hours a week didn’t make it easy to continue at home. To a degree this new interest caused a resentment for my job.
Well, be careful what you wish for. The whole facility will be completely shuttered in 100 days. Every person there from top to bottom will have to move on. I had to leave now since I’d been promoted over time, and my increased pay scale was too costly for the company to keep around as they power down the operation. Today was the final day for forty of my co-workers as well, people I’d worked with since I began. As certain crews ended their final shift, there was a parade of tears and well-wishes as groups of people left the floor for the final time.
Spending so much of my life there made my co-workers like family. Some of them I adored, most of them I liked and a few I disliked. I hung out with some outside of work, but the reality is I probably won’t see most of them ever again. However, I know from past experience that some I will remember, think of and catalog permanently into my consciousness (and not always the ones you expect).
And the place itself was like an extension of my home. Every nook and cranny is intimately familiar to me. But it is a security building to be accessed by employees only. Today was the last day I could ever see the place I know so well. I can never go back. The company I worked for will clear it out and it will be an empty building by the holiday season. A strange revelation that came to me after I left is I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream about my workplace. I didn’t have to dream it, I was often there. I wonder as time goes by if the dreams about it will start to come.
One good move on my part is, shortly after learning we were to close, I started a blog about my workplace (and an accompanying MySpace page). It’s probably my best blog at the moment as I’ve been trying to document as much as possible while the place still exists. I hope to keep it online for years to come as a memorial that former employees might look back on from time to time. Doing that blog was a good learning experience because I see I can knock out decent posts regularly when I force myself.
So what does my future look like now that I’m unemployed? Well, unfortunately my bills won’t go out of business. I’ve been told I might be getting a severance check. And I might be eligible for unemployment. I do have a ton of stuff I’ve been wanting to sell on eBay. Naturally a new job is high on the priority list.
As I said earlier, I had been wishing I could spend more time at home so that I might explore some of the ideas I’ve had for websites and SEO. So I came home from my last day at work and looked around my apartment realizing that now I would likely be spending most of my time there. And a feeling of dread came over me. I guess it was just a trying day.
Have you tried Pepsi Summer Mix yet? Hurry up and try this limited-edition flavor before summer ends, it’s good stuff (and I’m really a Coke drinker). I see a couple of other bloggers have commented about how it tastes like caramel cola mixed with candy, but I think they’ve missed the point. It’s a drink mixer. It’s a perfect cola flavor for mixing with rum, whiskey or any other liquor good with soda. It’s has a natural mixed-drink flavor to it, and I suspect that was the intention of its design. That’s not something Pepsi can promote overtly, but check out the Official Web Site with its urban beach party theme, the psychedelic label, the association with the “good times” of summer and of course the word “mix” and yeah…I know what they’re talking about.
It’s been a long stretch since my last post. I don’t have any excuses for a 7-month gap, but there have been mitigating factors:
When I moved into this apartment back in June of 2006, I upgraded my DSL connection. I remember downloading songs from Napster back in 1999 at a painfully slow 24 kilobytes per second in dial-up, so the DSL connection at my last residence was quite a treat at a speed of about 125 kilobytes per second. And the step up to 600kb/s download speed of the SBC DSL Elite package for this move was delightful to say the least. It was so fast that it actually exceeded the speed of some parts of the internet. That is, I could now detect which websites or files were served by hosts slower than my home internet speed.
But that all ended right before Thanksgiving. Since I wasn’t downloading any large files, it took a day for me to realize that web pages were loading painfully slow. I confirmed the problem by activating Juice. This is an old program for downloading podcasts, and one that tended to take full advantage of my maximum download speed (it generally always sped up to 600kb/s). That day my download speed for Juice maxed-out at about 70kb/s. I obtained the same poor speed results with GrabIt.
At first I assumed SBC was having some local problems. I had suffered through a couple of days of internet slowness last summer, but it all bounced back. But the speed didn’t bounce back this time, so during the weekend I finally called tech support.
SBC ran some tests on my line and concluded that everything was working fine from their end. I responded that my high-speed internet was still running horribly slow irregardless of their findings. I was handed over to a tech guy who had me run some tests at the official company speedtest site, and then more tests at the speed test page of my newshosting service, Giganews Newsgroup Access. The results of these tests, I thought, proved my contention that my DSL speeds were lacking. But the tech guy countered that the results were positive from testing my modem from his end, that some internet sites are slower than others and that the problems might be due to problems with my computer.
He was right about computer problems, I was starting to have crashes on my system. Little did I know my hard drive was due to fail within a month (perhaps more on that in a future post).
Still I further argued that I was clearly getting slow download speeds on my DSL connection. The tech guy demanded “How could you know that?” I answered that I could clearly see the difference when I utilized Juice. Tech guy asked me to explain what Juice is used for, and I explained that it is a simple program from downloading MP3s off of RSS feeds. He then concluded that I am getting poor DSL speeds because I am using that Juice program!
SBC Tech Guy further warned that if they sent technicians out to tweak the connection and the problem was found in a line inside my apartment, then I would have to pay full repair costs which might total in the hundreds of dollars. I didn’t like that prospect.
So I decided to drop the issue, at least until I mastered the problems with my PC and had an extra $200 to “fix the line.”
I lived with a 70kb/s speed on DSL until right before Christmas. Suddenly, for unknown reasons, my speed jumped back up again. Now it was topping off at about 275 kilobytes per second.
At that time, I received another PC to connect to my 2Wire modem*. It was a fast little Dell a friend had purchased at a garage sale. The poor little thing was full of viruses, and it was sent to me for a cleaning. It cleaned up just fine and it also confirmed that my speed issues were not my computer, as the freshly cleansed Dell likewise experienced the same max speed of about 275kb/s.
Certainly usage of the internet was more convenient at that more DSL-like speed of 275kb/s. It wasn’t what I was paying for, but I could live with it for the time being. Then my hard drive died. After I recovered from that, a lot of system problems I was living with cleared up but the speed remained the same.
I believe it was in March when I ventured to call tech support again to complain about my DSL speed. But during that time period, my internet provider had fully changed over from SBC Global Internet to their new face, AT&T Yahoo Internet. Here’s how that call went: “Hi, I don’t believe I am getting the full speed of my DSL plan.” AT&T: “Really? Let me check from my end…yes there seems to be a problem…okay try it now.” Suddenly my 600 kilobytes per second internet speed was fully restored.
Yes, it appears all someone had to do, all this time, was to flick a switch.
I will probably never know what went on “behind the scenes” concerning this technical difficulty. It seems I should be due some sort of refund since I did not receive the service I was paying for, but I was also getting a discount on that service as a first year special, thus eliminating whatever refund might be negotiated. AT&T just sent me a letter informing me that although the discount period is ending, I will continue to receive the DSL Elite Plan with a slightly lesser discount (raising the rate five bucks a month, at least I’m getting the discount on something I’m actually getting).
*As a side note, I learned some tips from the tech support calls. For one thing I found I could communicate with my 2Wire internet modem through my browser by using the address “http://gateway.2wire.net/“. Furthermore I found I could turn off the wireless function on said modem so that neighbors can’t hack into my connection (contrary to what the installation tech told me).
Today’s the big day for members (like myself) of DefectivebyDesign.org, an anti-DRM organization.
What is DRM, you ask? That question is why today is designated as special. Hopefully today we can make the general public more aware of this sinister trend in emerging technology.
Please visit this excellent page that begins to explain why DRMed technology must be adamantly avoided. If you find this cause to be as important as I do, then please also visit DefectivebyDesign’s 10 Simple Things I Can Do Today so you can also pitch in to spread the word.
Thanks to Wikipedia, I got stuck on YouTube this weekend! It was all because of the Wikipedia entry titled “List of Internet Phenomena,” a comprehensive report on people, pictures, audio files, videos and even concepts that became “hugely popular, often quite suddenly, through the mass propagation of media content.”
I focused mostly on the videos, and found hilarious things such as “Star Wars III: Backstroke of the West,” “Croyt’s Anger,” “Appalachian State University is Hot Hot Hot,” “Kure Kure Katora” and “The Bus Uncle.” When I exhausted my choices from the list, I then entered the search term “ghost.” This returned a few paranormal oddities and quite a lot of “Prank Flashes.”
If you’ve got some hours to spare, check out the list yourself.
Yeah, my Windows XP Service Pack 2 system was hobbled by some sort of virus this week. After I came home from work on Tuesday night, I started the computer and everything seemed to boot up just fine. But when I moused into “All Programs” and clicked on Yahoo Messenger to start, all I got was a momentary hourglass icon and then nothing. I clicked again and got the same result. Then I tried to start up Firefox…..hourglass icon by the mouse arrow but no Firefox. Shortly after, clicking on any button had no response, the system seemed frozen.
I knew this was bad news, but not the worst. A total disaster would be a blue screen of death or no startup at all. At least the system was starting up.
How could I have gotten a virus? I really haven’t been downloading much from the newsgroups lately. But I have been chatting with someone in the Philippines over Yahoo Messenger. They have many problems with their computer and seem to have little knowledge (or interest) in virus protection. Could they have sent me an infected .jpeg over YM? I can only guess.
I rebooted, and discovered I could get results by requesting programs within the first 60-90 seconds of startup. After that the system would freeze up again. So I got into the Windows Task Manager and could see that after starting, the memory usage was climbing to a continous 100%, a memory flood. My system has a gig of memory, but 100% usage of it results in no available memory to start up any other programs. The guilty file was one of the variants of svchost.exe. This file is an important component of the XP operating system, and it often appears multiple times in the Processes list. When I ended that one process of svchost.exe, the system seemed to run normally again. But I knew this solution could only be temporary and it might get worse if I didn’t deal with it.
I searched on svchost.exe in Google, and found ask-leo.com. My symptons were apparently a known condition and probably meant I had a virus. The site offered a great checklist of tasks to help deal with the problem.
The first was to get a Windows Update from Microsoft, but unfortunately my system couldn’t complete that task for some reason. So I went to the next task, which was a complete virus scan. I figured it was best to go into safe mode to do this, as for all I knew this virus was eating up my data or converting my computer into some sort of zombie. Then I couldn’t figure out how to boot in safe mode, there’s no easy button for it. I had to research to find that you open “Run” and command “msconfig” to open the “System Configuration Utility.”
After that it was a lot of waiting, as my Avast Antivirus program took hours and hours to virus-check the 150 gigs of data currently residing on my hard drives. I had to sleep, so this took me into the next day. The results of the scan was unsatisfactory, it found some low-priority spyware, corrupted files or unexecuted worms still zipped up from newsgroup downloads, but nothing that seemed serious. I deleted what was found, but a reboot into standard mode confirmed I still had a problem.
A round of Spybot – Search and Destroy revealed that an exception had been created to my Firewall settings, so I suspect the virus was readying my system to download something else.
Another website suggested that many viruses disguise themselves as svchost.exe, running from an improper folder. But a system search for that file name only showed three versions of svchost.exe on my computer, all over a year old. A new virus file would of course only be days old.
A check of my firewall settings showed the Windows Security Center was completely shut down on my system. Evidently, the bad variant of svchost.exe that I was stopping in the Windows Task Manager was responsible for the Security Center.
So then I tried Trendmicro’s free online virus scan. This again took a couple of hours, but it did find different problems as opposed to Avast’s scan. When I clicked the button to remove the problems, my Firefox browser crashed. So I had to do the scan all over from the beginning with Internet Explorer. Hours later, when that task completed, I found that it detected many more viruses or spyware programs than it had in Firefox. I clicked the button to remove the problems, and it seemed to hang. But I was patient and let the computer sit for a few hours. The browser eventually refreshed to report that all detected problems had been removed.
By this time I am into Thursday. A boot-up in standard mode showed that…I still had the same problem. But now I am able to achieve a Microsoft Windows scan for Updates. One of updates offered is the “Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool – September 2006 (KB890830).”
I chose and downloaded all the available updates and restarted my system once more. It was fixed! No more hang, no more memory flood from svchost.exe.
The Software Removal Tool is made to deal with the Blaster, Sasser and MyDoom, but they do not cause the symptons I had, nor did I get a startup notification one is supposed to see if you were indeed infected with those. So I can only assume it was another of the Windows updates that solved my problem.
You can imagine I am very much relieved that this seems to be over. The only consequence to my system from this episode seems to be that my Adobe Photoshop CS “de-activated” itself due to “too many changes in my configuration.” This type of assessment would normally make me nervous, but I know that Adobe’s current registration system is overly severe. So while I fix that I guess I’ll upgrade to CS2.
It sucked to lose a couple of days on my computer, but at the same time it is very satisfying to know that I had enough rudimentary knowledge to get myself out of this without causing further damage or having to hand my system over to somebody else.
