Alone Again (Naturally) - Gilbert O'Sullivan

In a little while from now,
If I'm not feeling any less sour
I promised myself to treat myself
And visit a nearby tower,
And climbing to the top,
Will throw myself off
In an effort to make it clear to who
Ever what it's like when your shattered
Left standing in the lurch, at a church
Where people 're saying,
"My God that's tough, she stood him up!
No point in us remaining.
May as well go home."
As I did on my own,
Alone again, naturally

To think that only yesterday,
I was cheerful, bright and gay,
Looking forward to, but who wouldn't do,
The role I was about to play
But as if to knock me down,
Reality came around
And without so much as a mere touch,
Cut me into little pieces
Leaving me to doubt,
All about God and His mercy
For if He really does exist
Why did He desert me
In my hour of need?
I truly am indeed,
Alone again, naturally

It seems to me that
There are more hearts
Broken in the world
That can't be mended
Left unattended
What do we do? What do we do?

(instrumental break)

Now looking back over the years,
And what ever else that appears
I remember I cried when my father died
Never wishing to have cried the tears

........
Alone again, naturally

Forever love?

"The promise of unconditional love stems from the premise of all conditions have already been met. "

Of course, there is that other matter where the conditions of love, loving someone, or being loved by thereof can be complicated by the pre-concieved notions of what love is and the reality of what it is not.

A catch-22.

Cooler Talk: Black or white?

This was about two weeks ago when we were talking about car brands being sold in North America.

Seems everyone in PH thinks American brands are great for vehicles (ergo all the Expeditions going around) and even have consumers pay a hefty price for them. The rankings appear to be Fords and other name brands, then Honda, Nissan and then Mitsubishi and a smattering of Hyundai.

In North America, the rankings are the other way. Everyone loves Honda and will spear to it being less of a hassle in maintenance. Next come other Asian brands with the last being Nissan for expensive parts. As for the brands made in the States ... NO WAY. They sum up what Ford means as always "Found On the Road Dead". How's that? :-)

So one office mate says that he's owned his white Honda Accord for years in college. In his words, its his "white bitch".

Well then, given what I drive these days ... meet my "black bitch"! :-p

Skunk un-ease or Skunk Anise?

Unfortunately its the former. I'll post more info later but basically coming home to the stinky musky smell of skunk is not the best way to go before dinner! Yuck!!!

-------

Skunk Anise is a grunge rock band in the UK. I first heard one of their songs while watching "Strange Days" starrring Ralph Feinnes (thats pronounched as rafe). Its an interesting piece that movie and again more on it later. Whats important is the song "Selling Jesus" where it describes selling salvation whether it be on the telly or by paying for the building of a church.

Why so far a topic? Well today a co-worker pointed out a news clipping about the probable arrival of an asteriod that may hit earth sometime in 2019. Hmmm, I correlated this to probably something about the Mayan calendar. Did you know that they foretold the end of the world by 2012? No dates happen after that and so time would stop. Or so it would seem.

Another thing about 2012 is its about some alighnment of the planets and a soltice or other. Isn't there another song about the Age of Aquarius? That age is coming again.

Repent!

Its 2006,and thats about 5 1/2 years to go. Doomsday is 12/22/2012. Love the numbers.

SPT means Sunpentown? or .....

.... perhaps super poor timing.

Its the hot months in the converted deserts of California and for the first time one realizes that its not always cool weather in the States. In fact, it never even does snow at all except for patches of hail reported in San Francisco some time ago. But thats a different story given that SFO is right next to the bay. I gather its always going to be freezing cold blasts of air over there.

So why bad timing? Well thats because work next week takes me over to steamy and even hotter Las Vegas (yes, yes, I promised not tot talk about work!). The short of it is that for purposes of ease it was deemed easier if we all just paid for everything ourselves first rather than having or even attempting to get it all pre-paid. So, I've got my round trips all paid up already on the cheapest flights I could find. My hotel is also already paid up (the one at the next leg) with the closest hotel with free internet and also free transfers to the venue when I get there. As for LV, thats going to be a bind.

See, the house rent is paid up every first of the month. On the second week goes my car lease dues. On the third week is insurance as well as a host of other utilities. Food and other groceries as well as a month's worth of gas somewhere between. The Aladdin is going to be almost a thousand and more including tax. Ouch.

So anyway, about my new and cool housemate .... here she is ...


Right, definitely not sexy and she's even gray unlike my white ONS previously.

So right now, I've positioned the doors and angled everything so that the air flows into the bedroom. I've been moving the portable left and right, in and out of the rooms for comfort. Well, no longer. That thing is staying put wherever it is i nthe living room. I just hope my technique works.

Updates later.

Poem: Short Term Memory

When dreams are long gone and love forgotten
The memories, the promises all for naught
With the hurt and the pain I am besotten
Unfaithful, believed and trusted that I am not;

Perhaps the past is now come on me, hunting
For vengeance, for freedom, for recompense
Here lies my heart disarrayed and bleeding
Having bared it, was it worth such expense?

Foresworn not others to love or even cherrish
But alas nothing changes that has come pass
For gone were those memoires all a-perish
All for the supposed loving of just this one lass;

Then now the troubles come hither full circle
Yet no longer will I let my heart be lead a-stray
I watch with unending horror at this debacle
'Tis sad, but this time my memory walks in day.

*JLAY 2006/07/19 1:38PM USA
*updated 2nd stanza 4:07PM

One night stand? It was cool while it lasted ....

I first met her online during one of my google searches yesterday. At the time I was really feeling so hot.

After going through some friends I found out she'd been returned since the person she was orignally with wasn't satisfied, and that she'd be right where I wanted her. Though I better hurry as they were closing the doors soon.

So I decided to take a chance hoping it wouldn't be damaged goods.

Once arriving at the shop I found her at the back lot apparently abandoned with the rest of her stuff scattered around. Poor girl, you're coming home with me now. Shhh ... you take care of me, and I'll take care of you.

I carried her out of there and sat her down in the car. Her stuff I gently placed around her so she'd be secure and wouldn't have to move around alot in the back. Being paranoid and all that, I even fastend her to the backseat just so there wouldn't be a chance of her jumping out of the car and hurting herself.

Arriving home, I opend the door and gently lifted her up and out into the living room. Made sure the doors were pretty open to avoid damaging her body. Right, I've got OCD. Go figure.

I started talking to her and learning her most darkest secrets, but most importantly how to turn her on and what turns her off all of a sudden. Satisfied, I turned her around and attached the hose and made sure we were near the window for easy ventilation. Thats when I plugged-in and hoped for the worst.

Surprisingly, she wasn't as bad as they all said she was. She was purring like a kitten and gave enough juice when asked to. Eureka!

Then all of a sudden, I noticed she was leaking. Oooops, not all over my rug! Damn. I ran to the laundry and started wiping her off. This I did almost all night. I thought to myself, nah, its not working between us. I expected you to have some rubber, why isn't it with you?

Alright, thats it. Tomorrow, you're going back where I picked you up if I don't find another way to hose you or plug your leaking hole.

Alas, when I called the guys up at the shop they didn't know her first customer and had now way to. There was another one that had just been returned though, but un-touched. Was I interested? Heck, sure am. I'll be over in a few hours. Let me just fetch the previous one back home.

So I went home, picked her up still gently. Tied her up in the back again, and dumped her stuff around her. Then sped off.

Arriving at the shop, I found out that the previous guy who I talked to had gone on home. He'd also mis-labeled the new one and so that one had been purchased just a few minutes ago. Curses! Foiled again.

Went back to the customer counter and asked for my refund. Better yet, put it all on a gift card. I'm going back online later to pick a new lady. And yeah, here's the piece of trash you sold me yesterday. Jeeez.

Oh finally ... after so long ...

The 250GB hard disk I was backing up since the 30th of June finally finished. Right then, since I did make sort of a mistake by using the 2nd copy of the sectors for the initial restore, I'm going to run a second backup using the primary sector this time on a separate disk. Later, if time permits, I'll merge the copies together as well as reformat the disk I restored off from.

The software I originally bought was a mistake (did I mention that already?). Anyway, I bought the correct version and now have a license for it. Thing is, its supposed to be an upgrade add-on. Am a bit lazy at the moment to explain further except that my card hasn't been charged the extra cost of at least $21 or the worse case scenario of $80. Let's wait and see.

Anyway, back to the original progress. Given that its taken me almost 14-whole days to get my data back will let you know how using the first option fares compared sometime by the 28th.

I really need that spare empty system right now to get my network access storage (NAS) system going. However am not planning anytime soon to shell out anything. There's other more important things to finance at the moment.

Well, thats it for now. Will back track (again?) all the stuff happening last week when time permits. Right now, its back to work [slave].

Virus Geek's BBQ - Scrabble to the Death

Kudos to David who hosted a more-talk-no-alcohol-but-go-ahead-and-smoke rocking bbq.

I had some difficulty with traffic coming over but the drive back was relatively smooth on the I-605N.

This isn't about work specifically, so posting it here should be fine. Here's the more mature side of the business though, people who have moved on and gone places, and those that have come back.

Now what was it that was so funny we were all broken up .... :-)

52-hours and counting ...

Something happened last Friday morning. The important work data had just arrived and I was about to write up my ideas.

Alas, the blue screen of death showed up and ate my time. Seems my hard disk wasn't being recognized and Windows XP refused to boot!

I spent all day looking into how to create a boot disk with supported drivers for NTFS.

Since it was the stock disk of about 40GB, with about 10GB left spare there wasn't anything to do or place to put the backup data. I ended up puttig my hands in the air (no, not waving like I just don't care -- since I do very much for all the pix and memories stored in my data folder). I was upset.

Next day, I waited on for a couple of my pals to drop by. Fry's was on the way back through Burbank and about 10-minutes out from the sign. Perfect.

At Fry's I took out my trusty Nokia 9500 communicator and pulled up Spreadsheet. Hey, if you're in a place where they sell everything for bulk, why not compute which is the better and cheaper bargain per GB of hard disk data? At first glance the Terrabyte-sized stations should be worth the bang but in reality they averaged about 80-cents per Gig versus the smaller hard disk sizes arond 250GB which were being sold comparably at around 35-cents to the Gig. Plus, Maxtor (which I realized later was actually Seagate owned already) was being sold at bargain 300GB for about $86. SOLD!

On the way out I grabbed myself an external IDE to USB powered cable (less enclosure) and a multi-socket heavy duty port. All in all, it was about $100 even for everything.

Next up, backup software. I've got it running now and its due in a few hours. Updates on that later and what software chosen and why. Laterzzzzzzzzz ......

HOLLYWOOD-land

Since an officemate had never been near the sign, a bunch of us decided to go. Actually, I'd never had the chance either.

Its actually off-limits any closer, so this is the best we could do. There's also a no smoking sign up top since its summer time and the grass is really dry and brittle. Fire hazard.

One thing we learned, when dealing with a mountain trail stick to the landmarks. The GPS voice hints just got us really lost. I ended up dictating the directions. Call me "jamz jamz" :-)