I'm waiting in line outside the Apple Store in The Oaks Mall. I got here at around 9:00 AM and there are about 150 people in front of me. I'm able to access the internet via the stores AirPort base station. I have a few pictures, so here they are, more than 45 minutes before the store's opening!!!

I stopped by The Oaks Mall Friday evening at around 5:45 PM and found they took the black wraps off the outside of the store (which I have pictures of in an earlier post). I took some photos of the store (below), in which you can see the windows are covered with paper. I saw employees going in and out, so it is fairly busy in there...

I stopped at the mall information desk and asked what time they were opening. They said the stores open at 10:00 AM but the exterior doors to the mall open at 7:00 AM. She proceeded to ask me if I was asking in relation to The Apple Store to which I said yes. She informed me I should enter at the door near the food court. This door is easily recognized on the outside as you can see The Cheesecake Factory to the left of the entrence. This is also the same entrence where they do valet parking durring Christmas.

At any rate, the photos as promised...

Well, things with my car recently have gone from not so good, to ok, to bad, to good, to really bad, to terrible...

I brought my car in for annual maintenence, as my car was having problems when running cold (not so good). I paid $700 for the total maintenence thinking I was good to go (ok), only to find out the problems I was having turned out to be the transmission (bad). I was forunate because they covered the parts under warranty even though my car was out of warranty based on miles. I had to pay for $500 in labor and got it fixed (good). Yesterday (about 2 weeks after I got it back) the IMA light came on indicating a problem with the hybred engine (really bad). I took it in this morning and got a call 5 minutes ago. There are 3 parts of the IMA system that are bad and the total for parts is over $4600, after labor, the total comes out to just over $5000 (terrible).

I told the person on the phone that I had absolutely NO way to pay for this, and the only thing I could really do is get the car back and drive it as little as possible. He told me he would call his district manager to see if they can help in any way with this problem. Even if they do I'm not sure I could afford whatever it will cost me.

Asside from paying labor only, I don't have any forseeable means of paying for this, so I may soon end up without a car... This is very difficult for me as most of my family in the area has moved away and neither me nor my wife have access to another car...

[update]

Welp, It's gone from Terrible to not so bad...

I got the call back from the dealership, and it turns out Honda will comp my parts, so I have to pay for labor bringing my total to around $340!!!

While that much wouldn't sound so great to me normally, after being told $5000 in contrast its a much easier price to handle...

Apple is opening a new retail store on October 29th in the Thousand Oaks Mall. I live around 20 minutes and work about 5 minutes from that mall. Durring my lunch break today I swung by to try and get some pictures (it doesn't open for a few more days), I had to use my cell phone to take them. Below is what I got, check it out:

I took the test the first time & came out republican.
After a re-test (as I'm sure I mis-clicked a few of the answers) I came out a capatalist...

You are a Social Moderate (55% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (71% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

After first reading the text above the snapshot on The Smoking Gun, I didn't fully understand what it was saying...

That was until I scrolled down to see the full snapshot, and ended up dieing laughing... I'm having a hard time keeping from laughing right now. I dunno why but this kind of thing cracks me up to no end... It's really the picture of the llama that sells it for me...

[edit]

Alright, I couldn't help myself. I've created a Free Juan bumper sticker in The Torgo Store...

I saw an endocrinologist the other day, the first time I've seen one in 10 years or so. Up until that day I had been on a Humulin Regular & NPH dosing. I've been on this type of regiment since I was first diagnosed with diabetes over 21 years ago. Actually that isn't fully accurate... I was originally on a Beef-Pork Regular & NPH dosing regiment.

So, the endocrinologist went on to tell me, after I told him what I was taking, that none of the people he knew in his field use that anymore. So he immediately changed me to a NovoLog & HumaLog regiment.

I'm very reluctant to change this type of thing. I do NOT like the idea of getting a Pump (though I don't know if I fully expressed that to the endocrinologist). I don't like the idea of being attached to a machine like that (I also would probably have nightmares of a substitute teacher ripping it out, but that's another story)...

So at any rate, with this new setup, I need to take an injection 4 times a day. This is a big upstep from 2 times a day, and not something I'm pleased about. I basically need to do an injection before each meal, then one before bed. The thing is, if I'm out to eat, this means I will need to worry about all of the following...

A) I need to have my insulin and testing kit with me every time I go out if I might eat (or even if I might not just in case). This was a problem today as I forgot to grab it before I left for my lunch break at work...

B) I need to wait at the table, then get up and excuse myself just as the food arrives at the table. This is mainly that it's not appropriate to do an injection while sitting at a table with a bunch of people, in a restaurant with even more people. I also can't risk doing it early as if the food doesn't come quickly enough, the fast acting insulin will kick in and possibly leave me in a coma...

C) I need to remember EVERY DAY to refill the supplies in my little carry bag, as I can only hold a total of 4 syringes in the bag so after a day out I'll have 2 or less left in the bag...

These issues all seem like a big step BACKWARDS to me. I would hope insulin control would become easier, not more burdensome. But this is the point I'm at now, and it's very annoying to me...

Trying to find things to simplify this whole experience, the closest thing I found are the new insulin pens (maybe not so new, but new to me never the less). This would help to reduce the issues listed above (I think if you did this type of injection at a table, nobody would really notice or care). The only problem I found is that they are EXTREMELY expensive. And unfortunately I highly doubt my health insurance will cover them. At this point I can only cross my fingers, but I'm not holding my breath...

One thing I'm surprised about is that I cannot find a fully reusable pen. They do have ones where you only replace the insulin cartarage, but they do not have devices where you can say, take a normal vial of insulin then fill the cartarage as you would a syringe. A FULLY reusable pen... As far as I can tell, this is probably the only way I will ever get one... Time will tell, and until then I'll be frustrated trying to use this regiment...

I was just watching a cupcake challange on the Food Network & have realized the contest has a reqirement which would make it difficult if not impossible for a disabled contestent to fully compete.

The problem is quite simple: The end of the contest requires moving a decorative piece from their working table to a display table. The idea is that the piece needs to be stable enough to be transported, which I can understand.

What I can't understand is why, when one member of one team pair was injured, was the other team member required to move the piece all by himself. You see, his team member had a back injury before the contest began.

Apparently, from what I could tell by what was said, someone else was not allowed to stand in for the injured team member to assist with the move... To clarify they said "he has one more problem, because of a back injury which occured to his partner before the contest began, he will need to move his piece all by himself."

The words seemingly indicated this was NOT a choice. This would quite litarally make it difficult to impossible for a team to enter where one member, if not both, are disabled. This absolutely appauls me. People who are physically disabled, such as myself, usually want to live as normal lives as possible. I'm fortunate to a degree since I can still walk (and hopefully will be able to do so for many more years). But to be excluded from a cooking competition simply because you aren't capable of lifting 100 lbs. to carry for five seconds all of two feet in distance is a little beyond unreasonable... I would hope that they would allow someone to stand in in place of an injured or disabled contestant. But the use of words by the Food Network seemed to clearly indicate this was not an option...

Blogger set it up so I'm implementing it...

Blogger now offters Backlinks. That is, a list of posts which link to any given post. Of corse since blogger is now offering it, I had to set it up. Seems like the list of features of blogger is getting longer, so even if the feature is unusable, I'll likley add it here!!!

I was just doing some searching and found someone I had a friendship with had died a couple years ago...

Holly Ann Austin died October 17, 2003

I was trying to find more information but was unable to locate any. I put my googling expertice to work trying to find any more information...

On the Alumni page for my school, in the year of 1995 (I graduated in '96, but knew a lot of people who graduated in '95) showed Holly Austin died. I was trying to find more information, but couldn't find any other listing on the net. I ended up searching Records.com and found a result which listed addresses ending in Goleta (that's why I guess she lived there). Doing a search for her full name (I got her middle name from Records.com as well) gave me one result. Other than that I can't find any information...

We wern't extremely close or anything, but we did work together and talk a lot. It just leaves me wondering what happened...

--

Oh, and if anybody stumbles across this post from Buena High & is wondering where to find out about a reunion, this page appears to be a good place to start.

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Some woman owes $1.16 on her unpaid taxes... And yes, that is a dollar & sixteen cents, less than a latte at Starbucks... So what do they do? They arrest her...

Whether it's $1 they owe us or $1,000, it's not fair to the rest of the public to not pursue that person," he said. "There is some expense involved, but it goes back to the principle. We have laws. The laws have to be complied with. At what cost do you stop enforcing the law?

How about you stop enforcing it when you start wasting OUR taxpayer money in excess of well over 1000 times what you would actually get if they payed up. Or how about you deduct that from what you guys are overpaid on a regular basis. Someone should sue the IRS for overpaid taxes. This basically would be the exact same thing they are doing here only against the IRS... You notice when you overpay the IRS doesn't give a damn, hell they're happy, yet you underpay (by a dollar no less), you get procecuted???

I'm watching a re-run of the Peter Jennings UFO special listening to the SETI scientists talk about how they're doing it right and UFOlogists do it wrong...

One interesting thing to consider: If an alien civilization used the exact method SETI is to scan for signals, then pointed their little dish at earth, THEY WOULD FIND NOTHING!!!

You see, the conundrum here is that SETI is scanning the 1400 MHz range. Interestingly we on Earth do NOT use this radio signal range for anything.

Question: If you're doing a through scientific study "the right way", why would this choice of "the right way", when applied to Earth, show nothing???

I blogged about a watch some time ago that was proporting to do this, but yet another prickless glucometer is in the works.

This one uses a laser, and again seems like a major improvement over the current system. Ironcially I'm going to see a diabetic specialist (I forgot the title for one) this afternoon. My only concern is the doctor being a prick twards me because I don't test my blood sugar anywhere near what I really should...

Hopefully one of these will reach consumer status in the next couple years...

If you've been following, I have been discussing an update to the MK portion of my site. A very sizable update... While I've not worked on anything in the last 2 weeks, I have made much progress and am looking to have a releasable page in the near future.

I'm going to include an MK blog along with it, so when it's launched, you will be able to see that. My main progress has been my database. I have developed a structure that is dynamic enough and easy enough to update, and I have created the SQL databases for MK & MK2. I'm still working on the database, and am planning my first release at the point & time that I finish all the databases for MK thru MKT... That means I need to finish MK3, UMK3 then MKT before that will be done. But rest assured I am making progress, and I'm very pleased with how everything is looking. At the way things are going, I will have to release the page eventually, because I will run out of things to do...

So those of you who are waiting anxiously, fret not, as it is coming along...

So, they can opt out huh?

Lawsuit Targets Teachers Union

A California teacher's union is being sued for increasing their membership fees by $60 a year. You see, this increase was because they've been spending an excess on political campaigns. Apparently they've already spent the equivalent of 3 years worth of the $60 fee increase from it's members to date...

The people filing the suit? The teachers of course... Go figure... Guess the ads aren't "proudly funded by union members" as the ads claim, are they???

No wonder they fear Prop 75...

I've made some changes to my blog. I realized I had changed my archive page URLs, I have fixed them and they're back where they should be. Hopefully the search enginges will re-register any changes it had registered prevously.

I was contimplating turning on comment words, where someone has to type text into a box before they can post a comment (elliminating auto posting), and wouldn't you know it, while I was trying to fix some things the page I was using to test had 2 seperate spam comments posted. So, I enabled it...

I'm curous as to why people do this, now that blogger has the "nofollow" tag in place. I was going to try to manually implement them until I found blogger implemented it...

I also got rid of some extranious code that wasn't used.

My blogroll is now solid HTML (I created a perl script to pull the RSS from blogrolling)...

Intel has been added to my stock lists on my main page...

One of these days I'm going to figure out how to keep the content based ads on my post pages from being about "blogs" and nothing else... This may mean not using adsense... I like adsense though, and if they had some way to improve or force the service it would be nice...

Oh, and I've implemented the blogger bar... I've tried this several times in the past, but it messes up the format of my blog to try & keep it on. I think I've found a work around that actually works this time (this isn't the first time I've enabled it, but each prevous attempt ended in me turning it back off). You may see the bar disappear some time tomorrow, but hopefully not...

Veiled Conceit: Bobby Flay is an ass

My wife had made a comment earlier today the wife of Bobby Flay, whom we saw on a Food Network show, looked like the woman from Law & Order...

After doing a quick search I ran across the page linked above which did in fact answer my question right at the top of the article. I proceeded to read the article, finding the name fairly interesting... I have to admit, this article is quite entertaining to read... I dunno if I have anything against Bobby Flay, but this article does seem to give a good defence if I decided I did...

I'm getting sick of the commercials I'm hearing on the radio. They're solely attacks instead of factual presentations...

And their #1 tactic constitutes the #1 reason I don't like unions: They lie!

The commercial I heard this evening consisted of something like:

Prop 75 isn't about protecting paychecks, its about taking power away from the unions. Just look who supports Prop 75...

So, they're trying to prove what Prop 75 was about by stating who supports it...

If you want to factually battle Prop 75, why not do it the simple way: State what it will do...

That is the ONE thing I've NEVER heard the unions bother to say in their advertising. No, you see, if all they did was say what the prop would do, people would think the unions are being stupid, and THEY KNOW THAT!

You see, all Prop 75 does is a 180 with their current setup. And, if what they're claiming is true (that all the current members support the unions political activism), it should barely effect the unions. See all the prop does is require a page with a dollar amount and a signature from each member of the union. The Union members have ultimate control over if they give money for political activism. If the unions currently believe all their members do this willingly, then they should have NOTHING TO FEAR!!!

The truth is, if people have the option to say "I'm not going to sign this" chances are they won't. They will elect to keep that money. The unions realize if it becomes that easy for someone to say "I want to keep my money" they will do just that.

What makes me even more angry is what they say at the end of the ad:

This ad is paid for by the union members...

interestingly enough, the money from the union members is THE SAME MONEY THE MEMBERS ARE CURRENTLY GIVING WITHOUT DIRECT CONSENT!!! And by direct consent I'm talking about a declaration, not consent by failure to take action to say otherwise.


The bottom line is simple: Prop 75 requires a dollar amount and a signature on a single page from a union member before the union can take that money and use it for political activism. The union member has 100% control over what happens to their money.

Also keep in mind one thing. The money these employees gets comes from one place: our tax dollars. So in a way, every California tax payer is helping to fund these ads. So when union members have money taken out of their paychecks, their paychecks and they get less money, when they ask for a raise to make up the difference this money could, the taxpayers pay for it.


Well this is my argument, take it or leave it. Even if you disagree with my opinions, you have to admit, having ads saying the prop is bad because of who creates & supports it rather than talking about what the prop does is deceptive if not dishonest. If the unions can't run ads saying the policy is bad and actually explain why, then why I supposed to believe anything they are saying???

Mary Mapes Hits Bloggers and MSM in Upcoming Book--But What's With the Kurtz Excerpts?

"Faxing changes a document in so many ways, large and small, that analyzing a memo that had been faxed -- -in some cases not once, but twice -- -was virtually impossible. The faxing destroyed the subtle arcs and lines in the letters. The characters bled into each other. The details of how the typed characters failed to line up perfectly inside each word were lost."">Mary Mapes Hits Bloggers and MSM in Upcoming Book--But What's With the Kurtz Excerpts?: "--'Faxing changes a document in so many ways, large and small, that analyzing a memo that had been faxed -- -in some cases not once, but twice -- -was virtually impossible. The faxing destroyed the subtle arcs and lines in the letters. The characters bled into each other. The details of how the typed characters failed to line up perfectly inside each word were lost."

Ummm, this statement is inaccurate in SO many ways... It doesn't matter how many times you fax something, things such as individual letter size and alignment NEVER change. It takes a computer to do that...

Faxing cannot cause a word on one line to move onto a different line.

Faxing cannot cause the width of individual lines to become different respectively to each other.

Faxing cannot cause two letters to shrink and move up in line to appear to be a superscript (exactly where a superscript would go for that matter).

Faxing cannot change a font into a completely differently structured font (it can only make subtle changes in appearance).

Faxing cannot explain all the inconsistencies this person is trying to blame on faxing.


Oh, and this statement is funny...

--"To these people, there was no such thing as unbiased mainstream reporting, certainly not when it came to criticism of the president, no matter how tepid. To them, there was Fox News and everything else -- and everything else was liberal and unfair."

Looks like someone is jealous of the fact that they are no longer able to solely dominate people sources of news and information... And she says it like bloggers are the evil doers and they are the only source of truth... Like the bloggers have no right to say anything.

The bottom question I have to ask is: Why did they not bother to bring any of these inconsistencies to the forefront when reporting on the memo to begin with? Valid dissenters came to them to give them information, and they didn't even bother to talk to them at all. To be subjective is to look at both sides of the issue. The bloggers took a defensive stance because the media source was completely one sided, and purposely electing to IGNORE those who brought valid discention against THEIR story... Had they done their full jobs as journalists, this person would not have anything to complain about...

They elected to run with a one sided story and didn't even say "while we believe the story is true, we felt obligated to disclose..." Not only did they not feel obligated to disclose, they also didn't feel obligated to investigate...

Well, I dropped off my Honda Insight today for a transmission replacement. I picked up a rental car -- a Chevy Aveo... Apparently they were out of Plymouth Horizons...

At any rate, this is mainly to document a problem I noticed. You see, it says to put the car in reverse you have to press down on the "shift lever". Well, if you can see in the picture, the shift lever is not there... I find I can put it into reverse, simply by forcing the stick, which is kind of annoying... But I wanted a documentation in case the auto rental place tries to give me any problems upon returning the car...

Well, I was sitting watching TV & my wife got a call, she answered the phone and then handed it to me...

It turned out that the government grant office, which is located in Florida, wanted to give her a grant for $12,000 which would NOT need to be paid back...

So, first thing I asked was where they were located (that's were I got Florida). I did a quick search and in a matter of seconds discovered this was a scam. So I of corse decided to see where it would go. So I then asked him what the grant was for. The whole idea behind a grant is that it's money given to be used for a specific purpose. The only likely reason the government would even bother giving an individual a grant is to start a business to generate tax money. However he simply said it's just a grant of $12,000 to go to (my wife)... I then proceeded to ask how she qualified, and he was unable to tell me, he simply repeated she qualified for a grant. I then mentioned I felt this was a scam, and indicated I was reading some information indicating his exact script was that of a scam organization...

He then got real angry and proceeded to yell asking why, if I wasn't interested, was I wasting his time. I then proceeded to remind him he had called me, that I had not called him. I told him if his time was that important maybe he shouldn't be making these calls. I then asked him if I had to pay a fee to get the grant (an obvous sign of a scam). He then said (or yelled rather) "no, all I need is some of your banks information where you want the money to be deposited." Which is sign #3 that it is a scam. I told him he wasn't fooling me, that it was obvous this was a scam, and I told him not to bother calling us back.

The only thing I didn't remember to ask was how the weather was in Florida. Considering he was probably in India or Pakistan, I doubt he would know anything about the weather there (the hurricane that recnetly past, or more namely the new one forming off the coast)...

If I were in a better mood this evening, I would have tried to have a bit more fun... But I'm tired so I didn't bother pushing him any further... It was fun while it lasted though...

I'm disappointed. I recently set up an MSN Mobile account for my cell phone. I enabled sports scores for The Mighty Ducks, to which I have been recieveing alerts for the past few years on my cell phone. I prior to setting up MSN's sports scores was using my providers setup...

At any rate I recieved my first score today. It looked something like this:
ANA*5LOS*4***F*

After spending a minute to decode it, I went in and disabled MSN's alerts and switched back to my providers. My providers puts each team and their score on their own line, so it's simple to read...

I tried the feedback link in MSN but for some strange reason it sent me BACK TO MY CELLPHONE PROVIDER'S PAGE! So I'm not able to tell MSN that their scores suck and give them a recomendation to FIX the layout!

MS's big ball 'o suck never ceises to amaze me... It's like there's an intellegence black hole in the middle of MS that sucks the intellegence of anybody who is in range of it. Of corse if I actually could send MS feedback, my recomendation would probably just get sucked into that same black hole anyway, so it's pretty much worthless...