All Good Things

Posted on March 4, 2012 by almohada

Besides being an episode title for arguably one of the better endings for a TV series, STTNG nerds represent, this came to mind today while I was having coffee. I found out recently that a few of the k-cup varieties that I enjoy have been discontinued. Timothy’s apparently is no longer distributing in the United States and Gloria Jean’s has discontinued making the Swiss Chocolate Almond k-cups.

A moment of silence for some of my favorite caffeine which I can’t get any more.

I’d pour out 40 ounces of coffee, but that’s caffeine abuse.

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Ordering Shouldn’t Be This Hard…

Posted on December 3, 2011 by almohada

I am a consumer whore ... And How!Yesterday, I decided to continue my voyage into consumer whoredom and buy a new laptop so I could tell the world that I am a raging nerd and play whatever game I’m addicted to currently while traveling. I initially started this voyage by buying a new 55″ plasma television for a pretty low price, enabling me to get rid of the dinosauric 32″ CRT still in my bedroom, but I digress. This is about the laptop. Sort of.

I placed the order, and thought much like other internet purchases, since I had my email confirmation including the laptop, things would arrive from the magical UPS fairy later. I was so very wrong.

I got the confirmation for two random accessories I had tacked onto the order, but no laptop. I thought that just meant they were shipping from different facilities and shrugged it off. Then a couple hours later I got an email that said “the laptop you tried to order was no longer in stock. Sorry, but we’ll keep sending you the accessories.” Now, call me crazy, but why the hell would I want accessories for a laptop I am no longer getting? That’s just… insane.

This prompted me to call Dell, explicitly to tell them I don’t want accessories for a laptop that I was no longer going to be getting. The first person I reached on the phone seemed perplexed by such a statement, I mean who wouldn’t want random crap they have no use for right? She then proceeded to argue with me that there was no laptop on my order. I let her know that she was probably right at this point, because I have an email telling me that the laptop is no longer available. This started her arguing with me again, until I pointed out I wouldn’t order accessories for something I didn’t own. Perplexed, I got transfer number one to Customer Support.

This gentlemen also seemed confused as to why I wasn’t happy I was getting my laptop-free accessories. I kinda lost it a bit when he was going on about which ones had shipped, and ended up yelling “NO.” until he stopped talking. I explained the situation to him, at which point he sent me over to the sales department for transfer number two.

This guy spoke English as a first language, although with his heavy accent, the Indian support people were more understandable. After I finally got it through his thick skull that I didn’t want the random crap without an actual laptop, he decided to manually put in an order for a laptop for me, over the phone. It’s rather sad that I had to result to a phone call to get the item I wanted within the time frame I wanted because Dell’s online sales system failed so hard.

I hear you asking why I needed a new laptop in such a specifically short time frame, and why I thought I could pull that off around Christmas?  I leave you with this as an answer.

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Am I a Bad Person?

Posted on November 12, 2011 by almohada

I’ve owned my almohada email address on gmail since 2004. It’s not exactly dinosauric in internet terms, but that’s pretty close to when gmail invites first started, so within that realm it is. One would figure after seven years of a service being open, people would check to see if an address they wanted to use was available, or that they could even get it, before willy nilly opening up accounts on websites with it.

One would be wrong.

At least every few days, I get spam from several websites that are entirely in Spanish, which I am sure are lovely, but get this reaction from me….

And then I remember: “Right. People don’t check first.” Usually I’d just send email to the site administrator, in my rusty Spanish, and ask them to deactivate the account. However, after seven years of this, along with my slowly improving Spanish, I’ve kind of had it.

I’ve started logging in to these accounts, after I send myself a new password request, and changing the personal information. Today isabelita’s new first name because Check her middle initial is D. and her last name is Address. Her new password is herpdedurp. Mind you, these aren’t the only ones I use, but you get the drift.

Today’s internet lesson boys and girls: If you really like that shiny new account you just signed up for, maybe you should have checked to make sure that the e-mail address you attached it to is available, or maybe even owned, by you first. Otherwise, someone like me who is tired of people presuming the internet is their own personal playpen and they can have any address they want, might just be the real owner of the account. And tired of being signed up for random stuff.

But thanks for helping me practice my Spanish. You did me a solid there.

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Better Living Through Gadgets?

Posted on November 6, 2011 by almohada
Cat Feeder of DOOM
Automatic food is better, right?

Partially because I was feeling guilty about working long hours and delaying kitty dinner time, and partially because I was getting pretty sick and tired of being woke up at 5am every day by Tweak yowling in my face, I bought this automatic feeder. Strangely, being scared to death every morning is not really a pleasant feeling to wake up to. But I digress. Let’s start from the top of this tale of gadgetry and woe.

After their yearly vet visit, and Qubit having to be muzzled in order for the vets to give him his booster shots, they strongly suggested I start putting him on a diet to get him down from his porkly 19 pounds to something saner. Let’s be honest, all of the vets and the techs just saw the nightmare of giving him only one shot. They couldn’t imagine my having to do that daily, for insulin, when he would become a kitty Wilford Brimley if he didn’t shed a few pounds. They carefully handed me back my cat, and a bag of ‘your cat is a moocow!’ food, and sent me on my way.

Qubit Speaks out about Diabeetus

My name is Qubit, and I'm here to talk to you today about diabeetus.

I tried for a few days to separate the two cats, giving Tweak the normal indoor cat dietish food, and Qubit the prescription whoa-dude-you’re-a-land-whale food in separate rooms. This of course didn’t work out well for a multitude of reasons. One being they were both used to free feeding, so they weren’t going to magically be hungry at the arbitrary times I decided it was time to eat. Another was the lack of food during the day made them pretty much attack me as soon as I walked in the door at night from work or where ever else I’d been that day. And of course, last but not least, Tweak is really obnoxiously good at getting doors open. She’s like a feline Houdini. I’d put Qubit in my room with his food, leaving her out with hers, and she’d be all “Hey, what does he have? It’s got to be better than this crap!” and bust open the door. She’d also bust open the door if I put her in the room, because she didn’t want to be in there when clearly something cooler was going on outside.

This lead to my just giving up and feeding them both the insanely expensive shed some pounds food from the vet, using this automatic feeder. It has options to control the amount of food dispensed, and up to 3 meals a day. This I presumed would be sufficient with the new cat diet regimen. I set it for feedings at 6am, noon and 6pm. It seemed like a sane amount of time spreading food out during the course of a day.

I am so, so wrong.

Even after months of this new food and no free feeding, they stalk me with this look in their eyes. The look of hurt, because clearly feeding them three times a day is not enough, and they are clearly starving to death. Tweak is doing it right now, while I’m writing this, like she would be happy to eat me if I refuse to give in to her feline demands.

One of the complaints about this feeder is that if you have a smart cat, they can shove their paw up the chute where the food comes down, and feed themselves more food whenever they want. When you’re trying to do something like what I am, this is a bad thing if the fat cat is smart. Luckily for me Qubit is as dumb as a post, and the one doing this is Tweak, who is relatively skinny because of how food aggressive Qubit is. I caught her doing it, and just shrugged it off, because I don’t care if she eats a little more. The only way this becomes a problem is if she somehow manages to teach it to Qubit, which would be a disaster.

Let us pray this day never comes.

An automatic laser pointer for the lazy pet owner.

Yes, I bought one. My hand gets tired. Shut up.

You’ll be happy to know that along with a few months of the diet food and a bit of exercise thanks to laser pointers, purchasing a few random toys that are mostly ignored as usual, an automatic laser pointer, fetch with Mr. Fuzzy Ball, and the usual rumbling with Tweak, Qubit is down to about 16 pounds. Go team skinny cat!

 

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Rules to Live By For EvE Online

Posted on July 30, 2011 by almohada
EvE Online

Internet spaceships.... serious business.

This is borrowed from a profile inside of the game, and it’s so true.  I’ll add some side snark to it as well as other rules I’ve learned while going along. I expect that you’ll start nodding if you start reading this and play the game. :-)

  1. Trust no one. – EvE is full of twisted people who want to kill you. They will lie to you to try to get you to do something, they will sell things you tell them to other people, they will pretend to be your friend and steal all of your stuff… amongst other things.
  2. Always read the pop up messages before clicking “OK” – Who knew taking that random item would start a 15 minute timer where the person you stole it from can come and kill you for being a moron!? I’ve been on both sides of that, see: jet can mining.
  3. Fly only what you can afford to lose! – You will lose a ship, especially while you’re learning, and even when you think you know everything. Crap happens.
  4. Insurance, buy it! – See Rule 3, this helps offset the losses, but sadly not as much as it used to. RIP ship exploding as insurance is about to run out.
  5. Get a clone – keep it updated. – You will kick yourself if you end up dying without an up to date clone. Suck it up and pay for it, because it’s less expensive than memory-wipe is.
  6. EvE is about Risk Vs. Reward. – See Rule 3
  7. Avoid “Lowsec” (0.1 – 0.4). Stay in “Highsec” (0.5-1.0) or move to “Nullsec” (0.0) – See Rule 6
  8. Being in Empire Space/Highsec (0.5-1.0) does NOT mean you are safe.
  9. If you lose stuff, IT IS ALWAYS/ONLY YOUR FAULT! - Things happen, sometimes things you can’t control. It’s not your mission buddy’s fault, it’s not the fault of the guys you’re ratting with, it’s your fault for not planning ahead.
  10. Just because you CAN fly something doesn’t mean you SHOULD. - Ships require supporting skills to use them correctly. Yep, I can sit in a Hulk, it doesn’t mean I can actually USE it correctly.
  11. If everyone says “train for this” + “ship” or “module”, ignore them! It will be nerfed - The flavor of the month is never a good thing to roll with. CCP will catch that something is hosed eventually.
  12. Play a trial account. Play a second one. Play a third one. THEN make your main character. – You will screw up the first few times you start making a character. You’ll find something else that’s cool in the game, and then want to do that instead. Use the trials to figure out exactly what you want to do and then make your permanent account.
  13. There are a lot of really useful EvE fansites and folks who write tools for them out there with really helpful tools. Learn them, use them, love them. – EvE Mon, EvE Survival, eveboard, EvE Wiki, ISK The Guide, there are so many.
  14. TRUST NO ONE! – Seriously. People are jerks.

 

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Coffee, My Keurig, and Me

Posted on July 25, 2011 by almohada

Love My KeurigThat sounds like a bad book title, but I have to say, these past couple months have been an adventure in coffee sampling for me now that I own a Keurig machine at home. I am a regular coffee drinker, but I felt bad making a full pot of coffee at home, being the only one drinking it, a lot of the time more than half of whatever I made would end up going to waste. The Keurig was my answer to that, and I am able to drink the brands of coffee I liked previously with their “My K-Cup” reusable filter.

But I digress. This is about my misadventures in coffee tasting. I should point out in advance that I’m a bit of a wuss, and don’t do any dark roasts. They’re amazingly too bitter for my palette. I usually drink light roasts and flavored coffees.

Timothy's RaspberryI suppose I can start what I’ve drank today and work my way backwards. Some companies make different blends for the seasons, and for the summer months, Timothy’s put out this Sweet Summer Raspberry. I had some this morning and it was surprisingly almost like drinking a raspberry tea, having a very strong raspberry taste, almost to the point you couldn’t tell that you were drinking coffee at all. I realize this is a downside to some people, but strangely it didn’t affect my enjoyment. It was quite good.

Timothy's Chai TeaAnother Timothy’s product I’ve had lately is their Chai tea. I liked a couple of bagged versions of this, and was curious how it would translate to being a K-Cup instead. I added honey and milk to it like I normally do, and it’s surprisingly good. It’s not quite as strong as I usually make it, but when I want it in a hurry, it’s a good compromise for taste and convenience.

Green Mountain Donut House - Chocolate Glazed DonutI should probably mention here, as I am about to talk about the Donut House collection, that in general, I despise Green Mountain Coffee. It has this overly burned taste to me that is just plain foul. I skeptically bought a few of these to try, and it turned out to be amazing! The coffee really tastes like a chocolate glazed donut. It’s not an every day type of coffee, but when you’re having a craving for a donut, it meets it in a pinch. Their Cinnamon Bun flavor is also pretty decent, if you’re looking for something a little less tooth rottingly sweet.

Gloria Jeans MudslideOne brand of coffee that was suggested to me was Gloria Jean’s, and I am very glad that it was. Even their unflavored Special Blend was very smooth and quite good. Their Mudslide flavor is a great morning treat, very chocolatey and smooth. I also like their Swiss Chocolate Almond, Butter Toffee, French Vanilla Supreme and Cappuccino flavored coffees.

I do drink unflavored coffees, and by suggestion tried Caribou Coffee’s Daybreak Morning Blend and Sumatra k-cups.  Timothy’s Morning Blend is also a good choice. They are very smooth, and a good “I only want coffee in my coffee” choices for those of you out there who aren’t into the frufru flavored coffee racket.

Ones that I didn’t like or are so-so about? Timothy’s Kahlua is ok, but I’ve found that over time I seem to be liking it less and less. I’m not sure if it’s just the batch, but it’s not making me want to order more. I’ve already mentioned my dislike for Green Mountain coffee in general, so their k-cups aren’t really an exception.

I should mention here that if you’re looking for a good price on k-cups for home or to bring into work, you should give Big Cat Coffees a try. If you live in New England, you get next day shipping because they’re in New Hampshire! The awesome thing about Big Cat is they have variety packs, where you can put 5 cups of multiple flavors into a box so you can have a small sample of a coffee before you buy a whole box.

Yes, I know, I shouldn’t drink this much coffee, but what can I say? I love it!

coffee beans

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A Sudden Realization

Posted on July 1, 2011 by almohada

After having discussions with Verizon FiOS myself recently about my television plan and then talking to a friend who just had to change his cable plan himself, I came to a sudden realization. I watch CBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, TNT, USA, SyFy, HBO…. and that’s about it. Yes, 10 channels, maybe one or two here and there like Food Network and HGTV, but primarily just those 10. And one of them is only occasionally for TV series that I could probably live without. My friend watches a small subset of channels himself, again maybe 10 or 15 channels.

Which is why it finally dawned to me, this is why we will never have a la carte pricing for cable. Ever.

People like me and my friend, and probably a lot of the country really, completely ruin the scam the cable companies have going on. They push one or two popular channels out of the basic packages, so you have to get an extended one, and raise your bill $30 or more a month. I expect to pay more for premium channels like HBO, even if I only primarily have it for a TV series, but if they offered a service online to watch them? I’d ditch the channel. It comes down to the fact that if I only had to pay for what I actually used, like almost every other utility I have (coughCellPhonecough), the cable companies would go out of business.

I realize for most folks this is a ‘No duh.’ realization, but it never really dawned on me how little I actually use the packages I have on my cable service until going through what channels were actually offered per package. Well, that and them trying to up sell the hell out of me on the phone. No, really, I don’t need the ULTIMATE every channel in the universe package, thanks. I’m good with the just enough to get what channels I actually watch, thanks.

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Current Earworms

Posted on June 23, 2011 by almohada

(Here’s hoping WordPress plays nice and embeds the videos for these, it’s not been working 100% of the time so far.)

I couldn’t honestly tell you why this song is stuck in my head right now, but it is.  Here’s Stabbing Westward “Save Yourself.”

Since I was re-reminded of this song courtesy of a commercial last night…

This one should be self-explanatory however. I have a lot of joy in my heart for ladies who sing hard rock, so Flyleaf’s a given, and it’s Apocalyptica for cryin’ out loud! What more could you want?

(Meh this video’s being a pain, here’s the URL: Apocalyptica – Broken Pieces feat. Lacey of Flyleaf )

I’ll stop now, I swear! ;)

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My Latest Gadget – Asus’ Eee Transformer

Posted on June 23, 2011 by almohada

Asus Eee Transformer“A tablet? Why did you buy a tablet?” I hear you asking. Truthfully, I asked myself the same question. Friends of mine own iPads, and I could see how they were useful for light general internet use, but I mean honestly, how much would I use one if I bought one for myself? What was the point, after all, if I wasn’t going to use the thing.

After much hemming and hawing on my part, I finally pulled the trigger and bought an Asus Eee Transformer after seeing it in action courtesy of my co-worker. Why not an iPad? I own a Droid 2, and being able to share applications with each device (the Eee runs Honeycomb) was very attractive. The one downside of this device versus an iPad is that it is Wi-Fi only, but given where I seem to typically be using this so far, that’s not a downside for me.

The other part that was attractive was the fact that the Transformer is named as such because it has a docking station that you can put the tablet onto and have additional resources like power, USB ports, a card reader for things like say, your point and shoot camera, and a full sized keyboard. I haven’t yet pulled the trigger on picking up the dock, but it is on my short list of future purchases, along with a few accessories like a carrying case and an additional SD card for more space on the device.

In practical use, I’ve found that it’s easy to hold in one hand and type, but I also can drag around for predictive text. That’s been pretty hit and miss for me, so I tend not to use it too much. The built in cameras, one forward and one rear facing, are decent quality. It’s very responsive when starting things up, and given the dual core processor inside, I’d expect it to be. I’ve used TweetDeck on it so far pretty regularly with good success, and played a few games.

Overall I’d say I’m liking it and am slowly finding more uses for it in my day to day computer addiction.

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Young Adult Urban Fantasy

Posted on June 23, 2011 by almohada

Young Adult Urban Fantasy, I give up!

These are also in my Amazon store if you want a quick way to take a look at all of the items yourself. I’m pretty hit and miss it seems with Young Adult series in general. Seems like mostly miss lately.

 

The Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead

(Book 1 in this series is Vampire Academy.)

Rose Hathaway is a dhampir (half human, half vampire) connected to her best friend, a full Moroi vampire named Lissa, in an unusual way after a car accident.  She can read Lissa’s mind and knows her emotional state.  The series follows what happens with Rose, Lissa, and more supporting characters as they push traditional definitions to the limit and find their own way in the vampire world.  Rose is young, and impulsive, but she grows as a character throughout the series, which makes it a very enjoyable read.  At times I almost groaned out loud at some of her decisions, but this series which just concluded with the release of book 6, is enjoyable end to end.  It’s relatively fast paced and never leaves you wondering when the action is going to start.  There’s also a spin-off to this series coming in August 2011 for more content in the universe as well.

Witch, Curse, Legacy, Spellbound by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie

Holly, who has just lost her parents and best friend in a boating accident, is shipped off to live with relatives she’s never heard of before.  She later finds out that she’s part of a long line of witches who are cursed, have a blood feud with another witch family called the Deveraux and things go down hill from there.  I honestly said “UGH” out loud a few times reading these books, and wanted to choke the crap out of Holly multiple times.  She is insipid and idiotic, as are most of the characters in these books.  If you can find them cheap, and enjoy fire, I’m sure they’d make great kindling.

The Morganville Vampire Series

I tried to read the first book Glass Houses. I really did. The premise is that a girl with insanely overprotective parents goes to a college, gets bullied by some girls, tries to find an off-campus apartment, and finds out that the town is secretly controlled by vampires. No. I’m not kidding. I am pretty sure around the point where they realized a fun fact about one of their roommates, if this had been a paperback rather than on my Kindle, I would have thrown it at a wall in disgust.

The Frost Series, Bitter Frost, by Kailin Gow

This probably could have had potential, the idea in and of itself was enough to make me read at least the preview. The writing style in general just wound up doing nothing for me, and I couldn’t care less about any of the characters created in this universe.

Mortal Kiss by Alice Moss

It practically takes a force of nature for me to not finish a book. I gave up on trying to read this mess about halfway through. There are a lot of characters sloppily introduced throughout with random tangential stories that seem to go nowhere.  I just couldn’t make myself finish reading this.

The Vampire Journals series by Morgan Rice

A girl finds out she’s half vampire, beats the crap out of a bunch of thugs, sucks a Russian singer dry changing him into a vampire, and thinks she’s in love with a vampire who’s over 1000 years old. The worst part? He thinks he loves her back. I sometimes wondered how people could flat out label a book or a series a “Mary Sue” so easily, but now I understand. Completely.

The Hex Hall series by Rachel Hawkins

Young teenaged girl who can do magic thanks to her dad that she doesn’t know is shipped off to reform school for magic troublemakers. Sounds interesting, well except for the typical daddy issues part, and sort of is for the most part. Book two (Demonglass) takes her to Daddy, with her presumably going to stomp her foot and demand her magic be sealed off. This main character at least seems to learn a bit, which is a plus. Perhaps book three will change my mind, I’m not sure.

Come to think of it, most of the YA urban fantasy I’ve read lately has been pretty piss poor. Maybe I should just give up while I’m ahead.

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