I · am · not · Zen

Haha, I had to add a user via INSERT INTO 'accounts' VALUES (id,username,pass) for pam_mysql.so, because they're virtual users (passwd no good)
ABSURD

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to have a separate blog just for my technical ramblings, etc. Hm.

Favorite games of all time:

Link to the Past
Super Metroid
Half-Life/Half-Life 2
Symphony of the Night

Honorable mentions:
Ocarina of Time
Twilight Princess
Portal
Halo/2/3
L4D
Burnout

Favorite games also serves as a list of favorite soundtracks!

"With visual modifications to cater to a modern audience, this classic story may hold some promise." -Mediafreaks blog, on the 'Secret of NIMH' remake
I try not to tie my respect for humanity on the media industry, but god this really just makes me think nobody gets it. Agh.

However, in serious news: my grandmother is in the hospital. Today I felt possessed to call her, and left her a message asking how she was doing. Shortly thereafter I found out she's in the hospital, and word at this time is she has a fractured lumbar vertebrae.

Jump Into Spirit World - www.QuantumJumping.com - You Are One Jump Away From Changing Your Life Forever

So um, listen. If more ads are going to start ripping off 80's TV shows, I just, I don't know. Or maybe if more self help movements are going to do it, that would be...ok. Try to imagine meeting someone who believed in quantum jumping, and you'll see what I mean.

So, I just heard that my contract manager thinks the Bank is going to extend my contract through 2010. That is superb news! I have been waiting to see what would happen with my contract before making some personal purchases, etc.
On the other hand, a leadership role within another bank just opened up, and that's pretty tempting. Dilemma!

I also need more geek friends... I have noone to talk about all my nifty new toys with :/ :/

So, I'm pissed.

Tmobile called me yesterday to tell me my account was being suspended. Why? Because I apparently have a $660 bill.
Now, this was news to me. My December bill was about $60 (I have data services plans, thus the expense).
So, why? Oh, it's supposedly due to calls I made in Germany. This might seem to make sense until you consider:
1) my data services plan is free in Germany, according to a call I made to make sure before I left
2) I made very few calls in Germany. I ordered pizza twice, chinese once. I made one business call back here.
3) The rate they quoted me, and the rate on their website, is $.26/minute. That's high. But at that rate, I'd have to make about 2,500 minutes of calls to rack up $600. Or the rate would have to actually be between $10 and $20/minute, depending on how many minutes I estimate I used.

So I called today to get this cleared up. Apparently, my last month's bill is on there too (technically that's the one due now...the next bill isn't even available for viewing til this weekend, and isn't due for weeks). So that's a small amount off. Also, they tell me the rate is actually $.99, despite what I was quoted and what the website says. Then, they say I made more than twice as many calls as I remember, but I can't verify this because the bill isn't available yet (although my service is suspended..not amusing). Finally, even all that only comes up to less than half of the bill. The other half? "Oh, it appears you used data services while in Germany"
I..what..argh!! I specifically called to verify there would be no fees for using my data services plan while roaming. I was told there were NO extra fees.

Needless to say I am not paying. I'll call again when the bill is out and I can look over it.

So, I'm home! Not much to say there..had to buy a whole stock of groceries today, and get used to driving again :P (not really, I wasn't gone *that* long)

In other news:

First, there has been a reshuffling of teams at my job. I'm still doing the same old, just under a new boss. Who doesn't know me from Adam. Who can't really vouch for me or stand up for me when it comes down to 'where can we cut costs?'. Because even the bank is underperforming in this economy (mostly due to the purchase of a certain failing rival who apparently overrepresented their asset values in the buyout). Aaaanyway we're all scrambling to make ourselves useful, because the bank is segmented enough for the higher-ups not to know us, and to honestly think we could be replaced by Indian tech support.
It's amusing that I should suffer this worry, due to me being lazy and taking an easier job this time around. Oh well, simultaneously I suddenly have job offers this week. Luck may hold out.

Second, can I take a moment to sing Amazon's praises? While in Germany I went to amazon.de and ordered items for local delivery and my amazon prime account actually took effect, so I had free 2 day shipping. That was excellent. Then today I discover bbcshop.com does not ship outside the EU, and of course due to the ridiculous region encodings system bbc shop america doesn't offer the Attenborough 'life collection'. Because it was never released for the US. So I hit amazon.co.uk, and they happily serve it up, and my US account works equally well on the UK site, and shipping was somehow only 3EUR!
So I officially love Amazon even more than I did before

As a sidenote, region encoding is still a ridiculous, ridiculous system. Yet apparently there are not enough non-US-release DVDs for people to continue making a fuss. I sort've hate that something terrible and wrong can only be corrected if the indignation reaches some kind of critical mass. Even if only a few of us are affected, it's still a terrible system! Lucky for me, the old xbox will play any region for me, as will my PCs. Only my expensive blu-ray player turns up it's nose (and, I suppose, if it got over the region issue it would still choke on the PAL :P)
Yet noone is still complaining about region encoded DVDs. This reminds me of discovering that nobody lobbies the BBC for American shortwave anymore. I must be part of a sad minority who wish BBC still saw shortwave as a vital method of communication worldwide. And their internet streaming is terrible (there are standards for streaming, yet nobody uses THEM, either. augh.)

OK enough complaining! The complaining threatens to overwhelm the happiness for amazon, haha.

So, tomorrow is my last day here (I leave early Thursday morning)! I won't have any time to do anything but work and head to Frankfurt, so today I went to the former royal palace, called the Residenz. It was very pretty, please see the photos on my flickr.
Then I had some beer (ok, 2 litres is 'some' here), some sausage, some sauerkraut, and some pretzels. I just had to get a little bit more on the last real day (:

I wondered exactly how much of an honor system the subway was here, since there are no ticket takers or even stiles. You take a ticket mostly because you know you should. Also, however, they have well-disguised checkers who came and had to take away an american fellow sitting a few seats ahead of me! Apparently he tried to argue, tsk tsk.

I've spent a good amount of time pondering the language barrier. I've gotten by here by politely using what German I could, or working with their broken english when that failed. Only once or twice did I come across someone with genuinely no english who didn't seem to understand my german (doesn't speak well for my fluency, haha). We got by with hand signs.
I imagine that must be how people do it in countries with stronger language barriers, such as mainland china. I wonder how business transactions like hotel rentals work...

Suggestions for my next trip?

aaaaand Merry Christmas

MSN Autos says "Detroit deserves to be saved".
That logic aside, here's something from the article:

"We’ve assembled a list of the Detroit cars most worth saving... Our terrific 10 includes a pickup truck, a minivan and two crossover utility vehicles. Yes, Detroit still knows how to build a great truck.

Yet no current Detroit compact car makes our list."

Wow. Talk about missing the point, hmm? And they start with a tribute to a 638hp sportscar.

MSN remains the worst of the big 'news' sources.

Lately I've had The Veldt stuck in my head.. no idea why.
This is like the time I couldn't stop thinking about that heatstroke scene in The Stranger, but at least there was a reason for that, it wasn't random :P

It occurred to me today, that some of my best internet friends were found through means that today, I'd consider almost stalkerish. Searching friends of friends, lurking, etc. So now I'm not really OK with such means, and I meet fewer people online! Hahah.

god, i'm too fucking young to be so nostalgic.

repost from ought-three: "If seeing me will fulfill a life goal, or you'd just like to kick me in the shins, message me. and tell me which. we'll work from there."

It's been a while, but... crazy spam!

Whoaa, I just got a contract extension..and not for a month or two, this time...for SIX months. Exciting!
Shame I'm playing hooky today... :P

You know, as I said earlier, I was consolidating all my social networking/online presence accounts. This sort of reflects, to some extent, my admitting defeat. You can't really have, <i>in practice</i>, a single tool that does every bit of the job. I used to just have livejournal. Now I have LJ, myspace, facebook, linkedin, flickr, youtube, etc. accounts. I use them all to some degree. But then a new issue comes up, which is overlap. Myspace has blogging features. Facebook has extensive, user-taggable photo sets. Linkedin and facebook overlap on the resume scene.

This is also shown in my bits of technology, my gadgetry. I own a weather radio (also a shortwave..at home it's part of the emergency kit, sometimes getting evening use, abroad and in the field it serves only the latter purpose), an MP3/video player, a camera, a cellphone, and a laptop. Ken berates me because the iPhone serves several of these functions, but it not only leaves some out (although it plays mp3s, it doesnt play FM radio, it has a web browser but cannot edit documents or be used for text chat at any depth) but as a result of it being a 'packaged deal' it means you get the options presented how apple likes them, or how they feel you'd like them. And in a way, it's better to have the problem of overlap and too many gadgets/services/etc, than not quite enough.

I compromise by only carrying certain items at certain times. My phone is constant, and I hope for the camera to be. The MP3 player is for trips, walking/biking, things where I'll be out and about and possibly by myself. The laptop only comes on trips, otherwise I make do with the phone.

Alright enough rambling, time to finish this checkers game with patrick (hooray for the internet) and go to sleep.

In keeping with my theme of gadgets this week (bought a new camera, reloaded my phone, picked out the DS for my brothers' christmas gift) I had a dream last night that I was talking to someone from the, late 70s, early 80s era. This is also in keeping with my favorite mental game, "explaining modern technology to displaced members of the past". Though typically that game is played with people from Colonial America or earlier. Anyway, the conversation went something like...
"What does that little 19K mean on your..phone?"
"19 Kilobytes. You know, roughly 19,000 bytes*"
"In there! That's amazing! How can you fit it all?"
"Oh, right. Actually, the cellphone has 2Gigabytes."
"What!?"
"Yeah, and my DS has 4Gig. The Laptop has 60, the 360 has 15, the xbox has 160, my desktop has 60, and I've got about a terabyte in the back room"

It was an amusing dream. Weird state of consciousness, to be able to rattle off figures like that in a dream. I actually had to think about it, in a very immediate sense as I would in real life, and that means I was playing as me rather than observing me. Anyway.

I've finally broken down all the walls of security surrounding my "e-persona". I've consolidated emails to be strictly functional separations, I've linked accounts (curiously, Flickr was the straw -- it ties to both LJ and facebook, which ties to linkedin, which ties to blah blah blah). Now I just use the 'friends' security here if I want to make a post that might reflect poorly to people who google me, or if something is particularly private (though that merited security before). I've made peace with the idea. Of course now I want to shift away from 'drakemobius' and none of the usernames I like are either available or LJ options. Haha.