zrath

There's been no word from the French Consulate about the job I interviewed for.
I've sent some more resumes out for various jobs, including a QA Lead position at 2K Games.
Nothing new on the grandmother thing. I expect this will take forever.
A wire transfer popped up in my bank account a couple of days ago. It wasn't much, but it was enough to
take care of a couple of problems that would have made me unable to pay my October rent on time.
The transfer was from the SACEM, so looks like the paperwork has finally gone through.
I've decided to sell the 3 Lego Classic Space bases from The Tub after all. I need the money.
I still have a bunch of sets and minifigures on eBay, including the new Power Miners mini-sets right here.
There's a big LUGOLA meeting this Saturday, near Legoland Carlsbad. It's a joint meeting with SANDLUG,
the San Diego Lego User Group, so that should be interesting. And a bit of a drive.
I just completed a new Lego MOC (My Own Creation) for the meeting and I'm happy with it. I'll be bringing
it along with the SCAP strike package, Weapon M, the Agents flying sub, and the big scary Mega Bloks ship.
There will be pictures on Flickr some time in the future.
My sleep schedule is totally screwed up. I woke up at 6pm, did some computer and eBay stuff until 10pm,
then showered and dressed and went out to get dinner. Then I came back and ate dinner while watching
two Season 7 episodes of "Smallville". Damn, Brainiac is an asshole. Then I cracked open Volume 4 of
"Batman: The Animated Series" and watched Disc 1 while finishing my Lego MOC for the Saturday meeting.
Volume 4 contains the post-redesign episodes, were Joker suddenly has "Genesis Cooke reverse eyeballs"
(black eyes with white pupils), Bruce Wayne looks like Clark Kent from "Superman: TAS" but with blue eyes
and black hair, Poison Ivy looks elfin and unhealthy, and Catwoman lost all definition. Grrrrrr...
The Scarecrow did look scarier though, what with the noose and the Leatherface mask and the preacher's rags.
And the writing is still there, which is the most important part.
It's now approaching 6am and I'm going to try to get some sleep and return some normalcy to my schedule.
Good morning!

Well, enough with the not-posting. I think it's time for some general faffing.

First, please send some hugs to Spino (aka dcotelessa) and Sweetie.
Their kitty Mojo passed away today and they're feeling down.

And now, the faffing commences!

I recently joined the 21st Century and finally got myself an LCD widescreen monitor.
Someone on Slickdeals.net forums mentioned buying a 21.6" LG widescreen monitor for $139.99 at Best Buy.
This got my attention because my existing monitor, an old Sylvania CRT cube, was starting to twitch.
And the Samsung LCD unit I was looking at cost around $300.
So I went to the local Beast Buy to investigorikate.
The monitor was on some sort of bizarre geographical/store performance/stok on hand calculated sale.
Every Best Buy store had it for a different price!! At my local store, it was $239.99!
So I told the salesdude about someone getting it for $139.99.
He punched the model number into the computer and brought up a list of L.A. area BB stores.
The prices were all over the place, from $169.99 to $239.99!
I got him to price-match the Glendale store price of $169.99, and his manager okayed it!
So, while I didn't get it for $140, I still saved a bunch of money on it!
I walked home with my new purchase (thank the Fanged God the box had a handle!) and installed it.
Wow...
I went from a 17" salvage CRT running at 1024x768 to a 21.6" LCD running at 1680x1050!!
So much real estate! How will I cope with it? Very well, thank you. :)
Here's a shot of the new monitor:



On the left is SimpleMU connected to FurryMuck.
On the right is Netflix's website streaming "Doctor Who: The Robots Of Death".
Domo arigato, Mistah Roboto!
All my icons are along the top (I like to keep the numbers of icons down to just programs I use a lot)
So yes, pretty exciting for me, as I've been using salvaged CRT monitors since 2003.
The last new monitor I bought was a Viewsonic 19" Graphics Series unit I ordered in 1999.
Back then, nobody had the 19-inchers in stock locally, only 17" and 21". A salesman had told me that this
was because monitor buyers tended to fall into two categories:
1) People buying for personal use and getting the cheapest units, so 17-inchers.
2) People buying for work or home and making it a tax write-off, so splurging on 21-inchers.
The Viewsonic lasted 4 years, then just died one day.
From then on, I used monitors salvaged here and there.
And now, glorious LCD widescreen bliss with a silly name: FLATRON!!

I've started sorting and organizing the Sibling's stuff. The CDs alone are going to take several days
to fully process. There are tons of special CD-Rs that have to be destroyed: duplicates for mixing and
custom compilations created for gigging. I've filled 4 grocery bags with those and also broken CD cases.
I'm going to keep a bunch of the commercial CDs and merge them with my collection. There are a lot
I will not keep. I took a small portion of them (just a backpack-full) to Amoeba Records in Hollywood
last week and they didn't pick much. I went to Second Spin next and they didn't pick much either.
Most likely, I will have to hit other places that buy used CDs. I think I will also eBay some of them.
I have a couple of CDs I'm thinking about putting up on Furbid or other furry auction sites.
It's "The Trip Hop Test Part One" and "The Trip Hop Test Part Two" from Moonshine Records.
Each CD features a track by a furry music artist called Step Disk. Part One has "Boing Dragon".
Part Two has "Furvert", along with Step Disk remixing a track from Zen Cowboys.
Step Disk is probably the only furry music artist to appear on a major record label.
So it's a bit of furry history.
I figure somebody might be interested in picking these up.

The sorting and merging of the VHS tape collection, on the other, is complete. In the process,
I threw out all my "Babylon 5" and "Smallville" videotapes, because I finally got the DVDs!
Best Buy was having a sale on both, $20 a season, and I was tired of waiting, especially for B-5.
So I got them, and now I'm a happy Kzin!
And I have one less storage box of videotapes to drag around.

Soon, I need to sort all the vinyl, picking out what I want to keep. Then, have Pascal's DJ friend
come by and pick out what they want. Then, take the rest to Amoeba, and maybe Record Surplus.
I probably should have his friends look through the clothing too.
Oy gevalt...


More faffing later...