That said, things with Yan Yan have taken a bumpy ride these past few days. I've been so disillusioned from work that its beginning to affect my personal relationships. I wonder if I can sue based on this. . . ?

Anyways, looks like Travis passed his paramedics exam (the national exam is in November). With any luck he'll be heading down here for a few days. Much fragging will ensue.

Has the human race gone off the deep end in regards to where to draw the line on morality and basic politeness?

Some background information as to why I'm severely annoyed with the human race right now:

Was working today at Best Buy, and a african-american (just to be politically correct) lady came up wanting some work done on her VCR. She complained of it not ejecting her tapes properly, but I could not repeat that problem after numerous tries. She then wanted it to be cleaned, claiming it to be under our service plan. Throughout all this I treated her no differently than I would any other customer (except maybe ones that I personally am acquainted with), and strived to give her a pleasant experience. There were some discrepancies in the computer records, so I was asking her for some information so I can update it and keep everyone happy (she gets her VCR serviced, we get our records straight). Suddenly on a drop of a coin she went into a non-linear ballistic orbit.

By that I mean demanding to see a manager for and I quote "shoddy service", furious that we would ask to see her ID to look up her purchase information (so we can correct our records) when "you wouldn't do it for any other white people", and responding to the manager's threats of calling the police by saying she'll "shove what the white cops give me right back up your white ass" (the manager was hispanic, by the way). Oh, and mocking us when she left by asking "where're the white cops???"

Now let's consider the situation for a moment. I/we were only trying to get some information so we can update our records (since it turns out that another store did indeed input the wrong data several years ago). We even stated so several times, verbally. And yet for the better part of an hour she proceeded to antagonize everyone who tried to assist her, insisted that a non-white/asian/indian/middle-easterner/hispanic/european/australian/south-american would have given her better service, and just generally made a scene for herself and made all the customers uncomfortable.

Having minorities cry out because they feel that they are getting "inferior" treatment might make one soft-hearted to their cause, but when examples such as this occur, it makes me wonder if they even have a case at all (and more than likely just taking advantage of the socio-political climate).

And now. . . Quincy X is now sporting the biggest damn pipe in CCCCC.net (as befitting a server of its type). . . 2 100Mbps ports running in a network team on full duplex. . . 400Mbps total throughput. . . its as good as it gets short of running gigabit fiber optics. . .

Mmmmmm. . . bandwidth. . . mmmmm. . .

All in all. . . it lasted about 12 hours for me (6 of it trying to figure out why my Windows XP lost its activation. . . damn MS). . . Yan Yan joined in the last few hours and we got some DDR time in, and I managed to teach her the basics of Mahjong too (the REAL Mahjong. . . not the tile matching lame clone that the west introduced. . .)

The weather has gotten significantly colder within the last 24 hours. . . and man. . . I have to admit it feels nice. Spent all day getting supplies for OC4. . . and it was great not having to deal with the simmering heat that makes one sweat as soon as one steps outside of a air conditioned environment.

Finished watching Neon Genesis Evangelion last night. And I should've known Shinji was living the alternative lifestyle before watching Episode 24. And the ending left something to be said. . . and no I will not spoil the rest of the series for those who have not had a chance to experience it. And I do mean experience, not watch.

Grrrr. . . stupid Shinji. . .

On the other hand. . . today happens to be both the 9/11 Memorial Day AND the Chinese Fall Festival. . . talk about clash of cultures. One is suppose to be morbid and vengeful, while the other is celebratory and nostalgic. . .

So. . . there's a story behind the frozen Black Widow. Was working on a computer a few weeks ago at Best Buy, and when I opened up the computer to get at the insides, we find a Black Widow spider making its nice and comfy home in there. Since its considered a health hazard, I decided to halt work to find out what to do about it. Rus, who was working with me at the time, decided to be creative. Those compressed air canisters that are sold have two uses. They can blow dust out of the way (the recommended use), or if you turn it upside down they can freeze things (the unrecommended use). So armed with a canned compressed air, Rus flash froze the spider and blew it away at the same time. Ever since then we have joked about the Black Widow thawing out somewhere, being uber pissed at us, and planning for a bloodthirsty revenge.

Knowing my luck, the Black Widow found out where I lived, and ambushed me at the hot tub. . .

Spent the past three days plugging away at AutoCAD and 3D Studios and learning new tools for the updating of the Brigade profiles. Just finished a series of test images and animations, and it looks alot better than it did 5 years ago. Now if only I had learned all of this 5 years ago, maybe I would be working at a place like Pixar or IL&M. . . or maybe I'm just dreaming. . .

First was the classic Mad Max, Mel Gibson's jumping pad to fame. It was suffused with such sweet quality of film making that can only happen back in the '70s (the film was made in 1979), and violence and sex was only hinted at throughout the movie, never overwhelming. It was as good and clean as one can get nowadays.

Following that, I popped in Sum of All Fears (which I've been wanting to see for quite a while now), and munched on lunch while I watched Jack Ryan's fledging career teeter between success and permanent assignment to the listening station down in Antartica. Can't say I'm used to seeing Ben Affleck playing the role. . . much used to Harrison Ford's maturity. Also, I'm not sure I'm following the timeline correctly. . . this movie was suppose to be the inception of Ryan's career, yet the later "sequels" don't show Ford playing around with as much techie gadgets as Affleck was carelessly flinging about. Maybe its just me. And the utter destruction of the aircraft carrier almost made me cry. . . it just ain't right, wrecking a beauty like that. . .

So distraught I was after watching the carrier limping away from the surprise Russian attack, I decided to fire up the old Brigade archives and do some updating. . . its been a while since I've used AutoCAD and 3D Studios. . . and its definitely showing. . . :(

As for the ZIP drive itself, since I still have alot of data backed up in ZIP disks, it was indispensible. Fortunately, I was able to plug it into Quincy V and have it work properly, even though it refused to boot up with it as well. Looks like I have to move my stuff off of ZIP format soon. . .

That said, it looks like I don't have to spend uber amounts of money to fix Quincy VII at the moment. *crosses fingers. . . ALL of them*

So after three dying Quincies, one dead motherboard, and one dead network interface card later, CCCCC.net was more or less brought back online, with Quincy VII still inoperable. All the while Yan Yan was worried for my mental stability, since I was rushing around trying to fix three computers at once like a chicken with its head chopped off. . .