Anachostic

Lewis N Clark Urban Gear Duffel Review

Posted by anachostic on August 9, 2014 No comments

I have two fetishes and I’m not exactly shy about them. The fetishes are office supplies and luggage. Both center around the concept of organization. Like when I go to Staples, I fantasize about owning all this office equipment which necessitates the need for organizational supplies like binders and filing drawers and stands and on and on.

And luggage, well, I just appreciate a well-designed bag that holds just what you need. Because of this, I am constantly trying to find the right size bag for what I need at the time. And style has to be considered of course.

So, this bag came up on Woot:

And I really liked it. I’ve been using the bag for a while now and I still really like it. But one thing I never got around to testing was the bag’s capacity. I assumed I could use it for a week’s vacation, but would that really work? I mean, it’s only one bag. But then again, I am a guy. Guys don’t pack like women, am I right?

Therefore, this post is now the inaugural ManPack Experience.

You can see the empty bag above. First thing I’m going to pack is t-shirts. I am an advocate of the “rolled” packing style, so if you pack differently, you may get different results.

Nine t-shirts on layer 1. That also includes sleep shirts. I also expect I will buy a shirt or two on vacation. Next up, shorts – because I’m not going to go somewhere that’s cold, duh.

Five pairs of shorts and one pair of jeans. I could probably swap out a couple of the shorts for pants. Next up, Shirts, socks and underwear. These fill in the front.

Two button-down shirts, six pairs of socks, eight pairs of underwear. Next, toiletry bag, shoes and a belt. Of course, I’ll have the shoes and belt I’m wearing, too, so adding extra shoes is just an example.

A pair of sandals, a pair of loafers, and a belt. There is still room for more, too. Probably another pair of pants or a couple shirts. Now, will the bag close?

Sure it closes, and there’s more room on the outside. On the left, I keep a laundry bag for dirty clothes. On the right, I have my Kindle keyboard in its case. It’s shown vertically, but does fit horizontally. Front pocket holds a small tablet, which does fit horizontally. And I couldn’t think of what else to put in the front. So fully loaded, what’s the weight?

It’s 17 pounds loaded pretty full. You could stuff it further if you wanted.

So, this is a great travel bag for multi-day trips. If you had two bags, you could go for quite a while. But I don’t travel for long periods, so I am glad for another nice feature of the Lewis N Clark Urban series. I also bought their laptop bag, and it is a perfect fit inside the duffel.

The laptop bag fits my 15.6” Toshiba laptop just right. The interior of the bag is very sparse, with just one zippered mesh pouch that I use to hold the power cords. There is room in the bag for a legal padfolio, which I make use of. The front pockets hold cables, pens, and a flash drive.

Overall, I think the Urban Gear line of bags from Lewis N Clark is great stuff.

Can You…

Posted by anachostic on August 9, 2014 No comments

…be any more of a victim? – Chandler Bing

I get a call yesterday from a number I don’t know. I don’t answer it and the person leaves a voicemail. It’s a relative of a neighbor – I guess I’ve met him a few times. He needs help with his computer.

Still in voicemail, he relays the whole situation to me. He thinks his email was hacked. Yahoo Mail, maybe? So he “called Yahoo” and these guys “went in a did a bunch of stuff.” They charged him like $190 for this work. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t fix his problem. But, surprisingly, they called back and said they wanted to refund his money, but first he would have to wire $300 to a place overseas. Luckily at this point, he cut his losses and gave up. But that wasn’t the end. He shut down his computer and when he started it back up, he was prompted to log in and they had changed the password on him.

I call him back and offer to copy his files off the hard drive and reinstall the OS. He asks how much that’s going to cost because he’s not working and he’s on disability and he’s currently at an AA meeting (and I guess he’s already paid almost $200 so far). Oh boy. I told him not to worry about it. I know that I can fix this, but there’s a lot more wrong here and this certainly isn’t the end of the problems.

As I’m mulling over how much seems to be wrong: AA, disability, jobless, hacked, taken for a scam, it made me think about my persistent thought about how the PC revolution almost had something; how it almost brought enlightenment to humanity. This case was a stark reminder that some people just can’t handle a PC. These people need simpler devices like tablets. And yet, among the downloaded files on the laptop, were utilities for rooting Android phones. Just enough to be dangerous, indeed.

A Good Week So Far

Posted by anachostic on July 30, 2014 No comments

A couple of shoutouts for a couple of good actions by a couple of businesses I’ve dealt with. These were cases where I could have been out a little bit of money, but they absorbed the cost in a show of goodwill. For this, they deserve a good mention.

First, PNC Bank. Under most circumstances, I would be giving them a rant post. Consider this. I’m on the board for a small non-profit organization. We went to PNC last October and signed up for the free business checking. Everything was just great. Fast forward to two weeks ago and I got an email saying that August 1, there’s no more free checking and we would start getting charged $12/month. We’re a really small organization, so $12/mo is significant.

That was enough to irk me, but after some research, I discovered that the PNC’s decision to end free checking was made before we had even opened our account. So, our account rep sold us on an account knowing that in 10 months, we’d start getting hit with a fee. That’s not fair.

I just closed the account on Monday. The account rep was very understanding and didn’t give me any hassle. Later on that evening, I made the awful realization that I never printed off my online statements. Shame on me for not doing it each month. So, I check PNC’s fee schedule and it looks like it’s going to cost me $5 per statement, or $50 total. I take it on as a personal cost, since it was my screw-up.

I visit the bank Tuesday and sheepishly explain that I just closed my account and didn’t print my statements. The rep didn’t even bat an eye and said they’d print them out right away. And they did, for free. My sum impression of PNC is that the local branch service is very good, and they want their customers to be happy, but maybe the higher-level execs are a little disconnected and are just looking at the numbers, hence the discontinuation of free accounts.

Second kudos go to AdoramaPix. For the afore-mentioned organization, I had a need to print off a bunch of photos. Shopping for price proved that AdoramaPix was substantially cheaper, and I wasn’t worried about using them because I’d previously dealt with Adorama and they are highly respected.

I order the photos at 10pm on a Thursday with an estimated delivery next Friday. The next morning, I wake up to see my order has been shipped already and my delivery estimate is now Wednesday. I check the delivery tracking on Tuesday and discover the photos were delivered on Monday. Damn.

Then I go out to get my mail. No photos. Oh my god. I hate my mail carrier. He or she is always misdelivering mail. I’ve gotten valuable, important, and sometimes embarrassing things sent to me for my neighbors. I either hand-deliver them or put them back to be redelivered. This time it’s my turn.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a whole lot of faith in my neighbors. So I send an email to AdoramaPix and file a claim on USPS’s site. In the meantime, I’m wondering who just got $55 worth of pictures for free. A few hours later, I get an email from Adorama. An apology and a note that they’re reprinting my photos and resending them. It was that simple.

So yeah, it’s been a good week. Thanks to PNC and AdoramaPix whose personal service saved me unwelcome expenses.

Stranded

Posted by anachostic on July 25, 2014 No comments

Today, I got in my car to go to work today and I took note of the gas gauge. I have enough to get to work and I can get gas at lunchtime. So I head off to work. Out on the interstate, there’s an accident. Great. Still doing good on gas, though.

It was a delay of about 10 mins. I’ll be fine. I decide to stop for breakfast. At the Dunkin Donuts just down the road from my office, I get out of the car and something immediately feels odd. Just as I realize what it is and my hand moves to my pocket, I have a flashback of the previous night.

I’m leaving my office and heading to bed and I look down at my desk. I say to myself, “I have to remember my wallet tomorrow morning. It’s not in its usual place.”

It’s still there on the desk. How am I going to get breakfast? Lunch? Gas? I have to go back and get it. but I’m going to be late for work, like almost 2 hours late. Nevermind, I’ll have to deal with that when I get back.

I jump back in my car and it hits me. I don’t have enough gas to get back home to get my wallet. My mind starts racing trying to figure out how to resolve this. My only option is to continue to work and borrow some money to get me back home. But what a ridiculous reason.

Ridiculous or not, that is what I did. I went to my boss and explained the whole situation and he lent me the money to get the gas to get home and get my wallet. I have a real issue accepting help from other people, so I took this a little harshly.

Reboot & Graduation

Posted by anachostic on July 22, 2014 No comments

I saw an online forum post recently with a request on options for backing up photos. The person had a recent scare where they thought they had lost their hard drive and all their photos and was looking for something more.

This thought led me to remember the loss of all of my email some time ago. When was that? …wow, three years, almost to the day. You know what? I don’t miss it. I mean, there may be some times that I think about it, but as a whole, I don’t need it. That was a different person.

That made me think, what else don’t I need? And what else could I and others be hanging on to that are really unneeded. Things that could be keeping us in a rut, keeping us from reinventing ourselves, from really progressing. As I’ve said before, these things are an anchor.

Wisdom comes with age, they say. Not sure it’s wisdom, but I sure wish I had some of the thoughts that I do now when I was younger. Then again, maybe I was incapable of those thoughts. Back when you’re young, you’re just struggling to get ahead in the world, and damn if that isn’t so much harder now then it used to be. So any idea of me dropping everything and starting from scratch is a little biased.

I think I’d be better prepared for rebooting my life as a young person because I’d have the energy and drive and not a lot of baggage that comes with being an established adult. But I would be missing all the knowledge of how to get ahead that I’ve gained in my years. Things like business knowledge, common sense, handyman skills, social skills. All these I wouldn’t have available back then. Yeah, things seem easy now, but I’ve been doing it for a long time. The only thing I lack is youth.

But how appealing that sounds. Just to have a schedule of every three years, you sell everything, move somewhere new, ditch all your friends and start over. You could take on a totally different personality, have totally different interests, and through making new friends, experience things that would be completely incompatible with your previous life. In a sense, it would be like experiencing reincarnation within one lifetime, with the benefit of keeping the memories of your past lives.

Oddly, that has been a very strange recurring thought for me – what will my next life be like? I think about the missteps I’ve made in my current life and what I have learned in this life that I hope I recognize early enough in my next life to really make a larger impact on the world. A bigger impact than I can do here and now.

Could I completely start over right now? Doubtful. Although it’s a very appealing thought, I feel that I am laying groundwork for something bigger in the future. Learning patience and tolerance. Developing empathy and recognizing evil… not evil exactly, but getting a good read on people and their motivations. Seeing how selfish motivations are fleeting while sacrifice and sharing give much greater results. Nowhere is this moral exercise more on display than in modern politics.

So, this life is simply a study session. I feel like I’m in my Junior year, and just like traditional school, the Senior year is going to fly right by and then you get to graduate.

Tech Terms

Posted by anachostic on July 21, 2014 No comments

As someone who has grown up during the computer revolution, I can look at today’s society and marvel at how computers changed so many things in our lives.

A phrase I repeat in my posts is “I blame Windows,” which refers to the idea that Windows allowed a user to customize lots of different visual and behavior aspects, which then caused the user to expect that sort of custom, tailored experience in the real world, which then possibly contributed to the self-centered nature of younger generations. Maybe.

But the thing I was thinking about last night was how computers have introduced language that possibly would never have entered into the mainstream otherwise. I’m not talking about computer-specific terminology, despite my slight fascination of the term “drive” – disk drive, floppy drive, hard drive, usb drive, flash drive, and thumb drive. I am talking about a couple of terms that possibly existed (I can’t be bothered to take the 10 seconds and check) but were of no concern to people until they got computers. For example:

Font. Everyone that uses a computer now knows about fonts and what they are used for. That’s because everyone that got a computer has become a publisher in some way or another. Even with something as simple as emails, you could get a admonishment, “your font is difficult to read/too big/ too small/ the wrong color/not installed on my computer”.

Back in “the old days”, you had a typewriter that had one font – Courier New. You never had to worry about fonts. Even people who wanted to care about them and wanted to sound artsy or something would say, “that’s a really nice typestyle on that advertisement”, which would lead a more pretentious artsy person to say, “It’s not a typestyle, it’s a typeface.” But now everything is a font and everyone knows what that is.

Portrait and Landscape. I don’t think these terms existed before computers, but I also don’t think they are strictly computer terms. Maybe they existed in the publishing and photography industries, don’t feel like checking. The thing I know is that before computers, we used terms like “vertically” and “long-ways” to describe orientation. What a clever naming convention, too. Describe portrait orientation to someone. “It’s like a portrait” And landscape – “It’s like a picture of a landscape.” However, it is possible to have a portrait of a landscape taken in portrait orientation, but displayed in landscape. That is a bit confusing to explain to someone.

Random Pieces

Posted by anachostic on July 10, 2014 No comments

Recently, Flickr, which is part or Yahoo, decided they were going to do away with integrated authentication (OAuth, SSO, whatever you want to call it), meaning you had to have a Yahoo login instead of logging in with a FaceBook or Google account. Curiously, Microsoft Live wasn’t included in the SSO program, even though Yahoo has a good working relationship with Microsoft. But none of that matters now.

Predictably, people are up in arms that they have to have a Yahoo login. I’ve had a few Flickr accounts over time, two still current, but will probably drop down to just one. That remaining one was integrated with FaceBook, so I had to go through the process of creating a new Yahoo account. I didn’t like doing it, but what I do like is having 1TB of free picture hosting that I can access via API. Let me explain that value a bit more. Hopefully, Yahoo doesn’t read this post and figure out how to stop it.

I have a virtual server with GoDaddy that I can use to host whatever web sites I want. It’s certainly not the fastest server in the world, but then again, I don’t host the biggest sites in the world. As part of this bare-bones plan, I have about 30GB of drive space, 20 of which is used up by OS and system applications. So, space is definitely at a premium.

If I’m going to host a web site that has a photo gallery, which I do as part of a side project I’m involved in, things get a little tense. But, with a little clever coding, I can host all the photos on Flickr and use their API to display the albums and photos on my website. You’d never even know the images are on Flickr unless you look at the URLs, and what normal web user does that? So, even with a free account, you can have 1TB of photo hosting – with no advertising. Sounds a little too good to be true. But I’m grateful.

And for that one reason alone, I can tolerate having a Yahoo account. And I’d have to tell any of the people all upset about having to create a Yahoo account: You’re late to the game, guys. Flickr used to have its own login before Yahoo bought them and before SSO became a “thing”. Would you have been upset that you had to create a whole new Flickr account to use their service? Of course not. Get over it.

In other news, for the afore-mentioned side project, I just purchased a vinyl cutting machine and heat press machine. It seemed like a good purchase at the time because of all the team jerseys that were always needed on short notice. And also, I am a big proponent of doing as much myself as possible. When you control everything from end-to-end, your costs and timelines are more predictable. (It’s almost like dropping login support for other parties and doing it all yourself, eh, Yahoo?) Outsourcing the printing of the jerseys had previously resulted in different costs, sometimes due to rush jobs, sometimes due to the printer’s whim. One job resulted in an incorrect name printed, with no time for correction since we paid out the nose for rush processing and shipping anyway. So bringing the shirt printing in-house was, to me, the best solution. Par for the course, both machines had to be rush shipped so we had enough time to print jerseys for the next game. Even so, buying entry-level equipment only cost about $600.

Now that I own this equipment, there is a serious potential to make that money back and then some. I have to say, the setup and operation of this equipment was really simple. If you can: use any graphics program, print a document, follow directions, and count, you can probably run a t-shirt business. And I have to say, watching a vinyl cutter, which is just a plotter with a knife instead of a pen, is mesmerizing.

Who Wants To Live Forever?

Posted by anachostic on June 28, 2014 No comments

Things that MSN Healthy Living says are bad to eat:

BBQ Sauce
Pasta Salad
Macaroni Salad
Potato Salad
Ranch Dressing
Fatty steaks
Breaded chicken
Fried chicken
Hot dogs
Sausage
Hamburgers
Pie
Cake
Gluten-free foods
Greek frozen yogurt
Asian Chicken salad
Fruit Smoothies
Fish Sandwiches
Chinese vegetarian dishes
Chipotle’s burrito bowl
Tomato soup
Baked fuckin’ potato
Omelet
Microwave popcorn
Light salad dressings
Trail mix
Granola
Artichoke spinach dip
Flavored fat-free yogurt
Dried fruit
Flavored soy milk
Energy drinks (well, duh)
Turkey sandwich
Parfait
Blue corn chips
Chicken wrap
Low-fat muffins
Frozen diet dinners
Canned soups
Veggie pizza
Spinach pasta
Wheat bread (or any fucking bread)
Diet soda (duh, again)
Reduced fat peanut butter
Fruit cocktail
Swordfish
Imported catfish
Farmed eel
King Mackerel
Orange Roughy
Chilean Sea Bass
Shark
Imported Shrimp
Tilefish
Bluefin Tuna
Non-organic strawberries
Anything from McDonalds
Canned Tomatoes
Corn. Yes, corn.
White chocolate
Artificial sweeteners (no, really?)
Sprouts
Anything with food dyes
Ice cream sundaes from chain restaurants
Eggnog
Candied Yams
Creamed Spinach
Cranberry Sauce
Cheese straw
Fruitcake
Swedish Meatballs
Pot Roast
Yorkshire pudding
Prime Rib
Sausage stuffing
Dark meat turkey
Green bean casserole with fried onions
Croissants
Potato pancakes
Lobster Newburg
Yule log
Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha
Caramel apples
Gingerbread
Sugar cookies
Plum pudding
Mashed Potatoes
Gooseberry pie
Beef Wellington
Glazed Ham
Gravy
Cinnamon Rolls
Peanut Brittle
Apple pie a la mode
Chocolate covered cherries
Cheese fondue
Shepard’s pie
Smoothie King’s Hulk Strawberry Smoothie
Starbucks’ Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino Blended Creme with whipped cream
Coldstone’s PB&C Shake
Auntie Anne’s Jumbo Pretzel Dog
Cinnabon’s Caramel Pecanbon
Wendy’s Sweet and Spicy Boneless Wings
Dunkin’ Donuts’ Coffee Cake Muffin

And although there are many more articles I could have pulled items from, I think that serves to show that if you really want to be healthy, all you can eat is organic lettuce. But even then, some articles complain about foods that are improperly produced or prepared, so make sure that straight-from-the-ground organic lettuce doesn’t have any bugs, dirt, or animal feces on it.

Do not, I repeat, do not cook. Mankind has been lucky to survive as long as it has with people indiscriminately making food. If you didn’t pull it from the ground or from a bush or tree with your own hands, it is not safe and you will die.

Back Into Music, Do They Still Make Music?

Posted by anachostic on June 25, 2014 No comments

Like the changing of the seasons, it’s time to cycle back into music-making. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve had any major interest in it. I guess mostly because I haven’t felt like I’ve had any time. Everything seems to be experienced in small doses here and there, and when I take a long time to sit down with an idea and try to expand it, I start to feel guilty, like I’m not paying attention to something that needs attention. This sort of meshes in with prior posts about how fleeting inspiration is and how life gets in the way.

Sometimes a real inspiration-killer is the effort it takes to set up and manage a recording session. When your time is limited, you kind of have to have everything planned in advance. You can find plenty of videos of musicians sitting in a studio, trying out different things until something gels. I used to have that luxury; I don’t feel I have that now.

Like when you have a good starting riff, then you go searching for the right sound patch to express it. Half an hour later, you’re midway through one synth’s patches and still have a few more synths to go. I guess that’s why so many people compose on a piano or acoustic guitar – deal with the sounds later.

So, I’m upgrading my office studio again, adding a third monitor to my computer to be wall-mounted above my keyboards so I can keep the recording software in front of me (Cubase in ma face). In past setups, I’ve had my computer to my side and to my back. I hope that being in front will help me be more productive since I don’t have to turn around all the time.

I’ve burnt out two mixers over the last few years, so I’ve been playing through headphones. That’s also going to be rectified with the upgrade – another mixer.

Yikes. Looking back at previous blog posts, it looks like I’ve been musically idle for over three years. That’s really no good. Oh, no… Checking my hard drive, the last thing I recorded was back in 2009. Where does the time go?! That is nothing like the changing of seasons, that’s more the changing of a generation.

And speaking of generations, it goes without saying that music is “done” differently now, and I have little interest in trying to do it that way or trying to sound similar. I do wonder if the effort to create modern music is more or less than what it takes me to do it the old way. For example, I have to write and play multiple tracks for a 4 minute song. Newer composers have to find to find a bunch of samples that work well together, loop them in some coherent order and then spend who-knows-how-much-time applying effects. At least that’s how I view modern music.

I listen to old-style music written in the new way and it seems to be the worst of both styles (effort-wise). Writing and performing everything, then embellishing it with effects and post-processing. That seems like so much effort, and it seems like so much more than I could devote in my tiny blocks of available time.

Like when you have a complete song, then you go searching for the right effects to apply. Half an hour later, you’ve run through one effect unit’s settings and still have half a dozen different units to go. On one track. It feels like I’ve been there before.

Food Bitching, With A Twist

Posted by anachostic on June 20, 2014 No comments

Here we go again. Another restaurant on my blacklist, which is a shame because I’ve been very tolerant of them in the past. But this incident had a a new, unexpected element to it.

I arrive and wait for attention. This is typical. I have no idea why this restaurant doesn’t have a host. Finally, a man notices me and tells me I can have a seat anywhere. And I do.

He brings me bread and a glass of water and says the waitress will be by soon. Huh. I guess they did get a host. Good for them. A lady comes out and takes my order. Coke, salad, and an entrée. Nothing fancy.

After a while, the host comes back out and asks if I need anything. I just placed my order and I have bread and water, so, no. I’m fine. Good, attentive host.

Another party comes in and sits in the booth in front of me. The waitress is apparently good friends with them, since they texted each other before arrival. When the waitress eventually comes back around to take their order, she sits in the booth with them, chats with them for an extended time, and in-between, takes their order. I’m thinking, “Where’s my coke?”

Waitress goes away, checks on another table, then brings the neighboring party’s salads out. Um, where’s my salad? She goes away, comes out and clears a table, checks on another table and refreshes their drinks. At this point, my water is empty and I’m being completely ignored, even when she looks right at me. As I sit and stew, I decide: It’s on.

At last, the waitress brings out my entrée. I say thank you, then turn on the asshole mode. “Now, may I have my Coke, my salad, and a refill of my water. Please.” She is stunned for a moment and says the other guy is my waiter. What? I thought he was the host. She took my order. She brought my food out. I thought she was my waitress. I tell her such. Nope, they had switched. She said that she got the Coke and salad ready, but he just left them there.

Wait. She just admitted that saw my drink and salad sit there in back and did nothing about it? She says the guy is new and she doesn’t think he’s going to work out. Yeah, I never saw him again after he asked me if I needed anything, but I didn’t think he was a waiter. In hindsight, why wasn’t he bussing the tables? Hmmm.

Anyway, she apologizes and says she will get my Coke and take the salad off the bill and talk to her manager. I’m semi-sympathizing with her at this point because of the misunderstanding that (at the time) I didn’t realize was more her fault than anything. But then, a challenger appears!

The guy in the booth in front of me half turns around and says, “This is my first night here, and I’ll be your waiter.” Remember, this guy is close friends with the waitress. Obviously he’s been there plenty. I didn’t quite get where he was going with his statement.

I chuckle and say, “Oh, I’ve been here several times."

His voice changes slightly and he says, “This is a good place to eat.”

Instinctively, I sense he’s a bit peeved about my dressing down of his friend. I reply sympathetically and emphatically, “You’re right, this is a good place.”

His voice changes more significantly and he orders, “Then shut the fuck up and enjoy it.”

Dramatic pause.

Using a tone I have mastered that basically says, I have to say this, but I don’t mean a word of it, I reply, “I’m sorry if I offended you, sir.”

He delivers more rambling f-bomb accusations with his back to me. His wife is saying, “Honey, stop.”

Well, that’s that. Without a bite of my food, I say, “You know, I don’t think this is a good place.” I remove my napkin and stand up. I walk by his booth and say to him, “Thank you very much, sir.”

I go to the waitress, who, despite the situation I put on her and the one happening between me and her friend, is helping another table… before she gets my damn Coke. I put a bill in her hand and say, “Here’s $10 for the food. I won’t be eating here again.” She chases after me trying to give the money back, but I shooed her off.

Sometimes the poison isn’t just the staff, it’s the patrons, too.

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