Fear the Crab

These customers were all leaving either tomorrow or the day after, so they decided to do all their shopping while they still had a chance. It kept me occupied enough that I didn’t get bored.

Maile told me her brother got some paternity papers from the state. It seems the woman he’s involved with has a long history of child neglect, abuse, and outright uncool stuff. It seems the woman has borne a plethora of kids, and all of them have been taken away. The state wants Keoni to take a paternity test to see if the child is really his (because neither he nor the woman are really that sure), and if so, whether he will take the baby or give it up to foster care. If the child does turn out to be his, I don’t really see him being able to take care of it, so it’s likely that kid will go to the state.

Maile also told me that Keoni knew about the woman’s history with kids, and even told a social worker to “check on her” because of her record. Perhaps he did it out of spite, but it’s possible that he did it out of actual concern for the child. I guess every person has their moment, and I’d really like to think that Keoni still retains some decency. It’s not healthy for me to continue thinking of him in ill-respect, if that makes sense. I’d rather consider (and treat) him as a human being, not some worthless fubar wasting precious air.

Today was Janet’s last day at Sports Authority, and I’m happy for her. It seems she’s having some trouble with her unemployment, though, as there are a few requirements of her that make no sense to the rest of us. She wants to collect partial unemployment, but the office is telling her that she needs to look for another full-time job.

Hopefully Janet’s situation can be resolved before her trip abroad. I asked her if she could buy me a bottle of Armani Gio and Johnnie Walker Blue Label. I’d give her the money, of course.

Tomorrow I go down to Toyota City and talk the talk with Bob. I hope to get a good deal on the truck I want. Armed with the MSRP as well as the actual invoice price, that knowledge may provide me with a bit of leverage when determining the final tally.

Work was pleasant enough, though I was in the duty free section by myself. Thankfully George was also working, so it meant I had someone to converse with. Work itself was slow, with few people wandering about the section. Duty Paid saw a little more action, especially with that Fuller convention still on the premises. I think I sold things to maybe four customers total for my entire shift.

I made an “appointment” to see a sales manager at Toyota City for Wednesday. My intent is to get a price list of the Tacoma and all the options I want, and see if it jives with what I’ve gotten from the web site. I also intend to ask if Toyota City offers services like tinting and alarms, because I may as well get it done through them (factory-installed, as it would be) rather than wait until a third party can do it. This way, too, I shouldn’t have as big a headache if it turns out to be illegal (ie tinting).

The only problem, though, is that it seems Toyota City has only the regular cab Tacomas on hand. This information has not been confirmed, but it is enough to indicate that I may have to wait longer to get the truck I want. I don’t know if they’d have to ship it from another dealer on the mainland, or order it from the factory. Whichever is the case, I may as well go for the 2003 model.

She still has to see a doctor next week to ensure it’s not something serious. This has relieved me tremendously; I almost burped my stomach out this morning, and I think it was because I’ve been so worried about the whole situation. I can now only hope that her next clinical visit will show nothing’s wrong, and also that the experience won’t be as painful as the last one.

I polished my boots tonight at George’s house. It was the first time I had ever taken a brush and wax to any of my footwear, but it’s a lot more simple than I had originally thought it would be. I think I was feeling a little anxious about the whole thing, not only because it was the first time I had done it, but because it’s nerve-racking when you’re doing something you’ve never done before to something you’ve invested some money into. It’s like trying out a brand new bottle of carwash for a brand new automobile. In the end it was all for naught, and now my boots look a bit more like how I bought them. I did notice, however, that the crease that normally comes from everyday wear on the right boot isn’t as “crisp” as the left, and that seems to make the left boot a bit more cleaner. Well, so long as I keep up the maintenance every couple of weeks or so, I shouldn’t have to worry. Now if I could only keep that mindset for my car…

Maile, George, Chanelle, and Jason were sleeping over at my house. Strangely enough, we were in my living room, on a piece of furniture that looked like a large-scale model of a station wagon. Maile and I were sleeping in the trunk of the station wagon, George was lying on the back seat, Chanelle was on the front bench seat, and Jason was lying in the footwells.

We all woke up and were trying to figure out what we were going to do. I was feeling very lazy, when all these strangers started showing up at my house. Normally I wouldn’t have allowed them in, but everyone else seemed okay with them and started to hang out. I was a tad upset by this (considering it was my house), and declined to join in the fun. Maile and I got into a brief argument over it, where I explained my feeling about the whole matter, but for some reason I kept getting the sensation that it was ME who was overreacting and being anti-social (even though it was my house and these were strangers coming in). I hopped into the shower, upon which a Smashing Pumpkins song kept playing in my head, and visions of long-haired grunge bands entertaining professional wrestlers jumbled in with a classical dose of Handel. Instead of sliding glass doors I had shower curtains, and these curtains kept blowing open in an unfelt breeze. The water pressure suddenly dropped to near-zero levels. Needless to say, I have no idea what SP song it was.

Maile is doing well with her homework, especially for her psychology class. Her paper/proposal assignment is progressing well, and all she has left to do is find the right set of words to properly describe her agenda. She came up with a great topic for a survey, that of what those in the medical profession think about euthanasia. This assignment is not due until Tuesday, giving her plenty of time to “touch up” her words for greater efficiency. I only wish my math homework could be like that.

Speaking of math homework, I must rewrite my assignment so that it’s legible and organized. Right now it’s a jumble of notes and scribbles as I wracked my brain to try and figure stuff out. I have arrows pointing to whatever free space there was, where I wrote additional notes or solutions. I don’t even know if any of them are correct.

Irene found out today that she has been selected for jury duty. Normally one would think it a golden opportunity to play god with another person’s life, but in this case Irene does not want to go. The selection process is scheduled for Monday the 23rd of September, and Irene has a full day of classes. As I am also a student at the UH, I can sympathize with her plight. It is difficult to miss even one day’s worth of classes when the material is quite important to one’s impending graduation. I’m not even sure if the professor’s would understand. Still, I told her to talk to her profs and see if they can either suggest how she can get out of jury duty, or find some way to give her the materials beforehand. There is, of course, the chance that she may not be selected to serve on the actual panel, but she would still have to go that first day, which loops us back to the main problem.

Today’s Invader Zim episode(s):
Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain
Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy

I have discovered that a half hour can make a whole lot of difference in regards to the morning rush hour. On Tuesday I left the house at 0615 hours and it took me about an hour to get to campus. Today I left at 0530 and showed up within 20 minutes. From now on, I plan to wake up at 0400 on school nights so I don’t have to sit in traffic. Now I really have to consider changing my hours on Mondays.

If I’ve never said it before, I’ll say it now; I hate math. Linear algebra, geometry, those I’m fine with. Stuff like what I’m getting into makes my head full. I can actually feel my brain pulse and get all fuzzy when I’m trying to comprehend stuff like mathematical induction. My head is so unhinged I can’t even describe induction here.

I officially made a fool of myself in 211. The prof is a big stickler for audience participation, going so far as to give points for it. We were reviewing basic Java concepts, and we came to the subject of while-loops and for-loops. She asked, “How many times will a for-loop initialize?” I know about for-loops, so I raised my hand, and was called to answer. Unfortunately, I misheard the question to be, “How many time will a for-loop run?” so I answered, “At least once.” I was corrected with the answer that it is just once. Not at least. Only once.

Well, my answer was “sorta” correct. And at least I’ve made myself known to the professor. The question remains whether or not I got a point for “effort,” or a neutral, which doesn’t affect my participation at all.

George left a message on my cell phone, at around 1920 hours according to the time stamp. He was hanging out with some old friends, Chanelle and Kandi (from what I understood of the message). Unfortunately, I got the message perhaps 2 hours later, and considering that I had been up since 0400 I was feeling quite beat. It’s too bad; I would’ve like to have gone. Haven’t seen those two girls in ages.

Maile came to visit me at work today, and that was a most pleasant surprise. She had just finished dinner with Lori at a restaurant called Buca de Beppo (sp?), an Italian place at the Ward Entertainment Center. I had paged Maile during their dinner, and since they were in the neighborhood, they both decided to drop in and see how I was doing. It made the rest of work more bearable, especially since I was able to meet Maile at Zippy’s for a quick bite to eat. Maile just had a chocolate shake, while I had a hot cake sandwich.

I told Maile that the next time she visits, she has to bring Titan. We both had a big laugh about that, because he’d probably freak out the whole of Waikiki. In any case, I can still see him when I drop by her house, so it’s no big loss for me.

I was in Longs with a whole bunch of co-workers. We were there because we were on our way to the beach, and we wanted to get things. Strangely enough, the items we were getting had nothing to do with the beach at all, and we were all in our duty free uniforms. I remember browsing the shelves for things that I wanted, and as I walked around, I traveled close to the windows and the door that lead outside. I looked outside to see what the weather was like, when suddenly I didn’t look where I was going and ended up nearly stepping out of the store with a basket full of merchandise. Thankfully I managed to steer away from certain doom before I crossed the line, but I kept thinking that Longs was going to send a security guard to check up on me. While browsing for gum, I noticed an undercover security officer trailing me. But I wasn’t hiding anything, and if he approached me I was going to tell him the truth, that I wasn’t watching where I was going, and in my dream that actually would have worked.

I went to pay, and was standing behind two other customers. It was odd that Longs’ registers were all inside little booths, and these booths formed a circular island in the middle of the store. There were these separators that you’d find at airports or Disneyland, which would accommodate long lines. The first customer left, then the second mentioned something to the sales clerk, and the two of them left the store. Those of us in line, especially me since I was next, began to wonder what was going on. I looked over to the door, and noticed that there were four sales clerks standing around there, just talking. Meanwhile, everybody else was done with their shopping, and they came by to see what was taking so long. I explained what was happening, as far as I could tell it, then I noticed that the line was getting super long, even at some of the other registers.

Eventually the sales clerk came back, and I got ready to pay. Unfortunately, she came back with another customer, and took her in front of everybody so she could be rung up. This happened twice more, and apparently it’s because this dream Longs had special 10-minute parking stalls for customers, meaning that if you parked there, you had top priority to be serviced because you only had 10 minutes. At this point I was getting quite upset, especially after being snubbed in line and all the other sales clerks not doing anything to help out. Irene and Min kept coming by to find out what was taking so long, and even Maile came into the store. Finally it was my turn, and strangely instead of having a basket full of little knick knacks, I was buying a pair of boots that in reality I got a couple weeks ago. My dream total ended up being over 200 dollars for one pair of boots. When I was done with my transaction, I stepped one window over to their service counter, where a young man was there. I asked if he was the manager, and he said yes. I then proceeded to tell him everything that went wrong with my visit. I said that I could understand how the clerks needed to service those people in the 10-minute stalls, but that left no excuse to have four other clerks standing around talking story while the line gets longer and longer. The manager seemed sympathetic.

However, before he could do anything or say anything in response, I found myself watching an anime cartoon detailing the end of a futuristic civilization. There was some sort of nuclear blast, or that’s what I was led to believe judging from what I was seeing. I remember the scene was underground, and there was a subway train that transported people to different sections of the underground city. There was no sound (it was a dramatic moment, I guess), and I felt that this cartoon was really cool because of the way they drew and how they wove their story. When the subway doors opened, no one came out, but rather this melting heat wave spilled out and turned the area into an oven. Even the walls were melting.

Here, the details of my dream are blurry, but I do remember an escape pod containing a robot and a monkey, crash landing on a planet. The monkey survived, but the robot did not, and the robot was the only thing that could tell the monkey what to do on this new planet. The monkey then turned into a group of five people, all trying to figure out their role on this new planet (which looked like Earth). I was among those people, and I remember opening up the flood gates in our yard and watching all this water spill out into the street. We wanted to judge the peoples’ reaction, and their reaction was to throw baseballs through our windows. I got rather sick of that, so I decided to leave and take a walk down the street, which led me to be find myself…

…in Longs, with a whole bunch of co-workers. We were there because we were on our way to the beach, and we wanted to get things. Strangely enough…

That little loop forced me out of my dream, with help from a power saw.

Not much happened today. I did some desc work on CheesyMUD and made a few mobiles, but that’s about it. Some would say I’m barely doing enough to warrant my immortal position, but I would disagree. Later.

At work it was a slow day. Nothing exciting occured, and the only notable thing worth mentioning was that Irene claims to not snore when she sleeps. I asked her how she can say that when she’s asleep and likely can’t hear herself snore. She says it’s because Tolkien never said anything. I think he’s being polite.

I’m trying to figure out why my desktop is so slow. By slow I do not mean machine speed, but rather the annoying fact that if it’s left on for a while, it will actually “act” slower. It’s as though something is chewing up all the processor time and it’s clogging up the pipes like a garlic chili dinner down the toilet. Among the clues that tell me this is the fact that my system clock gets slower and slower, to the point that it could be midnight in reality, but the computer will think it’s 2230 hours. The processor sounds like it’s regurgitating leftover spiced ham, and as it’s doing that the mouse is ill-responsive like a needle skipping over a broken record. I’ve removed some programs I no longer needed, one of which being ProgressQuest, a “hands-free” type of game that runs on its own. My suspicions fall greatly upon that cheeky monkey. I removed it, and after a reboot and disk cleanup/scandisk/degfrag I’m going to let it “sit” for a while and see if that fixes the problem. A deep gurgling in my stomach tells me that’s not the end of the problem, however. We shall see.

Today’s Invader Zim episode(s):
Megadoomer
Lice
Germs
Dark Harvest

Today was a lazy day. Didn’t do any work, didn’t do any chores, and I also didn’t waste my time doing anything recreational. About all I did do was watch Lord of the Rings on DVD. It was very difficult to separate the movie and the book, from my perspective. The fight scenes were very nice, and I can certainly see why the movie won four Academy Awards (Cinematography, Make-up, Music, and Visual Effects). However, I can also see why it didn’t win Best Picture or Best Actor/Actress. All-in-all, I’d say the movie is okay to watch, but I’m not going to buy it for keeps.

I also watched Kung-Pao at George’s house. I had no idea prior to this that they used an original kung-fu movie and spliced in new scenes. The movie is good for a few one-time laughs and inane silliness, but as with LotR, it’s not something I’ll own.

I ate a Quizno’s sub for dinner, but I couldn’t finish it. That’s what happens when you’ve imbibed 2 cans of soda 2 hours prior. Needless to say, all that junk food has made me even more lazy. I’ll probably turn in early tonight.