Your net troubles were contagious Kawaii… It took me till almost 3am to upload the Quackcast last night. The damn thing would go from 250kbs to 2 then 0 :(
And then when it was almost done uploading there would be an error and I'd have to start again. It took so many tries to upload that bastard. It was only about 58meg too! Teeny for a Quackcast.
I didn't find a soloution apart from keeping at it till it worked finally. -_-

Good on you for managing to fix that by yourself!

Some good anime:

B Gatta H Kei
This one seems really pervy from the set-up:
A girl going into highschool is obsessed with sex, her dream is to have casual sex with 100 men, but she's really self concious about the way her vagina looks…
She's very atractive and lots of guys approach her, but she's afraid to go out with them because she thinks they'll have more expereince and take advantage of her, or laugh at her or something, so she pics a boring, ordinary, still handsome, but non-confident guy to practise dating with and get her virginity out of the way.

It turns out to be pretty sweet for all that, a bit of a romantic comedy, with no one ever having any sex. And what I liked about it was that the girl wasn't just the usual 2D sterotype with no sexdrive of her own, but she's not a sex-crazed freak either. It's an Ecchi comedy about the girl tryng to get her rocks off for once.

Princess Jellyfish
I've just started this one, it seems really cool with a great art style. It seems to be about a few otaku girls living together in an apartment complex. They're very nerdy, with lots of different body types. One writes boy-love Manga, one's an illustrator and so on. I like it because the characters aren't all drawn as the usual sterotype anime females, these are stylised versions of real people, and they're nevrous and nerdy, with real people hangups. It's funny and fun. :)

Hi Ducks!
It's been awhile since I've dropped by. Life's been busy: my autistic son has finally earned his HS degree and has a part-time job (YAY!); my mother-in-law passed away in March (her husband died a year ago June), so lots of estate shtuff; and my last day of employment with an organization I was with for more than 20 years was on 9-11 (deliberately, symbolic of the exacerbating stress endured for the past two years).
So I'm beginning to resurface, breathe again, and find a little of this long lost thing called energy, or enthusiasm. Whatever. Enough that I marched in the NYC Peoples Climate March two weeks ago (if you like, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur5KIQEGf5c ). I was SO tired before we ever left the house, but it was a fantastic event and I'm foolishly proud that I was part of it.
I'm not ready to retire, but can't imagine job-hunting until I can get myself together before 10 AM. (Most employers seem to require that.) Who knows: maybe in amonth, or more, I might try drawing again.

Car is dead. 3100$ not to mention the new radiator for 800$ and the tires 350+…all down the drain. Didn't even ‘own’ it for more than one year. I'm so angry right now. I have enough saved to get another piece of shit but seriously how does a normal trip to work turn into losing my car?? Fucking universe suck asshole donkey dicks.

Skullbie wrote:
Car is dead. 3100$ not to mention the new radiator for 800$ and the tires 350+…all down the drain. Didn't even ‘own’ it for more than one year. I'm so angry right now. I have enough saved to get another piece of shit but seriously how does a normal trip to work turn into losing my car?? Fucking universe suck asshole donkey dicks.

Owch… I can relate. My car breaks down and I'm stuck using the second oldest form of self transportation known to humans.
Thanks to that I listen to my car as I run it, noting every unusual sound it's not supposed to make and any weird behavior in every system (steering, engines, electronics). Some were an easy fix (I know how to replace radiators, front and rear brakes, getting wipers to work, etc…) while others require an experienced mechanic and a ton of dough…

Well, nearly got hit by a typhoon for the second time within a month. And it looks like there will be more on the way. To make matters worse, I have to work despite the weather conditions. It's a real headache sometimes but I deal with it as best I can.

And maybe some soothing music to temporarily take away the pains of life? Actually I found this song in my tablet…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gb6IN1HS4U

Yay! Ayesinback is back! ^_^
I'm glad you're ok Ayes! How's Roku and PP? Any grandkids on the way yet?
Any more voiceover work in the offing?

–
Bad luck about your car Skull, that happened to a friend of mine… She paid a whole lot of money to get her little second hand car fixed up then one day the police stopped her, couldn't find that she's committed any offenses, so they put a yellow sticker on her car- That means the person has to take it to a police aproved mechanic so they can go over every inch of it and point out things wrong. If the car fails anything at all it can't go back on the road till all the things are completely fixed and t's been rechecked, all at the owner's expense.
Needless to say that's a death sentance for any second hand car unlucky enough to get that. So all she could do was sell it for parts.

ozoneocean wrote:
Bad luck about your car Skull, that happened to a friend of mine… She paid a whole lot of money to get her little second hand car fixed up then one day the police stopped her, couldn't find that she's committed any offenses, so they put a yellow sticker on her car- That means the person has to take it to a police aproved mechanic so they can go over every inch of it and point out things wrong. If the car fails anything at all it can't go back on the road till all the things are completely fixed and t's been rechecked, all at the owner's expense.
Needless to say that's a death sentance for any second hand car unlucky enough to get that. So all she could do was sell it for parts.

O_O Whoa what the hell, the cop surely knew that, too. Where was this? Very messed up!
I'm looking into getting a new car for the first time in my life. MSRP of 16k for staples like the toyota camry, as low as 12k for an older ford focus. Problem is I don't care about cars and would rather spend my money on other things. I don't wanna be someone who works to pay off their damn work transport.

Yikes, Ozone! My guess is that sort of thing is there to take all the old cars off the road. O_O

Personally I'd take a moped. But first I'll have to get a motorcycle license. Now around here you don't need a license to use a moped with an engine less than 50cc. Still need registration and insurance though. However, those mopeds don't move fast enough for my taste and I don't like slowing down traffic behind me hence the motorcycle license. Think of all the gas I could save (many of them are over a hundred miles to the gallon). Around 150cc is usually good enough. Anything over is too much power for my taste. :)

Yellow sticker? D: Sounds like a death sentance in all but name. Do they send these cars to an interment camp first? Over here all you have to do is pass a yearly check by a local approved garage and if you know them you can easily keep your old rustbucket running forever without too much expense. I've never owned a new car - hope you get a good deal Skullbie.

Use the internet to shop around. Especially Car Fax. Find what you want at the best price. I got my car for $3K less because of paying attention to the ads and websites.

The yellow sticker sounds like what happens when you go to the dealership for maintenance. They invent something wrong with your car to get you to spend money. However there are some real dangerous rust-buckets out there and I just scream “Put it out of its misery and LET IT DIE!” Then there are the kids who put pin holes in their muffler so it screams. Yeah I had that as a kid, it was a disconnected tail pipe. Back in the day it was sign to get your car fixed not “I'm just too cool for you and have a tiny penis”

Working in a garage you learn what most mechanics think of this stuff.

Yep, it's designed to keep older cars off the road… and punish poor people, like a lot of laws these days.

Good luck with the yphoons Lonne! I heard that a few US airmen dide in the recent on in Japan the other day. Though I think they were probabl idiots… I beleive that a couple of them were out surfing in the storm and one was trying to get picures of the ways and they all got washed out to sea or something.

Princess Jellyfish is such a cool anime! Very funny. :)
It turns out all the women are in their 30s, they're the children of babyboomers and their parents allowance subsudises their rent. One of the girls meets a very beautiful stylish woman and she ends up back at the apartment with the rest of the ladies, who're all intimidated by her fashionable looks… except she's reallly a transvestte.
I'm not doing it justice, it's just too cool and so far away from the usual anime cliches.

Yeah. So my husband just got back from the car mechanic. There had been a funny whistling sound; we guessed brakes. What do we know?

me: That was fast. Was it the brakes?
himself: Water pump. They told me it'll take about 4 hours.
me: (picturing a scene from Grey's Anatomy, but with the car on the table, belly up)

$$$$$$$ and Skull, this is a Camry. It's actually been a good car, but now that it's 6 years old, things will start hapnin. I like the idea of a moped, Lonne, tho not for a NJ winter. But could work well down in the Southwest area.

(Insert wildebeestie tracks)

So, Oz, no little wikings around, but PP and Roku are still a long-distance thing.

and Geez I forgot how Annoying this text editor is. Between it and auto-correct, it's a little surprising my neighbors haven't seen this Kindle fly throuh a window yet. Where are things with a kickstarter rescue mission McDeal?

ayesinback wrote:
$$$$$$$ and Skull, this is a Camry. It's actually been a good car, but now that it's 6 years old, things will start hapnin.

Water pump replacement for a 2004-2011 Camry varies widely in cost. So does the price for the part. You can get one for between $75 and $150. The procedure varies between $280 and $750. It shouldn't cost $750 to replace a water pump but if a mechanic can convince someone it does and they'll pay, the mechanic will do it. Pad out the cost.

me: That was fast. Was it the brakes?
himself: Water pump. They told me it'll take about 4 hours.
me: (picturing a scene from Grey's Anatomy, but with the car on the table, belly up)

It takes 4 hours because the engine compartment is so tight and you gotta go in from the bottom. If only it was as simple as Grey's Anatomy. It's like as if you could only get to the liver by going through the crotch.

bravo1102 wrote:
Water pump replacement for a 2004-2011 Camry varies widely in cost. So does the price for the part. You can get one for between $75 and $150. The procedure varies between $280 and $750. It shouldn't cost $750 to replace a water pump but if a mechanic can convince someone it does and they'll pay, the mechanic will do it. Pad out the cost.

First, I am impressed with your text quoting skills. huzzah et al.

Second, do You do Camry repairs? I'd rather pay an internet friend and take a little jaunt shore-ward than get stiffed. Because, by the info you shared, we apparently got stiffed.

Hmm, having just boight a 2008 Camry this weekend I'm hoping this tale has a happy ending …

ozoneocean wrote:
Good luck with the yphoons Lonne! I heard that a few US airmen dide in the recent on in Japan the other day. Though I think they were probabl idiots… I beleive that a couple of them were out surfing in the storm and one was trying to get picures of the ways and they all got washed out to sea or something.

Well… there's also the fact that Vongfong is a supertyphoon… which puts it on par if not beyond a category 5 hurricane. Those things are merciless monsters that bowl over an area, blowng apart concrete buildings as if they were a set of legos… T_T

Yeah… Vongfong is a real beast of a typhoon… it looks scary on any weather map..

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/10/08/super-typhoon-vongfong-japan/16912813/

I'm vary wary of any typhoon ever since my house got blown apart by Supertyphoon Paka, then Supertyphoon Pongsona years later. The way I see it, it won't be long before we get a direct hit… T_T

I think the term “Typhoon” is confusing… But it's basically what Americans and British call a Hurricane and what Australians call a Cyclone. They're all exactly the same type of storm virtually.

I have a really fricken painful scratchy throat! Dammit! I have to drink so much milk to soothe it… I'll have to ask the chemist about something for it this afternoon.

ozoneocean wrote:
I think the term “Typhoon” is confusing… But it's basically what Americans and British call a Hurricane and what Australians call a Cyclone. They're all exactly the same type of storm virtually.

I have a really fricken painful scratchy throat! Dammit! I have to drink so much milk to soothe it… I'll have to ask the chemist about something for it this afternoon.

Yeah. When it's in the North Pacific it's called a Typhoon. The scaling is even weirder. A category 1-4 hurricane is just a typhoon to us. But when it hits category 5+ it gains the “super” moniker…

Scratchy throat? I hate that. Might be a good idea to see a doctor though I usually just ride it out if the pain is managable.

The Dr is too expensive for a small thing like this. I'll just see the chemist this afternoon. I couldn't sleep last night because of it. -_-
No other noticable cold or flu symptoms though yet so hopefully it's just a limited throat thing only.

With stroms I think the problem is that if you don't really recognise the name (huricane/typhoon/cyclone) you don't realise how truly bad they are. It was years before I found out that typhoons were severe huricane/cyclone level storms… I always thought they were like seasonal monsoon storms or something.
And I think a lot of North Americans think of cyclones as tornadoes or something. :/
Thankfully I've never expereinced any of those weather systems!

Scratchy throat is one of the worst. No cure and the doctor is probabaly no more use than the chemist anyway. How about we all chip in with our largely anecdotal remedies?
Remedy one: My great grandfather prescribed nettle tea for just about everything - lots of other herbs too that he'd grab from the hedgerow, but the list of benefits for nettle is endless. He lived to be 83 which is pretty good for those days, so it's worth a try. There's a field recording of him in the British Library where he talks about this back in 1951, but they can't tell me exactly how much it will cost to send me a copy so sadly I haven't heard it yet

Remedy two: Honey. A tabalespoon of honey in some hot water, preferably with some freshly squeezed lemon juice really seems to help. Mrs Scarf would add freshly grated ginger and a generous glug of brandy and if that doesn't work, well who cares - I'm going to make one right now. Prevention is better than cure!

I can endorse Remedy 2, with slight modification: one part raw honey, one part lemon juice, and one part whisky. We generally mix a teaspoon of each in a shot glass.

As far as tea, I've read about the benefits of nettle tea before, but wouldn't recognize nettle if it bit me. And it did once, nasty mean bite, too. Instead of nettle, that's when we use ginger. Three slices of raw ginger root to steep in a mug of boiling water.

And last: grape juice and zinc. Zinc immediately when first experiencing symptoms and then grape juice throughout. Neither alleviate the sore throat, but zinc weakens the attack, and the juice shortens the duration of the virus.

I tried lemon juice, honey and hot water, but it didn't work. :(
-I don't have any of that other stuff… no whisky, Gin, brandy… :( :(
Strepsels to suck and soothe the throat just make my tongue numb.
Milk seems to sooth my throat best funilly enough.

I got a type of Betadine that you gargle (has iodine in it, you normally put it on cuts), from the chemist… But it's basically all the same stuff you find in ordinary mouthwash, just with the antisceptic iodine added.
You have to gargle it every hour… My throat hurts less than it did last night, but it's still as scratchy as it was yesterday. The gargle has zero imiediate effect on the scratchiness/pain. It's just supposed to kill the infection.

To my way of thinking, most normal sore throats will on last a few days anyway as your imune system handles them. So something that you're meant to gargle a lot of and takes a couple of days to work is pretty useless if all it does is mirror what your immune system does anyway.
I'd rather gargle good old fashioned laudanum. At least that really did ease the throat, which is all you need, -_-

Maybe I'm not being fair with it…
I'm off to gargle more of my placeabo now.

ozoneocean wrote:
With stroms I think the problem is that if you don't really recognise the name (huricane/typhoon/cyclone) you don't realise how truly bad they are. It was years before I found out that typhoons were severe huricane/cyclone level storms… I always thought they were like seasonal monsoon storms or something.
And I think a lot of North Americans think of cyclones as tornadoes or something. :/

Actually hurricanes and typhoons are types of cyclones. A cyclone refers to the circular swirling mass of air that forms the storm center. You can have cyclones over dry land like dust devils and those realy awful thunderstorm systems in the American praire. We laymen just don't know what all these terms mean so we just throw them around as if they all meant the same thing. Our definitions of the differences aren't correct according to the people who study these things. We're ignorant laymen jsut throwing around words not meteorologists.

@ayesinback: I am not a mechanic I merely worked in a garage as the guy at the front desk. I know a little about cars and repairs and am pretty good at describing and diagnosing probelms but I would never presume to fix one. The oil pan on my wife's car rusted out and that's that's gonna cost over $500. It's a labor intensive repair that may include unbolting the engine from its mounts and jacking it up. At least I don't have a Volkswagen that's a $2000 job.

Bravo- In Australia “Cyclone” only means “huricane” or “typhooon”, it's not used as a general term.
It's like in Australia our native people have always been called “aboriginies” as the specific name of the people (in the same way you might say American Indian), but that is just a general term for native people anywhere, elsewhere in the English speaking world.

Cultural definitions trump scientific ones if you're trying to understand what people are saying in different parts of the world. :)

ozoneocean wrote:

Cultural definitions trump scientific ones if you're trying to understand what people are saying in different parts of the world. :)

A colloquialism is a nice bit of local color but it is not an accurate description of something to someone without that cultural reference. A cyclone is a severe thunderstorm that can lead to tornadoes in the USA. A Tornado is a severe condition characterized by explosives raining from the sky in Iraq. (reference to the Tornado multi-role combat aircraft)
Use the right words so everyone knows what you are referring to. Do not use your cultural (colloquial) ones because the meaning will get lost. Primary rule of inter-cultural communication. I keep running into this at work even with immigrants who have been in the US for 20 years let alone recent arrivals. Therefore I'm trying to rid my speech of any cultural language and I try (and often fail due to my limitations) to use accurate scientific terminology rather than colloquialisms.

Heck in the USA colloquialisms change from state to state, region to region. I get lost when it comes to soda versus pop and hoagie versus slider versus sub.

Life has some really mysterious kind of timing. I had the money to buy my niece a new tablet. A lower end tablet mind you, but something that she can have fun with and hopefully use for schoolwork.

and right when I'm wracking my brain about buying her one or not, my BLU Spark phone mysteriously dies… It won't turn on. Heck, it won't even charge and my PC doesn't register its presence anymore when I hook it up. So I end up buying a new smartphone for $115… a BLU Dash Music 4.0…



It's an older model phone (newer models being 5.0 and up) and will probably be stuck with the Android Jellybean operating system. Oh, well… as long as it works. Too bad the store had run out (this was the last one in an unopened package)… and it's yellow… T_T

@ Lonne- it could be something simple like a totally dead battery. That happened to an old laptop of mine.

@Bravo- I think you misunderstand me, that's my fault actually because I phrased my explanation as if it was coliquial. Sorry for that. :(
It's not a colliquialisim, it's part of our official Australian English and English in general I think.
It's the offical definition of a storm here and is used in meterology globally when people refer to cyclone/hurrican/typhoon size storms in the southern hemisphere.
http://www.livescience.com/32180-how-do-cyclones-hurricanes-and-typhoons-differ.html
Did you hear that Pluto is back to being a full planet again? :D
The promblem with the dwarf planet kerfuffle was that people were imagining that “planet” was a term with a specific scientific definition… or at least they tried to give it one, but that never really worked, because there IS no such thing as a “planet” per se, just things we choose to call planets. It's a cultural definition.
Then there were the people that said all the other round objects out in the far asteroid belt should be full planets as well then, but that doesn't follow either: we call Europe and Asia “continents” and we have that on maps, geography books etc… even though there's no seperation between them appart from national borders and history, and even that is blurred.
If we choose to name Pluto a planet and not the other objects, so what?

Dead Battery? Don't think so. Borrowed a coworker's phone (also a BLU Spark) and still got no response from mine at all. And he was laughing at me when I bought the yellow colored phone. Then he stopped laughing when he later saw me playing Minecraft on the thing… :)