Hello Miss Antenna

I never cease to be amazed by the utter stupidity of people.  This story took place a few months ago in Baltimore.  I had recently gotten on the Lime bus headed north and there was two young ladies that had children with them. Well one of the ladies sits in front of me and I notice what looks like two metal antennas coming out of her cheeks.  (I swear that the reception on my phone got better when she sat down). it was hard not to notice the rather unique body modifications and thought they looked pretty stupid but I was able to maintain my composure nonetheless.

So they see this older gentleman on the bus and refer to him as their uncle and they have some small talk and then he looks over at Miss Antenna and asks:  “What is that on your face”?.  Now this was the straw that didn’t merely break the camel’s back no that joker broke in several places and I was unable to hold back the laughter.  At that Miss Antenna turns to me and in a very upset tone asks:  “Are you laughing at me?”  Now in my mind I’m like..”Duh lady you know good and well you got the antennas sticking out of your cheeks and you chose to come out the house looking like that so of course I am laughing at you”.  I kind of just paused and didn’t quite know how to respond. I clearly couldn’t say what was really on my mind lest this woman spaz out and I end up being yet another story that ends up here.

Dude with smart mouth gets stabbed on Lime bus

So her friend/relative looked at me and said…..”Just say yes.”  I sense that was probably the best thing to do so I said yes and that seemed to satisfy her and so we continued on the bus. Thankfully they got off not long afterwards and I was just left with a story to tell.

Goodbye Miss Antenna!

 

 

Loud Library

So I come to the library today sit down and get onto the internet, a few minutes later and two people decide to come in and immediately they get on their phones.  I immediately think to myself:

Why are you here making all this noise?

I mean seriously, this is just not the place for that.  There are plenty of books that you could read, or even get on one of the public computers if you don’t have one of your own.  There are even areas for you to sit in at a local Safeway but yet you choose to come here and disturb others with this foolishness.

Would it kill you to just sit down and shut up?

Oh, and if i say anything to you about it, then we have the likelihood of confrontation. But it doesn’t have to be that way You could just be mindful of others and take your conversation elsewhere.

Other patrons look and I am sure they feel as I do.  This is also one of those times when none of the librarians will randomly walk in to check on things and correct the problem.

Good, they left.

LOL!! Looks like I spoke too soon.  It’s like that movie “We’re back!” except this isn’t exactly a dinosaurs story.

You know what…..I don’t have to take this…I’m going home.

 

My confession

So I walk into a supermarket to get something to drink.  When something wonderful catches my eye. 

No silly not that.

I’m talking about Gelato.  Raspberries and Cream to be more specific.  Anyway I decide to try it because it sounded like something new.

I tasted it and it was indeed delicious so delicious I thought to myself…….

Am I dreamin’?

Then I notice that it tastes mighty familiar.  I decide to look it up to see what it was and surprise…..

Gelato is italian for ice cream!

I thought to myself, “seriously”? For it was a serious “duh” moment.  So I just had to write about it. 

You know what makes this worse?  I am lactose intolerant.  So I am hoping that the Empire will not in fact strike back.

Good grief! 

Stuck

So I wait and wait for the bus.  It finally comes.  Mind you, its a muggy summer day a day that normally I would love.

If I only had a brain

I would have never gotten on the bus that would take me the opposite direction from my house. 

Wish I knew that from the start.  Well, at first it wasn’t so bad after all i did have a seat. Unfortunately it didn’t take long for the bus to become a crowded mass of bodies.  One lady gets on the bus with a laundry cart. 

Genius, pure genius.

Meanwhile there is kid that just wouldn’t shut up.  He just kept crying and crying, and crying….I thought it would never stop.  All this and mind you I have on headphones.

Well, at least no one was cursing each other out. 

Two hours pass by and I finally get close to a good subway station. I decide to get off the bus and get a nice old fashioned fish sandwich.

I figured at least i would get something worthwhile out of it. 

Sike!!

Little did I know that my dream would be deferred. The fish place was closed.

At this point I am still OK because I was close to the subway that would take me home.  Take me home, take me home home take me to another place, take me home.

You get the point. 

I pay my fare go down the escalator and to my surprise there is a delay on the train and there is no estimated arrival. 

Its that that point that i was like seriously?  I can’t go home for nuffin!

I walk around for a bit then decide to just catch a bus instead.  Finally, a bus shows up I get on and i go to another subway station. 

Feeling good.

Then, I have to use the bathroom just great. By this point I had decided this was good material for my blog so here it is.  

Maybe I’ll eat out tonight after all.

A change by name only

You ever think of doing something but you are unsure of how it will turn out? Well, that was me several months ago.

I thought of changing the name of my blog. This was not the easiest of decisions as I have been doing this blog since August of 2011.  So you can imagine how it would feel to make a change. Yet, finally I went ahead and did it

 

You may be wondering:  Why the change? Well, I will tell you. It’s because I like to post links to my blog and I thought it was a good idea to change to a less personal name that still fits me.

Swift110.

I came up with that handle in 1998, pretty much because I was (and still am) a fast runner. In fact, in high school I wanted to be on the track team but then changed my mind because it would have interfered with the time I spent with my aunt, uncle and cousin who I would go to see on the weekend in D.C.  I look back and I am actually quite happy with my decision.

Hindsight is really something else lol!!!

Anyway that is really all I have to say on the matter so in the mean time feel free to check out more posts as I have lots and lots of them.

 

 

A library needs to be a library Part 2

 

So here I am right this very minute at a local library.  Its rainy outside and that has discouraged a lot of people from coming here today. You would think that for once this would indeed be peaceful place to study or chill.

Yeah right!!

There is the man across from me that decides to carry on an entire conversation concerning a youth’s sports team.  He goes on and on and on much unlike a love song.  And while it’s nice that he believes the children are our future, at the same time there is a time and a place for everything.

I wonder where I could have read that?

Well, maybe there is nothing to tell him that such a thing is inappropriate?  Nope sorry to burst that bubble but I have no choice. People just don’t read.

At the entrance of the library, there is a sign that asks for no cell-phone usage once within the library. Not that you should need to be told that because this is again a library.  With that being the case apparently uncommon sense would say that if you have a call for whatever reason that you take it into the hallway.  That way you can get done what needs to be done without disturbing others unnecessarily.  Just one of the many ways that people are self-centered in today’s world.

Message!

If only this was an isolated event. It’s really not. It happens all the time.  Just a few weeks ago upstairs in the children’s floor was a child that just kept screaming her head off. It was absolutely crazy how her parent/s did nothing about it.  Again, why that is considered acceptable inside a library is beyond me but goodness it was soooooo annoying.   Keep in mind that some highly intelligent multi-cellular organism had the idea of making the children’s floor open in such a way that if a kid is merely being a kid in the case of maybe a moment or two of excitement and saying something pretty loudly. That’s one thing, but this was something different.  Do I blame the child?  Nope. I blame the parents for not teaching their child that such behavior isn’t cool.

Message!

At this point you are probably going to say that because I don’t have children that I don’t understand.  To be honest, it is the parents that don’t understand .  They don’t understand that what you do now with your child has an enormous impact as to what kind of person they are to become in the future.  So if you spoil them or don’t give them the recreational outlet that they need then more and more self-absorbed jerks will be created.

As if we need any more of those.

Oh and here’s one last thing: A library is not your house or a hotel room.  It is a public place, so if you need nap-time please go home and get some rest.  I am pretty sure that your bed would be a lot more comfortable anyway.

Lady, yes you over there. I really could take a picture of you for all posterity. But I will not give you the rudeness that you are giving to others as well as myself but lets keep it real. I really do not need to hear your snoring because again a library needs to be a library.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Milk is bad for me

Like most people I grew up drinking milk.  As a child I was given a cup of milk at virtually every meal by my grandmother.  She absolutely insisted on it despite the fact I was already full from the food.

Years later I was sixteen years old and I would often go to McDonalds and get the super-sized Strawberry milk shake. Who knew that very soon there wouldn’t be super-sized anything at McDonald’s besides their prices.

Thanks to people who weren’t encouraged to have self-control but we’re pandered to, knowing full well that it wasn’t really solving the problem.

It also wasn’t long afterwards that I would get terrible gas after drinking milkshakes. This i actually experienced recently while out with family. I was already having a bad day thanks to serious moron and so I went ahead and got what I thought was a smoothie but was actually a strawberry milkshake. Well, it tasted good too bad it made me feel the opposite of the popular song by James Brown.

“And I feeeel bad, I knew it was bad”.

So bad in fact, for a while there I thought I was going to puke so I made a dash to the bathroom.

Thankfully, I was able to avoid that unpleasantness of puking and went back to the table. At the same time, I was unwilling to take any chances so I boxed my food up.

Needless to say, I won’t be doing that again anytime soon.

In fact, I will stick to my Cashew, Oat, Rice, Flax and may even try Sunflower seed milk soon as well. Believe me, it feels a whole lot better for me to do so.

Wonderful time in Addis

Sometimes its good to try something new,  to allow oneself to experience the cuisine of another culture.  Of this I encourage you to take the opportunity to do so.

Yes, there will be food you don’t like, you will have your likes and dislikes.  You may even food you never want to eat again, but at least once you have tried it so you can intelligently say that you don’t like it.

Thankfully today I had an absolutely wonderful experience at Addis Ababa Restaurant in Silver Spring, Maryland.  I had already made the decision that day that I would try Ethiopian food and despite other possibilities I stuck to my choice.

So I went in the restaurant and the waitress was truly a lovely woman.  Certainly not a Liberian girl for she was from the other side of the continent but I think you get the point.

I asked for a menu and when I got it I was happy to see something that sounded good to me:  Yebeg Tibs.

I chose Yebeg Tibs because I love to eat lamb (sorry lamb chop) and like I mentioned before, I wanted to try something new.

I sit down and take in the ambiance of the restaurant.  It was nice and quiet, with no one else in there, which I liked a whole lot.

A whole, whole lot!!!

Yeah, I know, you’re probably gonna say that if a restaurant is empty, then it must not be very good. As you have probably figured out by now.  That just wasn’t true this time.

Soon thereafter the food arrives and my, my, my, did it look good.  And the flavor was so good, so good that i have decided to thank James for it.

Thank you James!!!

Too bad you can’t hear me right now, but maybe I can thank you later.

I digress while I digest, quite literally speaking.

In the basket at the top of the picture is a basket filled with Injera bread. They were rolled up and the food rested on an unrolled piece of bread as well.  The chopped tomatoes went very well with the lamb meat in the middle.

My goodness It was some kind of wonderful!

Speaking of wonderful, remember when I mentioned before that the waitress was very beautiful, well because of that I felt as though I was 30 going on 13 as a result.

Talk about an interesting experience!!

With all of that said it should be painfully obvious that I will most certainly go back to Addis Ababa restaurant

I Gawr-On-Tee!!!

Thank you Justin, it seemed most appropriate to give a shout out to him since I used to watch him on Cajun Gourmet cooking show when I was little.  That was something that he would say and it brings back warm memories just like my lunch today has as well.

 

 

 

 

A very lame meal

Today I decided to something different. I had noticed that a certain Indian restaurant had a lunch buffet for $10.99. I thought to myself “not bad”. You see I had had Indian food before on many occasions and have even ate a nice lunch buffet meal at a wonderful place in Clarendon that I have written about before.

I say that to really emphasize that while I love Indian food, I really, really was not feeling the place I went to today. In fact, to further illustrate the fact that I didn’t like it I won’t even speak of it by name.

Also, please keep in mind that I am far from picky, so when it comes to food it’s pretty hard for me not to like something.  With that said it is truly a surprise that I disliked it as much as I did.

Want me to be more specific? Sure I thought you’d never ask. I was expecting the food to be outstanding but it sure did knock me out.

Yeah, Knocked me right out of there when I finished.

Granted it wasn’t a diabetic nightmare like some other buffets I have been to but it certainly was not one of my favorites. For one, the curry chicken had a bite to it and all, but that’s all it was, there was nothing unique about it. The curry vegetables were actually a little better and to be honest I forgot what the rest of the choices were.

I thought the dessert was going to be good but unfortunately I was disappointed once again because whatever it was that I had it made the paste I ate in kindergarten all the more appetizing.

You know I after all that have something positive to say…….

I really liked the bread and the water!!!

Isn’t that sad? Sure it is.

I also am happy to announce that I liked the ambiance of the restaurant that was pretty cool although much like pink cookies in a plastic bag getting crushed by buildings you probably could care less about that at this point.

Thankfully while my small intestine and colon were about the have an argument, they have managed to work out their differences and are now at peace with one another.

What else is there to say about my experience today? Well not a whole lot except that I will not be going to the same restaurant again…..at least not for the lunch buffet.

Oh, well such is life.

 

How I got started with Blender

When you first look at Blender I feel as though you are totally forgiven for feeling intimidated by it. In fact that was exactly my experience, yet I decided to press on anyway. Really I was determined to cast my fears aside and enter a brave new world.  One that I have wanted to  be a part of since high school. Thanks to this wonderful website for being one of several sites to inspire me to do this.

Well, over a decade later I finally got a piece of the pie for I am at long last in a position to follow the dream and thankfully it would be no simple fantasy

Yet, at long last I was able to go ahead and make something. Since then I have done the tutorial several times and each time I changed some of the details of it.  I also did renders on my x201 laptop and even on my Fujitsu Lifebook 4215.  It did pretty well on the x201 but the Fujitsu was well, I’ll tell you later about that.

I guarantee it!!

Of course, I prefer using my PC with my 30 inch Apple Cinema Display connected to it to work on Blender as it has much more kick than either of my laptops

No way i was letting that nice monitor go to waste!!

Then I decided to do it again and this time change the thickness of the cup to 0.9 vs. 0.7 and I know I know you are like…….Big hairy deal. And that’s perfectly fine, because I was just going for a minor difference before I completely lose my mind and make more drastic changes.

Just to be clear this is #3 and changed the roughness to 2 instead of 1. Changed the color, but decided to keep the original thickness of the cloth. The material I chose was silk instead of the regular cloth so don’t start with the whole “but silk is cloth moron!”.

LOL!! Well….duhhhhh!!!

Lamp strength doubled to 4,000 and I think that is why the cup looks as if its textured. Believe me I was just as surprised to see that effect as you are. Speaking of surprises, I thought the rendering process was going to be 20 minutes. Frankly I’m just glad they didn’t go by like hours to be honest with you.

Well, it was 17 minutes so not that far off really

Well, there you have it. Another bad creation by yours truly. Be on the look out because more are coming soon. Also, I am strongly considering doing more videos on You-tube so I’ll talk more about that later. Now, if I could just convince the Linux Mint guys the next time that the letter “I” comes around to name the version “Iesha”, that would be just great.

It sure would!!

Getting started with Simcity BuildIt

 

humble beginnings

I started playing SimCity Buildit a few weeks ago and already it’s my new favorite game.   In fact, I haven’t loved playing a game so much on my iPad since I got started on Jurassic Park Builder. But this game has an ability that the other one lacked. The ability to play without needing to be connected to the internet, this is great since I don’t have to worry about not being able to connect to a server for some reason.  Which is why I have this to say:

Finally its happened to me and……you know the rest.

Thank you CeCe.

Now, I told you I just got started playing SimCity Buildit, but already I have some things to share with you that will help you much along the way.

1. Be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your city be either.  So enjoy the journey along the way and be happy you don’t have to worry about someone dying because of a bad decision on your part.  You also don’t have to worry about other people trying to take over something you have spent time building.

2. Give the people what they want for you will receive bounteous bounty if you do.

3. You got to spend money to make money. But don’t be a moron, also be cool about fire safety, otherwise your sims will become rather hot with you.

4. Same as #1

5. Repeat steps one, two, three.

That’s all folks…..

For now.

 

Other side of town

Thanks Apple, you made me upgrade

At last I have upgraded my Ipad 3 from iOS 6 to iOS 8.  I had procrastinated about it for quite some time but finally decided to make the jump.

Actually, to be completely honest with you I did it because one day I turned on the iPad and got a weird image on the screen.  It looked like a power connector that was supposed to charge the iPad and the word “iTunes was above it.  I tried turning the iPad on and off multiple times to no avail.

I was like…”say it isn’t so!!

Doing some research on the matter, I came to find out that I would need to restore the iPad with iTunes.  Fortunately for me I had already backed it up on my old beat up bestie of a laptop the Fujitsu Lifebook 4215,  That proved to be a rather Capital Idea becuase I was going to need iTunes with an internet connection in order for my baby to come back.

I was wrong, and I just can’t be without you!!

So, after a few days, I went to the library and started the restoration process.  One of the reasons that I had procrastinated about upgrading to a new version of iOS in the first place is that I already had games that I had played for a very long time on it.  I also was concerned about the many pictures and videos that I had accumulated over time and I really didn’t want to start over.

That would be a real bummer!!!

Goodness, it did take forever and a half to do the restoration process over wifi and the whole time i was anxious that some error message would show up on the screen, strategically once I got to 90% finished.

Considering that this had taken roughly two hours I would have shouted a rather loud D’oh! ala Homer Simpson style.

Gratefully the test of my endurance came to an end and finally I had a device updated to the latest version of iOS.

Yippee!!!

Unfortunately, nobody’s perfect so I came across some problems that I will likely rant about later.

 

 

Rant about stuck up people

What a wonderful time I had the other day on the island. As the sun was about to set I heard the hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo of a Great Horned Owl. I ended up finding a huge asian snail sitting on the beach, and I decided to take some pictures of it that also highlighted my hitch-hikers thumb.

It’s times like this that I am so grateful for, to be free of the rat-race of life most have to endure on a day to day basis.

I realize of course, that for some it is by necessity and not choice that they work full-time, and so I don’t fault anyone for it. But as for me, I choose to “think different”. Yes, it means no GS this or GS that but thats just fine with me. I have worked my share of jobs over the past decade to know exactly what it is that I don’t want to do.

I mention that because a few years ago I was hanging out with friend and some folks he knew, it was annoying for them to talk about the GS level they were on and they had these beaming smiles as they said it…..

And then it was my turn….so Anthony, what do you do for a living?

It was indeed an awkward moment. I paused and said that I was unemployed and got the condescending response….

“Oh, that’s too bad”.

It wasn’t even just the tone of her voice it was the look I got it was like oh, look at him isn’t he so pitiful. All I was trying to do was to spend time with some new people. To not be a part of an exclusive clique.

Talk about lowered expectations. Do you think I ever hung out with those boogie people again? No I didn’t! If one measures success by the size of ones paycheck, then I’m just not a part of that club.

Nosireebob!!!

They turned out to be someone that I used to know….somebody.

Anyway you keep on runnin’ out of my life if you subscribe to that foolishness, cause guess what? While you’re at work, waiting and waiting as the minutes/hours pass by I am actually doing something I enjoy….Like going for walks, enjoying nature, or spending time with my mother and sister, you see those are things that bring me joy not no fancy cars or diamond rings which are not forever by the way.

I have been teased before for not attending a four year college……but I am glad I didn’t. I don’t have that level of debt to be concerned about, nor do I want it. As a result I have a measure of freedom many dream of but never get.

I mean, what’s the point of making lots of money, if you have virtually no time to enjoy it. Mo’ money really does equal mo’ problems when you think of it. As a result a simple life in my opinion is the way to go.

Of course, I have no qualms with hard work. I respect a person that works to make an honest living. I just don’t like those that have some cushy job that they got because of their parents. In fact, I feel sorry for them because they are spoiled brats and the truth is that the joke is indeed on them.

it’s just a shame they don’t see it that way.

Kolibri OS: A diminutive surprise

One thing that is pretty widely known about hummingbirds is that they are very, very fast. They are also very, very lightweight. I recall one time watching in horror as one flew into a glass window and plummeted three stories to the ground.

I was sure that it was going to be a goner and yet somehow, someway, some shape, some form it was still alive. In fact, its heart was still beating at what appeared to be a million miles a second. I remember its beautiful plumage and just being rather concerned about its future. More about that here.

Despite this being several years ago the scene plays like reed that were wound around my head.

It is as the result of the above characteristics that the Kolibri operating system is so very, very well named. I was to find this out for myself just a few minutes ago, when I loaded it up into VirtualBox and gave it 512 MB of RAM to work with. In fact the download for it was only 14 and a half MB, rather than the hundreds of Megabytes that I was used to with Linux and way more when obtaining Windows. Even Puppy Linux was a little more than 100 MB for comparison.

I digress!!!

Instantaneously I was greeted with the desktop and I promise that it was NOT “just my imagination”.

Once again!!!

The first thing I did was use a program called “tinypad” and boy, did it live up to it’s name. Then I played “snake”. If that game brings up ancient memories then that would make sense because I was playing a version of that game way back in 1995 on a Packard Bell.

If you look at the left side of the screen and you go there with your mouse you are presented with different options, one of them being the familiar terminal. Something that caught my attention that I really wasn’t expecting was an IRC chat client.

I guess I should have known better!!

Looking at the bottom right corner you will see several games such as the aforementioned “snake” and “checkers”. I was wondering where the rest of the games were and all I had to do was scroll down and more were visible. Going to the lower left side was familiar looking menu, this was what I was looking for in the first place, but I’m not gonna be a brat about it.

In the games section I was very, very surprised to see the bounteous bounty of games for an operating system of such a diminutive size. Yes, most of them will likely be familiar to you and will not have the 3d graphics that kids have been spoiled with now but they are still pretty cool just the same.

Whew this has ended up being quite an interesting look at Kolibri OS but I am getting tired so you’ll have to check me out the next time I decide to write about it.

A great new snack

Ya know I have found that it really pays to be open to new experiences as it allows for some truly wonderful surprises.

A prime example of that was what I was able to enjoy last Saturday. I was in Whole Foods and saw something that I wasn’t very sure about but decided I would try it anyway.

You know how many times what is good FOR you Doesn’t taste GOOD?  Well, thankfully this was NOT one of those times.  While it wasn’t the same as the beloved PB crisps of my childhood. This snack is a lot better for me.

As if!!!

The flavor is quite mild, reminiscent of olive oil and there is a nice satisfying crunch when you bite into the pods.

It was so good, so good that I decided to try it again when I was at a Trader Joes.  The snap pea crisps there tasted the same as those of Whole Foods (not a surprise at all).  Just a different name and slightly cheaper in price.

 

I really like that it’s neither too sweet or overly salty look at the back of the package.

So there you go, hopefully you’ll find some inner peas as well.