so I looked up the address of the post office, and it was on the other side of town, 3 buses and about an hour away. I get Skye and myself all ready for a little adventure, and head out the door around 2:00p. we catch the first and second buses just fine, it’s a pretty hot day, and we’re both gradually getting sweaty. while we were on the second bus (actually a tram), we get asked to see our tickets…  holy crap. in the more than a few months that we’ve been here, I have never once even heard of anybody being asked to see tickets, so we stopped buying them months ago (I know, I know).  so of course, I didn’t have one. mr. ticketman informs me there is a fine of €40, payable immediately to him. I suppose it’s a good thing I had it with me, because I’m not sure what he would have done if I hadn’t had it (which I often don’t).  so I pay him the fine, and go on with my trip.

we get to the stop for the third bus, and it is in the middle of nowhere. we are so far outside of town that there’s nothing left but industrial buildings and train tracks. we catch the third bus, but as it’s going along, I notice that the stops it’s stopping at aren’t the one I need (my stop was only two stops down)…  so I ask the bus driver where my stop is, and he just shrugs his shoulders (the extent of most of my conversations here).  another guy on the bus asks me if he could help, but he couldn’t speak english either, so he just tells me that the bus has two more stops and then it’s the end of the line. as we near the last stop, the bus driver points to the stop where I got on this bus, and there is a bus there with the same number, but different end point, and motions that that is the bus that I’m supposed to be on… as it passes us…  awesome.  (I suppose I could be glad that the bus I was on made a loop and at least brought me back, but at this point, I’m hot, irritated, and down €40, so I’m just more irritated)

I get off the wrong bus, only to wait at the stop I was originally at for another 20 minutes for the right bus, which takes me a grand total of like 500 meters to the post office where I need to be (easily walkable in a few minutes, as I’ll soon find out).  I walk up to the window, and the guy points me to another window another 100 meters down the road. I walk in there, knock on the window, and a guy takes my pick-up slip, points to some number on it, and says something. I have no idea what he’s saying, and I tell him “I don’t know what that means.”  so he walks off to get someone who speaks english and when the lady comes back, she says the same thing, pointing to the same number on the slip. I again tell her I don’t know what that means, and she says “posta 1″.

oh poo…

posta 1 is the post office downtown… near our house.

yay for not being able to decipher the stupid pick-up slip.

so we walk out, go to the bus stop, and I look at when the next one should be going by…  and the last bus went by about 2 minutes ago. yeah, you read that right, the last bus. here’s where I find out that the distance between the post office and the tram stop is easily walkable in a few minutes.

I finally get downtown, Skye has sweaty head, but is being surprisingly well behaved (not super, but pretty good under the circumstances), I’m hot as crap, also sweating a bit, and we pick up the package and go home. a trip that should have been about an hour total has taken about three and a half hours.

we appreciate all the stuff people are sending us, but please, when you do…   think of the children.

although now that we know what the special little pick-up slip code means, it won’t be near as bad next time…

Well, it turned out that my credit card was only that, a credit card. I went into another branch and asked for help (more like gestured for it, since I still get very tongue-tied with the language) and she has to go get someone else that can understand me, only to tell me that my credit card is the wrong kind of card.  I needed to get a new ATM card (that I had to wait an hour for at the bank to get) that would enable me to use the calculator device. So I trek back another day to another branch to reapply for a new ATM card that would allow the card to be scanned by the device. Again, it takes another hour wait and another application. A few more days and I finally get the card in the mail. Horray!  I open the envelope only to find out that they sent the new PIN to the post office.  They sent it to the posta in the opposite direction of my work, so it takes me a few days to get down there.  I stand in the wrong line only to get directed to another part of the building.  I finally get my golden ticket and the 4 digit PIN for the new ATM card.  Phew.

So I get home, armed with the new ATM card and PIN, calculator device and about a million other passwords to get into my account via the internet.  I have everything laid out, seriously like 5 papers, a “grid” card, the ATM card, the device, the instructions and the secret decoder pen from Ovaltine. I go to the Tatrabanka website, enter my username and one of the 16-alphanumeric PIN’s.

Error.

Error.

Error.

My original 16 digit PIN to enter the website is now invalid due to inactivity.

So I gave up.  I now just go into the bank whenever I need make a transaction.  Pssh, who needs internet banking anyways!?

we got the info they requested that proves we moved outside the service area (our rental agreement with the address here on it), and emailed it to my mom, and she mailed it off…  a few weeks pass, and we get another bill from them, with the $400 charge still on it. so we call again, ask them what’s up, and they inform us that they have no record of our correspondence. they let us know that we can also take the form in to a T-Mobile store, and they can take care of it there. so my mom takes the form into a store, they fax it off, and tell us everything will be taken care of.

a few weeks pass, and we get another bill… same amount. we call yet again, and they inform us that there is no fax number to send things in, so the store employee who faxed it, must have faxed it into a black hole somewhere…  they also tell us that the only way to send it in is via snail mail. so we mail it in from Slovakia, thinking that the return address might help our situation…  

a few weeks pass… same bill.

we call… again… they now tell us that the form we sent in is not acceptable, that they don’t accept rental agreements as proof of living overseas !!!   ummm…  what?  o_O

we have other proof now, chelsea finally got her ID with the school where she works, and we have other bills, so we’re planning on sending one of those in, but…

today we got a bill.

from T-Mobile, for $400…

…to our address in Slovakia.

that’s just a whole new level of retarded.

fry sauce is a condiment.

and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

nope. try again.

I begin to look up information on the file format that the camera uses to record the movies (.MOD), and apparently, nobody supports it. so now, in order to use the file (and subsequently, the camera), I have to either A. use the crappy software that came with the camera (which is slow and difficult), or B. buy some other software (also from the camcorder company, how convenient) that will allow me to convert the movie to some other easier-to-use format.

well, that does it, I’m thoroughly pissed at all software and hardware designers that decide that it’s okay to nickel and dime us by using proprietary file formats that are impossible to use otherwise. even if they don’t want to nickel and dime us, it still sucks when a company tries to “better” the current standards by creating a new format that only their software or hardware uses, and then fail to release the format details so others can use it as well (think MS Word 2007 and the .docx format).  well, at least with that one, OpenOffice.org finally supports it in v3.0, but .odt already existed and is more openly adopted by other word processing software anyway.

anywho…

point is, I doubt seriously that .MOD (which, I found out, is just .MPG with a different extension and some other .MOI files to go with it) was really necessary. why not just use one of the other formats that are already out there and more widely used, why must you create your own?  and if it’s absolutely necessary to create your own, at least release the details so that others may take advantage of your apparent excellence (think .7z files).

and if not, just use a format already available. my current camera records movies in .mov format, and everything I use can read an .mov file, and the pictures are .jpg… easy.

new camcorder… .MOD files… not so much.

NOTE: I finally found a small simple utility to convert my .MOD files to .MPG and set my widescreen marker at the same time: SDCopy

Video after the break.

Upon watching that, I somewhat agree with not teaching kids in elementary about the details of gay marriage, but that’s not to say that it’s absolutely bad, and we should ban gay marriage because of it.  Banning gay marriage because of the fear that it will allows teachers to teach about gay marriage in school is no different from a straight marriage.  If a teacher at your school is teaching your kids about anything sexual (besides Sex Ed./Health in high school), then they should be removed from teaching, especially if it’s younger children.  But simply showing situations of a same sex household, in normal everyday situations?  It’s like banning interracial marriages simply because you don’t want a picture of a white man and a black woman holding hands, being shown to your kids.  And if that still offends you…

The problem I see with banning gay marriage (and I’ve posted about this before), is that this country was built on the foundation that everybody is equal (I know, back then all they really meant was wealthy white male land owners, but I hope we’ve progressed farther than that by now), and we all have the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. Banning gay marriage is the exact opposite of this.

Banning gay marriage is taking away that right to happiness from so many people, that it absolutely cannot be tolerated.  If gay marriage were actually hurting you, or taking away your rights, then I could see your point.  But two people getting married has absolutely no effect on you, your family, or anything else important to you.  It does not hurt the “sanctity” of marriage, it does not stop you from getting married, and it certainly does not turn your kids gay because they saw a picture of a same sex couple in a kitchen, eating breakfast.

But banning it does have an immensely hurtful effect on the people we are imposing that ban on.  It hurts them by taking away their rights to answer important questions and make life changing decisions in a hospital when their loved one is sick or dying, it takes away the rights of them to pursue happiness in the same way that opposite sex marriages give to male-female partners have: by getting married, and showing the world that you have found a person that you connect with so deeply that you want to declare it to the world. So I ask you, and I really do want to open a conversation on this matter… why?

And there is so much more I want to say, but I wanted to keep this as short as possible, whie still getting my point across.  So please post your comments.  I won’t be offended.

he seemed cool enough, to her, i never met him before he moved in. so he gets moved in in like 8 hrs, all his crap in the garage and all over the basement. i finally meet him, and he’s kinda wierd, not good wierd either, kinda creepy and shady. for example, the first or second night that he was there, i was coming out of my room heading for the kitchen and he’s walkin past me with his hands behind his back, so i get a little curious as to what he feels he has to hide from me, because he’s 36 (which in itself is kinda odd, living with people 10 yrs younger).  i talked with my girl about it, and she said that she found a brown bag next to the couch, so i figured he just feels like he has to hide his booze from me and think nothing more of it. but then the next day, my girl asks me how much jack was in a bottle we had in the cupboard, and i told her i didn’t know, but she says there was only like an inch left in the bottom, and i’m pretty sure the bottle was half full when last i saw it, but i can’t say for sure, so we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

the next day. while straightening up my room, i notice my piggy-bank is gone. i may have misplaced it, but my first thought was that the new roomate (joel the creepy fucker) stole it.

it stays missing, i never find it, and later that week, we talk with our other roomates, and come to find out, he’s been stealing change from them as well. i guess they came home from a nice valentine’s weekend away to find their change jar, which is rather fat, and hence holds a lot of money, was missing about three inches worth of change, about $60. but the worst part is, it was hidden in their closet, so that means the fucker was going through our stuff!  after i heard that, i decided right then and there that he was out, i don’t give a shit about the lease, if he’s stealing from us, he’s either out of the house, or i’m beatin his ass.

my girl calls her dad (the landlord) and gets his permission to kick him out of the house, so joel calls her, and she tells him that he has three days to get out, he asks why, she tells him, and all he cares about is getting the rest of his rent back, he doesnt even try to deny it.

so he’s gone, moved all his stuff out in one day. but before he left, he stuffed our garbage cans FULL of his shit, which may not even be his shit the way he was going on around the house.

but i gave him a little going away present… while he was gone one night, after the incident, i cracked open his coffee maker and disconnected the heater, so it will only make cold coffee.  =)

so today, we’re gettin ready for a little party, and we noticed that there was a bottle of sprite that was in the same cupboard as the jack, that is now empty. fucker.

anywho, long story short, make sure you check references of new roommates, now matter how desperate you are or how nice they seem…  and keep a screwdriver and a coffee (dis)repair book handy in case things go sour.

plur l8

i am so sick of the company that my domain is registered through right now it’s not even funny. they have pretty much killed my site for the past three weeks and it is still dead. (i’m writing this through a more direct path that my hosting provides in situations like these)

my current registration period was going to expire, and my hosting company started offering domain registration services that they didn’t offer when i got the webspace, so i wanted to switch over to them to make everything easier. so i pay for the domain service through them about two weeks before it was to expire, and they tried to switch it but it didn’t work, so they tried again, but the second try was too late and my name (iohelix.com) was now being held ransom (ok, not really, but that’s what it seems like).  come to find out that there was a registrar-lock placed on my domain that nobody told me about, and i can’t remove it until i renew my subscription through my current company, so i finally give in and pay them what i need to to get it working…

still waiting…

its been a week now and i still have no control over my domain. the customer service they are providing is horrible, they have NO customer service on the weekends (?!?), no phone numbers that work, and the customer service they do provide is either wrong, or ambiguous (“don’t worry, we are getting in contact with department concerns”)  WTF???

anyway, they finally figured out that somewhere along the line, the order got lost and they are currently working on it, but that’s what they’ve been saying this whole time, so we’ll see…  anyway, just to let you all know, if your domain is registered through HostDime, Fariert, or any of their affiliate companies (except eNom, who is the actual registrar that HostDime is a reseller for), get out now!

just venting…
>(  l8

more to come when my service is finally back up…

my next class was at 2:00, so i went to work, then back to school for an hour, yep, that’s it, 1 hour. went home and sat around, or rather drove around, hunting down some money so i could buy me and my girl a couple of iPod’s (which are dope as hell by the way), then i had to go back to school at 7:15 for a night class, which is going to suck, but at least the class will be worth going to.

so i got home from that class, loaded some songs onto my iPod for today (gotta love firewire, 800 songs in about 5-10 min), then went to bed, but couldn’t sleep, and after i finally got to sleep, the dumb dog woke me up at like 6:00 this morning, and i never got back to sleep… so i got up around 8:30 and headed off to school with my girl, she had to go to work before school so she dropped me off and i waited for the shuttle… saw one, but it was the wrong one, going the other way, too far away to catch, then another one, and another… still waiting for mine…  40 minutes later, as my class was starting, i called my girl and had her take me to school. stupid shuttle.

so now that i’m finally warm again, i’m chillin.   ;)

but school’s lookin good, the iPod kicks ass, and i have a girl that loves me enough to leave work just to take me too school.

plur, l8

so i did, except that the dumb thing decided that it wanted to make the new drive (freshly formatted, etc.) drive letter f ??? so i get windows all installed (all the while not knowing it was installing on drive f), which takes about an hour, and then check the thing and notice that its drive f. so i take the drive that was supposed to be f, and change it to d and try to change the new drive to drive c, but it won’t let me. but it’s okay, i’m not too pissed, just a little annoyed, cuz i can easily reformat, remove the conflicting drive, and reinstall windows, not that big a deal, except that when i remove the drive, and go to reformat, the computer doesn’t detect the hard drive !!!  OMG!  so i have to flash the BIOS, fiddle with shit, and finally get it to detect the hard drive after about a half an hour of stress. so it’s finally installing, and i’m playing on another computer, but i just wanted to let everybody know, that computers suck!  just buy ‘em and leave ‘em alone.

grrr, lates