An Apple a day keeps the sanity away. I just spent about an hour and a half arguing on the phone today with Apple Inc. Allow me to explain. It all started with a simple little advertisement for an application that looked really freaking cool. It's called holoblog. Now, the neat thing about this app is that when you tilt your iPhone to the left or the right, it used the accelerometer to tilt the image of the hologram background. So it would change, completing the holographic effect essentially. It was like the captains log in Star Trek with all the little futuristic graphics to go with it, dorky, i know.

Well anyways, being the unobservant dumbass I am, I didn't notce that this application was for iPad only. (I have an iPhone, just let me state that there) So I spent my little $.99 on this application through the iTunes program, then go on my phone to download it from there because I'm too damn lazy to hook my phone up to my laptop at this point in the morning, except I'm unable to find it in the iPhone version of iTunes (because it isn't meant for it) so I can't download it, so at this point I'm going "what the fuck." So I go back in iTunes and look around. I can't find a damn thing that would explain why I can't get this application on my damn iPhone. I do a little research on my own, and lo and behold, iPad only.

So I go looking for the FAQ that will help solve all problems. I find said FAQ, and it tells me to click the "report a problem" link you can find in the iPhone version of iTunes on the applications page. The only problem with that is I can't because I can't open that page on my iPhone, you can only do it on an iPad, and if I had an iPad, I wouldn't be in the mess to begin with. So, I start looking around for the FAQ for the FAQ. That FAQ sends me to a webpage with a list of possible problems. I find the one for the iTunes application and bill on the list, and that FAQ sends me to another FAQ I FAQ myself a whole bunch of questions, none of which apply to me, so I keep clicking "no no no no no". Finally, I get to the end and it says "Didn't find what you were looking for? Click here!" and it sends me back to the original website I started from!!! This is just ghastly coding.

So I decide, 'Surely Apple has a customer service phone number! They have to care about their customers!?' Right? Wrong. I can't find a phone number to reach an actual person for the life of me, but I did find the number for the telephone-version of the Apple Store, so I called that. A robot answers and kindly informs me that he is an advanced something-another, and can understand complete sentences, so what am I looking for? I explain the whole problem to the robot. The robot says, "Let me get you to iTunes customer service!" Domo Arigato, Mr. Robato.

The robot sends me to another recording that says "If you have any problems with anything regarding iTunes or any iTunes applications, please visit this website", which is the same freaking webpage with the same freaking FAQ to solve every world crisis but mine. Mr. Robato then asks if that solved my problem. 'No. No it did not.' 'Well, what can I do to help?'   I politely respond, 'I want to speak to a freaking human." "Oh." it says, "Let me get you to a representative right away." Lols.

I sit there for 5 or so minutes of hold music, which by the way is epic as far as hold music goes. No muzac for the Apple Corporation, oh hellz to the no. You get real music, buddy, full guitar that doesn't transfer well over the phone and all. So I listen to how much I'm being missed, like the desert misses the rain, and eventually I'm connected to this lady. She says, "Hi, thank you for calling Apple. Can I get your name please?" "Andrea." "Hi, Andrea. Can I get the serial number of your iPhone?" "Sure, it's #####EEUY#K." "Thanks! Okay, how can I help you today?" So I describe the problem to her, and the website goose-chase, and she informs me that this isn't really the kind of thing she solves, but she'll be more than happy to send me on over to customer service. Off I go, forwarded to some other call center. Another 10 or so minutes of hearing how if I'd just walk a mile in someone else's shoes, I might then really know what it's like to have the blues. I get off hold and Ms. Customer-Service says "Hi! Thanks for calling Apple. Can I get your name, please?" "Andrea." "Can I get the serial number of your iPhone?" "Yes, it's ##### Elephant Elephant Umbrella Yellow # Kaleidoscope." "And how can I help you today?" I explain the problem to this lady, and the website goose-chase, and the phone-forwarding. She says this isn't exactly the kind of thing she solves, either, but she can certain forward me to technical support. Sure. Why not. And away I go.

I hold for another 10 minutes or more, listening to some Japanese song I've never heard before and a few others, and then I get Mr. Tech-Support. "Hello, and thank you for calling Apple Technical Support today. May I have your name please?" "....Andrea." "Hello, Andrea, may I have the serial number for you iPhone?" ".... it's ##### Elephant Elephant Umbrella Yellow # Kaleidoscope." "Alright, and how can I be of service today?" So I spin my yarn, problem -> web-chase -> phone tag -> you. He tells me he doesn't really solve that kind of thing, but let him get his department manager. Sure. Go for it. I'm on hold. Some guy heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from another some girl was messing around. I wonder if he had to go through all of those different people to hear she was messing around because he kept getting forwarded.

The Techie comes back and tells me I am now on the line with Q. I say "Q? Like the letter?" "Yes. Q, like the letter." "...Okay." Techie disconnects. "Hello, and thanks for calling Apple today. Can I get your name?" ".. You'd think someone would have written this down by now... It's Andrea." "Alright, and can I get your serial number for your iPhone?" "Sure, why not, just like the 5 people before you. It's ##### Elephant Elephant Umbrella Yellow # Kaleidoscope." "Alright, and what seems to be the trouble today, Andrea?" Problem. Goose Chase. Phone chase. Good hold music. New department. More phone chase. Feeling dumb doing this over 99 cents but now it's about the principle. You. "I see, well we don't usually solve these kinds of problems in this department.. but let me get my manager." ...... Mother... fucker.... "... *sigh* alright..."

The entire time I've been doing this, I've been talking to my friend Daniel over xfire, explaining what was happening while he was playing WoW. He laughs and jokes while I'm wondering who the manager of a Departmental manager is (Regional Manager?),  saying eventually I'm going to be forwarded up to Steve Jobs who's going to be like: "Hi Andrea. I heard about your problem. See, here's the thing, I can't give you your money back because I've already masturbated all over it." I corrected him and told him it wouldn't go down like that, because he missed the part where Steve Jobs would say "Hi, and thank you for calling my Apple Corporation today. The -entire- Apple Corporation today. Can I get your name? Can I get the serial number to your iPhone?"

So Mr. Department Manager Q (I'm thinking Star Trek: The Next Generation, Daniels too busy screaming "No! You mean James Bond!") tells me his manager is taking longer than expected to get a hold of (this is after 15 more minutes of music I didn't bother paying attention to. Sorry, no musical lyrics this time.) and could he get a number to call me back at. By now it's gone from Almost 9 am to past 10 am doing this journey. I sigh and ask if there isn't some way they can manage this without me having to be present. He says no, he'd need the zip code and such to verify billing. I said "Can't I just give that to you now?" "Sure." I give him every detail about my personal life including blood type and bra size, and then he thanks me and says he'll call me back once he gets his manager on the line, leaving me wondering why the fuck I told him anything if he's still going to call me back.

He does, about 5 minutes later, telling me it took far less time than I expected. He then informs me I used my one "get out of jail free card" that Apple provides every user per lifetime, and asks if there is anything else he can do for me today. I said "Can you give me back the hour and a half you took from me?" "Hahahahahaha... have a good day. *click*"

....

Meh. I got my fucking $.99 back. Take that. 

SLATFATF

~Å~

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The Grass is Always Greener...

They say that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence but somehow, I can't imagine that's the truth if the fence is the border between Mexico and the United States. I was watching a spanish movie about futuristic minority labor, where men and women get "nodes" to remote operate robot machinery so the U.S. gets all the labor they want without any of the people. Seems like a cold depiction of America, and only somewhat accurate.

I think there are some Americans that would love the labor without the populace, but many don't even want the labor here. I personally don't care, as long as the neighborhoods don't have to suffer. It seems to me that cheap labor seems to bring with it poor manners and disrespect for the surrounding area. I hate to see a place slowly reduced to bottles and trash everywhere, everything in disrepair, and violence taking root.

I can't help but wonder if people who wish immigrants would stop "taking our jobs" realize that by working for less pay they are boosting the american economy. Fat cats get richer, yes, but the cost of minimal wage directly corresponds to the cost of living. For example, everyone gets excited when they raise minimum wage, they think higher wages = more money, more money = more stuff. No one seems to realize that if you raise minimum wage, then all the different companies that were benefiting from the lower wages now have to up their production costs.

If you raise the salary of an employee who works for Kroger's Grocery Store, for example, Kroger's has to make up that cost somewhere. Many ways they do it is to cut costs elsewhere, but since they can't cut down the pay, they cut down the hours. Suddenly, John here was working 30 hours a week, but now he's only working 20. Was that 50 cent's extra really worth it?

Or lets say they decide to not adjust the hours at all, instead they decide to pass that cost off to the consumers. Now that jug of milk, or can of beans, or stalk of celery costs 20 cents more than it did last week. The average American drinks 19 gallons of milk in a year. That's the difference of $3.80 in a year. No big deal right? But that's just milk. They raise dozens and dozens of products up by 20 cents... it all adds up. Someone has to pay for that 50 cent raise, and guess what, it's you.

SLATFATF

~Å~

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a

Failboat is Now Boarding..

Okay, so, wow. I have completely fallen off the face of the earth with this little bloggy-thing. Well, resolutions are made to be broken. Ouch, that sounds really negative, doesn't it? I honestly don't mean to always be like that. I've been drawing recently, inspired by a character I created for a game I play, "Rogue Trader". (It's a War-hammer 40k based TTRPG. Oh lord, my dork-roots are showing.) She has a pretty interesting background that I've come up with and I'm thinking of adapting it to create another character for the book I'm writing (and have neglected as of late.)

That's the drawing of her, via my Photobucket account. I named her Talia, one of my all-time favorite names that I stumbled upon when I was a kid.

Drawing felt good. I mean like, really good. It's nice to know that you haven't lost certain skill sets, you know? Especially with my memory being the way it is and my negative outlook on life, lol.

I've been trying to catch up on my movies, completely been neglecting those too, instead opting for the easier to manage "tv episodes on dvd". It's so much easier to find time to watch 30 minutes or an hour of something than to find 2+. Somehow, in an ironic twist, I end up watching the whole bloody dvd, which ends up adding to a total of 3 hours and I curse my irresponsibility.

Trying to count calories before my weight gets out of control. Working at a job that promotes sitting on your ass and watching stuff is hard on the butt. With school and multiple jobs, I'm finding it hard to squeeze in time to visit the dojo. My new "Wii Fit Plus!" (THAT btw always has to be said in an upbeat voice. Never a down-tone. Oh! And I hate the voice of the little wii balance board in the game. When you "Step On!" it makes a little noise which ALWAYS sounds to my ears like an "...Oh..." in that tone when someone asks you how your day is going and you answer "like shit, my ____ just died", and you feel like a jackass for having just said that question in a voice that reeks of sunshine and lollipops.) game has a "calorie counting" option, which keeps track of how many you burnt. I know it's suppose to be helpful, but somehow the idea that I just spent 50 minutes jogging in place and rocking my hips around like a moron with an invisible hulu-hoop or on an invisible skate board and reaped the full-filling reward of 250 calories burnt, or roughly 1 bottle of Dr. Pepper (20 oz, of course), is more soul-crushing than uplifting.

Meh.. maybe it was meant to inspire suicide instead...

F.M.L.

SLATFATF

~Å~

P.S.... 

If anyone needs an invitation to Lockerz, let me know. I have 20 wasting away.

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An Odd Request

So as some might have guessed I work for a movie company that either shall not be named, or I named before and I just feel like being covert about now. ( :P ) Anyways, back on topic, one day the gates of hell broke loose and unleashed a horror of an idea from the deepest bowels of one of my customers. He suggested I make a review blog about various movies because, as he put it, "I always give such great info about them, and call it exactly like it is." Translation: when something is crap, I call it crap.

Selfish me, though, I don't want to give up this little blog I have going. I guess I am finding it a little therapeutic. If only I could write every little thing I think. Unfortunately, I still can't release all my hatches into the anonymity of the internet.

So, I've decided that if I am going to pursue this little side-venture, that I will start a new blog just for the purpose. (Ugh, look at me. Here I am, the girl who said she would never blog, working on making two blogs.) I'm going to link the two together so people can get to know the private me and the public me. I doubt anyone is going to read the reviews one, but what the heck. Why not make it. I like rambling.. and what is more reactive than a response to visual stimuli.

Meh... could be fun.

SLATFATF

~Å~

P.S. 

You can find my new blog posted here. Hope you enjoy it.

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You can't fight them! You have to run, Daddy..

Silent Hill has been the name of my latest trend. I played the second game along time ago, and by played I mean embarrassingly clung to a friend of mine as he played and I squealed and squirmed at every noise in a dark room. For an unknown reason (perhaps a flaw in my design), even though I can watch any horror movie and be unphased, read almost any scary novel and emerge unshaken, even traverse the most horrific of haunted houses and be stoic and steady, I can't play a spooky game without turning into a frightened five year old. I still haven't beaten half-life (the first one) because I was too chicken-shit. Instead I bravely hid under my blanket on my bed as I watched my boyfriend work his way through my copy of the game. Silent Hill 2 was the very first horror game I ever saw; I somehow missed Alone in the Dark when I was growing up (or at least don't recall it), and it scarred me forever. Since seeing it, I have been unable to face others, even the most gentle ones, like Dead Rising.

I suppose I decided to conquer my fear, so my roommate and I have been acquiring as many of the different Silent Hill titles as possible, so far accumulating 5. The Xbox 360 one (Homecoming), the P.S.P. one (Origins), Silent Hill 3 (fortuitously discovered at Gamestop), Silent Hill 2 (kindly donated by one of my coworkers who no longer has a PS2), and our latest addition, the new Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

I tried, oh how I tried, to play Origins (one of the 3 in the aforementioned list that are mine), and barely made any progress in the game, instead opting to hyperventilate and almost cry trying to get over a fear of nonexistent boogie-men in a virtual world as I sat there, headphones piping in the entire atmosphere of the game (which is very convincing in my 300 buck Sony headphones... ear orgasms I tell you. ear. orgasms.) in the dark of my room, cowering once more under my blankie. So, I decided to try again with Shattered Memories, and have made considerably more progress with this game. Something about the intuitive controls of the Wii makes me feel like I might have more control over the situation, but it also makes me more trepidatious. I've only encountered ghoulies once, and if the reviews online are to be taken as truth, then I am only in danger when the world "changes", unlike in most Silent Hill games. This gives me a bit more confidence in my exploring.

An interesting little tidbit about this game: It seems it builds a psychological profile about you as you play, by using "therapy sessions" to twist the game into a more tailored experience for you. I don't want to ruin anything if anyone reads this and hasn't played it yet, but the little things they do really mess with your head... in a good way. Silent Hill has always been more the psychological terror, and I think that is what makes it really effective. I played Resident Evil 5 (after much convincing), and seemed to conquer that one quite easily. It took more of a "House of the Dead" approach to the game style than, I have been told, the others in the series attempted. Maybe that is why I was able to actually beat it without going into hysterics.

I guess I'll just have to see what SH:SM has in store for me.

Meh.. maybe I'll update this blog about it in the future.. or maybe not.

SLATFATF

~Å~

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@--__----__-- (That's a Tumbleweed)

So my life is uninteresting. This is the flat-out truthful reason why I have not written crap in this blog over the last 2-ish weeks. Every time I faced this thing I stared at a blank page with a blank mind. I had nothing to input into the vast depths of cyber space. SO, I'm going to give a 2 week recap instead :D (Please hold your applause until the very end.)

First off, I read/finished Moby Dick. This is my mothers favorite book and at the tender age of 7, I crushed all her dreams by repeatedly falling asleep while attempting to navigate through this behemoth of a novel. Forever branded by the memory of this tedious tome, I avoided it for the next 17 years of my life until now. I also watched the movie (at her request), which was, in my humble opinion, 2000000000000 times better than the book. Wait, no. Add a zero onto that. No, wait, two. I never was very good at math.

To give you a rough idea of why the movie was so exponentially better than the book, let me say this. In the first 3 minutes of the movie, they cover roughly 350 pages. I'm not even exaggerating. This book became my white whale. I was determined to conquer this beast of dull discursive verbosity no matter the cost to my sanity. Just call me Ahab.

Watching someone read Hermann Melville's "classic literature piece" is like watching a Frenchman. You've never seen someone surrender so fast.

Beyond felling my bitter rival, I also joined a website called swagbucks.com. I'm sure tons of people have heard of it, but seeing that I still don't own a shiny Facebook page, I think you'll forgive my ignorance when it comes to this corner of the Interwebz. I spent a good chunk of last week earning free amazon monies, which I have now spent faster than the  French can throw their hands up. (Man, I am just hating on the French today, lol.) With that money and the earned ones from various survey websites (all of which have cost nothing but time), I have earned roughly 60 dollars in Amazon.com e-gift cards, 100 bucks in Gamestop giftcards, and 15
clams in Borders e-currency. Not a bad little profit.

In a small side note, check out this dude's blog if you like horror stuff, and manga:

http://www.daniel-lau.com/

He has been posting up brand-spanking new Junji Ito stuff, which is my favorite Manga-ka. (A Manga Author/Artist) Oh, so much I want and yet can't have because I don't live in Japan. Maybe I should ask my cousins overseas to send me some stuff.. But I can't read enough Japanese to understand it T_T. Woe is me. Meh... I'll live I guess.

SLATFATF
~Å~

P.S.

Honorary Mention goes to Fuan no Tane, a horror manga I recently stumbled apon by being nosy and clicking on people's links in the comments on Daniel-Lau's blog. Subscribed to my first blog, also. (No, it wasn't Daniel's... I couldn't find the button v_v;.. shut-up. I think I fucked up subscribing also, I had to redo it like 4 times, or something, in order to just get it to work under the right name, lol. Dude's gonna think I'm some creepy obsessive stalker like chick XD. Lawlz-u-scared.) 

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 ~Å~

Why Live on Earth..

...When you can live on Halo? I keep picking up and dropping Halo 3 for Xbox360 (horrorfangirl is my gamer tag if you want to add me). I go up and down in skill ranging from top killer or second to top all the way to third from bottom. It seems to change drastically match to match, partially dependent on how well I know the map or the style of play, and partially depending on some unknown variable I can't seem to isolate yet. It seems so very random!

I started wondering if this was the case with other situations for most people. It seems as though I am the only one who can gain great skill at things overnight and then lose that skill the very next day. I wonder if perhaps it has something to do with my particular memory problem. I'm trying to do some little memory builder software to teach me that certain skill set. Tricks and tips to remember anything and everything. My memory is so bad that out of fear of forgetting my experience meeting Christopher Titus (eeeee! <3 <3 hearts hearts!),I immediately went home and wrote down the entire interaction in precise detail. Revisiting the notes is like reliving the entire moment over again as if for the first time; that is how bad my memory is.

I hope this "good-one-moment-gone-the-next" doesn't carry over, for me, to my other abilities. Can you imagine having this situation happen during a Psych evaluation?

"Well, Carl, to be honest, I think your problem roots from

suicidal tendencies that even you yourself may not be

aware of."

"Really? What should I do about it, Doctor?"

"Uh... Well... I guess if you're already leaning that way..."

Meh... here's hoping, right?

SLATFATF
~Å~

P.S.
This is my Wednesday Post. I haven't slept yet. Again. F.M.L.