I am a firm believer in the phrase “if you’re early you are right on time, if you are right on time you are late” so it might not come as a surprise that I sit at work at least 15 minutes before my shift waiting to start and it may be boring as well. To pass the time I can study or help out (sometimes I’ll do things to help out the people who are working the shift before mine). So, if your employer does not like you signing in early what can you do if another employee sees you and asks you to do something?

Here are some quick options:

1. Say: “I’m sorry but I’m not on the clock for another five minutes” this will make them understand that you do not want to get in trouble for anything stupid like working before your shift and usually, if you have a full time manager they can ask if you could sign in early or if the manager is not there they will ask again.
2. If they ask again you can say that you REALLY don’t want to do work before you start getting paid for it and tell them that there is no real way to sign in early without getting in trouble. Here’s where the trouble comes in for people like me who actually like working before their shift, when they ask this question: “then why do you come 30 minutes early every day?”
3. You can deny this saying that the clock must be wrong or you can give up and help them a few minutes early, by this point 3 minutes should have passed by so donating 2 minutes of your time is not such a big deal since it is not a very large number. of course if you want to stall for 2 more minutes you can agree to do the task then ask them whats been going on thus far in the day and this should bring you to starting just on time for your shift (as long as they are talkative.

So thats my rant for today, please come back for more. Alleriodrone OUT!

One would think that when you move you keep your stuff that you don’t need in boxes but this is not always the case. Things that I don’t even remember having have started taking over my bedroom and have made it nearly impossible to pack. I even found a book that I have been carrying around for 3 years and kept putting off reading (already on page 190 of “the Dilbert Principle” by Scott Adams) and started to read instead of packing.  The only thing that I haven’t really played with as I was packing it up is my desktop and that is because it would be Impossible to do so without setting up the tv and the keyboard and mouse… Of course it still isn’t packed so I might resort to doing that before it is packed.

As I move I keep collecting more stuff and not ridding myself of it, to bring this pile of stuff down to one truckload seems overwhelming because it is hard to get rid of anything. My bed has been on craigslist for a week without an email, the giant metal bookshelf has not one single email either. I am either really bad at posting things on Craigslist or my email is screwed up. Donating is one way to get rid of this stuff. The bookshelf/office file cabinet will be easy since I bought it for $45 at the Habitat For Humanity Restore (had to get that name in here) but the bed is my own creation that cost $180 to make and I’m not really sure i they could sell it or not. One thing I am certainly not worried about is the dresser I have now since my landlord lent it to me for this entire time I’ve lived here (nice lady).

So in conclusion, save your boxes and don’t buy furniture if you think you might have a chance at moving across the country in a year. of course it has been 6 months of use for that bed at least do if you think about it 6 months having a loft bed was worth building it and a year of having a mini fridge and a really cool bookhelf was also well worth $100 for the pair (or 110 since one was $45 and the other $65) so just being ready to part with my good friends that I thought would come with me is a small price to pay for not renting a uhaul to bring my junk back with me. So just treasure your tings while they are here and let them go when you need too. Alleriodrone OUT!

Many Youtubers have used aliases since the start  of Youtube and have worked to keep their name out of the mix but what does that do? In reality they most likely don’t hide their name from other people so why would anyone hide it for a public service?

In my videos so far I haven’t thought about it much but have gone by Joe much more than Al or Alleriodrone though all 3 lend to the same character in minecraft, of course there are many people named Joe playing Minecrafft while there is only one Alleriodrone playing and my username is in use on Xbox, email, and now the Ouya (if it ever arrives). So I have to ask myself, is a username really an individuals identity or should we still go by the names our parents gave us even in a place where there are thousands of Joe’s and probably a hundred with the surname Abbey. One example of my name being taken is twitter where I thought that there would be no way that @joeabbey would be taken but it was so I went with @yearoflinux then changed to @thefourtharrow and neither really describes me but it describes my blogs and hobbies. (By the way I recently changed my Twitter again, surprisingly @Alleriodrone was not taken)

The only identity a person has is the identity they know themselves by and the identity that they claim to own. A name can be a brand, an attitude, or even something as basic as your favorite food everything one uses to identify oneself is leading to a name but whether it’s your username or your given name it should be your own and it should be your identity and noone elses.

I ordered an Ouya from kickstarter, I guess the real term is backed the Ouya but that doesn’t really matter. This is the most exciting email I’ve received  this week but at the same time I am doing poorly in my Physics class and pretty much am giving up because I can’t learn the entire semester in a week and for 4 or 5 weeks in the begnning of the semester there was no time to study because someone left my week without even a days notice. Also I’ve seen some reviews of this device and they are very disheartening when the Ouya seems like such a cool device.

If anyone is wondering my backer number is 40,006 and I’ve been waiting patiently on the sidelines. When it gets here I will get a few games and maybe do a quick review (coming from a standpoint of a casual gamer instead of the near-professional reviewers). I can’t wait to get it!

Less battery life, better graphics, beautiful widgets and an annoying sense of betrayal to the Gnome developers. Why a sense of betrayal when I say that I hate it, because it does have some great features!

My favorite kde setup, with Dilbert on the front page!

I have used Gnome or Unity for most of my linux running days and really get how to use them and why they are great graphical interfaces but there was always something missing, something that is well integrated to the KDE plasma desktop: Widgets. These little boxes of quick, useful information make it great to turn on and immediately see what you need (for me it is the latest Dilbert comic and my CPU stats.

The only Desktop that hasn’t got much attention by me has really been kde because of its very windows-like appearance and also because of the system requirements. The GUI is very heavy on resources in comparison to both Gnome and Unity 2D, Unity itself is right on par with kde. Why make a GUI so resource intensive though, is there a reason? Yes, there is a great reason that is very apparent to how polished it looks and how brilliant it acts.

All in all kde does annoy me but it also is a very useful desktop environment once it finally loads up (being used to much faster sign in times with Gnome and Unity). So, even though I do not like some of the features it totes because they slow it down it is much greater than many GUIs though Elementary OS is even better with their polish as they make changes to also better improve the programs which it totes (noise is a great media player interface). I hope that I can learn to like it over the next few weeks and I will post an update after using it as my main GUI for at least a week maybe two.

What does disposable mean? The dictionary definition I’ve learner is that if something is deposable it can be thrown out once it is used but what isn’t disposable by that definition?
Everything is disposable and the difference is made not by whether it can be thrown away but by when it will be thrown out. Somethings have a useful life of years, a laptop for instance, while others have a usable lifespan of almost 6 minutes after first time use, plastic silverware. Either way these items can be considered disposable but one is a purchase that puts over $200 into play while the other costs scarcely $1. The term disposable also applies to clothing, video games, consoles and even furniture (though that is harder to dispose of) . In the world I was raised cars were not disposable and my dad drove his cars until they were no longer useful in transportation anymore. In a consumer based society it is expected that these things are disposable and people should buy new cars and sell their old ones frequently but why would people do this if there is no guarantee that this car will even be as good as the old car or even be as great as you expect it to be?
My ’92 sonoma is a great truck and gets me to work, school and back home without stuttering but it does break down quite a bit. The problem with keeping my truck is not seen clearly to me since there has been so much money spent to get my truck into the condition that it is in and there is no way to get that money back unless the truck is used and driven to the ground. Yet this truck is, at this point, considered almost as disposable as a plastic fork to some of my friends and family and they justify it by saying words like unreliable and inefficient to make their point of trying to sell it.
I do not want to, nor will I, get rid of my truck yet. The only way to get money out of it is to continue it’s service until it is beyond repair or the repair outweighs the price of the trucks worth. Though my truck is considered disposable so is my dads laptop in my opinion but as he refuses to upgrade I will continue to refuse to get a new car, “if it works, don’t fix it.” This is why I keep my truck, because it has value even if that value is only to me.

I regularly shop at the 99 cents only stores and Habitat for Humanity Restore (where I work) but does this save any money or waste it?

During the next week I’m going to go about my every day life and try avoiding the 99 cent store and only shop at grocery stores for food (Target and Walmart count in this case). This experiment is to see if I spend more money on longer lasting food or less money on crap. Dollar stores pull people in by saying that the dollar doesn’t matter because whatever you get there is most likely worth significantly more in the regular stores. This notion is wrong because that dollar did take time to earn and it could be better spent on items of a better quality even though they may be slightly more expensive. This also makes sweets more of a treat, I can easily eat a box of Swiss Rolls but it is $1.79 for a box and is very unhealthy so if I do get a box I need to make it last a few days at least but it should last about a month!

I’m not telling anyone to do like me and just stop going to the dollar  store but try to look for the value while I do the same thing. Pretzels are one thing I get there often and I’ll have to get another brand but I can do it and I hope to better understand what that dollar spent on pretzels is truly worth. Is it better to get a smaller bag for 99 cents or a large bag for $3.29. I’ll tell you what I find after a week.

At one point I seriously considered riping my hard drive out myself thinking that Dell would be annoying to call. However, this was not the case and I actually and I was incredibly impressed with how they handled my first and second call. Most calls I have made to computer and technology companies are located in other countries and I cannot understand them through the thick accent but when I called Dell I was greeted by nice people who had an accent but it was not as bad as experiences with Dells Best Buy line (most horrible relationship ever!) where I could barely hear them and the told me they had to replace the entire computer or have it sent to Dell through Best Buy.

During my 30 minute conversation there are some questions that they did not ask such as, “did you try restarting it?” and I was grateful they knew I had a 1st grade education in electronics (though this is the first thing I would ask if someone called with a software problem who did not know about computers). So, my computer does have a hard drive problem and it was confirmed, 3 times including this one with Dell on the line, by the built-in Diagnostic software. They said that someone will be calling in the next 3 days to schedule a time to meet and get this sucker fixed!

In the meanwhile I am using a live USB drive with CrunchBang installed and having a great time with it. I will try to post some screenshots later but for now it’s just running live I’m going to install it onto a flashdrive tonight hopefully and I’ll get back to you on how that goes.

BTW, is anyone else with a Dell XPS 13 having trouble with their hard drive? leave a comment!

I find that I say silly of unwarranted things when I am tired, the most recent of which was when I walked into my grandmas house saying that  “it’s frozen” after we drove through a blizzard to get there and my mom asked me what is frozen and I state, without pausing for a second, “The Tundra.” She cracked up laughing and I laughed for a minute after I realized I had just said the obvious in an unusual manner. the frozen tundra refers mostly to cold places that are barren and I thought this was appropriate as a joke, how  many people would think it was funny though? I was just stating the obvious the only thing that I did was state it in an odd way. Maybe it’s just me but humor really depends on a number of factors including but not necessarily needing the  following: Alcohol content of viewers blood, history of audience, how tired the audience is, and if you know the person. The last one is really important, if you know a person and they know your dad and you make the same jokes new material, even if you think that it’s new, might have already been taken because you think alike.

The famous (or infamous) “why did the chicken cross the road?” has been used so many times that it no longer seems funny because it has been exhausted and if a stand up comedian told you that joke you would probably throw fruit at him (please don’t comedians are nice people!) but he  has brought up a joke that is know to have been funny at one point and even more your friends jokes might become as boring so it sometimes helps to just try something on the spot, sometimes saying something completely and utterly obvious can be funny.

I’m not a comedian but I think trying something new has worked in other areas, why not here? Have a good New Year!

I have been annoyed at things that don’t matter or are very small but something like getting classes in college is not small, it is very big,  it’s like planning for the rest of your life! Why is it that when I’m in real life situations like this that makes me want to write about them though? Annoyance is a great motivator for writing and I always have my computer with me to take advantage of that fact. The fact is that when I am annoyed I want to write about it, my words about it are sparing and fleeting as I type my annoyances out of my system and by the end of it there is none left to yell at the person or organization that is being annoying because at the end it really might  not be their fault at all. Most likely it is getting to the end of the day and people are humans and WILL make mistakes eventually.

Life has many mistakes but at least it helps to work them out, even though I can be waiting 30 minutes to straighten it out I will be pleased with the result unless it messes up my schedule. Anytime I can exchange time for annoyance I will do it, being mad, angry, or having steam coming out of your ears while getting something done is not good, just relax, take your time, and try to be patient.