Installing Arch Linux LXQT for fun.

Today I installed Arch Linux with the LXQT desktop environment. It was not as satisfying as I thought. Although I am able to install everything I wanted, once I got to the point of setting up the ALSA control panel for the sound card. I just gave up. There's no point. I realized I know Linux enough to do this. I just didn't have a need for this hard to configure rather quick and lean distribution, that and I got really lazy and tire. So I'm going to install Windows 7 and give this computer away.

Guitar Upgrade

When I started playing guitar, I had a steel string ugly acoustic thing that I never liked to play, it was hard and the steel strings hurt my fingers. I heard from a somewhat experienced guitar player that I should switch to nylon strings. He didn't know that guitars are made for one type of strings and neither did I, for my guitar was actually MADE for nylon strings and the guy who sold it, put steel strings on it, making it a terrible guitar. The upgrade (or should I say restoration?) was a huge difference and helped me in my guitar learning experience.

I never took good care of that guitar cause I always saw it as a cheap thing that was hard to play and never sounded professional. However even after buying a nice electric and other acoustic guitars, I still held onto that one as my personal favorite due to it's sound. I enjoyed playing many classical pieces and even composed a few on there, but then came the day that it was falling apart, and I wanted a replacement so I don't end up killing my beloved ugly guitar. So I went to Kline music thinking it would be easy to find any cheap old guitar that would outperform mine. It wasn't. I had to really find (in the good section) a guitar that had the bassy, no echo, feel of mine and when I did. I loved it. I don't have much to say about the new one. because this story is about my old classical guitar.

 Anyways, that's my story. i cut it short since I had a lot to say but not many people who read it all.

Musings on Vanity or Fashion.

I don't really care about my appearance as much as some people. But I care just enough to get by my everyday life and a few ventures in the outside world. What I have found quite bothersome is people who put so much emphasis on their appearance that everything else is put into a lower priority. Keep in mind that as I write this I'm staring at what I think is an example of such a person.

Perhaps a slick new hairstyle that obviously that it took longer than 15 minutes to set into place though he will deny it. A tight fitting suit that looks more fashionable than practical. Topped off with a bow tie, although I have been guilty of wearing one from time to time. Clip on. 

Besides all that I've mentioned, I do not envy them, I just feel other things should take precedence. And many would not agree with me, but it's just pure spite directed towards their wastefulness that irks me. That is all.

CSI: Sacramento

This is the script for our next upcoming film, still in the works. I just wanted to share this just to remind everyone I'm still working on it. 

Characters

Lead Detective: Erik

Partner Detective: Josh

Spencer: Spencer

Mario: Mario

Dead Party person. Natan

Sheriff: Raquel

Sheriff Assistant: Gaby

Allisa (Girl from party who got interrogated): Gricel

Crew

Camera guy: Natan

(We’re going to record the voices on a separate device so we can hear ourselves talk) Sound guy: Erik

STORY

The scene starts with the camera zooming through the open door of a house a house playing loud music at a party.

Camera cut scenes to a party with the guests going all crazy, loud rave music, drinking, lots of food, then blending stuff, tv playing a movie, popcorn, violent pillow fight, and whispering junk like dares and stuff, they laugh all crazy and sneak out.

The camera angles up to the night sky and it comes down on.....

2 car guys, (Beemer and Jay)

Camera transitions from up high to down to the rear end of the cars as the cars are revving their engines. Both cars in one shot.

A quick shot for each driver as they look at each other, nod.

Camera from behind on the ground watches them peel out.  

A short slow street race starts. Camera Sidewalk view.

After the drag race, two guys stay late and chat with each other talking about how this was much better than that lame party.

Beemer’s car is in the background playing some music.

Jay hears Beemer’s BMW revving the engine and they barely see the car peel out and drive off with the thief. (camera is behind them watching the car peel out)

(camera behind Beemer watches him dial 911 on his cell) He call the cops.

At the police station the lazy sheriff picks up the phone, goes “uhh’, and tells the assistant to “Give the job to the mystery crew. We only handle “real Cases” in this town.

Camera moves in Mystery Crew business card laying up on the Sheriff's desk.

Mystery crew member Erik picks up the old rotary phone ringing.

“uh uh, yeah that’s correct, ok right away. Wait... Do you take Debit?”

Camera angle swiftly moves to Erik’s partner (P).

and proceeds to yell, “Hey I need 20$ for pizza!” “Oh and the cops called, we have work tomorrow!” (Camera fades to day and the scene of the street where the drag race appears.)

The Mystery crew arrives a day later, in an old Mopar (Erik and (P)) camera watches them drive in. Drivers side. Erik comes out, While camera stares at his feet and moves up to his face while he close the door.

Camera looks at (P) quickly does the same.

Jay and Beemer are there waiting, Jay complains,

“What took you so long?”

Erik says,

“Relax buddy, we’re professionals, we know what we’re doing.”

(P) mutters to himself that the trail is all cold. He starts to investigate the road where the car was driven off look at the tire marks and take a cotton swab and put that in a baggie. Erik talks to the guys and asks questions in the background while (P) is inspecting the road. He says that the thief was maybe driving like a noob and trying to drag race, the two guys agree like they were scared. (since they don’t want to get fined for driving recklessly) Erik gets suspicious. (suspicious music)

(P)’s phone rings, he says it’s a call about a murder mystery and says he’d rather solve that one instead. “Good luck on finding your car, it’s definitely stolen, we’ll send you a bill in the mail.”

The mystery crew decides to ignore the fool whose car was stolen and go try to solve that case instead. Erik then says to Beemer, he may be in contact with him if he finds anything about his car. Maybe. Probably. Unlikely. Beemer and Jay feel abandoned.

As the mystery crew drives over to the river to investigate the dead body and the surrounding area. the Sheriff ( and her assistant are there) says this girl is dead from stab wounds all over the body. But (P) figures out that the murderer only made it look like a stabbing murder, and put ripped up weenies and ketchup all over her. And as he investigates this further by looking at the rocks and the broken plants, he imagines that the girl drove there, fell out of the car dead for some reason, and then someone took her car. Erik wonders if there is a car thief on the loose. (The girl driving to the river, falling out unconscious and having her car stolen will be like a dream sequence. kind of how CSI does it.)

The Mystery Crew takes the body to the lab in a black bag and input the dna data into the computer (using a scanner to scan the hair. Erik asks why did they have to bring in the whole body if all they needed was a hair. (P) was like, “Don’t question my methods!”) the loading data says, “data compiling, please wait 8867682376 years for results. Erik gets annoyed how long it’s taking and walks over to the server to do this manually. later.... find out she was just injected with a serum that makes her seem dead and it took effect after she was driving home maybe, fell out of the car when some joyrider took her car. (another Dream Sequence) The computer tells them all that from a DNA Hair sample.

So now they go out looking for two missing cars and who drugged this girl. The “dead” girl wakes up with a terrible hangover wrapped in a bag. she can’t get out. no one sees her. She says, Hello?” The camera fades out into a police station.

The Mystery Crew then goes to the DMV to see if they’ve seen this “Dead” girls car and what hopes to find what it looks like. Cop investigates on their computer system, but according to the records, she doesn’t own a car, or even a license, or even a social security number.

So Mystery crew and sheriff assistant drives the one of the girls’ house (Alisa) for an official on the spot interrogation. Erik busts down the door. Fails and just knocks instead. When the mother lets them in, they pull out the official paperwork and the mom starts crying saying. “Ohh my baby’s a criminal, I always knew she had a bad side!” And runs out the house.

The Sheriff’s assistant ties the suspect (alisa) to the chair.

Erik -”Where were you on the night of the 27th? Huh! Answer me punk, Say something?!”

ALisa - “Um I don’t know, what month?”

Erik - “I’ll make this easier for you Ally! Yesterday. where. where. you?”

Alisa - “I was at a party, behaving and having fun, my mom picked me up at 12:00, she can verify...”

Erik thinks she is lying (sherlock holmes moment, voice in his head, (She’s shaking her hand, refuses to look at him, voice is higher pitch. But in reality she just had something stuck in her eye that made her uncomfortable. and was scared at erik’s knife.) (P) plays good cop. Erik Bad cop. But she pretty much lies about everything. “We were just having a very safe party, watching movies and doing each others nails.... and stuff like that, what more do you want?” Erik then pretends to tip the chair over and she get’s really scared and spills everything. He finds out it was a dare to steal a car, and when Iris’ friends found her, they drugged her so she wouldn’t remember anything. They were all arrested. The girls also took the car and tried to drive it into the river. bye bye BMW.

(P), was like, “It’s ok it’ll be alright” and slaps handcuffs on her, “After you serve time in juvenile hall of course.” and they both but a bag over her head and carry her out, and put her in the trunk of the Mopar A.

Mystery crew now realizes that the car “dead” girl stole the car from Beemer and and now it’s in the river. So they go look for it at the river to fish it out when Zerin then sees a BMW parked like 10 feet away and asks (P) what kind of car was it they were looking for? Erik decides to close this case and report it.

As the chief of Mystery Crew reads the report, says everything looks good, but asks where the dead girl is.. Apparently everyone else forgot about her so the Sheriff goes to the dead body place and hears her singing “daisy” and gets her out, but she’s barely alive so the Sheriff rushes her to the emergency room. DR. Whaaat? comes in and says he can save her, but he needs to get drunk first, so he drinks a bottle and slams it on the ground. then he gets to work with this skill saw, but his assistant says he has the wrong tool, and he’s like, “you’re right”, and pulls out the sawzall. the show ends with a fadeout of a hospital. and the theme song from House. Whatever that song is.

(After the credits finish, Erik goes to explain to Beemer what happened to the car.

Beemer, “So my car is in the river?”
EriK, “Yes.”
Beemer,: Darn

ERIK: The good news is the crane company offered to buy it for a 100$>”
Beemer> Well it’s better than nothing.

Erik pays Beemer and then goes back to his newly purchased BMW and drives off.

And EVERYBODY Lived!

This is a story about a group of people with interesting names who are trying to escape a dungeon.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

NO-ONE knows why they are they, and THEY says HE knows, but HE won’t tell.

HE says WE should try to escape first.

But WE disagreed and decided to go with EVERYBODY.

SOMEONE decides to stay behind

THAT ONE GUY says WE should follow HIM. but EVERYBODY disagrees with HIM and HE ends up falling into a trap.

NOBODY thinks of a good idea. And EVERYBODY was ignored.

WHATsHISNAME was lost when going off on his own. But ran into THAT ONE GUY who kills HIM.

In the end only HE survived.

SOMEONE else survived but THEY didn't make it.

WE had to tell THEM the news. That THEY didn't make it,.

WE almost forgot about THEM.

And NOBODY saved THEM from being crushed under a huge rock.

When THEY died. NO ONE cared very much.

EVERYBODY survived and WE wrote this story.

-----------------------------------------------------

If this makes sense to you, I don't beleive you. 

My Thoughts on Home-Schooling

This is a rant. Do not take %100 seriously becuase I am just venting and this is only my opinion. I wrote this about a year ago, but never posted it before and figured I might as well put this here. So you know what really bothers me? Stereotypes, the kind that causes humans to assume they know what a person is like, for no good reason. In this case today I'll be talking about stereotypes about Homeschooling or Independent Study. On average most humans are very similar and think alike. But to the genius who thought that all children learn at the same rate was not the brightest bulb in the house, now sure it's cheaper than having individualized learning for every kid in school, but who cares? Right? Well parents do and they are willing to do something about it. Now it's clear that some kids learn faster than others and some are like bricks trapped in a tarpit. There are so many minute differences that in the end, you are almost always going to stunt someone's learning growth by putting them in regular school. Maybe not all kids, but some. And for those few who prefer to learn on their own instead of in a group, there's home school. Sheltered This bothers me. Home schooled kids are sheltered. What is sheltered? According to the consensus, people beleive that sheltered people are when the parents "baby" their kids by hiding them from all the bad things in the world and don't let them interact with the outside world. The when the children finally have freedom they tend go wild or refuse to leave home. I've never met anyone who was sheltered by that definition, and chances are that if you have, it's very rare since being "Sheltered" as defined by the people is uncommon and unrelated to homeschooling. The fact that some kids go all out wild when they first venture out in the world and taste some freedom has nothing to with being home schooled, this can happen to anyone. Just ask anyone who's gotten drunk, high, arrested or beat up. They all took it too far, not because they experienced some feeling of freedom doing it, but because humans are generally not very smart. I've met people at my school, you have to go in once a week, pick up your work, deal with the teacher one on one. You have no idea how easy this has made it for me to talk to people. I see them as equals in the sense that we both work together or are in a similar situation. Because of the communication I've had with adults and not other children with Potatoe IQ's, I've actually learned what it's like to be in a business environment right at my school. (And when I refer to school, I mean the once or twice a week I went in to turn in my homework. Which brings me to my next point.) Time spent. A lot of people think that home school is your parents watching over you and helping you with your homework at home. HA! I'm going to use my own personal experience. My mom yelling at me to finish my homework,. Making my own breakfast, parents gone while I did all my homework ON MY OWN. You think parents are going to help you with Algebra? You needed help? You called up the teacher, and not like a baby, "Teacher help me I don't know!" No you did it like an adult, going through automated phone calls and hoping someone was there to pick it up when you finally have 10 seconds to give a clear question on what you want to know before the teacher loses interest and recommends driving back to school for the 10 minutes he/she's going to spend on you to learn your material. The library was awesome, school libraries for independent schools sucked. But Government local libraries had anything you wanted to learn about I spent so much time there reading, renting out DVD and computer games that it felt like a college. Plus the free internet and WiFi. Socializing Dealing with other children or students. I don't know if you have much of a social life, that heavily depends on the type of person you are. There is more to life than school and work, and I was taught to keep those separate. Get a "real" social life, talk to your neighbors, be a Jehovah's Witness, or just deal with people in general to find those real friends. Shy kids are common in regular school AND home school. But you'll be surprised to learn that sometimes mini-hookers and pimps and popular kids also end up home-schooled for the rest of their high school years due to "bad" behavior. All in all, anyone can end up home schooled and it is not an antisocial place. So is much learning to do! How to make money, how to manage the money, how to work, how to cook, how to fix things, like cars computers and art. So much art. It was a school that allowed me to learn whatever I wanted, there was no limits. Except internet. That was a good thing since most kids nowadays are so attached by an Ethernet cable that nothing would even get done. So much television that they would become vegetables and if the parents let them, as most lazy parents sometimes do, then home schooling would not work out. That's the real work that parents have to do, and all they really need to do. Keep them focused. Real Quality Education They are the same Freakin' books! And same teachers, just in a different environment. Lazyiness Yes, kids are lazy and you know who's fault that is if they spend all day watching TV, staying online, on the cell phone and playing video games? I don't even need to tell you. Most people just treat regular school like a free government day care. And guess what? You can train kids to stay home alone and be responsible. How else are they going to work hard at a job when no one is looking. Good parenting speaks for itself. Not for everyone There are some kids that just need to be around other dumb kids like them, or smart kids like them if you were able to send them off to one of those rich schools where they actually have teachers that care. Some kids feel the need to be put in an environment like school and they like it. They need to be told what to do, how to do it and what to learn as well as hang around with other people like them. Well keep them in regular school if it seems to be working out that way. All in all, this may disagree with a lot of people, but I'm speaking from personal experience. You also have to keep in mind that people are pretty unpredictable and everyone behaves differently.

Great cars for under $5000 (Just My Opinion)

This is my list of 5 cars for under $5000 US dollars. I know that they are easily found in California for under that price and quite affordable.


Firebird/Camaro. 
In the 90's and 80's these were plenty and cheap. No one wants one now because they're guzzle gas and they handle pretty bad, they fall into the dreaded category of "pointless cars". But they do look good and it's better than driving around a 4 door front wheel drive import right? If you're lucky you can find a V6 version but then it's not a MUSCLE CAR! Even so, ther'es something special about driving these cars, they just feel good, even though you're not going fast all the time, pulling out burnouts, they look good and feel right. Find one that hasn't had the interiors ripped out or upgrade the upholstery yourself since you will find these very cheap. I've rarely had engine trouble with these type of cars, it's always everything else. I didn't add the mustangs on here cause I don't like them. :P Maybe it's juts the people who drive mustangs I don't like. Go figure

Classic Datsun 280ZX
It doesn't have to be a 280 ZX but a sporty Datsun is a common find in California where these tiny rockets are just sitting there waiting for someone to love. 2 seats or 4 seats if you're lucky, you can easily find one in great condition sometimes for even cheaper than it's American counterparts. The problem is finding one that isn't SMOG exempt but if you are willing to work with what it's got then it should be fine.

Toyota MR2
These cars are a good deal anywhere in the world. 2 seats, mid engine goodness. Just think about it, your own personal poor-man's Ferrari! So why are they so cheap? A freaking Corolla with the same engine and Rear Wheel drive layout costs twice as much! Why?!!!! Well I've never driven an MR2 but when I saw one of my friends cruising around it and looking closer I saw he had no cargo space, no people space it made me realize that this is the car for people who are dedicated to speed and coolness. Whereas an AE86 is dedicated to practicality, speed, and more; therefore an AE86 costs more. Logic.

BMW Coupe
The more expensive on our list is the BMW's, but if you stoop this low for a car like this, chances are you've had to make some compromises. Save your pennies and save your dimes because this driver's car may need quite a lot of maintenance since we drive like knuckle heads over here and I can't guarantee the last owner was calm and collected like granny num nums. Chances are when they're selling this car it's because the maintenance was too much. Be prepared for the little. "Here's everything we've worked on with this car." In the end if you're willing to skimp on amenities you may actually like this car. But in the end if you want to enjoy driving and plan to shell out the dough to keep this car going, go for it and you won't regret it.

Mazda Miata
Like the MR2 the Miata serves little purpose but to be driven and tracked. It's a great little car, the only problem is not the car, but the people that rag on it for no good reason. They're cheap, quick and fun. They're also very cheap here in California. We seem to like convertibles a lot here. But I've never actually been around them so why is it on my list? Just because.

In the end you'll noticed I've chosen rear wheel drive cars for my list and it's because they rule! I don't like how most Honda and Nissan tuner cars are FWD, they under-steer and the anemic 4 cyclinder engines are kind of pain me to drive. They also have a bad rap for getting umm... ruined, so in the end this is the list of cool cars I would actually want to drive.... for under 5K. The end.