Richard Smith died last night. That sucks. He used to be my dad’s best friend but they had some ridiculous falling out years ago. But me and him stayed friends, sorta. I’ve known him all my life. When I was a teen, he’s the guy I’d call to come and pick me up when I had car trouble. And he always answered all my computer questions and gave me tons of free pirated software. I remember him coming by and picking me up once at 2 in the morning with my parents not knowing. In the late 90’s I started seeing a lot of him again and we worked on computer stuff together. He got me some job with Ray Grimley which I never got paid for because Richard ran off to Ohio for some contract job. That’s the last I saw of him. He’d been back in the Alton area for a few years but I’d never seen him. He had a stroke a few weeks ago, then they found that he had lung cancer in both lungs. He was a heavy smoker. Even though I haven’t seen him in 6 years and I probably never would have seen him again, I’ll miss him. He was 58.

I run a few Yahoo Groups and one of them is this Prank Calls group. The other day an email comes through it with the subject line of “Profit Opportunity!” and the email contains lots of graphics and links about all the money you can make with PayPal. Occasionally spam slips through. So I log into the group, delete the email and ban the person responsible. Then today I get this email:

From: Ronnie Vinston rcaprix@yahoo.com
Subject: membership
To: prank_calls-owner@yahoogroups.com

I am having trouble logging in to your group. Was I removed from this group because of the email I sent to all the members. It was only an email that I recieved from someone else about an opportunity to make money through paypal. I thought it would be a good idea to share this with other people. I really wanted to join this group because I like listening to prank calls, not to sell items to members. I hope you would reconsider. Thank you.

I’m not going to bother replying. I just think it’s kinda funny. Usually it’s not members who spam their own groups – it’s people who sign up with intentions of spamming groups until they are kicked off.

I’ve been a real podcast whore since about January. It’s pretty much all I listen to lately. I barely even listen to music anymore, although I’m sure all this is just a phase. Here’s a few links to podcasts that I’ve been on or pissed off or whatever…

RBPC Show Episode #9 There’s a whole story behind this one which was lost when the RBPC Show forums crashed last month. And I sure don’t feel like going into it right now. But it has to do with their forum members accusing me of cheating on my Podcastalley votes. If you fast forward to 4 minutes and 25 seconds, you’ll hear them spend a minute talking about what a cheater I am.

RBPC Show Episode #10 Fast forward to 4 minutes and you’ll hear an angry voicemail message from me. I don’t do angry too good, though. I think Pez thanks me on the end of this one too. Click here for more RBPC Show episodes.

Lazy Radio Episode 2.11 About seven minutes and 40 seconds into this show, Melissa & John play Relay Operators in Love on their show and talk about how immature and mean relay pranking is. Here is more Lazy Radio for you.

BellCore Radio Episode #21 P(?)NYB(?)Y strains to convince listeners that PLA Radio isn’t that bad. Listen to more BellCore Radio. If there’s an RSS feed for this show, I sure can’t find it. P(?)NYB(?)Y, make a feed!

PLA Radio Goddammit, if you’re reading this journal you better be listening to PLA Radio or YOU’RE NOT MY FRIEND.

I made macaroni tonight and left them boiling on the stove for nearly 15 MINUTES. Spessa will never know.

Hung out with the kids at Fred Meyer for 30 minutes this morning, then walked them to school. Then walked an hour back to where my car sat at McDonald’s to wait for a locksmith. (Thanks, Nobody Likes Onions, for keeping me entertained for the walk.) Yesterday Jammie sent me a few links related to ignition problems which ended up giving me some good advice and information. In the end, I saved $140 by having a locksmith come to McDonalds and fix it for me, rather than taking it to the dealership. I couldn’t fix it myself since the lock had to be drilled out.

From reading some forums last night, I found out that the ignition locking up in a Ford Focus is very common. Some people claimed they had to replace their ignition every year or two. Others said that the locksmith or dealership would tell them that they usually replace several Ford Focus ignitions per week. The locksmith I talked to today said the same thing. The Ford Focus and the Contour, they get them all the time.

The cool part is this – the guy drilled my lock out and then noticed he was out of the tumbler whatever sets for my car. He said we could go by the dealership and ask them for one. Or he could just not put tumblers in it at all. Since the tumblers are the part that’s always failing (causing some Focus owners to replace their locks yearly) I can never have this problem again! Plus I can start my car with a flathead screwdriver instead of a key! Well, the key has to be there since there’s a chip in it and the car won’t start without it. But that seems secure enough. Why even have tumblers in there if you have the microchip?? So I saved an extra $60 on all the tumbler stuff, making my total $110. Not bad at all.

My day has been annoying so far. My key decided to stop turning in the ignition so easily this morning so my car is stranded at McDonalds. The kids and I had stopped there for breakfast and ended up having to take a cab to school. To take a cab across town and back is FOURTEEN DOLLARS! Seven bucks each way. Total driving time was 15 – 20 minutes for the cab. That’s a lot of money for a 20 minute drive.

Later this evening I’m going to go buy some graphite and spray that in the lock, hoping it’ll make the key turn. The key isn’t stuck in the ignition, it just won’t turn. It did the same thing last week but I was able to eventually make it work. This time it’s really stuck. Won’t budge at all. All I can think to do is either the graphite thing or maybe drag a paper clip across the tumblers, hoping to shake the problematic one loose.

At least I can replace the ignition myself if I really need to. Maybe I’ll just put a couple switches in it’s place to save myself a couple hundred bucks. I did that for a neighbor of mine a couple years ago. He didn’t want to spend $250 for a new ignition, so we spent about $20 on wires and 2 switches. One switch turned on the car’s electrical stuff. The 2nd was a momentary contact switch which started the car up. It ruled.

My other car problem I’ve been having for over a month now. The car’s idle isn’t sounding too good. A forum I checked says I need to replace the PCV valve which is easy enough. I’ve just been too lazy to get around to it. I hate hate hate hate hate cars. If I didn’t have kids I would sell my car in a second. My obsessive record keeping shows that I spent $5,250.99 on my car last year. That includes car payments, gas, oil changes, insurance, etc. This year I’ve already spent $703.02 on my car. Cars are evil and I hate them.

In less complainy news, phonelosers.org is moved to a new server and I’m really liking it so far. I set up a community thing on it which includes forums, calendar, messaging, etc. It also tells me how many people are on the website at any given time, which is cool. I’m going to use the member system mainly for commenting on all the various pages. It should hopefully work like my existing comment system, with the option of logging in to comment.

At some point in the late 80’s, I purchased a gun at Wal-Mart. No, not a real gun. Just a BB gun. But it was a very realistic-looking, shiny metal gun. It cost around $20.00, plus the several thousand BB’s that I purchased along with it. I’ve seen a very similar BB gun at Wal-Mart recently, but it’s all plastic and fake looking. Mine looked real and that’s the important part. Those BB’s were a lot of fun too. We’d throw hundreds of them into crowds at school or flick them at peoples’ heads in the movies.

Anyway, I carried this gun with me just about everywhere for the next year or so, as long as I could conceal it good. My friend Mike and I shot at everything we could think of. Street signs, buildings, cars, trees, whatever. We’d hang out by the train tracks near his house and shoot at the passing frieght trains. A few times an Amtrak would come by and we’d shoot at it. I remember a guy standing on some platform on the outside of an Amtrak as it passed, extremely pissed at our shooting the train, yelling all kinds of threats at us. No, we didn’t shoot him.

After I bought a car, I started keeping the gun in it so that it was always available to entertain us. Many times, while at a stoplight and with the windows down, Joe would pull the gun out and aim it at my head, screaming at me, “JUST SHUT UP AND FUCKING DRIVE THE CAR MOTHERFUCKER.” And I’d play a frantic, crying hostage as people in nearby cars looked at us in either horror and/or confusion. Luckily nobody owned cell phones yet or I’m sure we would have had all kinds of police excitement.

One day Mike and I were at a nearby train yard, in some kind of abandoned rusted out trolley car, shooting bottle rockets out of the windows. Mostly in the direction of a nearby motel called the Lewis & Clark Motor Lodge. At night, very few of the neon lights on their sign worked, making it Lewis & Clark Orge. Which is almost like Orgy. Which was somehow funny when I was a teenager. Anyway, we ran out of bottle rockets and started walking towards Mike’s house. That’s when I notice a cop car, speeding across the grass field towards us with his lights on. And of course I have my gun tucked into the wasteband of my pants, in the back.

He interrogates us for a few minutes and asks us if we’d been shooting off fireworks or shooting at anything, which we denied. He had us turn out our pockets to make sure we had no fireworks. I’m sure one of us must have had a lighter on us and I don’t remember what was said about that. Maybe I had it in a pack of cigarettes so it looked innocent. He finally seemed satisfied enough and seems about ready to let us go. Then he asks Mike to pull up his shirt. Mike does and does a spin for the cop. Then it’s my turn. Shit. I knew this was the end. I pulled up my shirt, turned around once and then faced the cop. He says, “Okay, get out of here.” I guess I didn’t pull my shirt up enough and he didn’t see it. How lucky was that?? So we headed back to the tracks to shoot more things.

My gun also made several unexpected appearances to unsuspecting passengers of mine. While working at Long John Silvers, my manager asked if I’d mind driving over to K-Mart to pick up the district manager who was waiting in the automotive department because of car trouble. I was so happy to have 15 minutes away from cooking shrimp that I didn’t even think to clear off my passenger seat or it’s floor. The district manager was waiting outside for me so I had to quickly clear a spot for him. First the seat and the district manager got a good look at my gun which was hiding under a bunch of papers and stuff on the seat. I’m like, “Uh..heh…it’s not real. Just a BB gun.” Then I had to clear the floor for him which happened to be littered with all kinds of trash, including Pepsi and Beer cans. Not to mention that I had a clothes bar in the back with all of my clothes hanging on it. I’m sure this guy was feeling really safe getting into a car with me.

We had a pleasant 5 minute conversation as I drove back to Long John Silver’s. I parked in the back and we walked to the back door. I wedged my fingers into the crack around the door and pulled it open, holding it open for him as he walked in. My manager showed up and jokes, “Ohhh, I see Brad is performing a security violation!” Turns out that even though that’s how I got into the building every day, we weren’t supposed to do that and the manager knew it. He told me later that day that he was written up because of it. Soon after I quit that job he was fired. I wonder if my “security violation” wasn’t partly responsible for it. I saw him several months later working at Taco Bell. I jokingly asked if I could have a job and he said, “Yeah right.” I suddenly remember his name being Edward Hogan. I wonder if he’s still got a career in the fast food industry. He must be 50 by now.

When I worked at Circle K in League City, some lady locked her keys in her car. I tried to help her locate the secret key hidden in the magnetic box underneath the car but had no luck. She tried to call home and there was no answer. So I offered to give her a ride home so she could get the spare key and come back with it. As I cleared off the seat, there’s my gun again. I don’t know why I kept it on the front seat so often in Texas. It’s not like I was using it much once I moved away from Illinois. The lady had a concerned look and I told her it was fake and threw it in the back.

Anyway, more appearances of my gun in my life. Hmmmm, what else. I know that my gun was present during my Arkansas Traffic Stop where a fat cop demanded to know if I had any firearms in my car and I told him no. Luckily my car was so packed full of junk that they didn’t happen to find it.

My BB gun disappeared from my life in 1992 while I was visiting Illinois. Chris Tomkinson and I were out causing random trouble when we pulled into a secluded East Alton parking lot. Chris went behind a building to piss and I was just hanging around the car when two cop cars pulled into the lot, wanting to know what we were up to. I think we were there for about an hour, trying to convince them that we were innocent. They split us up, read us our rights and made us tell them everything we’d been doing that night. Hoping to find discrepancies, I guess.

The used car lot next to us had been getting a lot of breakins recently and they thought we were there to steal some car stereos. Looking into my car, the cop noticed that I had a brand new equalizer sitting on the floorboard, hooked up and working. I’d purchased it just a few days before, but the cop assumed that I must have stolen it out of a car and we were back here installing it into my car before we left. He asks if he can search my car and I tell him sure. By then I’d completely forgotten about the gun. I think it was hidden up inside of the seat. The cop found it and exclaims, “Well what do we have here!” He tosses the gun onto the roof of my car, leaving a scratch. My precious 1979 Dodge Colt was scratched! As he pulls the gun out and holds it up, the look of dispair in Chris’ face is so comical. That was the first time I’d ever seen somebody say, “Oh, shit!” without speaking.

The cop locks us both in the back of one of the cop cars while they continue to search my car. By this point I really need to piss and I tell Chris that I’m going to pee in the floorboard. He begs me not to, completely not understanding how hilarious that would be. Looking back, I probably missed my only opportunity to pee in the back of a cop car. What are the odds that next time I’m arrested, I’ll need to pee really bad. Dammit Chris.

In the end, the police let us go. We weren’t really doing anything, after all. The police tells me that he’s going to keep the gun and I tell him that’s fine. He says he may stop by to see me tomorrow about the equalizer since I’d told him that I had a receipt for it. I really did, too, along with all the packaging for the thing. So anyway, those are my gun stories. All the ones I can remember. Maybe I’ll think of some more in the morning and add them.

I rediscovered the magic of MAME today. I haven’t touched an arcade emulator since about 2000 but I’ve been really itching to play Tron lately, ever since Jammie and I played it a few times at that museum in New York. So I got my three all-time arcade favorites and I’ve been playing them this evening…

Tron, Galaga and Speed Rumbler. Yes, those are my favorites and I don’t care if you make fun of me for them. I spent hours each day, on my way to/from high school, inside 7-Eleven playing Speed Rumbler with my friend Mike. I’d get out of bed an hour early some mornings, just to have more time to play it. All lunch money was diverted to Speed Rumbler funds.

I think my Tron addiction happened in 1991 when I was homeless in Galveston, Texas. The campground that I hung around in had a Tron machine in the lounge area which I played as often as possible. I’d played it many times throughout the 80’s, but it was in Galveston that it really got out of control. Tr0n 0wns me!

Galaga was just a favorite of mine throughout the 80’s. Every arcade on earth had that one, including Tilt at our local mall. In 1993, my Galaga playing became really competitive when I worked at Lafayette Square Mall and I spent my time before work, after work and sometimes even on breaks playing Galaga at the mall’s arcade. Someone with the initials JTS was constantly beating my score and I spent a lot of time beating his. I always hoped to meet JTS someday but it never happened.

So I have Mame now. Tron is a pain in the ass to play without the normal controls but I’m slowly adapting. arcadeathome.com is a great place to learn about and download MAME. This should effectively eliminate any hope of me doing anything productive this weekend.

I did another PLA Radio the other day. Go listen to it. I might redo some of that this weekend since I’m not completely happy with it. Or maybe I’ll just do an Episode #5. Or maybe I’ll just play Tron a lot so I don’t have to worry about anything else. Oh yeah, speaking of PLA Radio, go to podcastalley.com and vote for my show. Right now it’s at #3. I’ve been whoring for votes for two weeks now. Please?

Emily managed to get some editorial contest thing she did for school published in the local paper. So here it is…

Puddles and petals

If I had to pick between winter and spring, I would pick spring. I would pick spring because it rains and flowers get fed. Later on, when the flowers are fed enough, they grow beautifully.

I like running in the rain with my friend. We run in the grass, laughing while holding our umbrellas. I love spring. Spring gives you a warm feeling inside, and when it rains, you can do a lot of things like splash in puddles and dance in the rain. That is why I like spring better than winter.

Awoke this morning at 8 a.m.,
Then headed to McDonalds for breakfast again,
Hotcakes, a sausage, 2 milks and the paper,
Read all the news and the police log capers.

As I drove to the post office, I played Bob and Tom,
I hate that damn show but there’s nothing else on,
Stood in line just to buy stamps from Hank,
Checked my PO box then drove to the bank.

Worked all day and talked on the phone,
Chatted with Jammie and ate lunch alone,
Left around 3 and went to the school,
Picked up the kids and we WENT TO ALBERTSONS FOR GROCERIES.

Pulled into the driveway and unloaded the Ford,
The kids hung their jackets and said they were bored,
So we watched some Sliders on my P.C.,
Then I went to the kitchen to make macaroni.

The drywall guy showed up and worked on my room,
Used oil based paint and the odor sure loomed,
I opened the windows and turned on the air,
Hoping to get some of the smell out of there.

Homework was next, then Simpsons, then showers,
Put them to bed, then my laptop for a few hours,
Chatted with Jammie and then she logged off,
Dammit, my laptop screen is being attacked by a moth.

The moth has been squashed and knocked to the floor,
He must have flown in here when I opened the door,
I’m going to bed now because I’m tired as hell,
Goodnight, everybody, as I close the lid to my Dell.

OKAY FINE IT’S AN HP LAPTOP. SUE ME.