Like every bad joke you’ve ever heard about Asians and their rice, my wife’s family can’t live without their rice!  And this week a blown fuse in this overpriced crock pot has hampered their ability to cook rice.  At least conveniently anyway.  They can cook rice on the stove, but then no way to keep the extra rice warm.  It’s also a bad superstition to throw away rice.  Rice fried into these hard cookie shaped things have to be the worse thing I have seen them make with rice.  Its like eating one large chuck of uncooked rice.  The rice cooker is a Woonjin WPX-0702BC by Cucken.

I opened up the rice cooker, found the fuse and put a meter on it and sure enough its blown.  That was the easy part.  A trip to Radio Shack, Home Depot, Ace Hardware, and even Fry’s and this 3/4″ long tube fuse is nowhere to be found.   The main problem, its 12.5 AMPS!!!

The best I found was a 10amp fuse at Fry’s, which was enough to get the LED and LCD’s to light up, but starting to cook and this fuse is toast as well.  The home depot guy insisted that the fuse might be good and that we had to test it with a voltage meter, even after I insisted that I had.  After he replaced a perfectly good battery, I then had to show him how to use the voltage meter.  I thought it was common sense, but I guess if you’re 40 and making minimum wage at Home Depot you’re not the sharpest tack in the bunch.

Tip for those that don’t know how to meter a fuse,

1. Turn meter on to any setting.  Personally I like the setting that beeps, but any setting will do!
2. Take the two wires that are plugged into the meter, there should be metal on the ends these are called leads.
3. Touch the leads together…. note how the meter reacts.  Does it beep or does the display change?
4. Separate the leads… the meter should be quiet and display shouldn’t change (don’t touch the leads with your hands your body conducts electricity)
   
5. Now take one lead touch one end of the fuse, then take the other lead and touch the other end of the fuse
6. Note what the meter is doing (if this is too difficult for you, seriously re-think why you aren’t using the setting that beeps)
   
7. If the meter reacts like step 3, fuse is good…. if meter reacts like step 4, fuse is bad!

After I made a poor attempt of insulting the guy with my sinister dry humor that no one understands but me, he opened a package of 6 amp fuses (the largest they had) and gave me one.  Surprised that he was allowed to do such a thing I changed my attitude a little and graciously took it, even though I threw it away once I got home.

The fuse reads “T12.5AL 250V.”  I am not 100% what the L or T mean but the A and V are Amps and Volts, which with my knowledge it should be the only thing that matters.  Slow burn or fast acting is something I am learning about this week but still don’t know which this fuse is.  Honestly if it says 12.5 amps, I’m buying it!

I have a couple other places here in Sacramento and Roseville I want to check out on Monday, but for the most part I am looking at a new fuse holder, some wire, and any fuse that is 12 amps and re-wiring the rice cooker to make it take the new fuse.  If that doesn’t work then maybe we’ll just settle for some wire and review the fire insurance coverage on the house.

If anyone know of a place to buy these things online please point me in the right direction!  I’m also willing to drive anywhere from San Jose to Sacramento if I have too.  Sacramento or the Northern part of the San Francisco East bay is preferred (since I commute back and forth between the two a couple times a week), but as long as I can get this thing working and don’t have to spend another $200 is worth the trip.

Related posts:

1. Bel STi Driver
2. Home at Last!
3. Daddy’s Home

There are some rough spots living in another country, but one of the hardest is being away from family.  In the case with my wife, her entire family is here.  No seriously, the whole frigging tree!  Aunt’s, Uncles, Cousins, Parents, and once her brother finishes his mandatory 2 year service counting chocolate moon pie’s (as opposed to joining the Army) for the government, he will come back here as well.  So the only thing I hated about living in Korea that I couldn’t overcome isn’t an issue for my wife.  Yet the end of the world is upon us in her mind.

At first I did feel sorry for her and her family.  I tried to make the best of it, I scrounged up map and brochure’s bought travel books, everything to get them out of the house and stop being so depressed.  Not only did they not even look at them, but they laughed and threw them away right in front of me.

There are no books, board games, puzzles, video games, newspapers, magazines, or anything in the house to keep an adult entertained.  My daughter has her toys, but that’s it.  There is a TV hooked up to the computer to which my wife’s father watches documentaries all day long off the internet.  Watching movies off the internet is fine if you’re an American and have Hulu, Boxee, or even Youtube… but for a Korean?!?  You only get 2-3 seconds of play if you’re lucky 5-10, then a 1-2 second pause, and repeat for the entire show.  I don’t speak Korean, but just hearing the TV skip like that all day long from the other room is enough to drive you insane.

I’ve explained the option of pausing and waiting for it to buffer properly, but they don’t want to wait.  I’ve offered them my Netflix account which has several Korean movies with English subtitles, but they don’t like those movies.  I’ve found a torrent site dedicated to just downloading Korean movies and TV shows, but that takes up disk space and makes the computer slow.  I gave them an external hard drive and they still don’t want to download shows.

….it takes too much time!

Then all this time while they are watching TV I am banned from using the computer.  Granted my job is web design, and I work for myself, which requires me to monitor the 17 active websites I currently have all the time.  But while I am at my in-laws house I can’t be on the computer.  My laptop must remain hidden.

Why?  Fucked if I know!  “It doesn’t look right” is the excuse I get.  I’m not playing video games, I running a god damn business so we can eat!  Nope not while I am at my in-laws.

So this leaves me only one option left… I get to watch them watch TV.  I don’t speak Korean so the Korean shows they pick make no sense to me.  Shows like Infinite Challenge (무한도전) which is one of the most popular shows in Korea, but if you can’t understand Korean like me it has to be one of the dumbest!  It’s like a G rated version of Jackass, running around town hitting each other with squeaky toys, pulling stupid pranks on each other, and just pretending to be dumber than you know they are.

For me its hell just to be there, but I get the feeling that this hell is what they want.  Always screaming at each other, never doing anything worth while.  Just sitting around the house waiting for death.  Some times I think they wish it would hurry up and come.

My father in law is the worse one out of the bunch.  Literally blames me for living this way.  No seriously, he told me.  Has a head the size of a beachball and always has this grumpy old serial killer look to him.  It’s like someone make a Korean bobble-head of a serial killer.  One look from him and I am ready to slit my own throat.

I can walk through the worse parts of town and get eyeballed by everyone I walk past, can even see someone flash a knife or a gun and it’s not even have a scary as the face I get from him while passing in the kitchen.  His eyes jump out of his head and look like they are about to stab you.  He raises his eyebrows which widens his nose like a lion who is ready to attack.  Then his lips tighten in disgust and he has perfected that “crazy look”.

Lock me in a cell with Charles Manson and a wide variety of cutlery and I will feel safer than sitting at the the other end of the room with my father in law.  If I had a say in the matter my daughter wouldn’t know who he is.

Of course my wife justifies his attitude as him not being able to survive in the USA as its too stressful.  Then informs me that I have no clue what her parents are going through at all.  Despite me having lived in Korea for 4 years, meeting her there, getting married there, and having our daughter born there.  I know nothing about living in another country… yet her parents do and stepped right off the plane into a cave.

I realize that Sacramento doesn’t really compare to Seoul, but there are still some things to go out and see and do.  Even if Sacramento doesn’t amuse you enough its still only about an hour and a half from San Francisco and Napa valley.  At the very least bowling would be better than sitting on the couch all day watching TV over some crappy internet connection.

Bottom line, I get it that these guys think life was better in Korea, but they are making it worse than what it really is.  We have everything that Korea has and more, the only difference is that here in the U.S. it may require a little extra work or driving to get what you want.  If that’s a problem, then you’re just being lazy!

Related posts:

1. Missing Korea
2. They can’t stop playing video games
3. South Korean woman gives birth in North

Browsing through the other themes I noticed something.  There is no self-portrait theme.  I guess thats not really a theme, but what better way to interpret this than having this be an introduction to myself.  Besides every artist is supposed to have a self-portrait.  The Mona Lisa is supposedly a self-portrait of Leonardo DaVinci, I need my own Mona Lisa.  The best part about doing this first is that this is perfect for my 101st theme as well, as a re-do to see how well I have progressed.

I found two tutorials online that gave me an idea of what to do, although most everything I did came from the second tutorial on webdesign.org.  The tutorial was vague to say the least but it sent me down the path I wanted to take.  Oddly this trendy line look is relatively simple.  Its just a brush stroke with a shadow and glow applied.  The real challenge is knowing how to implement it, as you can see the dramatic differences between the two images below.

photospin.com	webdesign.org

This being a self-portrait I had to shoot a pic of myself that fit the concept I had in my head.  My daughter not being old enough and my wife as busy as she has been lately left me to setup a tripod and use the timer.  I need a new camera!

Not worried about everything else in the background, its going to disappear.  The magic of Photoshop… :-D  Here is the shot I selected.

The background I selected is the a birth of a star, found on google. Rotated multiplied, and some other effect were done with it.

[VIA]

The ending result…. I don’t know.  I think I hate it.

PSD saved, and we’ll see later on in the future.  I think that because I am in it I am going to hate it regardless.  I tend to like to stick in the corner and hide so putting myself out there like this isn’t something I like to do.  Or maybe I have just been staring at it so long today that I am sick of working on it.  Maybe tomorrow I will take a second look at it and make some adjustments…, or maybe then I will start to like it.  Right now I am pretty sure I hate it.

Anyway, this is what I got….

UPDATE: removed the texture from the background.  One of the first things I did (bad thing to do) and didn’t go back and look at it once I was done.  Liking it a little better but still uncertain.  Feedback is definitely needed! Posting the one below to deviantART now to get feedback.

Fav on deviantART

Related posts:

1. 100 Theme Art Challenge rules
2. Blog updated
3. New Look

Since then I have seen it mentioned here and there, but never read into it much.  So most of my knowledge of this challenge is from web design guy.  (Wish I could find the link)  This was also like a year ago…. maybe?  So I think I got the gist of it, but I could be way off.

I don’t want to go around researching the challenge either as I am afraid that it will cloud my mind with other peoples ideas and concepts on how they completed the challenge.  I would like to stay as original as possible.  I’m not playing for a prize, this is for me, and a chance to better my skills and puff up my resume/portfolio.  So my game, my rules. Gives me a little more room for experimenting this way too.

Each theme will be open to interpretation, such as the theme light.  I can interpret  as being not heavy or not dark.  So a feather, someone flying, a lightbulb, the sun, or my mothers homemade pancakes.  Anyway that its defined, and then how I choose to interpret that definition.  Again, the main purpose is for me to increase my skills and the content in my portfolio.

Everything will also be a photo manipulation.  Either slight or dramatic.  I’ll throw together a couple base sketches in my drawing pad, then gather the photo’s needed and finish on the computer.  The other rule I am going to set for myself is to prohibit the re-use of any past work.  I can re-use the techniques, but not any of the stock art used.  This does not include brushes and textures.  My iPhoto library is over 70Gb and my stock art directory on my materials drive is about 30Gb (I am such a data whore ) There are also places like stock.xchng and deviantART which offer free resources, and I still have some credits on istockphoto which are getting close to expire.  So this shouldn’t be a problem.  I’ll try to build off of my own material as much as possible, but if I find a stock image that screams at me I am not going to restrict myself from using it.

So now that the rules are set I am getting started.  Everything will be posted on my official blog first, then everywhere else will follow shortly after.  So if you’re reading this somewhere else like deviantART or tumblr and are patient enough, stay where you’re at.  If you want the details as soon as I post them subscribe to my blog at http://adium.me/.  The main reason for this is that’s where the graphics will be hosted and I can use my blog to write and save my progress with the links to resources used without making them public until I am ready.  I may get stressed and post teasers to vent… sometimes it helps to clear my head by ranting at the computer.  Which will be exclusive to the blog as well.  (Follow me on twitter and you’ll get everything which is more than you probably want.)

To reiterate the rules here is the list:

1. Everything is open to interpretation
2. Everything must be a digital manipulation, or digital painting (i.e. photoshop, maya)
3. No using old completed work
4. No reusing stock photo’s, fonts, or vectors (brushes and textures excluded)
5. Themes will be completed in order, starting with #1

Before you lecture me on how the original challenge works, I don’t care….  my game. my rules.

So now that I have set the rules for myself, lets get started.  The first theme up is “Introduction”…… sounds like I need lots of interpretation on this one.

Related posts:

1. 100 Theme Challenge
2. New look for the blog
3. Forum

I am going to do it by using various tutorials as well so I will be using someone else’s technique so I can learn something new. Then maybe when I am done I can make a pic or two on my own using the best combination’s among what I have learned. If nothing else it will give me some quality time with my new copy of CS5!

Here is the list, I will try to turn each one into a link once I complete it.

1. Introduction
2. Love
3. Light
4. Dark
5. Seeking Solace
6. Break Away
7. Heaven
8. Innocence
9. Drive
10. Breathe Again
11. Memory
12. Insanity
13. Misfortune
14. Smile
15. Silence
16. Questioning
17. Blood
18. Rainbow
19. Gray
20. Fortitude
21. Vacation
22. Mother Nature
23. Cat
24. No Time
25. Trouble Lurking
26. Tears
27. Foreign
28. Sorrow
29. Happiness
30. Under the Rain
31. Flowers
32. Night
33. Expectations
34. Stars
35. Hold My Hand
36. Precious Treasure
37. Eyes
38. Abandoned
39. Dreams
40. Rated
41. Teamwork
42. Standing Still
43. Dying
44. Two Roads
45. Illusion
46. Family
47. Creation
48. Childhood
49. Stripes
50. Breaking the Rules
51. Sport
52. Deep in Thought
53. Keeping a Secret
54. Tower
55. Waiting
56. Danger Ahead
57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head
59. No Way Out
60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale
62. Magic
63. Do Not Disturb
64. Multitasking
65. Horror
66. Traps
67. Playing the Melody
68. Hero
69. Annoyance
70. 67%
71. Obsession
72. Mischief Managed
73. I Can’t
74. Are You Challenging Me?
75. Mirror
76. Broken Pieces
77. Test
78. Drink
79. Starvation
80. Words
81. Pen and Paper
82. Can You Hear Me?
83. Heal
84. Out Cold
85. Spiral
86. Seeing Red
87. Food
88. Pain
89. Through the Fire
90. Triangle
91. Drowning
92. All That I Have
93. Give Up
94. Last Hope
95. Advertisement
96. In the Storm
97. Safety First
98. Puzzle
99. Solitude
100. Relaxation

Watch me on deviantART to monitor my progress.

Related posts:

1. 100 Theme Art Challenge rules
2. AFN Korea Survey
3. Blog updated

On one of my higher traffic pages I embedded a nearly invisible iframe.  Inside this 1 pixel square is someone’s profile page.  So whenever someone visits my site, this deviantART members page loads as well.  This page gets anywhere from 30-40k page loads a day.  Considering the results I have already seen, I have already ended the test.

I picked someone with a lot of friends, and artwork that is mediocre at best.  She is a huge fan of Paul McCartney so 90% of her art is random collages of him with some text that confesses her dying love for him.  If anything her profile is more of a fan page than an artist’s page.  Even her most popular work wouldn’t be considered for a fan page gallery, its more fodder for conversing with friends.

Which makes her an excellent guinea pig for my experiment.  She isn’t looking for real critique, she isn’t looking for fame, she’s just around for the friends.  The one thing that did stand out though was that she submitted a screencap of her hitting 13,000 page views.  Today she broke 16,000!  To place that in perspective, she got 104 views yesterday and 114 the day before.  As of writing this she has 3,255 for the day.

The reason for this is more for the reaction.  Does it help her, or what?  What do her friends say?  What will her page views be after tomorrow now that I have stopped?  Am I a cruel bastard?  I possibly already know the answer to the last question, but you’re welcome to humor me anyway.

I am not posting any information about her screencaps or anything for a while just so that she doesn’t get let in on the secret.  I think that maybe in a week things will settle back down and I will do one of two things…. let her in on the secret or install the iframe again.  In case you missed the title of the post, it will probably be the latter.

I don’t think I am being too cruel, but then again I don’t know this girl either.  Don’t know her age, what she looks like, or anything for that matter.  I only gathered she is a girl from claiming to be Mrs. Paul McCartney.

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1. Why MySpace Sucks!
2. Welcome to RazorNylon.com
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Why am I doing this?  Because geocachers are some of the most hostile, invasive, rude SOB’s I have had to come in contact with lately.  Seriously people…, it’s just a fucking game!

• I’ve had people steal caches I have hidden then write me and give me a lecture on how its illegal to hide a container that close to a public storm drain. (It wasn’t inside the storm drain, he thought it was too close so he took it home with him.)
• I’ve been stalked and harassed because my daughter picked up a trackable item which she loved playing with and we didn’t place it in another cache immediately.  Maybe I was partly at fault and shouldn’t have taken the item, but regardless that doesn’t give you the right to stalk me by emailing me repeatedly and calling me on my cell phone while I’m in class.  How they found my phone number still puzzles me.
• I’ve been verbally attacked at a geocaching event by someone who wrote some tracking software that they offered to download for free on their site, after I commented that the link was broken and that I was excited to look at it.  He didn’t like the fact that I “just wanted the free code” and didn’t have a planned intent to use it.  Seriously thought he was going to hit me with the finger he was waving in front of my face.
• I’ve had reviewers archive my own cache within an hour of activating it themselves without giving any reason.  I had to go above their head to get it re-activated, which totally fucked the FTF (first to find) prize.
• The last straw was when I came home this memorial day to 23 e-mails from a frantic geocacher who apparently expected me to answer him and give a clue immediately.  It didn’t occur to him that I could have the day off as well.  He must do this often as he likes to use the word “fcuk”.  Experience with profanity filters much?

Overall it seems that no matter what geocaching is just better if I ignore the people.  Or better yet, run away from them.

Anyway, after all of this, I archived all 40 of my geocaches.  I left 3 active, but only because they were part of a group and my brother broke his leg helping me hide one of them, which led to me calling 911 and him to having surgery and spending a month in the hospital, making them semi-special to me.  Within days after I archived everything all of them were vandalized.  So I archived them as well.  One with the remark “Fuck this”.

A couple days later I get this e-mail.

Dear Adam,

I am writing to let you know that I permanently encrypted your archived log on GC1BT3P. We do not allow profanity on our site, so I was forced to act quickly in this matter.

Sincerely,

Sandy Barker

First, that’s a downright lie, second you spelled my name wrong.

A quick search on Google and found that there are 238 references to the word fuck on geocaching.com.  From someone with the user name “fuck yeah!” to a puzzle which you have to count the number of times they say the word “fuck” in the movie Pick of destiny (GC2714P).  (Fuck is used 106 times in the 93 minute movie).  Clip below is one of the best scenes if you haven’t seen it, and gives an idea to how much the word is used.

Now today, exactly 1 week later I get this.

Your log entry for the listing The Hospital Cache (Traditional Cache) was deleted by Sandy at Thursday, 17 June 2010 15:30:35

Visit this listing at the below address:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=148e95ba-5491-4436-97bd-0147fcee9edd
Profile for Sandy:
http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=da3bd3fe-88da-4761-bbcd-26de535ce984

Now I can see them not wanting the use of profanity on their site, but what I don’t understand is their consistency. If profanity isn’t allowed, then don’t allow it.  But the fact is, profanity is allowed, and in some areas is actually encouraged and incorporated into the game.

A couple years ago I made a stink about finding a pocket knife in a cache.  It was a small pocket knife, but didn’t lock open or closed and was still sharp.  In my defense it was clearly listed as a violation of their guidelines, of items you can’t put in a cache.  Now on top of all that this specific knife was a travel bug, which has its own web page and is intended to move from cache to cache.  When I pointed this out in the forums asking for guidance, I made the comment that I will hold onto it until I know what to do with it.  This lead to an all out attack against me, even from the moderators.  “How dare you keep someones travel bug” was the gist of it.  I never got an honest answer from anyone, and in arguing back as to what I should do, I got heated and banned myself.  Several days later I got a response from the owner and mailed it back to him, which he replaced it with something else.  I still never got an honest response on what I am supposed to do… except the mods did say to put it in another cache immediately.

You can’t call the kettle black then piss all over it and call it yellow.

The type of bureaucracy they use makes absolutely no sense.  They are living in their own little world, don’t want anyone else to interfere, those that do get called “muggles” (term stolen from the book Harry Potter, and used the same way), and seek to kill those that play different.  Its just a game, yet I’ve see friendlier games on basketball courts and football fields against long-rivaled schools.  Hell, I remember seeing happier faces at the DMZ in Korea from the North Korean soldiers while we yelled rude remarks at them in Korean from a distance wearing our US Army uniforms.

So from now on I will play the game like the best of them.  I take what I want, never leave anything not even a signature. I have a nice collection of Army coins, which I will keep all coins I find and add them to the collection.  Any travel bugs or other toys that my daughter wants to play with are hers no questions asked.  The travel bug tag will be tossed before we get back to the car.  And if I find a nice clean container that I can use in my garage or somewhere else around the house, I’ll bring the whole thing home with me.  Which can easily be classified as garbage or abandoned property.  As long as it is valued under $100 I don’t have to declare the lost property to the authorities.  That’s state law, you can’t manipulate them like you can geocaching guidelines.

In the case that someone identifies with me that they are a geocacher I will punch them in the throat and walk away.  They can call the police, but I will scream self-defense.  Given my history with how geocachers behave, I feel this is a valid defense.

It’s supposed to be a game, but if this is what geocaching has turned into then fine, I’ll play right back.

Related posts:

1. Geocaching Copyright Violation
2. Japanese game uses Korea as Enemy
3. Confiscated Cache

When I am with my daughter I often try to get her to talk on the phone with my wife, to which she always refuses and won’t say anything unless I turn on the speakerphone and even then she will eventually if not at first push the phone away.

Today though while talking with my wife I suddenly hear my wife yelling at my daughter to stop doing something that was apparently hurting my wife.  Which ended shortly before hearing my daughters voice.  She had attacked my wife to take the phone away from her so that she could tell me about a new game she discovered on her computer.

She has a special kid-safe web browser called Kido’z that has hundreds of games so she regularly finds new games.  Today was Strawberry Shortcake, and it was exciting enough to where she had to attack my wife for the phone to tell me.

As bad as it sounds for my wife, it sent me to cloud 9, to which made me later feel rather guilty that after 5 minutes of hearing about this new found game that I had to tell her to give the phone back to her mother.

Still it made my day, that not only is my little girl growing up but she is taking to her Daddy rather well.

Related posts:

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2. New Phone
3. Call me weirdo?

Then went through and created something with a pen and a ruler and got the following.

Scanned it into the computer then using the pen tool traced the drawing and stroked the path to make my semi-finished design below.

I think I got the concept that I wanted, and portrayed it properly but not sure I like the results.  It just feels like its missing something.  I’ve tried adding a background some shading, overlays, texture, but nothing seems to fit the way I want it too.  So far at the moment it looks like it will only look good on a T-shirt with a good grunge overlay.

I think this one just needs some time to sit on the shelf and stew.  I’ve printed off a couple copies and placed them in my book and around my desk so hopefully (in the near future) it will hit me and I will know how to finish it.  At least for the moment I created it in a format that allows me to resize or alter it very easily.

Related posts:

1. New graphics
2. New Korean Currency
3. Good gone bad

Never gave dA that much thought until just recently, but now I can’t believe this! Still its only second so I’m not there yet, but working on it. First place is nearly twice so I got my work cut out for me, but gaining. I just hope it keeps up. The traffic has also given me my first two critiques and numerous favorites on my artwork. I wish the comment ratio was higher but no comments are better than bad ones. Especially since dA doesn’t allow you to delete any on your profile page or artwork. I can hide, but it shows that I hid it or marked it as spam.

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2. Columbus Day
3. on my way to career day