timoran

*blows dust off LiveJournal*

This platform is what I'll have to use, since I need to be able to make a long post and gather anonymous comments.

TL;DR version: Comment and tell me about anything I've done that makes you dislike me. Be specific and tell me how to fix it.

What brought this post on? I found out today that a lot of people have a problem with me and the way I conduct myself. Although I was suspicious that people might have a problem with me, nobody had ever respected me enough to tell me about it until today.

This is causing people to not hang out with me at social functions, not invite me to parties/dinner, and even people I've considered good friends lied to me about why they didn't hang out with me or respond to my messages. There's got to be a reason behind it, and enough people have a problem with me, that I'm willing to accept it's a problem with me.

I know a few people who just have a bad attitude and don't treat people right, and they refuse to accept that they have a problem and take feedback. I have no desire to ever see these people and avoid them whenever I can. So, I don't want to be one of these people and I need help to fix it.

Anonymous comments are allowed. I will unscreen once I verify it's not spam and it has to be a legitimate complaint. What I mean is, you have to identify a specific thing I have done wrong and tell me how I can improve myself. If you just say I'm a jerk that won't do me any good.

I especially want to hear from anyone who specifically avoided me or did not interact with me at a con or meet, because of something I've done. It's clear to me that I'm not welcome with many people at their parties and dinners and I want to know why that is. I know that when I get snubbed once that gets me in a bad mood and sets the tone for the rest of the day/weekend. I can take rejection but it's often the manner in which it's served (ignored texts, being told lies by people I trust, etc.) that really gets me angry. I'm not sure what to do about it.

Please - comment and tell me: What is it about me that rubs you the wrong way?

Not my picture but it looks identical to this: http://timoran.com/images/mcgladrey.jpg
The backpack only goes over one shoulder.

Got them in a Woot bag of crap.

Free to anyone who asks (but if I have to ship it you have to pay for the shipping).

So as you may or may not have seen, my Wii is bricked.

I am able to boot games with recovery mode but I can't get into the menu. I may be able to fix it, if I run the Smash Stack exploit on the PAL version of Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

I am a fully legit owner of the USA version, but the USA version crashes in autoboot mode. I've read reports that the PAL version doesn't.

I tried all the pirate sites but they all have a modified version that fits on a 4.7GB single layer DVD. This does not work on my Wii because the unsigned content bug is broken. I need the full, real, DVD9 double layer version.

If one of you out there has the game, could you be a sweetheart and dump it to a .wbfs file using WiiBackupManager and send it to me? Get in touch and I'll give you an FTP or something you could use.

I was having some trouble getting my Microsoft Zune to connect with my Microsoft Windows 7 computer. "That's queer," I thought. "Aren't they the same company?"

I tried the usual steps. I tried rotating between the three USB ports on the front of my computer (in the past doing this ritual one or two times always got it to connect). This time, it wasn't doing it - not even in the ports on the back of the computer.

This didn't work, so my next instinct was to open Device Manager and find the entry for my Zune. I right-click and Uninstall, then unplug and re-plug the USB. Sometimes I have to do this with my "plug-and-play" devices, although the irony of this wore off on me about 8 years ago.

Still nothing? Okay, it must be a problem with the driver. I go in and tell it to Update Driver. Even though my Zune is definitely not connected, Windows still believes that the best possible driver is already installed.

Then I tell Windows to let me choose the driver to install - an older version that's sitting on my computer for some reason. It installs, and still doesn't connect.

Hardball. Now I go to Programs and Features (or, as it was much better titled in XP, Add/Remove Programs) and uninstall Zune. One wrinkle: The uninstaller tells me I must disconnect my device before proceeding. Wait a minute, you know my Zune is connected but you can't connect to it? Fine, fine, whatever, unplug. Then I reinstall from a fresh download. The installer also tells me to disconnect my device.

New Zune software installed, and I prepare for all my disc art and ID3 tags to be fucked up afresh. But it still didn't fix the driver.

This time, I uninstall again, and I connect the Zune to see if the driver is being left installed after the software is gone. It is. The craptacular search engine in Windows 7 points me to my System32/DriverStore. Even though I am running as an administrator, I cannot delete driver files from this folder. I have to use a tool called pnputil.exe to "force delete" a "package" containing the driver. Oh, and I can't just tell it to delete zune.inf, I have to generate a list and find a Protable Media driver version 4.7.whatever by Microsoft (no "Zune" anywhere in the description).

Right about now, I am wondering what the engineers at Microsoft were thinking when they chose not to make this MP3 player mount as a STORAGE DEVICE. But, on I go.

I plug in my Zune, and—success—oh, not in getting the player to connect, but in getting the player not to install any driver. The system is now Zune driver free and for all purposes totally clean.

Reinstall. Fail. Headdesk.

I do more searching and come across a tool called UnZoone.exe that removes every trace of the Zune installation. I try it out and it looks good, but doesn't fix my problem.

At this point it's about 3 AM on a work night, so I turn in.

Today, I pick up where I left off. While I was at work, I tried connecting my Zune to my XP Corporate x86 laptop, truly a "best case" scenario. Although the first try leaves me with the standard issue of needing to Uninstall, disconnect, and reconnect, it does work. The player and the USB cable are fine.

I get home and look for more direction. One forum poster (by the way, Zune's forum pages cannot be linked from Google results; if you are coming from Google you must go past a splash screen and use the Microsoft Search) advises disconnecting a USB media card reader. Ooh, I have one of those, and it is a cheap dodgy one. I try disabling the unit in Device Manager first, but of course that is not good enough. I open up my tower and pull the plug on it. It still is not fixed.

Finally, I find a page that tells me to check my Event Log. I open it up, and find a message about "It was not possible to access the device () after installing drivers." At least it's a new error message. Two relevant Google posts, both on the Zune forum, both posts weren't cached by Google and can't be found by the Microsoft Search. I keep digging around, looking at posts from people with the same issue with completely different devices like external hard drives.

More searching brings me to this seemingly totally unrelated post: ERROR_WMI_INSTANCE_NOT_FOUND. The advice, buried about 12 posts down, is to download a tool called "SubInACL" and run a shell script (copy and pasted from the message, of course) to reset the "Access Control Lists" on the keys in my registry. All the millions of them. I watch all the registry keys fly by. I plug my Zune in, and the Zune software opens and syncs. Wait... that was it? Fuck. Finally.

And... that is the story of how I made my Microsoft Zune work with Microsoft Windows.

Those of you who dine out with me know that I view 15% as the tip for "good" service. To get more than that requires "great" or "excellent" service.

I've just watched a video on YouTube posted by a waiter who bitches and moans about people who leave tips less than 20%. His attitude is that 20% is standard and 15% is unacceptably low. A while ago I read a blog from another waiter with similar gripes, so this is the second time I've heard a waiter call a less than 20% tip bloody murder. The waiters who are complaining seem to work at upscale, busy restaurants (expensive), not a back-country hole in the wall.

You know what, waiters? Fuck you. You are the greediest people in the world. It's a difficult job, I'll give you that, but if you wait just 6 tables in an hour, average $100 total, tipping $15 each, you're making $90 an hour! Make it 20% and you've got $120 an hour! If we call these "busy" hours and you just have about 20 hours a week like this, you still make a lot more than I do as a software engineer on tips alone. And I had to go to college to get my job.

You know what? I'll consider tipping you more when you don't make MORE MONEY THAN I DO.

I am really wondering something after MFF. It is apparent to me that I'm not well liked. I have a couple of friends but most of the fandom wants nothing to do with me even if I try to be friendly and inviting. And yet people who have less social skills than I do have more friends and are more well liked. People I could have sworn everybody doesn't like know where all the parties are and I end up seeing them having con sex in videos posted later.

What am I doing wrong? Is it because I don't go to dances? Or go on SL? Is it my appearance? Am I not chatty enough? I'm stumped.

(P.S. LiveJournal has gotten very quiet, I am considering more or less abandoning it.)

Hey, for those of you who read this. I'm starting a novel-length book project and I'd like to gather some feedback as I go through. I'm hoping to make the book good enough to charge money for, but if you help by reviewing it, for your help you'll get a free digital copy.

If anyone's interested, let me know. The best way to reach me is on AIM at TJSynkral but comments here or notes would eventually be found. However I will need your e-mail address to send the attachment to in any case. I expect some kind of feedback, "I liked it" or "I didn't like it" won't really help me so you'll need to tell me what you did and didn't like about it.

Everything is still up in the air but right now the working title is "Blackshed" and the book's protagonist is a male anthro dragon named Krane. He'll be living in a human world (OMG) so he's likely going to be the only nonhuman character in the story.

Why does Windows 7 need 2 minutes to sort my porn by date, every time I open the folder, when Windows XP was able to do it in an instant?

UPDATE: I figured it out and Microsoft is fucking stupid. "Date" in Win7 means it tries to read the Date Picture Taken from the EXIF tags in EACH IMAGE. I had to dig in a menu and find "Date Modified" in the options to sort by that, which is instant like WinXP. Seriously, does anybody TEST this shit?

Oh, that's right, I know several people who did. Either they didn't complain about it or it fell on deaf ears...