Dying K-Marts and nostalgia

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So I was reading this article about how K-Mart is dying, that’s also overflowing with a bunch of depressing pictures of an unfortunate store, and I can’t help but feel a little bit sad for the once prominent giant in the world of commerce.

Given the general popularity of Target, it’s no surprise that K-Marts are getting destroyed by them, but what really has to suck for the K is that they’re also getting dominated by Wal-Mart, which basically has the reputation of like, herpes or something not necessarily fatal, but kind of an embarrassment and a thing that people don’t really want to talk about.  A lot of people really, really dislike Wal-Mart, and personally I don’t really hate them or anything, I just don’t like the fact that a trip to Wal-Mart guarantees you to be there for at least 30 minutes, if for any reason at all, is that there’s never anyone working the cash registers and the one open line is six customers deep, all of whom are buying 50 items.  Wal-Mart is a place synonymous with wasting time, and I do not like to waste time if possible.

But yeah, K-Mart is losing to them too.  Typically I often accuse articles like the aforementioned one of utilizing a bit too much hyperbole in their objective, but it’s hard to argue the points being made in this one, that are backed up in both statistical and photographic evidence.  K-Mart really is dying before our very eyes, and it kind of makes me sad.  It’s not so much the unfortunate demise of a gigantic, long-standing, well-known brand, or the countless people that will undoubtedly be losing their jobs if/when they go under.  No, I’m far too self-centered to really concern myself about that kind of collateral damage, although it would no doubt suck for all of them too.  But it’s the fact that K-Mart is kind of a symbol of nostalgia for me, and to see it crumble and collapse is somewhat a metaphor of the demise of a facet of my childhood.

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I love goodbyes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Now despite the fact that I like a good weekend every now and then where I literally do nothing but stay at home and play League, watch college football, sleep in until the dog starts barking his need to go pee and living off of whatever’s left over in the refrigerator and pantry, there’s no doubt that it can sometimes be pretty lonely doing such. Not necessarily in the “oh noes, Danny is making another ‘I wish I had a girlfriend’ post” kind of way, but really just being around other people in a fun social engagement in general kind of way, because when the day is over, I’d rather be in good company, chilling out in a relaxed setting.

Such does not occur as often as I’d admittedly like it to occur, but most of that falls on me. I live out in the sticks that are often as surprised as I am to be considered part of the Metro Atlanta area, and it’s a pain to get to anywhere without having to think about niggling details like traffic, time, and fuel consumption in the back of your head sometimes. Also, it’s not that I’m a raging alcoholic by any means necessary, but I do like to drink in social settings, and I’m always paranoid that there’ll be another sobriety checkpoint near my house again, but it’ll fall on a date where I’ve had one or two beers and no designated driver; my dad got a DUI a few years ago, and he’s living proof that no number of decades of safe, immaculate driving record is impervious to the damages a DUI can do, which scares the shit out of me sometimes.

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A few things I’d like

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

At first notion, this might seem like kind of a fluff post, but the thing is if anyone ever asks me “what would you like?” often times, I don’t necessarily have an answer for them.

It’s not that things I want are all exorbitantly expensive, although most are, like more championship belts, a larger home in a better neighborhood, camera equipment, but when it comes to little things that are more like trinkets, or along the caliber of birthday or holiday gifts, I typically don’t have the slightest clue to what to ask for.  Typically, I’m a fairly anti-clutter kind of person, and I have to imagine that if I lived by myself completely, my entire residence would be considered “minimalist” bordering along the lines of appearing like a somewhat abandoned home.

The point is, I’m not someone with a lot of materialistic wants.  Lately, I’ve been thinking about things I’d want, and missing the point, the following are (mostly) things that aren’t necessarily in the “gift” class either, but whatever, I want them anyway.

  • A nice coat.  I haven’t had a particularly nice coat in quite some time.  Throughout the years, I’ve worn big, oversized coats of my past, or hooded sweatshirts that aren’t necessarily bad garments for warmth in cooler weather, but as my aesthetic preferences have gradually changed throughout the years, I’m finding that I wouldn’t mind something that looked a little nicer and more fitted. Something versatile too, like something that I could wear to the typical family dinner, or when simply going out to a somewhat fancy occasion.  Maybe I need more than one coat, but the bottom line is that I wouldn’t mind having some nicer outerwear, especially as the fall is beginning to settle in and the temperatures are dropping again.
  • A necklace with intrinsic or personal value.  Yeah, it might sound kind of lame or sissy-ish to some, but I like jewelry.  But the thing is that I don’t really want something that I can go to the mall and pick up at a wagon kiosk, as I said, I’d like to have something to wear around my neck that has meaning to me.  Obviously, this isn’t something that can easily be acquired, but from an aesthetic perspective, I’d like to have something to wear around my neck.
  • Another tattoo.  Not everyone might know it, but I’ve got five tattoos.  Four of them are dorkily anime-related, and all gotten before I was even legal, and they’re there til the end of time, regardless of how I may feel about them today.  But it doesn’t matter, lately, I’ve been thinking about the possibility of getting another one.  What and where it would go, I don’t have the really have much clue, but hopefully I’ll make a decision on something that I’ll be happy with.

And there you have it, things I want.  Obviously, these aren’t things that are going to be of any help if there are people out there that are into gift giving, but I needed something to write about, and this felt like something as good as any to do such with.

The worst guy at the gym

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For those of you who are unfortunate enough to be “friends” with me on Facebook, you’re already probably well aware that I pretty much post nothing on it except for sporadic attempts to be funny by exploiting the types of silly people that populate my gym, also known as The Gym Bro Chronicles.

The adventures of GBC has seen a wide variety of actual people that actually do the things I’m describing on a regular basis at my gym.  Whether it’s guys that use two elliptical machines at the same time, all the douchebags that drop their weights, use their Beats headphones as auxiliary speakers, grunt, scream, sing, and every conceivable negative stereotype associated with meat-head gym bros, I’ve pretty much seen them all at my gym that I’ve been going to every single work day for the last three years now.

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Photos: Annual Pumpkin Carving

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m the kind of person who believes in the importance of having traditions and annual occurrences.  Without them, sometimes there aren’t always things to look forward to, and sometimes it’s just nice to know that there are going to be times when you know you’re going be in good company and have a good time.

Pumpkin carving at Stu and Allison’s is one of those traditions that I look forward to every year, and every year, I like to put a little bit of effort into carving out something unique and not necessarily easy.  This year, I decided to parlay my fandom of LoL into my pumpkin and carve out the most important things in the world – wards.  And since I’m apparently a try-hard overachiever, I decided to do two wards, so it didn’t seem like I was just doing it to say I placed one.

The green lights are LED lights and not actual flame, because I think burning copper or mercury or whatever it takes to generate green flame would have been somewhat of a hazard, for just pumpkin carving.  Maybe another year.

Anyway, I took a few pictures, and here they are for us to all admire the creativity and an enjoyable annual tradition.

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I don’t hate all computers; just ones that aren’t mine

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One thing that often baffles me is just how poorly people treat their computers.  It’s like when you sit down at someone else’s machine, and see that the desktop is completely filled with incomprehensible clutter, and the system tray icon has like 16 icons of running applications or utilities that aren’t actively being used.  And then they’re asking you what’s wrong with their machine.

Obviously, I’m not an IT guy, or someone who’s really that great with the general operations of a computer.  But I do know how to do clean installations, and understand that pre-made computers come loaded to the brim with unnecessary bloatware and egregious bullshit applications that don’t really need to be on them.  Needless to say, I’ve done quite a number of clean installations for my own machines as well as the machines of pretty much everyone in my family.  What happens to these machines once they’re out of my hands is basically, the will of god or whatever deity sounds like the best to reference.

One of the worst phone calls I could ever get is whenever either of my parents call me up whenever they’re having computer problems.  Seriously, I think I’d rather have jury duty over having to deal with the computer problems that my parents encounter, because at least while I’m waiting to get called up, I can usually get a very good amount of quality reading time in the process, and it’s something that has a definitive ending to it.  My parents’ computer problems?  The endings are vague, future uncertain, and it’s only a matter of time before something else occurs.

Today, I get word that my mom’s computer isn’t working.  “User Profile Service failed the logon” error, which probably means that something has genuinely fucked with the system registry.  In a perfect world, the remedy is as simple as F8ing at the system start up and starting up Windows with the last known working settings, but I’d bet my lunch money that the result of this whole issue is one of those weird Korean* virus/malwares that leech themselves to unsuspecting users from all the random Korean websites that my mom is enamored by.  Honestly though, trying to talk my computer illiterate mother into hitting F8 at the appropriate time during the startup itself, I’m banking on being about as difficult as painting the Sistine Chapel.

*Fuck you, Korea.  Why the fuck do your stupid fucking websites all have so much fucking malware on them in the first place?

It really sucks, and I do not look forward to having to deal with this.  I’ve told my mom countless times to be careful of what sites to go to, and to not download anything at all from emails unless it’s 100% from a genuine source, but it’s pretty much like telling a kleptomaniac to not steal anything, it’s just not going to happen.  It’s also not as if my mom’s going to completely abstain from going to Korean websites, which is pretty much all she does day and night when she’s not working these days, so dealing with issues like this is somewhat inevitable.

The bottom line is that it’s exasperating to see how people treat the computers I set up for them.  I don’t set these machines up very differently than how I set my own up machines, and I like to believe that my personal computers are pretty clean and not too heavily spammed up by malware and bullshit.  It just feels like a slight metaphorical slap in the face when the users of these machines don’t do the most very common and no-brainer of simple things like running and actually installing Windows updates or periodic virus scans, and then their machines becomes vulnerable to the hourly-evolving threats of the internet, and then they come whining to me when shit goes bad, and expect me to fix everything.

I have a lot of admiration for those who do this kind of shit for a living, because I sure as shit hate computers that aren’t mine.  But at least they get paid for it, whereas I’m expected to do it under the guise of “family obligation.”