Excel cannot complete this task with available resources.

The truth is, Excel can complete the task with the resources, you just need to remove an update that Microsoft sent you with the intent of blocking some malicious code.  This update is Titled: security update for Microsoft Excel 2010 (KB2597).

To fix this problem, navigate to Installed Updates which lives in this folder: Control Panel\Programs\Programs and Features

Search for KB2597166 as you see in the photo below, right click and remove/uninstall and back to your Excel work, nerd.

this is the bastard right here

And it helps that they make you install a box the size of a wall heater in your living room. What on earth necessitates such a box? Well it must be good.

Let me tell you what this box affords you:

• Television
• High Speed Internet (it’s 2012, we can drop the first two words here any day now as everything should be high speed)
• Landline Telephone (hooah!)

Execution is everything, and coming from Verizon– a company that summons ideas of the 1990′s technology company that isn’t very good at technology, a silly, robotic and inorganic name branded with a shitty logo and having known IT personnel who swear by their cell coverage, for no other reason than because IT people are required to like things that are inelegant (think Linux or Blackberry phones).

Let’s have a look at their logo:

i cannot believe this is a serious logo

So we see a red checkmark, which means absolutely nothing, and then something like lower case Impact font, with a Red Z that has a Gaussian blur for no reason that I can understand. And unlike most blurry logos that should look like it’s going fast, this actually looks like it’s going really slow. Just look at this logo and marvel. Is this company’s design sensibility something you want to invest in?

Well, go ahead and open up the Guide or Menu in your FiOS TV. It is like they said “Ok look at our logo. Now design a channel guide and menu based on this. Also, if you ever worked for the WebTV company just say the word and you’re hired”.

The internet is fast, but not ridiculously so. It’s about what you’d get from Cable I think, though without the stability. There are times when I cannot connect and I have to refresh and repair my connection and right before I reset the gigantic modem (about the size of a modern DVD player with a giant antenna) it begins working again.

Fiber Optic, man.

I imagine inside that box is clear fiber optics with colors flying and morphing and turning into pictures and programs on my TV, but I don’t really see the obvious advantage. Which when you consider the Hype and this dorm sized refrigerator box now bruising my wall, I want to know why.

Now back to the name FiOS. Fiber Optic System? Fiber Operating System? I do see from advertisements that FiOS does strive to be an operating system for your whole home with controls for your doors, lights, etc. I saw a commercial tonight where a woman is spying on her teenage daughter and opens the door for the forgetful keyless strumpet. Is it clear how to set this kind of thing up, if you really wanted to wager the operational systems of your house on this system? Not really. It just says it’s $9.99, and I sense the commercial is not aimed at people who already have FiOS and the box in their living room but instead people who want the box but don’t know why. (Me a few weeks ago).

Back to the TV menu. So with the regular bundle you don’t get very many channels, and are missing some that come standard with cable. Don’t ask which ones, you’ll know them when you see them. It will take any Computer Science major 15 minutes to figure out how to set up the favorites menu (so that you don’t have to trudge through the gigantic catalog of worthless channels organized worthlessly), and twice as long to realize that you cannot keep the “Subscribed Channels” setting permanently in your Channel Guide, so you must always browse through the channels you cannot watch, including the ones you know damn well should be included.

The picture is just ok, unless you want to watch the HD channels which are probably very vibrant, which come with the up front package. Nice gift considering you need to pay an extra $10 per month for the HD set top box.  So you’re telling me they give you the HD channels free, but you cannot watch them without a special box that costs $10 per month? Yes, that is what I am telling you. 

I think a DVR box is another 10 crispies per month, though your guide and remote are the universal one, which will again tease you into thinking you can DVR stuff.

Whereas the cable guide shows you a dozen channels per screen, the FiOS guide shows about 6, with the highlighted channel in some big bubble with large font, which means you’ll see who stars in the show and what year it was made but the description will look like this:

Peter and Lois  go on a vacation that turns out…

How does it turn out? Click Info. Then Info again. Read. Now click Exit or Back twice. Each of these steps takes about a second longer than you would expect with the latency in their system (because of inefficient design; if you were able to view the source code of the FiOS menu you probably would not be surprised to find that the menu was designed using BMP files).

Maybe FiOS has all kinds of plans for the future of their service, but based on the current service offerings and execution I can’t imagine they will turn out very well.

::fart sound::

So I put the candle up there and the spider fell, but I didnt see where to, and it wasn’t in the candle. I looked around and didn’t see him so I figured he realized what kind of bad ass he was dealing with and went someplace out of sight. I flipped out for a second to make sure he wasn’t somewhere on my body or clothes and he wasn’t.

I go back to computering, and i’m sitting back in my chair for a minute and suddenly this bastard is rappelling down right onto my keyboard, about a foot up. He lands on my keyboard and i’m like jumping out of my skin. It’s like a horror movie, and he’s back and ready to rock. I menace him and he goes behind my computer which is elevated by this laptop cooler I use to keep my shitty HP Envy 17 from overheating. I mash him with a paper towel, throw it in the basket and keep computering.

A few moments later I look up from my screen, and there’s another, same species spider crawling up my fucking wall!??!

Anyhow, here is what I hypothesized happened, follow along with the photo below:

Earlier when I brought in the mail (mostly junkmail, possibly forwarded from my old address, figure 1A. right side of photo), I  inadvertently brought in two spiders who went into my mailbox to avoid the heavy rain (when I got bit by a spider last time it was also rainy).

After putting the junk mail into garbage, they emerged, one by one, and happened to travel to a place near the garbage can (my desk and the wall above it) and they came out since it’s dry here. Nothing supernatural happened, I just brought in a few spiders.

Or possibly they came in through the olden mail slot itself. Spiders are into old stuff. They are like the hipsters of the insect world.

“Hey Bernard, this mail slot looks hella steampunk, let’s go in!” 

And After That: 

My biological Dad died last week. I haven’t talked to him in 10 years. I regret not reaching out but I’ve decided that as far as any kind of context or natural basis for a relationship would go, even if we talked it’s been too long and there isn’t enough connective tissue to overcome the huge gaps and differences in who we are and how are lives are now. A talk or a meeting would be like a talk or a meeting with any other stranger, minus the fact that we are eternally connected, share DNA, and probably have a lot in common.

Or not.

In some weird way it’s gotten me thinking about how much impact family can have on you, and how you can really just walk away from it if you want to reinvent yourself, which might be a good thing to do if the circumstances of your family are bad enough. Mine aren’t, but at the same time it’s not necessary to consent to low-level abuse and dysfunction just because you signed up for it at birth. I can’t imagine that there is really any pay-off to this kind of action, instead I think of some kind of Charles Bukowski existence and then later meeting your long lost family at the Pasadena botanical gardens and breaking down and crying like a baby over lost time and longing and so on.

But in the case of my biological father, and I may be thinking in an unnecessarily hardnosed way in order to protect myself from any kind of really childish ideas grownups still carry about their parents, but I really believe that had he been available to me and supportive, his availability and support would’ve only been a portal into a world that I do not need to go into.

Because i’m so reactionary and action-obsessed i’ve decided at this point to start cutting off all of my currently imperfect relationships even for small reasons, so that I can focus on the bigger picture;  focus on fixing my own problems.

This is like one of those videos you’ve seen where some redneck tapes himself kicking over some old coffee can that he suspects has a spider or two in it, only to unleash a swarm of thousands of baby spiders, which emerge and disappear into crevices to grow larger and reappear at a later date .

previously, the garden was here

Where is John Pate when you need him?

I moved into this new place in Long Beach. I used to hate Long Beach, but now I really love Long Beach. I had one bad experience here before and geographically it isn’t important or convenient.

You don’t go to Long Beach by accident.

You don’t pass through Long Beach.

Long Beach is the San Francisco of LA.

Most of Long Beach is dreary and shadowy. Like San Francisco, Long Beach will tether you to the bottom. All of 1st street is shadowed by the buildings of Ocean Ave. If you’re looking for an apartment on 1st  street get ready for a dark, cold, shady apartment.1st Street seems so promising (la primera!), but it isn’t. If you live on 4th street its probably in some area that you must pay a premium to live near other gays. They call it the Gay Ghetto. Third Street is kind of a middle area. 4th is a mix of the rich gays and rich hipsters, as long as your far enough west.

Anywhere north of 7th street it gets ghetto, or not, but there’s no way to know without going there and looking around.

Long Beach is the type of place that you can figure yourself out. Long Beach has everything you need in life, if you’re at a certain point in life and your needs are basic but essential. I don’t need a Bed Bath & Beyond. You don’t either.

Earlier tonight I was at a convenience store all the way hell out and gone on Anaheim Ave, and as you might expect, someone was arguing with the clerk about selling them one (1) swisher sweet cigar. Why does this always happen? I don’t know. I’ve never tried to buy Swisher Sweet cigars in bulk or per piece. But the bulk price must be prohibitive.

The customer looked at me. He said, why can’t I just buy one? It makes sense. I understand it. I don’t know, I said. The clerk was angry. I remembered what 80′s Rob said, it’s not necessarily to roll a blunt. I wanted to tell the clerk this. Maybe he wanted to smoke it, in 80′s Rob’s words, “the way you might smoke a Monte Cristo; a chemical break after a hard day, especially if you have a probation officer”. 80′s Rob is a social worker now. He knows this stuff.

I left the store after, and drove around a little to familiarize myself with Long Beach a little more. I wish I knew more people in Long Beach, or those with Long Beach experience. I got to the area where the streets turned into names of colors, or fruits, and turned around. I stopped and ate Sushi for dinner. It was at a place that  I once had a bad date and the waitress hated my date. She was there. I said hi and ate my sushi quietly, in the japanese fashion: putting the wasabi on the sushi before dipping it. Only the fish gets wet, I remember someone telling me. I dipped only the fish side into the soy sauce.

I got back into my Saabcar. I drove around to look for an alternative supermarket. Maybe  I wouldn’t like the prices or maybe i’d have a bad run-in with an employee and i’d need to switch to a new one. I need to find a source for fresh vegetables and fruit. Don’t ask why, it’s a thing for me now. I left an Albertsons on Redondo and went North until I recognized the area then went West on 10th and back down to 4th. Blocks in Long Beach are European. One regular block is .65 of a regular block, or whatever the Fibonacci code is to calculate Miles to Kilometers. Its 1.6KM=Mile. Something like that. It’s 1.6 blocks per regular block.

I came home. I called a few people. I decided that I needed Long Beach friends.

You don’t go to Long Beach by accident.

You don’t pass through Long Beach.

——————————————————————————–

Pickle Factory Boss: Writer huh? Are you sure?

Henry Chinaski: No, I’m not. I’m halfway through a novel.

Pickle Factory Boss:: What’s it about?

Henry Chinaski: Everything.

Pickle Factory Boss: It’s about… cancer?

Henry Chinaski: Yes.

Pickle Factory Boss: How about my wife?

Henry Chinaski:  She’s in there too

yes, it came with those glasses.

• Runs extremely hot, especially on the left side. I’ve had laptops that run warm. This is hot. Burn your hand hot if you touch the right spot.
• Flickers or has graphics problems when plugged into an external monitor
• After BIOS update cannot play flash
• Not as fast as a 64-bit i7  premium processor with 6 goddamned gigabytes of RAM should be
• Lousy Audio, especially when the monitor boasts BEATS AUDIO by Dr Dre, but is quieter than pretty much any laptop you’ve ever owned. I have a feeling that if Dr Dre and his crew were trying to listen to music on this thing they’d end up emptying their revolvers into it.

Remember, this device was supposed to be the PC answer the the Macbook Pro and a business or non-Mountain Dew breathed gaming geek alternative to AlienWare. The non-douchebag alternative to the Acer Ferarri line of computers, that don’t, but should come with a red leather ferarri jacket and a pair of  minus one  whatever your size is Diesel Jeans.

I had high hopes for the HP Envy 17 and after tweaking it and downloading fix after fix and flashing the bios a half dozen times I  finally just accepted that I had bought a lemon of a laptop that could never truly be used as a laptop but only as a desktop replacement laptop. Then tonight for the 100th time it froze up and gave me the motherboard heat error and I lost about 40 mins of work in Excel.

Then I found this BIOS update:  

HP Envy 17 BIOS update

Things are better now. Not perfect, still warm, but not scorching hot. Audio is louder and sounds nicer. No display issues. Flash works.

Give it a try.

Bo Khe Thanh Mi (completely made up dish using some common vietnamese words I see) could be described as: beef, noodles and vegetables. Sounds like fried noodles. But then it will be soup. Or maybe something that looks like soup will arrive at the table as a structure of dried noodles with a few pieces of vegetable on top and even fewer slices of meat.

Now in the winter of my time in Westminster, I am looking for some absolutes. I want to know the best Pho. The cheapest pho. The best Banh Mi.

Today’s feature is:

The Cheapest Pho In Westminster !

Mentally play some dramatic music after reading this line

From the 405 head opposite of the beach on Westminster Blvd past the Excalibur Hotel & Casino-esque signage and street flair.

Ah yes, an open gate in the Medieval fashion on the edge of the median as you enter Westminster. Nice touch! (Imagine how pitching this street flair might have sound at the city council meeting.)

Drive past all of the Marketplaces and Home Depots and past Golden West and you’ll hit a stretch of town that isn’t quite sure what it’s gonna do yet. You’ll find TV repair shops in 1950′s style strip malls and dancing studios for older generations who like ballroom dancing until the wee hours of the night but don’t require alcohol. Right now you’re in between the 7600th and 7700th block of Westminster Blvd. Continue on a little further and you start to find the upscale Westminster blvd with a Lexus Dealership and some nice looking banks.

On the corner of Northwest Beach Blvd and Westminster Blvd behind some building you will find Nha Hang $1.99 Restuarant. Wow Nha Hang must mean value or some small but proud town in the Vietnamese countryside that offers food at reasonable prices.  Allow me to translate the photo below:

Vietnamese:  Restaurant $1.99

English: $1.99 Restaurant

For Cheap Pho enthusiasts, this Tudor Medieval Revival style structure is your Westminster Abbey. But leave the attitude at home: this place is for G’s only. Your fellow customers will be strong, construction worker type vietnamese men, eating alone reading a newspaper, old but tough looking Vietnamese couples and the occasional family who look like they eat here thrice weekly. And why wouldn’t you? With their $2.75 bowl of Pho (Chicken, Beef or either with parts) or their $3.50 bowl of Pho Bo Kho (beef stew with carrots and onions) you could eat dinner here every night for a month for a measly $90.

The waiters speak barely passable english: I ordered fried noodles, the waiter asked if I wanted “Beef or Rib”, mmm rib sounds nice I thought. Turns out he meant to say Shrimp. Hey shrimp weren’t bad either! And for $1.99 for a plate of friend noodles i’m not complaining.  Drinks, if you keep it simple (soda or iced teas) are $1. No cents. One Dollar. Condiments are free, surprisingly. (But don’t wait until the owners kids come back from Wharton or you’ll probably be paying a quarter dollar for a plastic cup of hoisin and sriracha!)

The side plate of fresh vegetables and herbs is a muted handful of bean sprouts and a lime wedge. The mint and basil is added by the chef. You don’t need that whole garden of mint and basil so shut your noodle cooler.

The ambiance is shabby-asian-chic:

√    Golden Maneki Neko Cat at the Cash Register

√    Buddhist stone fresco on the wall

√   Framed photograph of a noble oriental countryside

√   Small water fountain with rocks

√  Ambient lit ceiling fans

√  Harsh Fluorescent ceiling lights

√  Takeout case with sneeze guard

√  Collection of local foreign language publications at the door

√  Local insurance agent giveaway calendar on the wall

This place has it all.

The menu is too cheap to believe:

What’s more is that Nha Hang $1.99 has three locations to serve you in the North Orange County  Region:

Westminster (what-what!)

7971 Westminster Blvd

Westminster, CA 92683

(714) 893-8364

Fountain Valley 

11707 Edinger Ave
Fountain Valley, CA 92708
(714) 531-0088

Garden Grove 

12035 Garden Grove Blvd
Garden Grove, CA 92842
(714) 636-3426

Basically I left a comment like:

“Wow OP nice work! You really lived in a shithole before, that said would you have me over for dinner sometime?”

After typing that I realized that my generation does not have friends over for dinner the way past generations have. Ok sometimes they do, but it’s usually overblown and has a theme. When I was growing up my Mom would make a big pot of spaghetti with olives and be like “Hey Ron and Katie are coming for dinner”, which was sort of exciting to have company over, even though it was just a pot of spaghetti and maybe my Stepdad would crack a bottle or two of wine for the group. This happened a few times a month.

I haven’t had people over for dinner in ages (though brunch, yeah pretty often).

Maybe it’s just a southern California thing as I sometimes hear about some New Yorkers I know having dinner parties, but again those are usually fancy.  I dunno, why don’t people invite each other over for dinner anymore? And why isn’t it just whatever you planned to eat but a little more and maybe something sorta nice added? Actually in China I got invited over and out for dinner several times per week, by both foreigners and Chinese. Why not here?

Sometimes my memory from youth is condensed and confused so this might be one of those times. Anyhow, invite me over for dinner please.

I’m hungry.

I’m enjoying my Sunday tradition of brunch and bloody mary’s with music blaring from my record player today. While cooking breakfast (some sort of healthy pita breakfast sandwich with eggs, cheese, bacon,  greens and fried green tomatoes and potatoes and onions), in order to focus on cooking,  I pluggged my phone into my all-in-one portable picnic player that looks similar but not exactly like this one:

pitiful portable picnic player

Suddenly “The Seed 2.0″ by The Roots clicked on and as I was listening to it I decided to finally google to see if anyone has a SongMeaning.com type breakddown of this song, not that it’s hard to understand, it’s just that it’s so nasty and weird but beautiful.

Cody Chestnutt, who toured with the roots once and I was lucky to see the show at the House Of Blues in Hollywood (don’t know the year, mid 2000′s maybe?), sings with a beautiful voice coupled with some of the most explicit lyrics you can find without curse words and outside of one of the 2 Live Crew records.

Since I googled it and couldn’t find a comprehensive breakdown of the song I will do so here, first watch the video:

Pardon any VEVO commercials. VEVO is the reason why we can’t have nice things.

A few facts about the song before we get started with the line by line breakdown: 

Little known fact, Cody Chestnutt actually produced this song prior to the Roots helping him make it better. The original song (brace yourself) is titled “The Seed” and i’d give it a 6 out of 10 with the “The Seed 2.0″ being a 8.5 or 9 out of 10.  The scant discussion that exists online about this song attempts to say that the Seed 2.0 is about a melding rock and roll and hip hop. While the Seed 2.0 may be about this, almost certainly, the original song is not.  This was an afterthought and a very clever one at that.

To make the claim that the original song intends to say what the remix* goes on to be about would be like saying that Midnight Star intended to make their song “Feels So Good” about the summertime in Long Beach, California so that 20 years later Dove Shack could make their song “Summertime In The LBC”.

That notion is pure nonsense, and instead what is taking place is a faster and more reactive feedback loop: hip hop artists can now use current songs for samples instead of digging through soul and disco jams from decades before because there is enough cross-pollination between contemporary pop, rock and roll and R&B that the beats and sound are complimentary to rap verses. See Dido and Eminem with “Stan” or any other of the many examples.

Add to this that rappers’ styles and abilities have come a long way since the standard and spartan boom boom bap samples from the old soul and R&B songs that allowed for rhymed words to be rapped in between these long pauses between beats. These wide breaks between beats, when the break is very wide, are called fat, which coined the slang term you heard inner city people say for 10 minutes in the early 90′s and then white people continued for the next 10 years, much to the embarrassment of other whites.

With the original song “The Seed” you’ll notice that it is quite a bit slower than the remixed version and you’ll also notice that speeding it up is really the only way to make it work, even though Black Thought sounds only the slightest bit awkward rapping to that tempo. Again, this speaks to the point about rapper’s versatility nowadays– the Sugar Hill Gang or KRS-ONE c. “MCs Act Like They Don’t Know” could not collaborate with Cody Chestnutt in any meaningful or harmonic way.

 Now to the analysis of the lyrics of the Seed 2.0, bold is mine: 

Knocked up nine months ago
And what she’s fittin’ to have she don’t know
She wants neo soul cause hip hop is old
She don’t want no rock ‘n roll
She want platinum, ice and gold
She want a whole lot of somethin’ to fold
If you’re an obstacle she’ll just drop you cold
Cause one monkey don’t stop the show
Little Mary’s bad
In these streets she done ran
E’ry since when the heat began
I told the girl look here
Calm down I’m gonna hold your hand
To enable you to keep the plan
Because you’re quick to learn
And we can make money to burn
If you allow me the latest game
I don’t ask for much but enough to room to spread my wings
And a world fittin’ to know my name, just listen to me

Above in Black Thought’s verse is pretty much a foreshadow of what Cody is about to start singing about, with some hints that the song might be about more than just a guy knocking some chick up, and some pretty standard rap lexicon thrown in there to let you know that you are indeed listening to a hip hop song and not to adjust your dial. 

Cody’s Chorus Begins: 

I don’t ask, for much these days
And I don’t bitch and whine if I don’t get my way
I only want to fertilize another behind my lover’s back 
I sit and watch it grow standin’ where I’m at
Fertilize another behind my lovers behind my lovers back 
And I’m keeping my secrets mine
I push my seed in her bush for life
It’s gonna work because I’m pushin’ it right
If Mary dropped my baby girl tonight I would name her rock ‘n roll

The urge for men to impregnate women is primal and very real and present. The urge to impregnate women with whom they are not married or even acquainted is doubly so. This is a little talked about fact of life, as is the other side of the coin: women want to be the receptacles for these alpha males like the brother Cody, subconsciously, and given the right strength of character in the donor male, the woman may actually agree to naming the child Rock N’ Roll Chestnutt, thus keeping Cody’s legend alive (he gets to that in the next verse). 

Back to Black Thought: 

Cadillac needs space to roam
Where we headin’ for she don’t know
We in the city where the pro shake rattle ‘n roll
And I’m a god dang rollin’ stone
I don’t beg I can hold my own
I don’t break I can hold a chrome
And it’s weighin’ a ton and I’m a son of a gun
My code name is the only one
And Black Thought is bad
These streets he done ran ever since when the game began
I never played the fool
Matter of fact I’ve been keeping it cool
Since money been changin’ hands
And I’m left to shine, the legacy I leave behind be the seed that’ll keep the flame
I don’t ask for much but enough room to spread these wings
And a world fittin’ to know my name, now listen to me

Above is more rap lexicon, well done sure, but lexicon nonetheless with some hints at rock n roll (Rolling Stones), being street smart and tough (at least formerly, before he began making money from music), and a hint at the legacy Cody is about to discuss. Back to Cody:

I don’t beg from a rich man
And I don’t scream and kick when his shit don’t fall in my hands man
Cause I know how to still
Fertilize another against my lovers will
I lick the opposition cause she don’t take no pill
Oh you know the deal you’ll be keeping my legend alive
I push my seed in her bush for life
It’s gonna work because I’m pushin’ it right
If Mary drops my baby girl tonight I would name her rock ‘n roll.

The implication here is that Cody is a tomcat and a very natural and primal man, and as such his choice is the only one that matters when naming the child, and many would argue (including myself), rightly so. Referring to “it’s gonna work because i’m pushing it right” many studies have shown that a woman is more likely to become impregnated if she has an orgasm, or rather depending on her level of arousal, generally the level of arousal that would come with a new or exciting lover like the brother Chestnutt. 

Oh break it down, down for me
I push my seed somewhere deep in her chest
I push it naked cause I’ve takin’ my test
Deliverin’ Mary it don’t matter the sex 
I’m gonna name it rock ‘n roll.

Here Cody decides that in fact, it doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl he will name it Rock N Roll. Also notice the departure of the word would in exchange for gonna, or going to, as if a certainty. Again, nary a music fan would object to a Rocky Chestnutt (boy or girl) on the music scene in 2020. 

I push my seed in her bush for life
It’s gonna work because I’m pushin’ it right
If Mary drops my baby girl tonight
I would name her rock ‘n roll
I would name her rock ‘n roll
I would name her rock ‘n roll
I would name it rock ‘n roll

Lastly, Cody continues along with the brash and admirably confused (her, it) notion of naming the child rock n roll. 

Thank you please. 

*I am remiss to call it a remix since the 2.0 version is quite a different song but for the sake of making this easier let me refer to it at the remix, I owe you $5.