Build Your Age disaster

I never expected how crazy it would get. I thought I would be spending $11 for my kids to get a Build a Bear. My son wanted a Pikachu. I get to the mall and get inside and get to the first level and the line is long. I talk to the store employee there and she told me the line was closed and didn’t know when it would open again.

Been in long lines before, I knew I would be in it for hours and there is no way my son can wait in it and what if we get hungry or they have to go to the bathroom? Plus I work this evening and I didn’t want to stick at the mall for hours for the line and then wait in it for hours. It would not be possible so we left. My son got upset with me saying I promised him so I told him I did not know this was going to happen and that lot of people were going to show up. I had to carry him through Macy’s when he wouldn’t come and he cried on the way home and fought with his sister. He didn’t seem to understand I did not know many people were going to show up and they would close the line. I also told him he can’t even wait in long lines and what happens if they have to go to the bathroom or get hungry. I would have no way of leaving and no one else is with us to hold our spot.

I came home and put him in his room and he came out and had shaped up. No more fighting with his sister or whining. I also decided to put like $10 away every month so he can get his Pikachu but instead I found a $15 voucher on the website under my account. I thought I was already a member but I lost my account information so I rejoined it by signing in with Facebook. I still have the membership card. So I printed it off and decided I will use that on the Build a Bear for my son for his Pokemon. My daughter didn’t seem to care about all this so she didn’t act up. She just acted neutral and didn’t have behavior.

I came home and found this was a problem all over US, UK, and Canada and many parents and kids were left upset and disappointed. The event was actually cancelled too. I don’t think BAB even expected this would happen because they planned this event and announced it few days prior and only had it for one day. Bam over 1,000 people show up and wait outside the malls hours before opening. At least I wasn’t the only one who had this problem and had one disappointed child. At least I didn’t wait in line for hours to be turned away or drive over an hour or over 200 miles for this event.

Perhaps BAB should do this event for a whole month than for one day. But I have a feeling they won’t do this again or they will only announce it via email to bonus club members to avoid the madness. But I found out they do this for a kid’s birthday who is under 14 years of age so I will look into that when I go to the store next time and see if I have to do the party there for my child to do build a age. If not, I will take my daughter there for her next birthday for her first Build a Bear. But I do not plan on buying any accessories. I want to keep it cheap.

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The heat is coming again

Every summer, we get a heatwave that happens for about 3 weeks total all summer long. When it gets up to at least 90, we call it a heat wave. I hear about it in the news, hear warnings about needing to drink plenty of water and being lectured about to keep cool. In Montana, we had hot weather all summer long and not one news anchor would say a word about it other than broadcasting the temperature and the weather guy. There would be no warnings about it or being told to keep cool or where to go to cool down or places to go to to cool off. Everyone just knew what to do in hot weather.

But here, we here all the fuss about this heatwave and where to go to keep cool and what we can do on a hot summer day to cool down and being warned about drinking enough water. How long has everyone lived here now? Shouldn’t everyone now know what to do in this weather? A co worker told me at work maybe they make a big deal about it to draw attention. Bingo, I never thought of that. maybe that is what it is. Make a big deal about 90 degree heat or 100 degree heat and it makes the news more fun to watch. In Montana it would be boring to hear all the time because it’s so normal there. But here because it only happens for a few weeks, it’s fun to hear about it and listen to the fuss.

But there are pros about it here, on hot hot hot days when you go to places, there will be lots and lots of water being offered and free showers to cool down. You won’t see that in Montana. If you want water, you just have to buy it like normal. Pack your own water along. At a family fun center and you need water, just go inside and buy some, they have some there already but you won’t find packs and packs of it. Everyone in Montana knows to bring water. Here in my area, no need to bring any, they will have it there, lots and lots of it.

I hear it is supposed to be hot tomorrow so I was hearing at work, “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

Yeah, we have air conditioned. My kids will want to play in the water.

The Chamber book

Spoilers in this post.

I have seen the movie several times so I decided to read the book. The book was slightly different than the movie and it had more details in it and characters. I don’t remember in the movie if Sam Cayhall’s brother Donnie was in it or if he was his partner to bombs the Kramer’s. In the book, it was Rollie Wedge and they were unrelated but worked together. The bomb was meant to go off before the office opened but it didn’t go off when it was supposed to because someone had re timed it and had it set off when Mr. Kramer would be in the office and his boys. Ruth Kramer wasn’t really in the book but only at the beginning and she was then only mentioned in it. Adam didn’t go see her in the book like he does in the movie. Lee didn’t go see her father in prison like she did in the movie and she instead got drunk and drove under the influence and got arrested and then she was gone for the rest of the book until the very end when she decided to burn down her childhood home to destroy the memories in it and the bad stuff that happened there.

The year was 1990 than 1996 and the execution happened August 8th than April 13th. Adam was born in 1964 than 1970ish and he was 16 when his dad committed suicide, not ten. Sam had been in prison for 9 years than 16 years. Adam never gave that one speech in the capital about Sam never having a chance because his dad was a Klansman and so was his grandfather and great grandfather so all he knew was hate. Sam’s brother came and saw him in Prison and gave him the clothes he bought him, Adam brings in Eskimos pies during the visits.

Rollie Wedge never gets caught like he did in the movie at the very end. Sam refused to say his name in the book, he could have right before his execution so Adam could dig into the case and bring proof to catch the man.

Adam never got beaten up in the book like he did in the movie by the KKK.

Adam also had a sister, I don’t remember if he did in the movie, but she came and visited her grandfather in prison and then flew back to California.

Adam never ran from the prison during the execution, he got escorted by Lucus.

The book never mentioned the details of Sam being executed in the chamber like the movie showed.

One thing I learned about the book is John Grisham worked as a lawyer for real and went to law school and the book made me wonder some things. Do states really carry out executions to impress their state residents and to compete with other states that do executions? In the book, the state of Mississippi wanted to keep up with Florida and Texas so they needed to do an execution and picked Sam because of notoriety due to the Kramer bombing. More details were mentioned about his family in the book like his siblings and his wife and his parents, his wife died of cancer in 1977 and Sam took care of her before passing and she despised him in the story but yet never left him. He was about to run off to South America but waited too long because he was already being watched by the FBI when David McAllister decided to reopen the Kramer case. The reason why he didn’t run was because he thought it was all over but by then things were different in 1981 than they were in 1967. So he got convicted and sentenced to death.

But if a US state does decide to do an execution to compete with Texas and Florida, it wouldn’t surprise me. I have heard of plenty fucked up things in politics, one of them was that Arkansas wanted to execute 8 inmates in one month because the lethal drugs were about to expire. To me that just sounded messed up. But the federal judged halted it so that didn’t happen.

One thing I found ironic in the book was Sam hated Jews but yet there were Jews that have actually kept him out of the gas chamber, Jewish lawyers that is. Ironic that Jews would actually defend him to fight to keep him alive behind bars because they were opposed to capital punishment. It took Sam years to fire them all. The book also explained why Sam hated lawyers. They don’t really care about him, they care about getting in the press and making money off him by fighting for him. The lawyers were just doing it for notoriety and Sam hated how he was being used for it. Adam reassured him he was not like those lawyers and it wouldn’t happen and he won’t talk to any press and give them any details. So Sam made a contract and had him sign it or else he is fired if he breaks his promise. Sam also decided to just let him take him as his case for him to practice on.

My son the responsible dog owner

My brother went to Montana for a wedding so he left his dog at our house. He is a Shih Tzu and he and his ex had him before my son was born so he is that old.

My kids took a like to him so they played with him and liked holding him and my son took him out frequently so he could go potty and he also fed him and had him sleep with him part of the night.

My son has wanted a dog since he was little but I never wanted a dog because I don’t want to house train it or even want to take care of it but he has shown he can do all that. He told me he wanted a Dalmatian and I told him that could be a good dog for him because I bet he could relate to one. They are hyper like he is and they get into lot of trouble when they are bored just like him.

Now I need to see if everyone else in the house wants a dog and a big one. Then I would have to see where I could buy one and also consider vet bills for shots. I know he would potty train it because he would always be watching it and taking it outside and giving him treats each time he pees or poops out there.

Then my brother came back and picked the dog up.

Sorry, Trump supporter, I can’t be your friend anymore.

I also feel the same way. I used to give them the benefit of the doubt but now either you are an idiot or you just are a hateful person.

Lucky Otters Haven

Cartoon Credit: Unknown.

A few days ago, I unfriended an old Facebook friend because I couldn’t handle her constant pro-Trump memes and posts anymore.  Later, she asked me why I unfriended her.  I decided to be honest.  She replied that she thought I was being silly for unfriending people over something as shallow as politics.

But she missed the point.   I didn’t unfriend her because I didn’t agree with her politics.  Because it’s not about mere politics.  It’s not about Democrat vs. Republican.   It’s not about liberal vs. conservative.   It’s not about right vs. left.

It’s about good vs. evil.

It’s about whether you’re on the side of the bullies and sociopaths and applaud their scorched earth terrorist tactics vs.  being a decent fucking human being.  It’s about whether you’re on the side of a wealthy group of selfish criminals vs.  the average Joes and Janes just trying to get…

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My son refusing to read and do math

My son is always finding shortcuts or the easy way out. He can read and knows his alphabet and sounds but his reading is at the kindergarten level. He is going into the second grade and I am, worried about him. Second grade has a lot of reading and once I started it, I picked up on reading quickly because lot of subjects required reading despite my poor reading comprehension so I always got Cs, I would be lucky if I got a B. But my son is so willful. He will not read at all. He won’t read a book, won’t do math work he thinks has a lot of problems. I have tried paying him to do it, I have tried rewards, I have tried to take away electronics and all privileges and nothing works. He just mopes and acts up. I have tried computer games, tried this circus game the eshop has on the 3DS and he just doesn’t like to think hard. I caught him doing the easiest levels in the game and I told him that didn’t count because it was just giving him the answers and that isn’t teaching him to read or do math. Also when he does decide to read a book, he keeps picking the same ones he’s already read and he won’t read any new books.

I wonder how he is going to survive second grade when there will be lot of reading and writing and I might have to hold him back or move him to the first grade but then that means he will be eight in first grade.

My son also wants to be perfect and not make mistakes so he refuses to read new material saying it’s too hard. I tell him he is going to mess up and that is okay because it’s part of learning. He is going to say words wrong and mispronounce them but that is part of learning to read. That is how you get better and it becomes easier and easier.

Right now my son is doing literally nothing because I tell him he can’t do anything until he reads a book he hasn’t read yet.

I wasn’t this difficult as a child, when my mom told me to read a book, I would read a book and I also had to pick out a book I had not read yet. When she would have me do a workbook, I would do a couple of pages and I would be done. I didn’t fight it and I would be done in like a half hour. But not my son because he makes it last all day until i go to work because he fights it. Then he blames it all on me because I “wasted his day.” I have even tried books that were his interest and that didn’t work either, “too much words” even though the book is level 1. I even tried the library and he was enthusiastic and said he would read books he checks out but he then didn’t want to read them when I brought them home. Instead he only wanted to read the baby books his little sister checked out and then only wanted to read those because they had very little words each page.

I refuse to give into my child and I won’t let him cheat or take any short cuts. Even ABC Mouse doesn’t teach him to read because all it does is read to him, it doesn’t make him read the words nor does it teach him sounds and spelling. All it does is teaches him subjects. Not reading or math.

iDisorder

It’s been a while since I wrote a post here. I just got through reading a book I checked from the library and it was called iDisorder. On the cover is a photo of a smartphone with a person behind the screen and it makes me think of the Poltergeist title

The book is about how obsessed we have gotten with technology and how people can’t function without their phones and how they mimic mental disorders like OCD. “If I don’t check my messages, I might miss something important.”

But here is something I disagreed with, if it’s not phones people are obsessed with, they would be obsessed with other things, people text and drive, well they have been talking on their cell phones long before there was texting, people have done other stuff too like read books or do their make up or taking off their coats or sweaters looking at their road maps while driving. Before smartphones, parents were just reading a book than texting. Parents would just stand around and talk to other parents or to their friends than watching their kids, I remember those days. Smartphones are not really to blame, they are just something people are fixated on. I don’t get anxious if I don’t check my Twitter or my Facebook or my text messages. I am still old fashioned and I don’t spend hours texting or compulsively checking emails. I will do it when I have the chance, not be a prisoner to my own phone. But sadly I think it has come to a point where we are all expected to be be glued to our phones and compulsively check our messages because of what has changed. If you have a job where you need to respond quickly to your boss or co workers, you have to check your phones whenever you get a text or an email because it could be from them.

I don’t think kids need a smartphone and I don’t plan on giving our kids one until they are teens. I can just call or text the parents if my children were at someone’s house. Yes I have had to go to my son’s school to get my phone when i left it there than getting it the next day because I need it for work and to contact my boss and because it has his number in it. But kids don’t need to check their phones all the time because one they are not employed and two, they don’t have a demanding job where they are working on projects and have to keep in touch with their co workers and boss. Before smartphones, we had pagers and used those. Before texting, kids did note passing. This is nothing new, we have just evolved. Instead of reading books, people do it on their phones now because we have ebooks. Before you could put music on your phones, people used ipods or had walkmen or a CD player. Before smartphones, people were playing their Gameboys or anything electronic. Before smart phones and watching TV on them, kids were already planted in front of the TV set.

I think the author was just blaming phones too much on how society is now and I wanted to tell him what people were doing before smartphones but now we can all do them on the phone now. Hey before smart phones, people were doodling, now they have their phones to mess around with. As technology evolves, so do humans. Take away all the phones in the world, people will just find other ways that will impair them. Before GPS, I was just writing down directions on how to get to places and looking at the paper while driving by glancing at it. Now it’s the GPS to look at.

Today was the day

I finally figured out I am a bad driver. Because I am a defensive driver and follow traffic laws and I am cautious.

When you are a good driver, none of this applies to you. You are above the rules, you can go faster than the speed and start tailgating others and honk your horn at them when they turn their blinker on and when they slow down when they turn, you can be a moron and honk at the car in front of you who cannot even move due to another car stopped in front of them or due to a pedestrian who is deciding to cross out in the middle of the intersection than using the fricken crosswalk. If a car dares to not stop on the tracks, honk your horn at them for not filling in that gap. If someone doesn’t turn within five seconds even though there are cars coming, honk your horn. This is what being a good driver is all about. You are above the law and you don’t need to do defensive driving when you have very good insurance and you are so wealthy you can just get another car if it gets totaled because of some idiotic driver on the road. Anyone who does defensive driving is a wuss and defensive driving is for wussies who can’t handle the road. Traffic laws are for people who are bad drivers. You are a good driver, none of this stuff will apply to you so ignore traffic safety and forget defensive driving, forget assuming everyone is a bad driver. Fuck traffic laws, those are for people who can’t handle the road, you are above the law. It took me this long to figure it out.

Hacked 3DS

I bought a brand new European SNES 3DS on ebay and the system had been modded to play all regions and it has homebrew on it and the freeshop and other programs like CIA and FBI and the Anemone.

I have downloaded every game I wanted that was in the freeshop. Not all games are there that are in the eshop. While this is cool, there are lot of cons to a modded 3DS. They are:

There are risks of getting your system banned from online Nintendo services and that means you wouldn’t be able to acecss the eshop or do online gaming.

If you create a NNID and then visit the eshop, your DLC could get deleted and you would have to redownload them every time from the freeshop and it can also delete your themes too you got for free and also delete your custom themes

If you need to get your system fixed, you can’t ship it to Nintendo to get it fixed

It voids warrenty

There is a risk of losing all your games but the same is true for when Nintendo decides to close the eshop and you don’t have enough space on your 32 gb card for all your purchased games for you to redownload

Not all games will work you download from the freeshop, for one make sure it is downloaded from the same region as your console, even if it is supposed to be all region (apparently it doesn’t work with videos but will with most 3DS games)

You can crash your 3DS if you don’t use the programs right. I have crashed mine several times with anemone due to me not using it properly. The system just shuts itself off and then I have to turn it back on and it works again like nothing happened. You have to use the anemone feature the way it was programmed like for example, to exit the app, I have to hit the start button, not the home button and then close. Also if I wisah to use a custom theme, I have to press start and then the home button, doing the home button and then close will only install the theme music but keep the other theme I had previously set. So Start and then home will install the custom theme properly.

You can’t do a system transfer and still expect it to be like it on your previous gaming system but you can transfer all the files to a bigger card and put that card in and it will still be the same like it was before but you have more blocks now. The system transfer won’t take your freeshop games and themes with it and everything would be wiped out and only things they would take are the bought ones from the eshop and it won’t take any hacked content either.

It’s complicated to do a system transfer with a hacked 3DS when you want to move it all to another 3DS.

When you open the freeshop and you installs all the themes, it overloads the theme settings section and you can’t access the theme shop or access any of your themes unless you delete enough of them. I had to go to my data management in system settings and delete the theme data and I went back to the theme shop to redownload and that was annoying but I couldn’t download all the themes because they were not originally from the Euro theme shop. It says no data is found when I try to redownload. I don’t know if me accessing the theme shop did it or the eshop. No I did not lose any of my DLC data from accessing the theme shop or eshop. Maybe because I have not created a NNID and I am too terrified to do it even though I was told by the guy who sold it to me I can create a NNID on it and it won’t affect the system and Nintendo wouldn’t be able to detect if my system was hacked and the games being from the freeshop so I can play them online as normal and that the 3DS will act like a real 3DS so I can buy games from the eshop as normal but it would only be European stuff and anything they have available in their eshop.

You can’t close your gaming system while in the freeshop and still expect the games to download and you can’t exit the app either until everything is downloaded

There are no wishlists.

There are no sections like Mario games or sonic games etc. Instead everything is scattered together so you either have to use the search button to find a game you want or go to settings and check boxes like DSIware or retail/download or SNES or NES to only see those games.

But there are also cons to a hacked 3DS:

You can download custom themes here https://themeplaza.eu/themes and use the QR code. New themes are always added to the page.

You can try any game from the freeshop just to see if you like it and you can buy the game for real if you want just so you have a legitimate copy and it’s tied to your account.

You can play any game and then delete it as if you had rented it and watch any video and then delete as if you rented it.

You can play all the DLC with a game without purchasing it and that includes all the Mii Plaza games and the Swapdoodle lessons.

The games act like real games

You can download a game that was never released in your country but I am not sure if that game would have to match with your system region. I got Nintendo Pocket Football Club and I downloaded a bunch of My Nintendo videos that were only released in Europe. The only con part was none of the American version videos would work because I kept getting an error code when I would try and play it. So I was not able to watch these Dreamwork shorts that are no longer in the eshop.

You can still back up your saved data on pirated 3ds games when you delete the game from data management under syetm settings

You can download 3DS themes that were never released in the US theme shop. I got a bunch of Hello Kitty ones and the Winx Club and Euro Nintendo Club theme and some others that were never released in the US theme shop. I only lost the ones that were not released in the Euro theme shop but yet they still show under my purchased themes but you just can’t redownload them and I can’t find the themes in the freeshop under the list of downloads I already have on my system.

Overall, while my system works like a real 3DS, none of it can be transferred to another 3DS like a normal 3DS and both systems have to be from the same region.

You also have to be computer smart to be able to hack your system because the instructions are complicated. None of it is written for dummies. It is written for as if you understand this stuff and as if you already have hacked it. Plus Nitnendo has patched all of it when I do find simple vidoes for dummies on how to do it because their instructions would only work on 3DS versions below 11.0.

But I love my modded 3DS and I have been playing it more than my primary 3DS.

I came across an article and it just looked like a bunch of excuses to me and denial. I’ll break it into pieces for my response.

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2222-i-weigh-5002B-pounds-5-realities-extreme-obesity.html

According to Dr. Sharma, “It doesn’t matter how you put on the weight; once you do, your physiology resets the way it works to defend the weight. And it pretty much does so permanently.”

Bullshit, the heaviest I have been was around 172 and I have not been that high ever since when I lost some weight and I have not been 140 lbs since high school except for when I was pregnant. How I stayed less than that was I quit eating a bunch of cookies whenever my mom made them and sneaking fruit snacks and other junk my mom would buy. I cut back on the sugar and I just couldn’t whenever I wanted anymore but that could have been because my level of activity changed so my eating had to change to fit my new level of activity.

“While my diet isn’t great, I don’t eat anywhere near that much,” Rachel continues. “Maybe 3,000, 4,000 [calories] tops.”

I appreciate her honesty and her admitting her eating isn’t that great. But 3,000-4,000 calories? That is a lot and I don’t eat that much a day. Sometimes I eat between 2000-3000 and that is not often because I don’t eat a bunch of sweets when I first see them and then I compensate for those calories by not eating other foods. I know when I have had more than I should when the numbers tip up on the scale so that means lay off the sugar again.

That might seem like a lot, but keep in mind that you can get that many calories in one restaurant meal if you’re not careful.

Yeah click on the words to another article linked in that sentence, you have to eat different meals from a restaurant to get that much and a single meal isn’t that high. I get too full before I can eat any others and I always just get water and then I don’t eat for the rest of the day to compensate and I get so full, I am full all day.

“Many people probably assume that by the time they get to 500 pounds, they must have a diagnosable eating disorder,” Dr. Cassin says, “but it turns out that many are overeating a lot at every meal, grazing.”

Duh.

Let’s do the math: One pound of fat is 3,500 calories, or 500 calories a day. That’s a few cans of Coke, or two cookies from Subway. That’s all it takes to gain a pound a week, or more than 50 lbs. a year. Combine

Do that everyday, who is going to go to Subway everyday and order two cookies and I don’t even drink pop. Rarely I drink any.

Rachel admits that she sometimes eats too much: “If I go to Wendy’s I’ll get the double cheeseburger, large fries, and large Frosty,” but as she points out, “that’s not outside the norm of what a lot of people get.

I don’t order large meals and who does she see ordering large meals like her and large shakes? I always get a size small because that is enough to fill me up. I always prefer to get a size small shake every time. And I don’t go to fast food everyday.

Don’t try to tell us you haven’t had a similar meal in the not-too-distant past.

I just did, if we went to eat at McDonalds together, you would see me not getting a super size or a large meal.

“People ask me ‘How did you get that fat?’ and it’s like, it doesn’t happen all at once,” Rachel says. “It creeps up on you slowly, and then one day, you start having trouble walking.”

Bullshit, you see the numbers tip up on the scale or notice clothes are getting too tight, it would be logical to lay off the junk and eat healthier and cut down the portions.

When you’ve already got addiction issues — as the two-pack-a-day-smoking, video-game-junkie Rachel clearly does — it’s one more obstacle to smash your metaphorical genitals into. Rachel started out as a relatively thin kid, but a traumatic experience in sixth grade led her to seek emotional relief from sweet lady pizza. “I would be upset, and then I would eat a pie or order a large pizza and eat that by myself,” she says, although she adds that “I don’t really do that anymore.”

How does emotional eating ever work? Food betrays you because it lets you down by making you big and friends never let you down so therefore food is not your friend.Why would food make someone happy if it makes them put on weight?

Rachel has something called defensive eating, she gets anxiety whenever she loses weight so she eats more to keep her large size due to trauma. That makes more sense and sounds more like a medical condition. But the previous were all sounded like excuses and a bunch of fatlogic for being obese.