Got one. What else can I say?

You might not have noticed, but I sent in a birthday greeting for Hello Kitty’s 35th birthday. It was posted in the “First batch of birthday greetings”, or something (too lazy to link right now), but it’s also listed on the “Recent, Most watch videos” in the Dream Studio! Just a simple video, one still-frame photo set to some music.

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I needed to go to the pet store today, but I got there too early and it wasn’t open yet. So to spend the time, I figured to walk around Target for a while. They’re a licensed Sanrio distributor. And I’m feeling blue, so you can’t go wrong with Hello Kitty to help cheer you. So…

There was a nice set of plushies in various poses, but I have a weakness for pretty Asian women, so I liked the Japanese style on this one.

There were some other plushies and things there, and a few “35th” items, but I have to say, some of these newer products are getting a little too gaudy. The colors are totally garish, and the outfits and poses are unappealing. Note to Sanrio: a lot of appeal (IMO) of Kitty is the pure simplicity of her. Don’t forget that foundation.

And I’ve been wanting to buy an aluminum water bottle for some time, but never seem to remember when I am in a store. I drink a lot of water, and lately you hear all sorts of news about the dangers of plastic water bottles. I saw two Kitty bottles, but one was just way too small. This was a little bigger, but not as big as I’d like, but I guess it’ll do. It says 0.6L, but I’m metrically impaired, so I have no idea. I’d guess about 14 ounces.

And then… I was wandering the bedding aisles. I really wouldn’t mind having a set of Kitty sheets. It’s not like anyone ever shares my bed :P But in Target, all the stuff is for Twin sized beds, and I have a Full. I’m sure if I looked elsewhere I could find a set of Full sheets, shams, and stuff. But this fleece blanket caught my eye.

Oh and Target loves to cater to impulse buyers like me. On one end-cap was a display of awesome looking chocolates. And for a chocolate lover like me, it drew me like a fly to honey.  I haven’t tried them yet.

I did buy some other stuff, but mostly male necessities, and there’s no reason to post those, right? But when I got out of Target, it was still 8:45, fifteen minutes until Petsmart opened, so I went to Panara to have some breakfast. I dunno how popular these are elsewhere, but there are quite a few locations in New Jersey. They’re an artsy “lifestyle” type of place, like Starbucks. And like Starbucks, they’re expensive. But unlike Starbucks, their food is actually very good, and probably worth it (can you tell I don’t like Starbucks?). Each store bakes their own breads daily. So I ordered an egg, bacon and cheese sandwich, and this is what I got:

ONE skimpy slice of bacon, and barely a slice of cheese. Sheesh. Well, it was good, but probably not worth $8.

The receptionist in my office came by and gave me this.

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When I saw this, I was feeling pretty gloomy myself, so I could not resist.

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Beware, long and potentially boring material ahead. Feel free to close this window, I won’t even know! Of course, in just over 24 hours, Happy Hearts will begin, and I’m sure I’ll be distracted by that, which means a brief respite in my inane postings; aren’t you glad? And the way I’ve been behaving lately, I’ll probably get disciplined by the GMs. They’ll turn me into a frog or something.

Today, the Hello Kitty guitar picks I recently ordered arrived. And wouldn’t you know it, about two hours after I placed this order, I found one of my other picks. That’s my kind of luck. Well, I know there are others floating around, and you really need more than one, so it wasn’t an unnecessary purchase.

I’ve placed my other pick in perspective, which is just a standard medium gauge tortoise-shell pick. The HK picks are of the same size and gauge. Six of white, six of pink, and the back is the same on all. If you look closely at the pink one here, you might think that it is blurry. It is actually that rippled finish that changes the image depending on the angle.

They are fairly nice, almost too cute to actually use. And they’re medium gauge, so they have a nice firm bend. They feel like a different material, or may it is just that finish, so I don’t know how they’ll hold up to heavy picking.

But the saga will continue. When I was noodling with my bass, I was having a horrific time with the intonation. I tuned it, using both the 5th fret and open string method, and the 5th harmonic and 7th harmonic. But when I was playing, it sounded horribly out of tune. At that point, you have to look at the neck. And BOY was it seriously bowed. I’m ashamed that I didn’t notice the horrible bow.

Most guitars have a truss rod inside the neck, which adjusts the bend of neck, to make it flat. So you just crank it up or down. Not too much, because it’s possible to snap the rod, and then you’re looking at buying a new neck. The instrument needs to be stringed and relatively tuned, otherwise the neck won’t have the proper tension to adjust.

Once the neck is re-tensioned, you’ve really changed the the performance  of the bass, and now you have to adjust the bridge. You need to bring the strings up or down so they’re parallel with the fretboard. No hard rules of thumb, just no buzzing and a comfortable fretting. You shouldn’t need to muscle the string to fret it.

After the string heights are adjusted, THEN you need to adjust the intonation, by shortening or lengthening the string. The 12th fret, the 12th harmonic and the open string should be exactly in tune (give or take the octave).

Two hex screws on top to adjust the height, one screw on the rear to make it longer or shorter.

Once I get it all tuned and adjusted, then maybe I’ll amaze you with my mad skillz at playing.

Well, that was all very interesting, wasn’t it? Say yes. Please? Thank you.

When I was in the crafts store buying materials for my boxpig, I noticed this crafts box. Since I was buying materials to make a Kitty-based craft, how appropriate would it be to buy a Kitty crafts box? Of course, I couldn’t resist.

I stored all the leftover materials in it for now.

Having found my bass guitar, I need to find the rest of the accessories. The only thing I can’t find right are picks. Yes, I play bass with a pick. The only time I finger-pick is when I want a warm sound, but I like the speed and sound of picking. If you are confused by all this, it’s Ok, ask someone who plays bass and see what they say :)

Anyways, I guess I couldn’t resist these.

The only problem is that they don’t say what gauge they are (light, medium, heavy) or what kind of material they are. When I play with plastic picks, I usually shatter them pretty quickly (yes, I’m heavy-handed), so I prefer nylon picks in medium gauge.

Geez, all this issue over such an insignificant accessory?

I picked this up some time ago:

I thought it was cute. It is one of those “best friends” types of things. There is an identical mate to it, but I didn’t see any reason to take photo of it. I don’t wear it. It’s kinda of silly of me, I guess, but since nobody is wearing the other half, it made me feel a little little funny.

I got this as a Christmas present in 2007.

I’m actually not using it at the moment. It is very battery-hungry, and rather than keep buying AA batteries, I wanted to pick up a recharagable battery kit. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet :-/ The dongle on the left is the wireless receiver, which blinks when the mouse moves.

It is very “bling”, which is not really my style, but this was the only HK optical wireless mouse available. There is a nice wired mouse, but this is not an optical mouse. It uses a mouse-ball, which is a grime magnet.

The USB memory stick I won arrived this morning. I knew it was going to be delivered, because I had a delivery ticket, so I was looking forward to receiving it today. So here are some images to enjoy! Please forgive the length and graphic-rich posting; I’m kind of excited.

The postage stamps. As I previously mentioned, I’m a birder, and these are nice stamps. Two of the birds appear to be of Asian locale, the long-tailed shrike and the common kingfisher. I’m pretty sure my field guide (specific to the eastern seaboard of the USA) wouldn’t list these, so I won’t even look it up. Yea, I’m kinda geeky that way, but it might be nice to actually add these to my log one day.

And someone has very nice handwriting! I’ve got terrible printing. Some of my friends call me “X” because my handwriting is atrocious.

An interesting packaging system.

And the back:

The memory stick is very tiny! It has its own little case.

And finally, the actual memory stick. Tiny (and blurry), indeed!

I did plug it into my PC. Was kinda curious if there might be something on it. Maybe some secret screenshots of the up-and-coming HKO OB, audio files, a group shot of the team, or maybe just one particular person of the team. Oh wait, I didn’t say that last part out loud, did I? How about that generic sports team? But, alas, it was empty.

Again, thanks to everyone at HKO (and Sanrio, and Sanrio Digital) for this game, the events, and everything. If you haven’t guessed already, I’ve been having a wonderful time with the HKO community, even if I act like a total dork sometimes.

Here are a couple of things I’ve picked up here and there. I have some other stuff laying about, too. But first, here is a Kitty plushie.

I think I picked her up in 2002. She was packed up from the last time I moved, and was really grungy. The care label says “surface wash only”, but since she was already in bad shape, I took a risk and put her in the washing machine. I let the spin-cycle dry her, so no dryer. That probably would have ruined her for sure. She came out nice and white!

In 2007, a friend of mine gave me this. Can you guess what it is?

It’s a candy tin! The best part about it is that it is legally licensed (as is the plushie above). Yea, I do worry about that kind of stuff.