♣Tascalcoán♣

I'm a new hire at Trader Joe's, btw. The DayForce login page at home is different from the login page at the store kiosk. It asks for "Company" before my username, so I typed [Trader Joe's] exactly as it's spelled; then my username (my 7-digit employee number); then my password that I personally changed when prompted at the store kiosk. It just says, "AUTHENTICATION FAILED.' Then when I click on "Can't Access Your Account?" at the bottom, it just flashes "AUTHENTICATION FAILED" again without taking me to a new window or page.

A few years ago I sat down at the UCLA Library and I noticed that my typing was faster and I made no mistakes. On top of that I felt extremely confident with everything I typed. It seemed like I could not make any mistakes with my fingers at that moment. I wish I would have stopped to think about what I had eaten or drunk that day to make me type so accurately. I must have been at 70wpm, when I usually don't go past 60wpm. It has never happened again. I've always wondered if I ate something or drank something that day that improved my dexterity. Is there anything out there that anyone knows about? I am about to take a typing test within the next 48 hours.

I am doing research on the 1972 AL Championship Series between the Oakland A's and the Detroit Tigers. In the play-by-play of Game 4 at Baseball-Reference.com, I noticed that in the bottom of the 10th inning at Detroit, with the A's holding a 3-1 lead after having scored twice in the top of the inning, Bob Locker was brought in to pitch. He promptly allowed Dick McAuliffe and Al Kaline to reach on singles to put runners on 1st and 2nd base. He was quickly relieved by Joe Horlen after facing just those two batters, the second of whom (Kaline) now represented the tying run as the runner on first. Horlen then threw a wild pitch, putting both runners in scoring position. He then walked the batter (Gates Brown), loading the bases with nobody out. Bill Freehan then came up to bat, and he reached base on a fielder's choice/E-4, as A's second baseman Gene Tenace botched a catch. McAuliffe scored on the play, Kaline advanced to third, and Gates went to second base. The score was now 3-2 Oakland. The A's then replaced Horlen with Dave Hamilton. Al Kaline represented the tying run on third base now, and there was still nobody out. Hamilton walked Norm Cash to force in the tying run. Kaline, who scored the tying run on the walk, was the last batter Bob Locker had faced. Now Jim Northrup came to bat with the bases loaded. The winning run, in the form of Gates Brown, was just 90 feet away at third base. Jim Northrup then singled to score Brown, giving the Tigers the win in Game 4 by a score of 4-3. Now my question is this: Why, if Bob Locker of the A's was responsible for only two runners (who both wound up scoring) when the game was 3-1 in the A's favor--why is he officially charged with the loss, when the winning run that later scored in the inning was scored by a runner that the following pitcher had put on base? Shouldn't Joe Horlen have been charged with the loss? After all, he put the eventual winning run on base when he walked Gates Brown. To my knowledge, a pitcher cannot be charged with a loss when the opposing runner that scores the winning run was not put on base by that pitcher (barring a pinch-runner, of course--but only if the same pitcher put the replaced batter-runner on base). Were the rules for determining winning and losing pitchers different back then? Is this simply an error on the part of Baseball-reference.com? Please help; I am stumped.

I am doing research to see how many state flags include horses in them. I noticed the front side of the Oregon flag (it's the only US state flag to have a reverse side) depicts a covered Conestoga wagon, with two animals depicted on the obverse side of the flag. I would have thought that horses pulled wagons back then, but these two animals look more like steer, with the square rumps, not curved like a horse. I cannot find any information online about what animals these are--only that the wagon is a Conestoga one, and that there is a beaver on the reverse side of the flag.

Now I'm a stickler for continuity. I know this was not a serious movie and it was kind of tongue-in-cheek throughout. But when the father, Jacob, gets bitten and he knows he is going to become a vampire, we never see him hand over the keys to the RV to his son or daughter. With all the stress of fighting for your life and killing off vampires, who would think of that, right? But in the end of the film, we see the two survivors Seth Gecko and Kate Fuller, outside the Titty Twister cantina/vampire haven that nearly killed them. They have just been saved by--of all people--the drug dealers they were waiting for all night to meet them at the bar. Seth tells Kate to bring the money from the "car" (the RV). She walks out of camera range but we never see her get into the RV. She merely returns with the briefcase full of money. Then at the end, as Seth and she part ways, we see Seth Gecko drive away in the car that has been freshly provided by the Mexican narcos. Then in the next shot, we see the RV driving away--supposedly being driven by Kate. But again, we never see her get into it or take out the keys or start the engine. Her Dad should have had the keys on him when he blew up as a vampire, right? I can't believe Quentin Tarantino, the screenwriter for this, would have overlooked such a big detail. And you can't tell me that she had a spare key or that Jacob simply left the keys in the RV in front of a Mexican cantina with the drug money inside the vehicle all night. Plus, it was the boy (Scott) who we saw earlier in the film sitting in the passenger side of the RV as his dad drove, who was more likely to have helped his dad drive; so he should have been given the keys--but he also died at the hand of the vampires. And just of minor note, there was another flaw in the dialogue spoken by Salma Hayak's character, Santanico Pandemonium: After she kills Richie Gecko (Tarantino) and the whole vampire melee is going on in the cantina, she pulls Seth Gecko toward her and says, "Let's see if you taste as good as your brother." But no one ever introduced the brothers to her, and no one spoke of the two being brothers while they were at the bar. So how did she know? Well, I guess you could argue she's a vampire and thus can read minds. But I have never seen a film where a vampire can read minds. Otherwise, they would know when someone is coming with a wooden stake to kill them, right? Maybe she read the script. LOL

If you have the film on your laptop or on DVD, check out the third minute of the film. At around the 2:45 mark, as Mr. White takes Joe's address book away, and he's complaining about how he's tired of hearing, "Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby Wong, Toby Wong, Toby Chung, f**king Charlie Chan..." Anyway, as he's saying that, the guy who walks up to the cashier to pay his bill in the half-lit background--it looks just like Steven Seagal. I've seen this movie over 15 times and I'd never noticed it before. Of course there's no mention of Seagal anywhere in the credits, so it's uncredited. But it's got to be him! His profile is unmistakable. Take a look for yourself if you have the movie.

I was watching the video of the 1991 Sacramento hostage crisis in a Good Guys! store. The Wikipedia description says it is, to this day, the largest hostage rescue operation in US history. (There were 51 hostages in the store.) But what about the 1980 failed Iran hostage rescue that President Carter ordered? Sure, it failed miserably when several of the helicopters malfunctioned and one crashed into a C-130, destroying both aircraft and killing nine people. Wouldn't that be the largest US rescue operation? Sure, it failed, but they were trying to rescue 52 US hostages in Iran. Or is it because the Good Guys hostage situation occurred on US soil? Is that why it's called the largest hostage rescue operation in US history? Or is it because it was semi-successful: "only" three of the hostages were killed during the rescue, while three of the four gunmen were killed.

Or would it be when she is completed? I'm doing research on my favourite ship, the Battleship Bismarck. Wikipedia says she was laid down 1 July, 1936, and launched 14 February, 1939. It says nothing about when she was completed, though it says she was commissioned 24 August, 1940. Would that be a birthday?

I have never seen his name in any credits. The mentally challenged Goon was Billy's best friend in the movie before he met the girl.

I've tried downloading and installing the latest Java updates for Chrome, and I've cleared my memory cache, but I'm still getting this message, "Couldn't Load Plugin." What else can I do?

I was just reading about the sinking of the German U-Boat 331 by RAF airplanes and torpedo bombers. She was badly damaged by an RAF Hudson bomber. The U-boat then signaled surrender to its attacker, the Hudson bomber. Unfortunately other RAF planes did not get the signal and swiftly came in to finish her off. What would that surrender code have been? I'm curious how an enemy U-Boat would signal surrender to its attacker (besides waving a white flag). Morse Code, perhaps?

I think I can make out a horse (an Appaloosa, maybe) inside the shield within the Seal of Idaho, which is part of the state flag.

Incidentally, I am trying to see how many US state flags include depictions of horses in them. (I don't know, I'm bored!) So far I have six, if this Idaho flag has one. Kansas seems to have the most horses in its flag so far; I can count ten of them! Two free-standing horses in the foreground and eight horses in the background pulling covered wagons. =)

It was an hour-long documentary on PBS way back in the late 80s, and I never saw it again. It was part of a series titled, "Isles of the South Seas," or "South Seas Islands"--one of the two. I distinctly remember seeing something about "Australia films" in the credits. It was a beautiful look into the everyday lives of the islanders. Unfortunately I never saw it again. Does anyone know where I could possibly find this film/video?

And I don't mean Mike Lum. He was actually Japanese-American, son of a Japanese woman and American serviceman, but adopted by a Chinese-American family. I mean is there a player that came directly from China--spoke mainly Chinese--and played in the major leagues and hit a grand slam?

I'm trying to take the Food Handler's Test for my job, but the ServSafe test is not compatible with Google Chrome (my usual browser), because of the JavaScript involved--we have to watch a video, I think, on the site and then answer questions pertaining to the video; it works only with Firefox and Internet Explorer. So I tried Firefox, but Firefox will not even allow me to log on to ServSafe; it says it has an invalid security certificate; whereas Google Chrome and IE were fine in allowing me to log on to the site. (I tried Explorer, but I noticed that right away after I used it my Norton Antivirus caught and resolved 11 tracking cookies, so I abandoned IE--which is why I had abandoned Internet Explorer about four years ago in the first place: My antivirus kept finding tracking cookies whenever I used it so I switched to Firefox and then Chrome. What to do? Firefox does give me the option to "Add Exception," and allow the browser to accept the site, but it warns that before I click on the button I should have a good reason to know why this site does not use trusted identification. Could it be that Firefox security is just too strict and does not "see" ServSafe as safe?

It just seems so different from the way I brush my teeth in rill life. It looks like they're just "stabbing" their mouth with the tootbrush, back and forth real quick.

I always beat her at racing...

I couldn't find any clear answer on the Internet. It talks about past aircraft carriers that have housed the Blue Angels, like the USS Princeton, but what current carrier has them now? A friend posted a pic of the Blue Angels on their carrier at Corpus Christi today (May 8, 2011), but I could not read the hull number of the carrier to look it up. Anybody know off-hand?