Tag Archives: dailyprompt

Daily Writing, Errant Literary

MLKs “I have a dream” speech

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Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?

In the course of my attendance of the Tongue Point Job Corps Center in Astoria, OR, I was granted the privilege of reading Martin Luther King Junior’s “Dream” speech, during Black History month, in front of the entire student body and staff.

Astoria’s Tongue Point Job Corps center was one of the first in the nation to open in 1965. Located on a former Navy base, it now hosts 313 students, many of whom live on campus, and 165 staff members.

Read more at: https://dailyastorian.com/2025/05/30/tongue-point-job-corps-center-slated-to-close/

The Job Corps program originated in 1964 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” established by the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) to combat youth unemployment by providing education, vocational training, and work experience for disadvantaged young people.

At the Job Corps Center, I was a member of the Student Government Association (SGA), representing the third residence as its president. I served for 3 terms in office. I had originally applied for and was elected to the role of Vice President of the dorm.

Mid way through the semester I took over the president role, after the current president had joined the college program and her class schedules conflicted with regular SGA activities.

I would go on to serve as president for the remainder of the term and was twice re-elected to office.

In 2007, during Black History Month, a call went out for a student volunteer to make a reading of MLKs reverent speech.

After my application and interview was accepted, I won the coveted role.

I read the speech numerous times, listening to and watching recordings, to familiarize myself with Dr. King’s manner of speech, his inflection, and voice.

My own voice is often colored by the British English accent I picked up from my father. I practiced speaking in the manner of a preacher, replicating a soulful black southern accent to better convey the words of MLKs speech.

Martin Luther King Jr.

In February, before the entire assembled student body and staff, I gave my reading.

Public speaking was never my strong suit, but I felt empowered that day. Constant practice had lent me confidence and strength.

I believe that day marked the pinnacle of my time at Tongue Point. It was the culmination of my efforts to improve upon myself as a person and a future member of the workforce.

It was also an especially poignant speech as I was living proof of the success of that Dream.

Born of mixed race parentage in the predominantly Caucasian Pacific Northwest, growing up, I had had my share of racist encounters in school and society, but it was during my time at the Center that I truly found acceptance.

I was uplifted, moving beyond mere tolerance to actively support, encourage, and help others to grow.

The success of the Job Corps program lies in its fostering of an environment where people feel valued, empowered, and inspired to reach their best selves.

I am reminded of my best self every February and following months are better for it.

Daily Writing

The Vision of Escaflowne

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What’s your favorite cartoon?

I first saw Escaflowne in 1996 on TV in America. I must have been 11 years old.

I didn’t know it was a Japanese animation at the time. I really only became cognizant of Japan during my time at the Job Corps Center in Astoria, OR.

Escaflowne aired on Fox Kids (1990-2002) with 10 episodes before it was canceled. I wouldn’t find out about the cancelation until years later when I discovered the internet.

Escaflowne 1996

I didn’t have the best attention span back then and didn’t take notice that the show had disappeared, and it’s not like they issue notices on kids afternoon cartoon channel’s, “…oh hey, by the way, the shows been canceled.”

I didn’t even really remember the plot, only the first scenes with the dragon slaying and the mecha operation in the first episode. That sealed the deal for me. It became my favorite cartoon.

Later, in college when I was introduced to torrenting by friend and roommate Ian Dumych at Tongue Point JCC, I was able to download and watch the entire series in its original Japanese language with subtitles.

It was both nostalgic and new to me at the same time. Simply splendid.

I considered mentioning a synopsis or plot lines, but I feel that would be a spoiler. I will say, Escaflowne holds an older ascetic among anime and departs from some of the traditional tropes. The shows perspective centers on a female lead, while the trials and tribulations of the male protagonist are seen from her point-of-view.

At the time it was a fresh take storytelling. I understand Fox Kids had made many edits to the dubbed version I saw as a child. Notably, for their young Western audience, they reduced the importance of the female leads role in the show.

If you are interested in checking it out, but don’t have the energy for a full 26-episode anime series, I’d suggest watching the movie, Escaflowne (DailyMotion).

Daily Writing, Errant Literary

Hard Choices: Removing Site Content

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What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?

A couple weeks ago I made the difficult decision to cease providing wiki pages and game art galleries for several mobile titles.

I was under a certain amount of duress after receiving multiple complaints and strong suggestions to make a change.

You may know, earlier this year my YouTube channel GameGirlsGallery was shutdown, most unfortunately. Complaints about the amount of sexually suggestive content present in mobile games, ranging from game art to dialog and plot lines, had built up over the years and ultimately killed the channel.

The reasons for the recent site content removal are the same as those that caused GameGirlsGallery to be removed.

The Top Girl / Apex Girl wiki hosted on fatwalletrefugee accounted for nearly 84% of all site traffic. The remainder of site traffic went to the mobile game art and character galleries.

Top Girl had been initially rated mature, but after being removed from the Apple Store and worries over possible removal from the Google Play Store they released several updates that brought the rating down to Teen.

Despite the artistic changes there was still a good amount of sexual suggestion and lewd imagery present. In fact, I think most regular people, if looking at most titles in the Google Play Store rated Teen, might think the games were for Mature audiences, and not be suitable for the age ranges the ratings board has decided on.

Even playing merge and puzzle games rated E for everyone, I still see ads for games rated Mature, AI dating chat bots, hookup apps, romantic story apps, and Harem anime games.

All this plus the mounting complaints and suggestions of actions taken led me to the hard decision to purge the site of all offending content. I deleted all of the posts, pages, wikis, and site media including images and videos that were likely to receive further complaint.

I was contacted by multiple subscribers afterwards asking where everything went and had to explain the difficulties I went through deciding to stop providing that type of content.

I had in fact been expecting to hit the 1 million page views mark by December this year, a new milestone stone for this site. Prior to the content removal, my average daily site traffic in early November was around 6k views. Sadly, now my average is closer to 450 views per day.

A bar graph displaying total weekly site traffic for my website.
Total Weekly Site Traffic

As you might imagine, my ad revenue has fallen off a cliff. While I had recently received my first payout from WordAds since signing up in March of 2024, I am likely not going to receive another payment for some considerable amount of time hereafter.

a bar chart indicating the ad revenues for the month of November. A steep decline in daily revenues is notable on the day after the site was purged of content.

The question as to how to recover from this loss also comes up. I still provide guides for family-friendly mobile games. I am in the process of detailing a guide for Fable Town at the moment. I am also expanding the written content for buildings and units in the Puzzles and Chaos wiki.

I used to get good traffic from Google and Reddit for my game guides, but once I began focusing on Apex Girl and Road to Rich, that traffic dropped and the algorithm sent those folks to other resources.

A splash page screen from the mobile game "Fable Town." Pictured are a pair of capybara sitting down in a hot spring while pink butterflies flit about them. The title of the game hangs just above their heads.
Fable Town: Merge

There is also the Travel and Food section of the site which hasn’t seen much writings since my last trip in 2019. That was originally what started my blog. A trip to New York City to see family prompted me to make kasanje.home.blog and years later I bought the fatwalletrefugee.com domain.

There are also side projects I started but never finished like the FatWallet Forums archives and the Lost Media directory.

Recently, I began redesigning the Travel page and restructuring the page hierarchy for that section. This also involves adding pagess for each US state I have visited and a separate section for my international trips.

My vacation to Washington last month inspired me to travel more locally here in North Carolina. I also was gifted a new camera. It’s an Olympus E-M10 II. There are two swappable lenses, one telephoto and a precision close up, and three batteries.

In the past month I have visited and photographed 6 towns and a state park. I am planning a trip to visit the Outer Banks next year.

Hopefully this move back to this site’s roots will boost site traffic and begin to shift the algorithm back home.

Daily Writing

Top 3 Pet Peeves

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What irritates me to no end?

Name your top three pet peeves.

1. Bad or faulty products.

I will absolutely return any merchandise I purchase that doesn’t deliver on its promises.

Whether is distasteful yogurt or a  deceptively labeled floor mat. Back it goes. I’ll not spend a dime on dysfunctional product.

2. Not signaling lane changes.

It’s not difficult to flip a lever or hit a switch. A flick of the fingers signals to the world and me in particular that your planning on cutting me off.

That’s fine. I’ll yield, as I am legally bound to do so. But, if you don’t signal, I promise I’ll glower at your car for miles.

3.

Advertising on a paid service.

There shouldn’t be any ads on a subscription or paid service. That’s the whole reason we cut the cord in the first place. Now they’re bringing back advertising for paid services. It’s entirely infuriating.

When I realized I wouldn’t have to see anymore ads if I downloaded programs, I canceled my TV service.

Before streaming services came to be, we were downloading all our media, happily ad-free. Sure it was limited to certain types of content, but I was predominantly watching Japanese and Korean programs, and back then there were no streaming services for that content.

To be clear, I’m okay with watching an ad to access a free service. But not if I paid money upfront.

Daily Writing

Some New and Some Old

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What are your family’s top 3 favorite meals?

Fried chicken is a household staple for us. But chicken can get a little dull over time, so my mother has explored with several different recipes to spice things up, quite literally.

With my family’s adoption of the Korean Jesa ceremony several years ago we also started including healthy foods in out diet, like kimchi and pajeon. We have a local Korean grocer in Wake Forest (Han Ah Rum Mart) that we visit on occasion when we have the spare funds.

Another favorite for us is Tteok-bokki, rice cakes about the size of a French fry and consumed in a spicy sweet sauce accompanied by fish cake and sausages.

No meal is complete without dessert and we especially enjoy strawberries either with a nice dollop of Häagen-Dazs ice cream or some pudding or cake.

In the spring and summer my mother will craft homemade ice cream in a variety of flavors. We’ve had cranberry, mango, wolfberry, and orange ice cream.

Another Korean treat is the sweet red bean paste which can be found in Patbingsu (팥빙수) and Bungeoppang (팥빙수) the fish shaped pastry. We bought a shaved ice machine and waffle bowels to make a really nice treat.

Daily Writing

Is this Wisdom or just Guessing?

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Do you trust your instincts?

My Spidey-sense hasn’t been the best gage for decision making in the past. I’ve come to second guess my immediate feelings and mull things over before taking a plunge.

So, no, I’m not really that trusting of my instincts.

From bad timing in stock market to poor sourcing choices for products to sell, I’ve had my blunders. What instinctively felt to be a sure thing often turned out to be the height of the market right before a plunge.

I have bags on top of bags, filled with swimsuits filling my closet, apparel that will likely never sell.

I’ve also fallen for my share of crypto scams and ponzi schemes. Hard lessons that have shaped, in part, my present predicament.

My best advice, which I take myself, is to get a second opinion whenever and where ever possible.

Daily Writing

ATTENTION?

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What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

Diet, Exercise, and my health.

I’m still working off the dregs of really cold (bedridden) that could probably have been avoided with more attention paid to my health.

Oh and this website could use more love for sure. I check my traffic stats more than anything else.

But what exactly am I expecting to see when I rarely make any posts?

Very curious.

Daily Writing

It’s gotta be Cats 🙀

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Dogs or cats?

I did have a dog for a while but he didn’t get trained properly and grew up to be something of an idiot.

You don’t have to train a cat. They work properly right out of the box. No assembly is required.

They have the decency to bury their poo and don’t leave it all over the lawn. Nor do cats treat a litter box as a smorgasbord.

Yes, my idiot dog had a s***-eating grin.

That’s not to say that cats are not without their own set of issues.

I recall being awoken one morning by a kitten going pee in my hair. I’ve cleaned and disposed of many household objects that got sprayed on. I have painful memories of scratches and bites come bath day.

But overall I still prefer a cat to a dog.

I believe a dog topic that has received little attention has been their historical uses regarding race-based violence and chattel slavery in the Americas.

Particular breeds were used to track and hunt down those escaping enslavement. Punishment, while often depicted in media as whipping, often did involve abuses by the master’s dogs.

Law enforcement’s use of police dogs to capture and subdue a fleeing individual is another example of canine violence.

Some of the more popular breeds today have a violent history which I feel deserves more attention.

That’s it for today. Thanks for taking the time to read this and have a great day.

Daily Writing

My oldest thing? Pride, fresh from the dryer.

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What’s the oldest thing you own that you still use daily?

I had the privilege of attending the Tongue Point Job Corps Center in Astoria, OR back in 2005-07.

During my time at the center I completed two basic vocational certificates in Landscaping and Facility Maintenance.

Bridge to Success, TPJCC

Having reached the highest rank, three times in a row, I received a monogram sweatshirt and a ring that I still wear 18 years later.

Ranking

The Center used a scoring system with ranks to determine the various privileges or limitations set to each student (Red, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum).

If you got in trouble (misconduct or rule breaking) you could get written up and possibly  bumped down a grade.

But, if you performed well, either in your vocation or the dorms, then your average score could move you up in the rankings.

Everyone arriving at the Center would start at Silver and some might drop to Bronze after their first evaluation.

Some students struggled with conforming with the structure. I had an advantage in having been in Boy Scouts and possessing a “follower” mentality.

Limitations

I think Red was an average of 1.0 and you would be on the cusp of termination unless you improved by the next evaluation period.

If you were Red you were not allowed to go to town. I think Bronze could only leave on the weekends.

Silver could could go any day and was the standard that most students hovered around.

Privileges

If you managed to reach the high rank of Gold then you would get to stand at the front of the line for the bus to town.

You could even bump someone else off the bus if it was full and you arrived late. The “bumped” individual needed to be lower rank than you.

You had first dibs on events held by the recreation facility.

I remember going to my first (and last) Monster Truck rally, without ear plugs, thanks to my Gold status. I also attended some Ice Hockey matches in Portland at the Rose Bowl (Quarter).

Lastly, if you somehow reached Platinum, the first time you received some points that could be exchanged for items in a gift shop located in the main office.

Sometimes if a student did something really special they would be awarded points. I think we also received points each evaluation that resulted in Gold/Platinum status, but I could be mistaken. 18 years is a long time.

Another prize was getting a seat at the restaurant run by the culinary students for lunch. The Center’s Director would often buy a meal ticket and bring guests from the community to show off the students hard work.

Instructors were also able to nominate one of their students to have lunch at the restaurant. Other staff members would often buy a ticket to eat there.

Upon reaching Platinum a second time, students were eligible to redeem their points to get the monogram sweatshirt which has the school’s “Bridge to Success” motto on it.

Finally, we come to the third Platinum prize.

The coveted school ring with a blue stone for boys or a red for girls. You still needed to have enough points saved up to buy the ring, but I think it was worth it.

Achievements

After completing my trades I applied to and was accepted into the Centers college program which allowed me to attend Clatsop Community College for three semesters.

I successfully ran for student government and was the VP of Residence 3 for half a term before moving up to Dorm President.

I also had a stint as the floor leader and as a Student Ambassador.

I took part in a local radio program featuring student voices.

I had the opportunity to attend a conference in Washington DC with other student leaders.

I volunteered with fellow students in a restoration project for the Lewis and Clark trail and the construction of a playground in downtown Astoria.

I was the first student to request and complete an 8-week internship with the US Coast Guard at their Air Base and Family Housing.

I received a plaque for overcoming personal challenges at the 2006 Youth Recognition Awards Banquet in Clatsop County.

2006 Youth Recognition Awards Banquet

After TPJCC

After I left the center I went on the classic “European Trip.”

I got visit family in England, tour castles in France, and ride the trains in Spain.On

Upon my return state-side, I settled in North Carolina and I’ve been here ever since. I’ll probably stay another 7 years before moving back to the Pacific Northwest.

That’s all for now. Thanks for your time.

Questions and comments please put them below and have a great Father’s Day.

Daily Writing

Life Before the Internet?

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Do you remember life before the internet?

Well, I was born in 1985 and the Internet first started around 1983, so I can’t truly say I knew life before its time. I began accessing the Internet in the first grade, but I didn’t realize its potential at the time.

Although the Internet didn’t come into its own until the mid-90s. I remember the first computer I saw at school in the first grade. The classroom had an Apple II and a Mac LC 500, which was an all-in-one Macintosh computer with a CD-ROM and floppy drive. The Apple II used the big floppy disks and you had to load the disk before powering on the computer because it didn’t have an operating system to boot to.

Some of my friends had other models of Macintosh computers. One friend had a Mac SE with dual floppy drives and another had the Macintosh Portable with a little trackball.

My mother bought a Packard-Bell personal computer that came with a 14.4k modem. I recall trying to load a picture of Mickey Mouse from the Disney website and it took all night and only got a quarter of the way through the image. After that, we got a 28.8k modem that was attached to the motherboard.

Later around the time I began attending high school, we got a Micron PC with an integrated video card, the NVIDIA Riva 128. This allowed for some 3D and 2D processing and I was able to run games like Warcraft 2, Starcraft, and Diablo. I also got into Emulators and would play Super Nintendo and Gameboy games on the computer.

I also embarrassingly ruined the computer when I tried to install the Star Wars arcade game code on the PC. It overwrote the firmware and caused the computer to boot as an arcade machine. I got in a lot of trouble for that.

I also recall around 1999, I began visiting the computer lab at the local high school a year or so before I began attending. In the evenings after school the computer lab was kept open by a staff member and some of the older students would visit the lab and play a game called Marathon Infinity.

It was a First-Person Shooter similar to Quake or Unreal. There were four Performa Macs in the lab that were networked and could be used for multiplayer matches.

Prior to this, I had mostly been playing Sim City 2000, which an older student had installed on a computer at the alternative school I was attending. I would actually come across a number of computers that the same boy would install games on throughout my school life.

It wasn’t until late 2007 that I figured out who the other boy was. Quite by accident, I noticed he had the same games in his room, and when I asked about them he confirmed my suspicions. I had actually known his family for a long time but I didn’t know he was interested in computers.

I also had a penchant for installing games on the computers I came across at school. There were four different Macs in my homeroom and I installed the demo versions of Escape Velocity and EV: Override on two of them. The others didn’t have the specifications to handle such a game so I installed Maelstrom and Apeiron on them.

I went too far when I installed Starcraft on the Power Mac. A new teacher was present when the opening video played with the Zerg overrunning the colony and the Protoss nuking the planet. The sounds of screams and gunfire were sufficient to attract her ire.

The teacher had the school’s tech guy wipe the computers. He also installed Deep Freeze on them which wiped any unwanted data when you turned off the computer. I was also barred from using the computers during my homeroom period.

I actually met the tech guy after an altercation with another student caused me to be removed from some classes we shared for one year. I was removed from both my Art and Jewellery classes and reassigned as a library assistant and a tech assistant.

I helped to install the new iMacs in the computer lab and library, I also learned how to run cables and set up the Deep Freeze software on the machines.

It was a great experience for me.

Although, in hindsight, the Internet has been, perhaps, the bane of my existence for other reasons. It is an addiction that I would be rid of if not for the necessity that it has become in our modern world…

Thanks for reading. Sorry to end on a somber note. Thank you for your time.