Earlier this year I had resolved to blog more often and more consistently. That has clearly not been the reality. I tend to spend much time reading other peoples stuff. CS Penn's Awaken Your Superhero and Merlin Mann over at 43folders.com. Yes, I am breaking etiquette by not including the links. I could take a momment to whine about how the best thing the worlds largest software company (Microsoft) does is make mice but then who doesn't already know that.
Bottom line, there is good stuff on the 'net although burried by mountains of crap (RIP Geocities). Maybe I should resolve to contribute to the semi intelligent content on the internet rather than sew the seeds of mindless crap. Hmmm, or maybe I should just drive up my site traffic by posting nothing but doctored Megan Fox pictures. Hmmmmmm....
Friday, October 30, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
It wasn't my fault
My wife's Dell Inspiron 1720 died 2 weeks ago. As the post title will tell you, it was not my fault. We have had the thing for about a year and a half. My wife tries to turn the laptop on one day and nothing. No hard drive spin, no error beep/light codes, just blank screen and a sinking feeling. I have had a number of computers in my time and it really strikes me odd that this thing would just up and die.
I called Dell Support and got an English speaking person first time (miracles never cease) and after a few steps, one of which was "power off the laptop" to which I said "you do understand that is all it does now, right?", we finally agreed that it was not functioning properly and we were told we would get a box to ship it in for service. This was almost two weeks ago. With profit margins so small on computers these days wouldn't it be less expensive for Dell to just replace rather than maintain the infrastructure needed to make a major repair like this (motherboard replacement)?
Relatively immaterial at this point I supposed but two weeks? That seems a bit much but I'm not going to complain too much yet since the work is covered under warranty. So for now, we wait and my wife has to use my computer if she needs something online. Not that I have an issue with sharing or anything but, COME ON DELL, I want my... uh, wife's computer back. plzkthanxbai
I called Dell Support and got an English speaking person first time (miracles never cease) and after a few steps, one of which was "power off the laptop" to which I said "you do understand that is all it does now, right?", we finally agreed that it was not functioning properly and we were told we would get a box to ship it in for service. This was almost two weeks ago. With profit margins so small on computers these days wouldn't it be less expensive for Dell to just replace rather than maintain the infrastructure needed to make a major repair like this (motherboard replacement)?
Relatively immaterial at this point I supposed but two weeks? That seems a bit much but I'm not going to complain too much yet since the work is covered under warranty. So for now, we wait and my wife has to use my computer if she needs something online. Not that I have an issue with sharing or anything but, COME ON DELL, I want my... uh, wife's computer back. plzkthanxbai
Friday, September 18, 2009
Xbox 360 sucks ass but we all bought it anyway!
I really need to figure out a way to get people to buy any old piece of shit from me and brainwash them all into thinking they love it and want to buy another one. Oh, wait Microsoft already did that and I think my own sense of pride and general scruples would keep me from being able to do that. What's that? You Microsoft wouldn't do that or worse yet you live under a rock and haven't seen umpteen reports on the astronomical failure rate of the 360.
Come on kids, let's get real. We were all suckered and yet we stand in line asking "Please Sir, can I have some more?" Any other product with a 54% failure rate, yes a 54% fail rate, would see the manufacturer in bankruptcy before you could say "Steve Ballmer is a hyperactive, power mad, dancing monkey!". What this really showcases is the complete breakdown of the way free markets and/or capitalism is supposed to work. Consumers have so fallen for the marketing BS! that we believe we need something whether it works or not.
Do I sound pissed? Damn right! I knew all this and still bought a effin' 360. Every time I turn it on I know there is a 50/50 shot that the RRoD will bite me in the ass. Oh yea, we have all that cool XBLive stuff thrown in and we get to do all kinds of cool gaming with friends and stuff. No! Not only do we pay $400 for a POS console, it has about as much online capability as a Commodore 64 until you pay an extra fee and then if you want to watch a video that is otherwise freely available on the Internet you have to pay AGAIN!?! As Penn Jillette would say, "Fuck!".
Come on kids, let's get real. We were all suckered and yet we stand in line asking "Please Sir, can I have some more?" Any other product with a 54% failure rate, yes a 54% fail rate, would see the manufacturer in bankruptcy before you could say "Steve Ballmer is a hyperactive, power mad, dancing monkey!". What this really showcases is the complete breakdown of the way free markets and/or capitalism is supposed to work. Consumers have so fallen for the marketing BS! that we believe we need something whether it works or not.
Do I sound pissed? Damn right! I knew all this and still bought a effin' 360. Every time I turn it on I know there is a 50/50 shot that the RRoD will bite me in the ass. Oh yea, we have all that cool XBLive stuff thrown in and we get to do all kinds of cool gaming with friends and stuff. No! Not only do we pay $400 for a POS console, it has about as much online capability as a Commodore 64 until you pay an extra fee and then if you want to watch a video that is otherwise freely available on the Internet you have to pay AGAIN!?! As Penn Jillette would say, "Fuck!".
Thursday, July 9, 2009
AndroBlogger Test Post
this seems to work fairly well. there is no auto capitalization or punctuation. not really a big deal. i don't see any way to add tags or categories, though. that is a pain. if i have to login to the website to tag the post i might as well just write it.
that is all.
that is all.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
"Fired"man Fail!
Saw this over at the fail blog and had to post it here. It is a Fireman post but this guy should be "fired".
Monday, April 6, 2009
Tech Notes for day 67 and counting for DTV
Yea, only 67 days left. If they don't delay the cut over date again. We are quickly getting ready with new equipment. There will be more about that on my other blog. Right now I'm looking at the beta version of the Friend Feed site. Real time stuff is the way to go but lots of sites will go through some major pains to get it working well.
On another note...
Anyone else find the "click" noise that Guitar Hero guitars make really annoying? It drives me crazy. Glad I bought Rock Band instead. Can't wait until the Beatles stuff comes out in September. There are actually some tunes in there that I have never heard of that I like. For an old guy that tends to take 10+ years before I give a band a chance, that's saying something.
It's been a whole week since I broke, err, found flaws in anything. Must be a storm brewing...
On another note...
Anyone else find the "click" noise that Guitar Hero guitars make really annoying? It drives me crazy. Glad I bought Rock Band instead. Can't wait until the Beatles stuff comes out in September. There are actually some tunes in there that I have never heard of that I like. For an old guy that tends to take 10+ years before I give a band a chance, that's saying something.
It's been a whole week since I broke, err, found flaws in anything. Must be a storm brewing...
Saturday, March 28, 2009
... and not the good kind of PITA either.
In this case the PITA involved here is not the tasty grain based item you would find in your favorite Mediterranean restaurant. It is an acronym for Pain In The Ass. This is where I get to inform folks about stuff that may work for most people but for some reason is not really worth using to me because of the PITA factor.
So, with that being said...
Social Median is a site that is sort of a community based news aggregation portal. You can join in on news streams based on different topics that are posted by other members. You can setup your own feeds to be posted on the site and there is a follow system similar to that of Friend Feed and Twitter.
I used the site for awhile to get news on certain topics and to identify people that tended to post on topics that I like to follow. This feature set works well and I had no issue here. I wanted to use the site to pull in my blog entries and push them out to other sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. My issue was that if I happened to title one of my posts the same as some other site, my post would not get pulled into Social Median it would just link to the other post where ever that may have been. The most recent was a link that was supposed to go to my blog on wordpress.com but instead went to a page at the Nashville Post website. That is a deal breaker for a lot of bloggers that are trying to generate some exposure.
I also like the idea of being able to have one place where I could have all my blog posts pulled into and then be able to push them out to other social networks that I am involved in. The problem here is that whenever one of my posts had apostrophes or periods in them, the social median site would push the link out with a bunch of junk characters in the title. This made the links very hard to read and pretty amateurish which is not what you want if you are trying to attract positive attention.
To their credit when I posted tweets about these issues, Jason Goldberg (the founder) DM'd me asking what was going on. I explained the issues I was having and it escalated into their support side. I then received and acknowledgement about how my issues could be significant to members but no follow up on a timeline to fix the issues. The suggestion I got was to rename my posts so that they weren't the same as any others.
All in all, I'm sure the site is useful to many people but these few issues are more than I am willing to put up with. There are just too many options for news aggregation and social networking/media.
So, with that being said...
Social Median is a site that is sort of a community based news aggregation portal. You can join in on news streams based on different topics that are posted by other members. You can setup your own feeds to be posted on the site and there is a follow system similar to that of Friend Feed and Twitter.
I used the site for awhile to get news on certain topics and to identify people that tended to post on topics that I like to follow. This feature set works well and I had no issue here. I wanted to use the site to pull in my blog entries and push them out to other sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. My issue was that if I happened to title one of my posts the same as some other site, my post would not get pulled into Social Median it would just link to the other post where ever that may have been. The most recent was a link that was supposed to go to my blog on wordpress.com but instead went to a page at the Nashville Post website. That is a deal breaker for a lot of bloggers that are trying to generate some exposure.
I also like the idea of being able to have one place where I could have all my blog posts pulled into and then be able to push them out to other social networks that I am involved in. The problem here is that whenever one of my posts had apostrophes or periods in them, the social median site would push the link out with a bunch of junk characters in the title. This made the links very hard to read and pretty amateurish which is not what you want if you are trying to attract positive attention.
To their credit when I posted tweets about these issues, Jason Goldberg (the founder) DM'd me asking what was going on. I explained the issues I was having and it escalated into their support side. I then received and acknowledgement about how my issues could be significant to members but no follow up on a timeline to fix the issues. The suggestion I got was to rename my posts so that they weren't the same as any others.
All in all, I'm sure the site is useful to many people but these few issues are more than I am willing to put up with. There are just too many options for news aggregation and social networking/media.
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