Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in jivasbarabbas' LiveJournal:

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Sunday, June 28th, 2009
12:43 am	2009 Summer Movies Part Deux As I mentioned in my last review, the movie I wanted to see first from the summer "block busters" was X-men Origins "Wolverine" but it was out of the theatres by the time we got out to see a movie.  I'm very happy I didn't pay good money to see this awful film.  I'm not going into any detail as to how I did see it, I will only say that I was able to see it for free and that was a blessing. Hugh Jackman is a VERY hunky man and I will see his movies regardless of how bad they might be.  He's also a very good actor and does a great job trying to save the dung heap they handed him with this movie, but in the end this was a really awful experience.  I'll get right to it with the scene where he and his wife are hanging out, drinking beer on the couch and getting all romantic.  She tells him a story about a mythical character who loved the moon spirit (or something like that) and was tricked by "the trickster" (loved that) into leaving the heavens to go pick flowers for his sweetie.  Not realizing he can't go back once he's here on Earth, he gets stuck howling at the moon every night.  Our movie hero laughs at this and says "sounds like coo coo cachoo got screwed."  See corrects him and says "His name was Coacuatchoo.  It means the wolverine."  Okey Dokey.  Anyone ever see a wolverine howl at the moon???  I haven't.  I've seen plenty of wolves do it and maybe a coyote or two, but no wolverines.  So, did the writers mistakenly re-cast Hugh's character as a wolf?  Or did they think the plural of wolf is wolverine?  Or maybe they just thought wolverine's howl.  Who knows, but goddamit it was STUPID scripting.  STOOOPID.  Just 'cause I'm a jackass, while we were watching the movie I started googling with my ATT Tilt to be sure I wasn't on drugs and sure enough, wolverines are not wolves nor do they howl at the moon.  See, this is a perfect example of how well this movie kept my attention.  In the first half hour I was more interested in the google hits I got and started reading the actual comics online instead of watching the film.  Not good. I will say this, Liev Schreiber surprised the hell out of me.  I remember his fresh faced, bespeckled, geeky, SKINNY body in "Sphere" and had a LOT of trouble tryiing to remember where I'd seen him before when he showed up in this movie.  WOW!  What a physical transformation!!  HE IS HUGE in this movie!  HUGE!  I really liked the evil, sort of fraternal twin thing going on between his character and Wolverine.  However I simply could NOT buy into him actually being Wolverine's brother and that he would one day turn into SABERTOOTH!  My god, the Sabertooth we see in the first film is so radically different and SO MUCH better played that what they did in this movie!  What were they thinking!?  A hulking, dark haired guy with mutton chops (which was kinda hot btw) mysteriously morphs into blond, metalhead, mute growler????  HOW and WHY did that occur???  It's just left out there hanging, like a drip of snot on the end of a hag's nose.  Did they writers for this movie even watch the first two films???  Nevermind that, I forgot...howling wolverines.  Jesus, IDIOTS!  And why didn't someone catch everything the planet has after seeing this movie??  Gawd. I'm glad we got to see Stryker's past and how he wound up the way he did, but their choice of actor was poor.  No way I'm buying the thin, tall handsome guy turns short, fat and bearded just because his wife dies, he hates his son and subsequently all mutants because his son is an evil mutant.  Nope.  BAD writing.  They should have had a different character pull Wolverine and his brother out of jail and make them do awful things and then we find out he works for Stryker and they insert deleted stuff from the first movie using the original Stryker.   That would have been smart.  Damn I wish they'd consulted me before filming. Nice to see Pippin again here.  That's really all that needs mentioning.  LOL.  Taylor Kitsch was lame in the Covenant, lame here too.  Ryan Reynolds needs to be beaten to death by someone.  Period.  I am SO SICK of his bullshit.  "Do you ever shut up?  No, I'm awake."  Best part of the movie was his stitched up mouth at the end.  HILARIOUS!  THANK YOU, they finally got one thing right with the movie but sadly it was in the last 10 minutes.  So funny..."Looks like Stryker finally found a way to keep him quiet."  LOVE IT!  The rest of the cast is a bunch of nobodies in a go nowhere film that should have been pulled faster than it was and buried in a DVD goof lockup somewhere bad movies go. The only truly great scene in the movie is the one they showed in the previews everywhere and on the TV spots...the helicopter scene.  That was great film making and I wish to hell the rest of the film was that good, but it wasn't. I give Xmen Origins "Wolverine" a big, fat F.  No?  Oh, alright a D for Dumb but at least they tried.  No wonder it was pulled so fast from the theatres.  I now understand. Current Music: Soundtrack to The Mission (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
1:01 am	2009 Summer Movies Part I My wife and I finally had a few minutes to ourselves and decided it was time to catch up on the summer movies.  Ideally I think we'd have seen Wolverine but that was already out of the theatres so we saw Star Trek.  Mind you I'm a HUGE trek fan and proud of it.  I once interrupted a formal dinner party to turn on the host's TV and watch the final episode of Deep Space Nine.  I really did!  It was never forgotten...possibly also never forgiven but I digress.  Star Trek has been out in the theatres for quite a long time by today's standards.  Seems these days 4 weeks is ancient history for a new movie release.  Star Trek is moving in on 2 months out in the theatres but judging by the rather sparse crowd in last night's theatre (maybe 20 people at most) that mark is going to be very hard to hit.  Still, not a bad run for one of the Summer's reputed "block busters". As for the movie itself, well...I was left wanting.  Alright, now I understand all of the folks who accepted a role in this film had GIGANTIC shoes to fill but still, some of the casting picks were just insanely stupid.  Winona Rider as Spock's mother?  Jesus Christ, what a travesty.  Winona Rider has this strange, well, "lisp" if  you will when she speaks.  It's all words with an "s" in them.  When she pronounces an "s", her mouth makes this loud, ear piercing whistle sound and she's been doing it her entire adult life.  It's missing in some early works of hers like in Mermaids, but one day it just appeared and I don't know whether it's an affectation she created to distinguish herself but in any case she needs to either drop it or have her teeth ground down until it's gone because it's KILLING ME!  As soon as I hear it, the sound travels up my spine and into my head, literally causing me to shudder.  So when the hood came loose and I saw it was her, I literally said "no fucking way" and instead of being chastized by fellow moviegoers, I got several grumbles of approval.  There is no way on God's green Earth that she should have gotten that role.  She must have taken it in the rear end by at least 12 people to have gotten that role.  But enough about that.  Really bad pick there.  Next, Simon Pegg as SCOTTY?  No way!  The man who brought us Shawn of the Dead sticks his bloody gob in yet another place it does NOT belong.  Doesn't this guy have enough recent work behind him already?  I'm actually really burned out on his antics and he literally put a bullet in the memory of Montgomery Scott with his portrayal of Star Trek's most beloved, alcoholic engineer.  That call by the producers of this film was criminal and permanently reduced the best possible grade I'd give this film to a B-.  Last, I was disappointed by the choice of Eric Bana to play the role of the bad guy.  Eric's work in Hulk and Munich was quite good and I think he has a place in certain movies but this wasn't one of them.  His choice of character reminded me of something Corey Haim would have done and he strangely resembled him even through the limited and cheesy makeup.  Blech. Moving right along, let's talk special effects.  Right from the beginning of the movie, a med tech delivering baby James T. Kirk was made to appear "alien" by using the same effect they use in kids' commercials to make eyes bulge, tongues poke out and all that other nonsense.  In fact it almost looked exactly like someone applied a Photoshop Distort filter.  One of the women in the audience actually burst out laughing after seeing the med tech's eyes.  It was such a BAD effect...so very bad....laughably bad.  This set a bad tone for the remainder of the film.  The CGI used to create alien life forms was just awful and the costume effects were even worse.  Simon Pegg was given some sort of reptile assistant/pet to work with (maybe to bring in some british humour from like Red Dwarf??) and it was instantly annoying.  Hated it.  The Romulans are supposed to be cousins of the Vulcans and instead looked like skin head thugs with a large, penis shaped ship.  Led by "Eric Haim" with stupid tattoos obviously used to drag in the 14-17 year old crowd...it was hugely disappointing.  Boo, Hiss! Now it wasn't ALL bad (though some die hard trekkies might lead you to believe that) so I guess I'll move onto the good stuff.  Karl Urban has NEVER turned in a bad performance.  Not ever.  He made "Doom" watchable.  His excellence is only outdone by his versatility.  He was spot on, the best Bones anyone ever ever could have been.  If DeForest Kelley were still alive, he'd have wept with joy at Urban's performance.  He was funny, genuine and just perfect.  He made this movie watchable too.  Zachary Quinto needs a nose-job...BAD.  Had he done that before putting on the ears to play Spock, he'd have succeeded.  However he didn't and that huge, bulbous honker of his really distracted me and made the new Spock rather difficult to watch.  HOWEVER, his love affair with the smoking-screaming-pants disintegrating Zoe Saldana as Uhura more than made up for that.  On my GOD is Zoe Saldana HOT!!!  HOT HOT HOT!! LOL!  I can't say that enough.  DAMN SHE'S HOT!!!!!!!!  *giggle*  That kept the grade for this movie at a solid B- and prevented it from dropping any lower.  As Uhura she was just amazing and added some incredible "dimensions" to the character.  It's critical to mention that without the legendary work of Nichelle Nichols, who helped open the door for credible roles for black actresses, Zoe might never have had the opportunity to play a great role like Uhura and I wish someone had found the fountain of youth so Nichelle could have reprised the role.  For a person of her years, she is STILL HOT though!  I love that woman, and I always will.  Fresh faced Anton Yelchin brought us a new and desperately needed Chekov and, frankly, I like him much better than his predecessor.  He was GREAT and I loved the script written for him.  Just neat.  Last but not least, poor poor Chris Pine got saddled with the task of filling William Shatner's shoes.   God will never create the being capable of doing that...so I'm not even going to bother critiquing Chris Pine's attempt.  What I will say is that he did a good job of trying to make Captain Kirk his own.  He did some good work keeping the essence of the original Kirk character and a great job of saying "alright, enough is enough...I did Shatner for 10 minutes, now here's how I'm going to do Kirk". The plot on the whole was OK.  Certainly better than some of the original Star Trek movie attempts.  I was pleased they created the opportunity for an entirely different Star Trek experience via the tried and true "spatial anomoly" creating an entirely new timeline by the introduction of accidental time travel.  "OOPS!  We slogged into the past and screwed it all up".  OK OK, they had to get that done somehow and this was such an obvious and lazy method, but it got the job done and let us move on with the character development and story AND gave us back our one favourite, original character - Leonard Nimoy's Spock.  Damn he looks good for 78!  He's gonna be 80 in 2 years and looks 60!  Seriously!  Shatner really needs to hook up with him more often and get some of whatever Nimoy's taking.  Anyway, old cranky voice and all, I was just thrilled to have the Spock I will always remember back up there on the big screen.  It was the crowning achievement for this film and I sincerely hope the Academy gives him an Oscar nod for it.  The story at times did get my heart racing, made me laugh a good deal, mostly kept my attention and did a decent job setting the stage for sequels.  Compared to the "Superman is Back" experience, this was akin to watching the Fight Club for the first time - confusing, a little difficult to buy into, but not awful. Final Grade - B- Current Mood: good Current Music: the sound of my air conditioner (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
3:06 pm	Windows 7. Jesus Christ, will Microsoft EVER get ANYTHING right??? So I downloaded Windows 7 RC1 and tossed it on a spare hard drive to see what's up.  WinDose 7 has been in the works for a LONG time now and is supposed to be Microsoft's apology for Vista (kind of like XP SP1 and SP2 were apologies for XP in its original state).  I'll save any possible readers a lot of time right now and tell everyone I'm keeping my XP machine.  If that's all you wanted to know (should I still stay with XP?), then the answer is a resounding YES!  For God's sake...keep at least ONE XP machine in your house.  Trust me, you'll be glad you did. Previously I posted about how bad Vista is.  I'll admit right here and now that I'm writing this post on a Vista machine!  Just installed SP2 in fact.  It was my hope that Microsoft actually fixed the problem with their RSS feeds not updating properly.  It didn't, despite claims right there in the release notes that it did!  Vista is just SOOOO horrible.  I get lockups so frequently, it's scary and they come without warning and robs you of all your work.  Mind you, I have actually chosen to send them error reports in the hope of a fix, but gave up on that after nothing got done.  So WHY am I typing this on a Vista machine?  Because HP, Dell and everyone else are in bed with Microsoft (literally, I hear skin friction) and they FORCE you to get Vista with their new systems.  Want a new laptop?  You HAVE to get Vista.  I even asked the kid at Best Buy "Can I have XP with this?"  'No, there's no compatible firmware with the hardware'.  Over time that changed and firmware and drivers did slowly appear for my system.  But they're only 80% compatible.  Audio is the biggest problem as the audio and modem hardware are now a single piece of hardware on the motherboard.  WHO DESIGNS THESE THINGS???  The MODEM and the AUDIO are slapped together???  WHY for God's sake?  I'll buy the ethernet and modem together.  That's fine.  But modem and audio???  Anyway, the XP driver that works causes the modem to go wonky or the audio to not work or the headphone jack to work without shutting off the speakers or the microphone doesn't work at all...etc etc etc.  The wireless light stays yellow and never goes blue so you don't know if you're ACTUALLY disabled or not.  Basically you CAN go XP if you want, but you sacrifice a lot.  So WHY aren't the hardware folks providing drivers for XP AND Vista?  Money.  They get an assload of money IF they play ball and go Vista.  Otherwise, they get shit and that's something consumers should have pushed back on more.  Some did, mind you and eventually force HP and Dell (especially Dell) to provide XP fallback disks and firmware/drivers for XP if the customer HATED Vista (which most did) but with each generation of machine that comes out, that fallback position gets weaker and weaker.  So bad, in fact, that Ubuntu is now making major headway as the Vista alternative.  Yep.  People will go to great lengths and learn Linux rather than adopt Vista.  I love that.  The result?  Microsoft can only claim a 25% adoption rate of Vista and that figure is SUCH a lie.  Actual upgrades from XP to Vista cannot exceed 5%, they can't.  The other 20% are people who get new hardware because they HAVE to get Vista with it.  Period.  End of story.  Vista is an abortion and Microsoft KNOWS IT.  So what are they doing?  They're hammering their engineers, HAMMERING THEM to get Windows 7 out NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW.  They want to sell it at Christmas.  "Here's our next piece of shit!  BUY IT PLEASE!!!"  Ok, I'm game...I downloaded your Release Candidate 1 and all the updates.  My results??  Well if you've made it this far, you're a masochist, but OK...I'll list my results as only a masochist would want to upgrade to Windows 7.  Seriously. We'll begin with the total and complete lack of hardware support.  Following right on the heels of Vista's 5% adoption rate due to lack of hardware support for legacy systems, with the 64 bit system most painfully lacking ANY drivers - even for PRINTERS, Windows 7 will be Microsoft's next push to keep the planet from using ANY hardware that isn't signed off on by the RIAA, MPAA and other major contributors to Microsoft's bottom line.  My Soundblaster Live 5.1 card was dead from the moment the drive came up.  DEAD.  Worked fine with XP.  Worked fine with Vista.  Worked fine with Ubuntu.  But as soon as Windows 7 came up...WHAM!  No sound.  I'm already unimpressed.  Next...my ATI Radeon card functioned fine as a VGA device, but could not render any 3D imaging.  What's going ON??  Well Microsoft, who used to LOVE Creative and made sure the Soundblasters worked out of the box starting with Windows 3.1, but ever since those damned MP3 files came out, the love between Microsoft and Creative was lost.  WHY?  Because Creative KNOWS its customer base and refused to nuke technology like recording "What you hear" and so forth and it has cost them DEARLY.  I don't know of a motherboard manufacturer that utilizes Creative's decades of audio experience to create on-board hardware/firmware to give end-users Soundblaster technology without having to plug in a card or external device and that's really sad.  So they sit, off to the side, watching PC/Laptop technology evolve so quickly that you can't get laptop with an expansion slot for different audio or video.  You get what you get and you better like it or get something else.  Oh, you COULD get USB technology for an external sound device (and I did) but that's a goddamned pain in the ass.  Works GREAT if you have a docking station for your laptop at home and you use it for multimedia...but as for portability, creative has missed a boat that sailed 10 years ago.  They're trying to make it up with MP3 players and all kinds of other stuff, but it's just not the same. I want  CREATIVE technology in EVERY machine I use!  Period.  My ATI card has video passthrough technology...and that's also a no no so NO drivers for that either!  Guess I'll have to use something else that's "Windows 7 Certified".  Now, on to the O/S itself.  Wow.  Talk about underdeveloped.  You know what I'm seeing with each generation of O/S that comes from Microsoft?  Less and Less and Less advanced functionality for the user.  And it all gets back to this itch Microsoft can't scratch...how to keep the end user as "stupid" as possible.  The control panel is absolutely naked.  I can't do a thing with it.  I looked EVERYWHERE for that "Classic Control Panel" button but it's nowhere to be found.  I'm assuming there's a setting I need to put in the registry or whatever...it's just...you know what?  I gave up there I think.  I said to myself "is this worth looking at any further?" and the answer was a resounding NO. Windows 7 RC1 sucks ass and if this is their RELEASE CANDIDATE and they want a production retail run by Christmas????  COUNT ME OUT.  No Windows 7 for me.  No Vista if I can at all avoid it (which is getting really hard to do).  I'm STAYING with XP SP3 on every single machine I squeeze it into.  Forever and ever and ever and ever.  WHY?  Because it WORKS.  Because it has FUNCTIONALITY I CAN USE!  Because it was released only 8 years ago (can you believe that?  October 2001...wow)  and after like 6 years, they FINALLY got it right and that's why people LOVE IT and want to STAY WITH IT!  You know what the smartest thing Microsoft could do right now??  Put Windows 7 back on the shelf and find a way to integrate the good stuff from Vista (like the visual experience, which really is pretty slick even though it's a MAC rip off) back into XP and release something like XSTA.  LOL.  Wait...that's a kick ass idea.  HEY, MICROSOFT...gimme XSTA! Current Mood: busy Current Music: Soundtrack to Lord of the Rings (Comment on this)
1:17 pm	Wow, it's been a long time since I updated this.... I've been keeping a more personal account of the progress of my illness and my attempt to find some semblance of normalcy.  I haven't done so well.  Got a new hip on the left side but that didn't do shit.  I had expected at least SOME relief from pain in that area, but it didn't make an ounce of difference, which has baffled every one of my doctors.  I now have an dermatologist, allergist, an ENT surgeon, a rheumatologist, neurologist, endocrinologist, orthopaedic surgeon, THE fibromyalgia specialist on the PLANET (Dr. Goldenberg) and a pain management specialist.  The official diagnosis is an auto-immune disorder causing avascular necrosis, rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia (which is just a fancy name for chronic pain).  I've probably mentioned this piecemeal (over and over again) as my memory is about as reliable as our recently retired 1999 Saturn, but as this is the official, final diagnosis and I wanted it all in one place...there it is. The prognosis is poor and my rheumagologist (who's been crippled by RA and is in a wheel chair) told me it's time to "suck it up and just deal with it".  So I've learned to just "suck it up".  I take massive doses of anti-inflammatory medication every day to keep my joints from becoming deformed and that at least is working for me.  To date, my hands have been completely spared the massive deformity that can come from RA and my mobility is akin to an 80 year old man....not kidding.  My toes are another story but they've been broken so many times that really isn't a surprise and the new shape is probably an improvement.  :)  My long bones will simply have to be fixed surgically one by one as they fail.  My right hip is right on the edge, but I don't want the surgery until total collapse because the last replacement was a living hell for 3 months.  My shoulders have no natural anti-friction material left and have "fused" into a less mobile joint, but I still have decent range of motion, despite a good deal of cracking and popping.  My knees are going too..and my ankles...but nice and slow and that's the way I like it.  Ow...just shifted my right arm to move the mouse and the pain went right from my shoulder, down my back and into my hip.  And so begins my day... Pain control is managed with methadone.  A lovely little pill.  I was on 15 mg a day but got myself down to 10.  Although it's a potent pain killer...it coats and reshapes all of your brains receptors so they lose their ability to process natural endorphines.  The result is you evenually become a legal drug addict.  It's much, much more than that though.  In lieu of the natural mood and comfort hormones in your body, you become completely and totally numb to anything resembling emotion.  I am neither happy nor sad nor anything really for almost all of the day.  When I first awake at noon or so (my med coctail causes severe sleep disturbance and noon is actually good for me), I'm in agony but actually FEEL something and it's usually pretty good.  So I take my first round of meds and can actually see that feeling ebb away and into nothingness until I look in the mirror and see a stranger there.  But there's balance I guess.  After that I can start actually doing stuff around the house and get a little work done here and there.  It's not so bad...I just miss the highs and lows of normal existence. At last half of my pain sensation is caused by the auto-immune disorder.  It's not actual joint pain that makes my life without medication intolerable, I have pain EVERYWHERE.  It's in my bones, my muscles, my teeth, everywhere and it's all day, every day.  NO relief ever.  I'm trying a trial of Lyrica for that.  It's supposed to really help with fibromyalgia and it does make a difference, just not as much as I'd hoped. Aside from the pain, my body has done simply awful things over the years to itself.  An inner ear skin growth called a cholesteatoma destroyed my entire left ear.  I had to have it gutted and the inner ear bones were replaced with a ceramic prosthesis.  It never healed properly and I wrestle with chronic bacterial and fungal infections that have begun to migrate to other areas due to drug resistance.  Because of my altered immunity I am now allergic to most medications as well and that is what will likely kill me in the end.  That or my rapidly clogging arteries.  Anti-inflammatory medications, all of them, over time do that.  In my case it's nice n slow, but it's begun to manifest in funky chest pains and shortness of breath from time to time.  Celebrex definitely did the most damage.  I alternate that with Lodine to minimize and slow the damage.  The allergy problem is more urgent however.  During a recent episode where my eyes swelled shut, I was in the ER and got an IV push of prednisone...which I had an allergic reaction to!  See, what's really awful there is...prednisone is a steroid USED TO TREAT ALLERGIC REACTIONS!  That's a very new development.  I've taken that medication 3 times before without incident..but that was 10 years ago and that's one of the bellweathers for my illness' progression.  If I'm now allergic to steroidal antihistamine control, that's bad.  Really bad.  I'm going in for a full barrage of tests next month to find a medication I can use for emergencies.  They may simply have to use the medication to control the symptoms and simultaneously treat me for the allergic reaction to the anti-allergy medication, which will get extremely ugly.  The reaction to the prednisone was what they call erythema multiforme.  Neck to knees, red blistering rash covering every inch of skin.  SO ITCHY!  Had they used even a tiny bit higher dosage, I probably wouldn't be here as my skin would have fallen off.  Yeah...fallen off.  Steven-Johnson syndrome they call it.  Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis.  Joy.  Google just the images of that.  If I hadn't been in the ER at the time of treatment...holy shit. Anyway, that's that and I think that's all I'm gonna say about that moving forward.  I'm fucking sick and it's going to fucking kill me some day.  I was very seriously considering hastening that process but a couple of reasons have kept me from pursuing that (my kids).  I have chosen instead to "suck it up" and let the disease take me instead.  They're getting bigger now, and they know what's coming, but they know it doesn't have to be today or tomorrow or even next month.  So we make every passing birthday, thanksgiving, christmas etc as special as possible...since the next one may or may not come.  My best friend in the universe keeps telling me I'll outlive him and everyone else.  He's a liar, but a damned good one.  I don't think this is the year.  Nothing's that bad right now.  But I see darkness next year.  Darker than I've ever seen.  I think it was that last ER visit.  Time's up.  I'm going to create a special post that will only appear after that happens.  Look for it if you want, or don't.  Who cares about this crap anyway,eh?  Until then though...let's live a little and see what's going on out there.  That's where my next post will pick up and we'll just go from there. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
3:17 pm	World's First Watch Made From Dead People   Here for your bemusement is the world's first watch made from actual dead people.  OK, to be fair, it's not made from the dead persons themselves but rather from their metal tomb.  Tastelessly entitled "Titanic DNA" - this watch, with its tell tale pitted appearance, is made from the actual hull of the Titanic.  That's right - the actual hull from the ship where one thousand five hundred and twenty-two passengers and crew were lost to the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean in the year 1912.  It's beyond comprehension.  I don't know who sickens me more - the man that made it and those involved with material procurement or the people who are buying it.  Price tagged in the thousands, purportedly hundreds of thousands of dollars, this is surely coveted by people who do things like eat monkey brains and condor eggs and go on hunting expeditions for various human  minorities.  Scoop yours up now before the rare, precious metal runs out!  While you're at it, buy some coins made from the twin towers of the ill-fated World Trade Center.  I hear you can find actual pieces of hair and bone in those. Current Mood: cranky Current Music: Portal ending theme (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
11:23 pm	"FUCK HIM!" I'm listening to the McCain concession speech right now and I distinctly heard at the VERY BEGINNING, right after he stated Obama had won.... "FUCK HIM!!!" from someone right near the mic in the very front of the audience. HOLY CRAP!! Live TV is a bitch. I find it very amusing that we see who his supporters really are...or were I can say now. hee hee hee Vote for McCain because if you don't... "FUCK YOU!" No...Fuck YOU you red-necked, racist, illiterate SCUMBAG. Goddamn we are blessed tonight. THANK YOU AMERICA!! You finally woke up. Current Mood: jubilant Current Music: WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS (not) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
10:03 pm	It just never stops More viral videos to tantalize your soul....or save it...or damn it forever in the firey burning pit of HELL! It's all your point of view I guess: "He touched me deep inside"....that really creeped me out. There's a lyric that SHOULD BE "even if I'm gay" and I leave that to you where it should be put. OK, moving right along, this one actually hit The Soup too (during their mail bag section) but I want it here for posterity: So there you go. More proof that religion causes SERIOUS brain damage. SERIOUS! And that's that. Current Music: Negativland - Christianity is Stupid (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
11:06 am	Google Privacy Policy Reaches New LOW I have been a huge Google fan for years.  I love the speed, flexibility and openness of almost everything they do.  I REALLY love their new mobile phone software and have, until now, aggressively advocated for them to get a chunk of airwaves and start their own cell business.  It's really a great place for them to branch out and get more brick and mortar traction to validate their ginormous stock price.  My active promotion there is now on hold though as the result of a recent product release by Google.  Read on! For the past couple of years, I've been increasingly worried about Google's corporate philosophy and attitude towards customer privacy issues.  Sites like Scroogle have been digging into these issues and have found things that are so stomach turning they've gathered a rather large, angry mob of "google-bashing" neophytes.  The 2038 "perpetual cookie" Google has been storing on its servers is one glaring example of how excessive Google has become in the area of data mining.  I mean, seriously, 30 years from now, how many people who originally shopped online for shoes are going to be dead??  Are ANY of the eStores that they visited going to be in existence?  NO!  So why keep data for such an obscene length of time???  One has to wonder quite seriously if Google is in bed with Big Brother as much as the Scroogle-ite Paranoids would like us to believe.  I'm beginning to take "Do No Evil" with more than a grain of salt.  More like a truck load of it. The proverbial straw on the camel's back came in the form of Google Chrome.  On the surface, Chrome had such promise.  A real, 100% Google browser, WOW!  I was excited...until I read the EULA I had to agree to.  It was then that my love of Google turned to a psychology of sad, painful loss.  Let's take a look at the offending text (which has already been modified due to public outcry):   By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. That means everything I have written here, even if I lock it down with non-public "me only" read permissions, is available for Google to publish anywhere they wish at any time and can even be modified to say whatever they want it to say!  That's not crossing the line of privacy invasion, that's spitting, pissing and shitting on the line and then looking back at it with disdain as you skip forward gleeishly with horns beginning to appear on your forehead.  It's EVIL!  Keep in mind people, that their Picasa picture storage product HAS EXACTLY THE SAME EULA!!!  I'll bet you didn't know that!  I did, because I read every single EULA I agree to....every word.  That said, I really didn't care so much about my vacation photos ending up somewhere else in cyberspace...that's cool.  I'm proud of the pictures I publish...I'd actually like to be discovered as a great amateur photographer.  But pictures with my kids are a different story.  Those NEED my permission for them to do anything with them and they know that.  It's not written into their EULA however they've not crossed that line ever to my knowledge as, again, that's image law 101.  The moment they do however, I will slap them with a class action lawsuit so huge they'll never recover.  If anyone over there is reading this....I'd post that on the fridge in your 3 billion dollar kitchen.  Don't fuck with me here...or I WILL BURY YOU...all these pictures are yours except my kids...DO NOT APPROACH.  [2010 was such a good movie.  :) ] As I said above, they've modified the Chrome EULA (and possibly Picasa too - haven't checked yet) to say "You  retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services."  Now on the face of it, that's better.  However if you read the fine print there, they're still STORING THAT INFORMATION ON THEIR SERVERS, even if they can't use it NOW for commercial interests!!!  I'm sorry Google, but the correct thing to do here, the ONLY thing that will ever allow me to trust you again and possibly use your new browser, is to shut off ALL DATA COLLECTION except that which is necessary for me to end up on the landing page of the URL I requested.  And even that should be purged from your servers within 2 weeks.  There is no commercial application of the data beyond that point.  You already have Ad Words everywhere to send me the correct Ad data...let that be enough please. I used to use Google toolbar primarily for the Popup Blocker functionality.  I've had to uninstall that now because I just don't trust them to perform my searches and do so with my privacy foremost in their mind.  I guess I'd be cool if they kept anonymous, aggregate data from the toolbar, but they don't and show no signs of heading in that direction ever. The point I'm getting to here, the one I want them to really understand at Google Corp Headquarters, is...GOOGLE IS LOSING IT'S COOL!  Your street cred is really beginning to suffer and even the diehard Google lovers are now thinking twice about what they've invested your  technology and whether Google is even a safe network/product line any more.  All it would take is ONE bad employee over there and the damage to the PLANET would be irrepairable.  There's too much really personal, private data stored on poorly secured servers and the stated goal of storing the data to begin with is to " reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit".  That's some pretty scary shit, Google.  Enough is Enough.  Time to delete all those 2038 expiration date cookies, time to shut off the Chrome data mining and time to collect only anonymous, aggregate data from the toolbar.  It's 2008, we're all smart enough now to actually READ EULAs and we're online savvy enough to know that you have no business invading our privacy just so the accuracy of your ad targeting can go up by a fraction of a percentage point.  ENOUGH! M'kay..that's my rant for today. Current Mood: pessimistic Current Music: Negativland - Christianity is Stupid.mp3 (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
9:17 pm	Welcome to Fascist America!! I don't recall any mass arrests at the DNC...apparently the RNC decided they'd kick it up a notch by starting off their convention in true, blue style. Arrest all the hippies despite the fact that no one had committed any crime (they're all very well respected journalists in fact), do so without the benefit of a warrant, seize all computer and recording equipment without a subpoena and generally force the police into a position whereby they all make gigantic asses of themselves. I have to say though - at least they were fairly polite asses. Here...check out the AP press release for these stories and more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hksHDv1i55R2qYI6dkmMm10uxZ0AD92UQ8TG0 Here, watch the illegal arrest of some iWitness journalists too:   It was nice to see some folks finally sick of Bush Era politics truly take it to the streets:  Some turn violent in march to GOP convention I can't take another 4 years of this shit...I like McCain, I even think he's probably the better candidate...but he's lost my vote, man.  THIS is how you start off your convention???  FUCK YOU!!!  Obama in '08.  All they peaceful way.  January just cannot come soon enough.   Current Mood: pissed off Current Music: William S Burroughs - Dead City Poets "Naked Lunch Excerpts" (Comment on this)
Friday, August 29th, 2008
8:56 pm	I love a guy with too much time on his hands... Heard of Orange Box?? It's a compilation of aging but still fun games like Half Life2, Team Fortress and Portal, all packed into a massive DVD box set. Well as we all know, as the games age and the same old missions get hella boring, inevitably folks start writing mods that keep the tradition alive. I've played literally about a thousand mods from the Original Quake, Descent etc all the way up to Doom 3 and its ilk. They sometimes wow me and other times make me wonder what the author was thinking. What follows is perhaps the best written mod I've ever seen in my life and possibly the funniest...to the guy who wrote it, seriously, you have the most amazing coding skills I have EVER seen and I've seen a lot of code. Without further ado - folks, PLEASEcheck this out and PLEASE make sure you're not within eye shot of your boss or your kids - it's for grown ups in the privacy of their home only. ENJOY! (and let me know what you think) Current Music: Einstürzende Neubauten - Nagorny Karabach.mp3 (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
1:00 pm	Really nice ad blocker - KH Blocker I wanted to have it mentioned somewhere here on the net that there's a really cool banner ad, javascript ad, flash ad etc blocking package out there called KH Blocker. If you haven't tried it yet, I STRONGLY recommend that you do! It's totally free, TINY and has a footprint so quiet you'll literally forget it's there sometimes and wonder what happened to all those annoying ads like the one where you're supposed to smack a mosquito...God I HATED that one so much!! Anyway, I've used it for almost 3 years now and have recently noticed an up-tick on the number of folks suffering from the barrage of ads that appear on literally every page now while I surf happily along without the same nuisance. I'm not against advertising on your page, that's cool, I know many of you make some nice extra change with them floating around on your page. The problem is the sheer volume of ads many of you use now (taking up as much as half the page - no lie!) and the content. See, when I go to visit my favorite news, music or video site and all over the sides are scantily clad women and/or men doing whatever on their bedspread while supposedly chatting away on their computer....and my KIDS sit down next to me and say "Daddy, what are you doing???" - it's a bad moment for me. I won't even mention my favorite...erm..."acquisition" sites and the content they have there. Good gawd, I wouldn't send my brother there and he's a real pervert! LOL!! Again, I know you gotta pay for the web space and hosting somehow and if ads do it for ya, then go to it! But I simply can't have it visible on my pc any more and I'm NOT clicking on ads for anyone only to be inundated with spyware and trojans any more. Not gonna happen. So BYE BYE ads, thanks to KH Blocker. Please, for heaven's sakes don't pay for that service either. It's a simple matter of selective java script and flash blocking by looking at the referring URL...you can do that yourself with simple browser settings and controls set in your hosts file. But it's really handy to have a package handle that for you automatically - hence I'm giving you a recommendation. And NO, no one paid me to say all these nice things. I just thought the author was WAY overdue for some kudos...and here it is. That is all. Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: LOTR sound track (Comment on this)
12:05 pm	Vista SUCKS, as predicted... So I decided to get myself a toy this year to compliment my outgoing personality. I finally bought a laptop so I could GET OUT OF THIS FRIKKIN' HOUSE! :) My initial choice was a cheapo dealie from our local Best Buy, but the kid working the Computer section on the day I visited read me like a book! "Dude, this thing is going to make you miserable...you're a gamer, aren't you???" Indeed I am. I live on video sites too...so the stock graphics chip on the low end crud box I set my sights on wouldn't have been able to run jack. For an extra Ben Franklin, I got myself the newest Presario Notebook and I have to say, I got a nice toy for the most part. It needs more memory, hard drive space etc...but for an off the shelf experience this was initially happy one to be sure. It's got an AMD Turion 64X2 chip in it with Nvidia graphics and a blazing wifi card....and I was happy happy happy until... I'm happily working away one day and got a request to do some audio processing for some folks. I have my machine with me and THOUGHT I was about to dazzle everyone with my mad skills. See at home I've got a Linux box now with some VERY slick software a la Ubuntu Studio and my old XP machine is simply a huge ass audio/visual production studio now. I'd moved a bunch of stuff onto the new machine and trusted my 20 some odd years in tech support would allow me to get 99% of it working with Vista, which was my ONLY choice for an O/S on this new machine as XP isn't even a choice due to non-existent drivers for some of the new hardware (audio and modem on a single chip??? What an ODD design!) and a dual boot Linux attempt nearly melted the PC speakers with a faulty firmware package. Anyway, I installed the requisite software for my immediate needs and went to work my magic, only to find THERE IS NO AUDIO CAPTURE FUNCTIONALITY AT ALL...zero, zilch...NOTHING. Panic and sweat ensue and I excuse myself so I can be humiliated elsewhere. I hit our local Panera and begin Googling while sipping on a hot cinnamon coffee dealie...and find the root cause. Microsoft in Conjunction with HP apparently forced Conexant to release an audio driver that only provides OUTPUT with their new SmartAudio hardware, all other functionality deliberately prevented. The only audio input is routed through two condenser mics on the screen and a mic jack on the front that is so badly compressed it can't possibly be used for anything other than voice recording. If you tear apart the software and the various installs available from all 3 providers, you can physically see the Stereo Mixer functionality RIGHT THERE, ready to use...but disabled in so many places I couldn't get it to work even with some home made DLLs and whatnot. I found during some trials with other 3rd party drivers the Sony Vaios are even more hobbled - Sony's answer to the rootkit fiasco when they first tried to shut down home audio processing "Just turn it off before they even get their new machines home - that'll fix 'em". So my earlier rants about Vista taking away our personal liberties have all come true...I'm living the nightmare. Vista is three thousand steps backwards from XP, it's Big Brother telling me what I can and cannot do with equipment I BOUGHT with my hard earned money and use in the privacy of my own home. The real bitch of it is, I can't just pop in another audio card and move on with my life...it's the Brave New World..everything on board with a single firmware source controlling multiple pieces of functionality...screw with one too much and you may nuke your entire machine. So I have buyer's regret now. Well, not totally. I mean, for a good amount of stuff I do, this fits the bill well and there is some slickness to be sure. But this bullshit with audio capture and processing being shut off has GOT TO GO!! To HP, SHAME ON YOU for participating in this nonsense, I thought more of you. To Microsoft - suck it, I'm all Linux from now on and you can take my XP machine from me when I'm dead and cold. Hell, I've still got two Windows 3.11 machines running! As well as Win95, Win98 and Win2000 machines fully functional. hee hee hee I've got the Museum of Windows over here!! And they ALL RUN BETTER THAN VISTA!! To all of you in the market for new machines moving forward, LOOK CAREFULLY at what the manufacturer has hobbled before you buy....and write reviews of your experience on the appropriate websites so the rest of us can more readily determine what our real choices are. It is my hope that with enough buyer boycott of machines thusly disabled, we can force manufacturers into smarter decisions. Hell, Dell already caved and released updated drivers which re-enable the audio capture on their new machines...let's please get everyone else to follow suit. Current Mood: bitchy Current Music: Lord of the Rings soundtrack (Comment on this)
Friday, June 13th, 2008
7:07 pm	I'm voting REPUBLICAN!! *snark snark* (Comment on this)
Friday, June 6th, 2008
8:39 am	Everyone sucks and I hate you for it P eople in general today are complete douchebags.  I'm not talking about everyone, but 99.9% of people are just a bag of old, rotten nuts walking around without purpose and would serve humanity better by turning off all their CO2 detectors and leave their SUV's running in the garage underneath the house. Bystanders Ignore Hit and Run Victim  Click to see the article.   I've watched the video of those ass-faces repeatedly and it makes me SICK!  What if that were my kids??  OR ME!??  The only thing keeping me from the grave right now is a 6 inch piece of nanotube material.  LOL  But seriously, what if that was me!?  I stroke out, plop to the ground...and promptly watch an entire city populus walk by and do NOTHING!!  NOTHING!!!!!  What if that was YOUR loved one?? You all suck.  I hope you die, you miserable pieces of mass consuming, apathetic, junk eating, pop media worshiping, global warming, gas guzzling, got no education and NO BRAINS shit bags.  Yeah - YOU!!!!!!!!!! Current Mood: MegaPissed Current Music: Gang of 4 - To Hell with Poverty (Comment on this)
Friday, November 30th, 2007
8:27 pm	Google Cache is a WONDERFUL THING! As is the Wayback Machine and all the other resources that guarantee you can always find exactly what you're looking for - even when folks go to great lengths to erase information they probably shouldn't have put on the internet to begin with.  One word - Euclid.  Ok...maybe 3 more but I don't feel good and I'm tired and just can't be bothered right now... By the way - don't EVER hire a recovering alcoholic/pill-addict to be your carpenter... the net result is unpleasant and the job takes forever to reach unpleasant.  It's like the worst sex you've ever had...except they don't leave 30 minutes later....and they keep coming back every day and make you relive the same nightmare over and over and over and over and you actually have to PAY THEM for the priviledge!  It's like some kind of hellish prostitution but with no discernable orgasm on the horizon...ever...and in the end it's actually YOU who has to take it up the ass repeatedly.  Oh GOD...when will it end! Last thought for today...appearances are unbelievably deceiving.  When I saw this, I thought..."good God, what a magnificent creature!  What cruel twist of fate has left me without ever experiencing the sweet nectar of this heavenly flower?!"  Then I saw this and I threw up in my mouth a little and nearly developed permanent ED and then read the correlating blog and soiled myself to an obscene extent.  Beauty really is skin deep...dumb and useless go all the way to the bone.  Moreover...it appears in a VERY short time beauty turned into a beast anyway...there's GOT to be at LEAST another 20 pounds on that heffer now.  Looks like a gerbil with sausages for fingers.  DAMN!  Current Mood: uncomfortable Current Music: Reality Control - The Law (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007
9:23 pm	Today was a Good Day A recent discovery brought me a refreshing breeze of inner peace that was long overdue.  As a result, I have restarted an exercize I performed long ago to help contain the crippling pain of migraine headaches - Chakra Meditation.  As I have apparently reached the end of line with regards to medical treatment for my Rheumatoid Arthritis, Fibromyalgia and Avascular Necrosis - I am placing a good deal of faith now in my mind and body to maintain if not heal itself and Chakra Meditation is a route that was incredibly helpful in the past.  As I write this, the warmth has returned to my hands and the pain behind my eyes has melted away. Today was a Good Day. At last I have made sense of it all.... U Lose  NOT I Current Mood: peaceful Current Music: Ben Scott & Christa Michell - Solar Plexus Chakra-Empowerment (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007
5:26 pm	Cape Cod Vacation (Updated with PeekChurs) We had some spare time on our hands so got a roof-rack storage thingy, tents, sleeping bags, stove and all the other camping necessities and headed out for Shawme-Crowell State Forest for a 5 day camping experience.  Along the way, we stopped off at Battleship Cove and saw the big BIG ships.  I only made it through 2 of them before I had to call it quits (right hip is going fast) but it was really a LOT of fun.  They had helicopters and planes and all kinds of other war memorabilia as well.  Kids had a GREAT time. Our first night camping was spectacular also.  Nice n warm, not too humid, great night to sleep out in the woods.  Day 2 did not go as well; however, and it rained and Rained and RAINED...right from the get-go.  Libs woke up and (God Bless Her) tried to fake her way through it and cooked breakfast IN THE RAIN and even made coffee to boot.  She deserves an Academy Award AND a Nobel Prize for what she did that morning...but, alas, the day overtook all our spirits.  So we hopped into the car and headed for......Walmart.  LOL!  We seriously underestimated what our needs and would have had to make the trip anyway (the bugs were ferocious and we were armed with only some weak DEET) but, as Andrew said, our activities were not "in the camping spirit".  Indeed they were not, they were exactly the same as if we were at home, but we really had no choice.  It was that or go insane inside a 6' x 6' tent with nothing except some Nick Jr. magazines to keep us busy.  Towards the later portion of the day, the rain abated for only 40 minutes and we managed to get in a game of minigolf at a really cute little place over on route 6.  I have pictures of it, and the entire experience, via "Picasa" and have strewn them pell mell in here.  ENJOY!  LOL.  We got a 2 GB card for the camera while we were out, so we wound up with a gargantuan amount of pictures and short movies.  Sadly, the rain returned full force later in the day and we retreated to a very soggy and humid tent for the duration of the evening...and I am now wrestling with flu-like symptoms as a result.  (I've been masking them for 3 days now so the kids didn't get discouraged, but it has been a horrific challenge.) Day 3 was spent with a couple Libs knows from YAAPS.  I cannot recall any of their names...but they were very nice people.  The husband is an army trained physician's assistant and the whole family lives on the base down there in Cape Cod.  Those are very fortunate circumstances for his wife, who suffers from a nasty case of lupus.  She requires constant care and supervision and that's in abundance there on the base.  It was actually somewhat amusing...the two of us swapping meds and one-upping medical mistake stories.  LOL.  Good people.   Day 4 was spent at a beach house owned by a woman named Charlene.  She works with Libs.  She's an older woman who recently started taking courses in Wiki programming and she and I have developed quite a rapport.  She's a woman of "significant substance" and lives in the tradition of the Greeks and Portugese....Food is Love.  The food never stopped coming and, though I strived to be gracious, I eventually became sickened at the sight of it.  I knew it was akin to slapping the poor woman in the face, but I just can't EAT THAT MUCH!!!  LOL.  Libs was right on queue though, seeing me turn green she quickly herded everyone out for a walk on the beach, which was literally feet from the door.  I walked...and walked...and walked for what must have been 3 miles through sand, mud and water.  It was AMAZING!  I had NO pain, NONE!  The warm sea air was very good to me and I think the sand was a perfect cushion.  We got some AWESOME pictures from there, you just have to see them.  Later that evening, I got a roaring fire going and Libby's friends from the Army base came by our camp site for a good old fashioned marshmallow roast.  They smuggled in some wine as well (it's forbidden in ALL state forests) and Libs had a really, really nice time.  The kids and I did too, but not as much as she did!  HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. We left on day 5 and along the way home, we stopped by the National Cemetary to visit parents' gravesite.  I haven't been since the funeral(s)...there either wasn't time or it simply wasn't time for me yet.  I was emotionless the entire way there...but that ended rather abruptly when I found the grave marker in section 13, row 500.  To be honest, the sheer vastness of the thing grabbed me first....so many lost souls.  But when we hit that marker, the house of cards I'd built 12 years ago came crashing down.  I don't know which upset Andrew more, seeing his grandparents resting place or the reaction of his Daddy...it was a very tough time for everyone.  Once we got past that part, we got to work tidying up his plot.  They don't allow much in the way of decorations there; no headstones, no bedded flowers, no momentos of any kind - but you can do some "respectful landscaping" around the marker.  The lawn mowers there remove a modicum of grass and weeds, but it's not enough to prevent many of the older markers from being completely overrun or, in some cases, totally lost so we pulled everything back and then got some pictures for keepsake.  We stopped by to visit older relatives resting there as well, and Libs got really sad - being reminded that her ~90 year old grandparents will soon be resting there as well.  It was about that time that my brain just simply shut off...just stopped...cold.  I'd put my cane in the trunk of the car for just a minute so I could repack everything we'd used to clean up the sites. Then I slammed the trunk closed...with my metal cane still hanging out the back end at an angle.  The rear blinker housing was the weakest stress point, so it promptly exploded and sent shards of plastic everywhere.  It was the perfect end to an already sour day.  And on the way home....it rained, and Rained and RAINED.  We stopped by a Friendly's restaurant to indulge and try to elevate the mood, only to endure an onslaught of complaints from the older couple behind us.  I think they just went out so they'd have a place other than home to bitch.  "How can you charge $1.99 for a soda?  That's OUTRAGEOUS!  These food portions are too small.  This soup is cold.  You didn't take this off the bill.  blah blah blah blah blah blah blah."  As I stood to approach them and bludgeon them both with my already mangled cane until the were left without enough teeth to continue complaining with...Libby motioned me firmly TO THE CAR and out of harm's way.  I'd have done it too had she not been there.  It was so surreal...like a Tarantino movie you can't STAND...but are also unable to turn off.  I think I heard some of the theme music from one of his recent movies going through my head as well.  Thank GOD for my wife. We're all unpacked, the animals are cleaned up (the kid we asked to look after them did a CRIMINALLY piss-poor job and Libs went to his parents house to let him have it...poor little shit picked the WRONG woman to screw over that week *giggle*) and I'm enjoying spider-free showers and my own warm, dry, comfy little bed.   File this under "Vacation + Us = Variety Show". Current Mood: happy Current Music: Sansa e250 (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
1:12 am	How many times can you see the word "deadbeat" here??? http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=djvinylatcost Or really just pick any particular derogative term found at that link and make a drinking game out of it.  It is possibly the funniest trail of feedback I have EVER seen on eBay.  Frankly, I say GOOD FOR HIM!  It's refreshing to finally see someone HONEST about the whole eBay bidding thing.  It's all so FAKE...like wrestling fake.  "I'll give you money so you can send me an overpriced item and then we'll write each other notes that say our farts don't stink!"  People are really RABID about it too!  "Did you get it?  Are you going to leave positive feedback for me??  If you leave positive feedback then I'll leave positive feedback but if you don't then I might not or leave neutral feedback or sign up for 50 other user names and spam your feedback page with lots and lots of scandalous lies!!  You said LIKE NEW and it was merely SOMEWHAT LIKE NEW!!  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!"  LOL.  It's seriousy whack.  I mean, I understand the need for some kind of feedback...but I prefer something more akin to Epinions.com where you get mostly just the negative and occasionally a glowing review but never really anything in between.  If you go there and there's no feedback at all, then it's safe to say the item in question is probably pretty good because no one took the time to k'vech about it or you can see folks that went out of their way to say nice things.  I like that.  But eBay feedback is often the victim of hostage negotiations where sellers anxiously await positive feedback so their ratio doesn't go below 98% and end up on someone's "black list" and buyers often face totally unwarranted personal attacks from sellers that absolutley ripped them off...although the reverse can be true too...buyers getting exactly what they paid for and then complain afterwards that they paid too much shipping or didn't get the degree of "like new" they were expecting blah blah blah blah blah.  There HAS to be a better way. I have also discovered recently, through HOURS and hours of searching, that 99% of the customer electronic items listed are actually CHEAPER through sites like Amazon, Buy.com, Newegg, Mwave and a whole host of other reputable retail sites that deliver money back guaranteed REALLY NEW items with all applicable accessories or guaranteed used items that aren't literally a piece of crap (I got an eBay shipment with real doo doo in the box once...apparently their cat got there before they put the packing tape on..HA HA HA HA HA HA HA).  Amazon has consistently proven to be the cheapest yet have the most AMAZING quality ever.  They actually recruited me to do some product evals for them too...apparently my grasp of the English language was the selling point.  LOL.  So many bad engrish spellings owt day-er.  That probably colors my opinion of them somewhat...but I DARE you to find cheaper memory or power supplies there.  You'll get more variety and MUCH better info from Newegg for the power supplies...but sometimes you pay a premium for that.  Anyway, I digress. I was talking to my significant other about all this today and she too had noticed the price disparity between retail eCommerce sites and eBay's auctions.  There's no real bargain there any more (really in a LOT of cases!) so what's the appeal??  "They're all gambling addicts..."  She was right!  I was hunting and pecking today for an mp3 player with a much larger playground than my Sansa e250 (which I love) and got locked on the Microsoft Zune for a good portion of the day.  I must have bid on 40 auctions...which required a whole lot of time.  All that time, I put in a maximum bid of $160 because you can get one retail, shipped now for about $189.  eBay has risk and a LOT of it...so if I'm gonna bid on something there, the price has to be LOWER than retail (even if it really is brand spanking new...because the bad sellers on eBay WAY outnumber the good ones and I'm sick and tired of getting boxes with the UPCs cut out or all the accessories removed for piece part resale).  Yet I lost every single auction...and not by a little.  These morons are paying upwards of $250, with shipping factored in, for stuff they can get cheaper WITHOUT all the bidding, feedback and RISK.  WHY???!!!  "Because they get caught up in snipe bidding."  Ah yes, the snipe bidders....frantically pressing "Refresh" until there's 8 seconds left and then hitting "Confirm Bid" right then and there with bids as much as TWICE the actual value just so they get in for $2.50 over the other maximum bidders.  It's addiction, plain and simple.  Then they have to either back out of the deal when they wind up with a $600 hammer and take the negative feedback hit or turn it right around for resale at a loss.  Don't you DARE believe the hype people...there are NO more bargains any more on eBay that allow for a "buy low, sell high" strategy.  Your best bet is to buy lots from real wholesalers and THEN sell it on eBay at massively inflated prices.  Even then you're losing a little with eBay's ridiculously expensive fees.  At any rate, I lost my interest in the Zune after all of that.  Not just because I couldn't get it cheaper (and can't afford full retail price yet), but because I found out near the end that the DRM technology deployed by Microsoft and the proprietary sync software makes usage of the device tedious to the point of uselessness....WiFi that only connects to OTHER Zunes...WHY???  So, thank you eBay, you saved me a BUNCH of money and now I have a Creative Zen coming...with more features and no hassle.  I really wanted WiFi too, which the Zen M does not have, but that will have to wait for my laptop.  Truthfully, I haven't seen it used properly on any handheld mp3 players...although it's WAY cool on stuff like the Archos 604 and 704...I think I might actually treat myself to a Gen 5 Archos player which is being released in a couple of weeks...Xmas present for ME!!! What's up with eBay's open ended shipping policy anyway?  How the hell can they sleep at night knowing a 4GB MicroSDHC chip (packing included weighs less than a girlscout cookie) is being sent USPS at a cost of $25 to the buyer???!!!  Or $3.99 insured if you have a reputable seller...but unlikely.  My point is the completely random assignment of shipping costs.  I can charge $2 for something and then $100 shipping...while the next guy charges $100 and $2 shipping...so it all comes out in the wash.  They SHOULD lock in with 3 major shippers and completely take that over....set the rates and automate shipping for EVERYONE.  They should also integrate an "alternative vendors" feature that allows bidders to see INSTANTLY where they could be getting items cheaper than the auction....which would drive the costs WAY down and protect a lot of more "inexperienced" users (ie stupid for lack of a better term). All I wanted to do is post that link up there...because I thought it was amusing...and look where I wound up.  I really have to work on my tangents. Current Mood: calm (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
10:36 am	Hairy Slaughter Irony = China's Hairiest Man....going bald???  LOL I've always been astounded by that.  Take your average hairy butt, back n arm hair guy....and you can almost rest assured that he'll be balding by age 30.  Hair everywhere but where you want it...WHY???  Nature is so cruel. Biggest BBQ EVER!  That's what happens when 3.5 million sheep, cows and pigs have to be roasted at the same time to contain a viral outbreak.  That was 2001 in the UK.  They're back at it again TODAY - hoping to keep the number of A1 bottles under a thousand. mmmmmm....so much bar-bee-queue.  Where's my bib??? Oh...and for the LAST TIME...DON'T LEAVE YOUR KIDS IN A PARKED CAR EVER!!!!!!!!!!!    Not for 10 minutes, not for 5 minutes, not for a MINUTE!  EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER!!!  If you transport kids for a living, check every square inch of your vehicle to ensure all the kids are gone.  If you're walking along, see a car with kids in it and no parent...GET THE KIDS OUT!!  Use a rock to break a window if you have to - then call 911!  If I EVER see ANYONE do something like that or find their kids near a heat stroke because their parents are MORONS - I'm gonna personally give them a guided tour of the House of Pain. Current Music: House of Pain - Come and Get Some of THIS (Comment on this)
Friday, August 3rd, 2007
1:35 pm	In da Nooz I hate Microsoft....so much...so very, very much. That's nothing new for anyone and certainly no secret here, but goddamnit, WHEN is SOMEONE going to come along and take these guys DOWN??? Admittedly, half or a majority of my displeasure is jealous anger because they somehow ALWAYS find a way to get to market faster or simply trounce their competition but the remainder is justified rage. Here...check this out. So...we were THIS close to having a portable, multigigabyte storage AND application media that would afford us UNTOLD capacities for on-the-go data processing...and then...Microsoft bought it and shelved it. Since pen hit the paper between Microsoft and SanDisk, both U3 AND the Sansa Viewer have both been shelved....the Sansa viewer suffering the same fate as U3 presumably because Microsoft put the screws to SanDisk to prevent a MUCH cheaper alternative to their Zune and whatever other crap they've put out recently. So once again, Microsoft buys up a rival company producing innovative technology...and then snuffs out that innovative technology until they can find a way to totally dominate the market...and prevent any further innovation without paying Microsoft copyright/patent/trademark fees. I was really looking forward to the Sansa Viewer too...but alas...none for me. Not that it really matters anyway...with the new 6GB and 8GB MicroSDHC chips coming out...soon we'll have the technology to run entire eBusinesses on our watch...seriously! Scary. Oh...and police just arrested some chick for deliberately causing multiple still-born babies while they were still "in the oven"...and then keeping them around the house after she'd birthed them. Again...scary. What a world people...what a world. As for Dr. Hootan Roozrokh, who was just charged for "speeding up" the death of brain dead or nearly brain dead patients so their organs could be harvested to save dozens of other lives....THANK YOU!!!! I hope to GOD the judge dismisses that case outright or at least a jury of intelligent individuals sits in on this trial and finds him innocent. People...if ANYTHING EVER happens to me and I'm lying there on a hospital bed with tubes coming out of every hole...unplug the machines, inject copious quantities of narcotics into my tubes, use a pillow...use WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO to turn out my lights for good...and then rip out everything I've got and go save some people who are going to be able to USE THEM and live a full, happy and USEFUL life. I'm quite serious...do NOT EVER do ANYTHING to prolong my already miserable existence. I've already documented my DNR, health proxy and eventual cremation. I want to be here for as short a time as possible, and then TOTALLY recycle my remains. Whatever can't be used by the living...torch it and toss it to the wind. I wish to hell I could go out like Hunter S. Thompson did...but I have 9 more years until I'm 50...two many reasons (pun there) to stay right now....and I don't have the money yet for a cannon and class A fireworks. Goddamnit. Nippercreep discovered....be afraid, be very afraid. Don't mind the limp wrist...he's European. LOL. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Nippercreep - Gamin (Comment on this)