Random thoughts, organized and categorized for your consumption.
Rants
If I have a problem with something, here it will be.
Just Another Week in Texas
Apr 28th
Getting stuffed into an airplane like sardines in a can. Sweltering heat and humidity during the day with little respite at night. Eating enough bar-b-que’d animals to cause a meat coma. Encountering more trucks than the entire population of some small countries. Bouffant hair. Strange looks from the country folk when driving a minivan. Lots of NASCAR loving yahoos. A crazy amount of turnpikes and toll roads. Gas prices below $3.40 a gallon. The worst B.O. ever on the cramped plane ride home.
What else could all of this be but a trip to Texas?
Retail Rip-Off: HDMI cables
Mar 22nd
If you have a new HDTV set and are looking to hook up some glorious Blu-ray or PS3 goodness you know that you will have to run to the store and purchase one special component not bundled with any device shipping in quantity: an HDMI cable.
Unlike the days of old when you could run into your local Radio Shack and pickup whatever cheap cables they had on hand and make the new device work, in today’s digital era you are treated the one of the greatest fleecings in modern retail sales history. You see, Monster, the cable provider of over-priced More >
Screaming Childeren Make Any Flight Longer
Mar 8th
I took one of the last flights home last night from Austin. As is AA’s custom, they placed two rows of children around me on this journey. Normally I just put in the headphones and deal with the problem, however on this flight some of the children decided they needed to be rowdy and play up and down the aisles during most of the flight. This left me and most of the passengers near the front of the plane (no business class for me) to be forever vigilant about our arms, elbows, and any items we had on our trays.
What really More >
Worst Chicken Fried Steak Ever
Mar 2nd
This evening I had dinner at a local Austin, TX restaurant: Threadgill’s
Their menu claims that the house specialty is chicken fried steak with gravy. Seeing this and being in a home style cooked meal kind of mood, I jumped at the chance to find a worthy competitor to the reigning run-of-the-mill challenger, found today at Chili’s. The walls were lined with pictures of various singers and bands that had played at the establishment and some of the online reviews for the place looked good, so why not try the “world famous” chicken fried steak? It was, in a word, bad. More >
When Drones (Ants) Attack
Jan 24th
Since we’ve entered Season One (cold and wet) of the Northern California weather cycle it must be time for the ants to enter the house and disrupt things. And that they did just 24 short hours ago. Seems that ants don’t like to float around out in the windy, rainy weather we’re having so they decided to make a straight line into my humble abode. Not only that, but they decided the best way in was via the second floor, across the carpet, down the stairs and into the living room. Odd, I would have thought coming straight in one More >
AT&T / Cingular: The Final Insult
Oct 1st
Today, as if things weren’t just swell enough (said with tongue firmly in cheek) AT&T ships me a bill for cellular service that took place in September. Funny how they conveniently forgot that I canceled that service on September 3rd. Funnier still, seeing as because their deliberate degrading of the wireless network knocked me completely offline for the entire month of August and most of July.
The sad part is that they wanted another $40 just to part company with them, even though I had already done all the paperwork at the store back on September 3rd. After a lot of More >
Enough Already! Calm Down Apple Fanboys
Sep 5th
I realized today, for about the hundredth time, that there is just way too much hype, marketing, and slickness and not enough reality around Apple and its products (and storied product launches). I mean for crying out loud, this is a computer company that is at 5% world wide market share. 5%! To put that into perspective, how much do you care about Via’s CPU’s (about 1% share), SiS’s GPU’s (about 3% share), or Polaroid’s HDTV’s (about 4% share). These are all examples of others who play third fiddle in their respective markets, just like Apple does in the PC More >
PT Cruiser; Verdict: it sucks
Sep 4th
I really should just end a review on the title, as that says it all. I was rented one of the little PT Cruiser’s today and I honestly don’t know who would want to own one. Window controls on the center console? Terrible ergonomics where you have to lean into the passenger seat to change the stereo? A completely unusable adjustment for the seat height and steering wheel positions? And don’t even get me started on the sadness that is the engine (I call it the little engine that can’t, but wishes it could).
Granted, all of this is just from More >
AT&T Sucks (and so I'm done with them)
Sep 3rd
I finally found the final straw, the thing that sent me over the edge and made me get rid of AT&T after so many years of suffering. AT&T (the wireless provider) decided that…
1. my phone no longer will work on their network
2. that my calling plan is not what they want to provide any longer
3. that the new plan they wish to offer should cost much more
4. that I should pay for both a new phone AND a two year contract for the privilege of keeping their company
This, then, would be the final chapter in the long and torrid tale More >
The Bourne Shakey Cam Express
Aug 19th
I just finished going to the theater (what!?!) to see The Bourne Ultimatum with Steve, April, and Steve’s dad, and man does my head hurt afterwards. Evidently the new “in thing” for movies is to shoot them hand held guerrilla style and make the moviegoer dizzy or sick. Another great example of this technique shown this summer was Transformers, a Michael Bay epic that was full of robot vs robot fighting (yay!) that would have looked great, if only the camera would have been still for more than 3 seconds.
While this is the 3rd and last in the series of movies, it More >