suburbicide

Thoughts About a Shrinking World

2010-12-03T18:35:00.013-05:00

I have just finished reading The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman and SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good by Rosabeth Moss Kantner and noticed some trends that I felt like writing about.

The biggest point that I took from The World is Flat 3.0 is that the overall scale of the world is seemingly shrinking mostly due to the major influences that technology has played in linking different parts of the world together. The bigger the improvements and the greater the advances we make, particularly in the areas of communications, work flow planning, software, information storage and retrieval processes the more the world will seem to shrink.

Friedman calls the shrinking "flattening" which seems to be his way of saying that the proverbial "playing field" is being leveled. Areas of the world that don't have great amounts of natural resources to sell to the rest of the world (particularly oil) are using this technology to start other industries that can leverage their vast workforce into a competitive force to enable them to become a part of the global supply chain of goods and services.

This shrinking or "flattening" of the world can be used for good or bad. Most technologies are the same way. You can use a delivery van to make deliveries or you can back it through the window of a bank and rob it. You can use the internet to do research for a book report or you can create a "hate site". This is a problem with human nature and not with technology.

Friedman mentioned that terror, war and protectionism are reasons that might be used to put the walls back up and "unflatten" the world but he seems to feel that in most cases everyone involved benefits from a flat world. The benefits aren't limited to improved standard of living, stronger economies and better educational opportunities for countries that are taking on new responsibilities and cost reductions, redundant around the clock supply chains and new, large, eager sources of the exact level of labor required for a task for the companies doing the outsourcing.

SuperCorp pointed out many "vanguard" companies that are using their size and global influence to do good things in the world and that as we progress this will become more necessary and almost expected of them.

I can't say that I completely disagree with a lot of the points raised in either book, most of it kind of seems like "common sense" but I was left with a lot of questions about religion, politics and war, "haves versus have nots" and the responsibility of business in the world.

Is outsourcing ultimately good, bad or a shade of gray? Does outsourcing for cost savings really free up money to reinvest in new jobs or does it just go to the bottom line?

Investors always want to see a company that is making more profit than the previous year. At what point does this "growth" become unsustainable?

Are large corporations too powerful? Are they using this power responsibly?

Does human nature ruin everything?

What makes us happy?

2010-08-12T19:00:00.030-04:00

If you take (or have taken) a few minutes to venture around my blog you'll see that like many other people I struggle between the conflicting feelings of wanting to simplify my life and eliminate my debt and buying shiny new toys.

Over the past couple years I've been more on the simplification side of the struggle but I have to admit that I have a few websites that I like to browse regularly for new gadgets and car stuff. I've been really good about not buying much stuff lately but sometimes I temporarily feel unhappy when I see something that I think that I would really like but know deep down that it would be foolish (financially or otherwise) to buy it. That feeling subsides somewhat quickly once I start to think about all of the things I've purchased over the years and ended up rarely using.

Over the past couple years I have sold and donated quite a few things that I know I'll never use again and haven't missed them. I know that I still have quite a few things left that I know I wouldn't mind seeing gone... I just have to make the time to put stuff up on craigslist, eBay, Amazon and gather together the rest to donate.

Another reason behind my quest for simplification is that I really don't like clutter. Clutter makes me unhappy and in our two-bedroom apartment with a den/office both the spare bedroom and the office have a good amount of semi-organized clutter, most of which is mine. I would love to see that gone. That would make me happy.

So my question is: What makes us happy?

Money? Stuff? Vacations? Cars? Clothes? Simplification? Having lots of things around? Plain walls? Pictures and decorations all over? Having money in the bank? Being outdoors? Movies? Music?

Is it more about things or is it experiences? Is it security or possibly rewarding risks? Is it what others think of you or what you think of yourself?

I think for me it's:

Trying to straddle the fine line between having hobbies and things that I really like but keeping everything else in check.

Getting rid of the "clutter" of things that I don't use and won't need but keeping my CD collection and books.

Spending time doing things I like like going to see bands and making it to a beach every once in awhile.

Spending time with my family, having friends over or spending quiet nights at home instead of spending hundreds of dollars out for dinner and drinks.

Spending more money on car washes than clothes.

Wearing said clothes until they're worn out instead of getting a new wardrobe every year.

Not buying a bigger, better TV or computer every year even though I might think I want one.

I guess I'm probably pretty average. I could never do a 100 item challenge or anything like that... but I think I'd feel a lot better if I could get rid of extra stuff, keep control over my desire to spend money, pay off my debt and get myself to a position where I feel more stable.

Aside: This blog post was brought to you by the Friends episode "The One With The Secret Closet" ("hidden" clutter) and the recent New York Times article "But Will It Make You Happy?" (simplification and conspicuous consumption).

Want - Energy Star Certified Gasoline-Powered Alarm Clock

2010-03-26T15:10:00.001-04:00

On Inhabitat today there was a story that was reported on NY Times about the US Government Accountability Office looking into the Energy Star certification process and how easy it was to get an Energy Star label. They created a few fictitious products including a gasoline-powered alarm clock and put them through the system and received Energy Star certification.

The articles made a few good points, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all well and good but now I want a gasoline-powered alarm clock. Make mine a supercharged LS9 from a Corvette C6 ZR1. I'd wake up to that!

On a serious note, though, it's kind of good that we have government organizations to keep an eye on stuff like this. I mean, Energy Star certification, that's super important! Wow... What's wrong with me? I just can't be serious today.

Blog comments.

2010-03-25T10:15:00.000-04:00

I don't know if anyone else out there does this, but I find myself almost constantly reading a blog post or article somewhere and typing out a comment in response and then when I'm just about done I close the window and never post my comment.

I do this because I usually find that what I've typed out has either already been said or I feel that it doesn't matter what I'm typing because the people who's comments or post I'm commenting on have already moved on and probably won't read what I've spent time thinking about and writing down. So I don't bother.

It popped into my head a few days ago that I almost always do this. Anyone else?

What are the odds?

2010-03-15T23:39:00.005-04:00

What are the odds that both the book that I'm reading right now and the one I just finished mention The Research Triangle?

I just finished Generation A by Douglas Coupland a few days ago and just started Makers by Cory Doctorow and both of them mentioned The Research Triangle in North Carolina. It was more involved in the plot of Generation A, but then tonight there it was mentioned in Makers, too.

It's not so weird... Right? ;)

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm a huge Douglas Coupland fan... so obviously I'm going to recommend Generation A pretty strongly. Makers was something that I added to my Amazon Wish List on a whim after reading the description and I like it so far.

Website changes.

2010-03-11T23:26:00.003-05:00

Google is removing FTP publishing support for Blogger which I have been using since I started this blog. It was a bit of a struggle to switch to Blogger's custom domain option but I persevered. After a few temporary stops, I'm back online at blog.suburbicide.com.

While I was messing around with switching from FTP publishing, I also took the time to get everything switched over from the the old "Template" style to the newer "Layout" format. It took a bit of work and I'm sure I broke a few things here and there but I think I managed to capture most of what my blog looked like.

Something I learned today: If after making major changes to your blog's layout, the order of the "Posted by" and "Labels" stuff in your actual post is messed up and you can't move them where you want them: In your Dashboard click on "Layout" and then on "Edit HTML", scroll down to the bottom and click on "Revert widget templates to default" and it seemed to magically work for me.

More simplification.

2010-03-09T10:03:00.006-05:00

I've been making some changes to this blog and I'll post more about that in a later post...

Aside from my website/blog changes I've been trying to continue with my simplification project. Lately, I've sold off a bunch of stuff that I never use including a guitar, my amplifier, a microphone, an old freestyle bike and a couple little things. I also gave a couple old printers, t-shirts, household stuff and a new pair of sneakers to my sister to donate to charity.

I'm working on clearing out some more of my old computer stuff, car parts, bike parts and other stuff that I have hanging around between my apartment, my parent's house and storage. One of my main goals for the next few months is to get most of my unused junk sold (or donated) and put whatever proceeds towards paying down my credit card and college debt.

Simplification

2010-01-03T18:37:00.002-05:00

Every year around this time it seems like I go through a period of feeling like I want to weed out some of my belongings that I don't ever use and try to simplify my life.

I don't like the feeling of clutter so I wander around the apartment and look for things that I don't use, don't need and wouldn't ever use again. I generally make a pile of stuff to go to charity, stuff to give away to friends or family and stuff to sell.

I'm putting a little dent in the stuff I've managed to accumulate over the years. I sold off my netbook that I used for one week when I was on vacation over the summer and a couple miscellaneous computer parts. I'm working on getting rid of an old cell phone, more older computer parts, possibly my old PowerMac G4, one of my guitars and an amplifier, miscellaneous guitar stuff, etc. I have some clothes and household type stuff to give to charity.

Over the past few years I've realized just how much stuff I have that I don't use or don't need but wanted really badly at one point in time. My guitars are a prime example of this. At one point I had 3 guitars, 2 amplifiers and tons of other miscellaneous guitar related stuff. I messed around on the guitar a little bit but never took lessons or teaching myself how to really play all that seriously and I haven't picked up any of my guitars in probably at least 3 years.

I think part of the reason I go through this is the realization of just how much Christmas is focused on buying stuff and another reason is that when the weather is cold and gloomy I tend to stay in my apartment more and seeing stuff around that is little more than a waste of space and money is kind of depressing.

I'm going to work more on trying to decide whether I'm really going to use something enough to make it worthwhile to purchase more in the future...

Running

2009-10-26T14:33:00.004-04:00

Last week I decided that it's time to start working out and getting myself back into shape again. So, I'm doing what I usually do when I'm trying to get myself going on something. I'm having a bit of a "spending spree" to get all of the required gear.

Last year (about this time) I completely refurbished my bike in an effort to build interest in riding it again and by the time I finished the bike the wintry weather was right around the corner and while the refurbished bike was a huge improvement over it's previous build, it still wasn't comfortable to ride at my current weight.

This year I'm trying to get into running again. So last week I went out a couple times for walk/jog/run laps around our apartment complex. However, I realized that my old New Balance running shoes aren't super comfortable. Plus, I don't have hardly any workout clothes.

So, I picked up a couple pairs of shorts last week and I just bought a pair of Saucony running shoes on Amazon. Now I'm on the hunt for some cooler weather running clothes for the next month or so before the winter weather hits and I'm on the treadmill until spring.

I'm hoping to get in shape over the winter and into the spring and then get back on my bike next spring and summer. As much as it sucked to admit this to myself, I really am horribly out of shape and it's time to correct that. ;)

So far, I've (re-)cut soda and energy drinks out of my diet and started drinking more water. I started taking a daily multivitamin and eating salad a couple days a week for lunch instead of one of the work cafeteria specials. I'm trying to also watch my portion sizes and eating a little more slowly so that I give myself a chance to feel full before I stuff more food down my throat... on top of that stuff I've done a little bit more physical activity.

In about a week I've managed to drop about 4-5 pounds and I feel excited to get out of work, lace up my running shoes and do a few laps. I hope that I can keep my motivation up and continue to make progress. My short term goal is to be under 200 lbs by Christmas and ultimately to get to about 160-175 lbs. It's attainable, I just can't lose focus like I did a couple years ago when I started off strong, did well and then just stopped all of my healthy behaviors and went right back to where I was.

Past goals & progress.

2009-10-19T15:30:00.004-04:00

I was randomly looking at old posts on my blog today and I found an old post from January 23, 2007 entitled Douglas Coupland books & my to do list which, I'm sure you'll be surprised to read, contained a "to do" list.

In fact, this was the list:
1) finish cleaning up all my junk at the apartment (did some, accumulated more)
2) refinish an old coffee table to bring to the apartment (started...)
3) ~~get my parent's old orange chair over to my apartment~~ (scrapped this idea)
4) ~~pull my mountain bike apart, repaint the frame and overhaul the rest~~ (It's orange now!)
5) go through my accumulated bike parts and sell/donate what I'm never going to use (I donated quite a few bikes and parts but still have some left that can go.)
6) finish selling off the misc. car parts I've accumulated over the past 5 years that don't fit my current car (I haven't done too much with this.)
7) ~~sell off my small guitar practice amp, distortion pedal and cables that I never use~~ (Gone.)
8) ~~(maybe: get rid of one of my guitars)~~ (Acoustic/electric gone.)
9) ~~(maybe: go through my CD's and sell off the ones I'm never going to listen to)~~ (ruled out for now.)
10) ~~(maybe: build a new "entertainment center" that isn't ugly and has room for the TV and all of the electronics)~~ (bought one)

I thought it would be amusing to see how many of these that I actually did since then... so I crossed off the ones that I did. I completely finished 4 and ruled out 2. Out of the remaining 4, I started 3... I should probably get going on those. ;)

The lazy days of summer...

2009-09-11T11:04:00.012-04:00

Note: This post is going to be a quick recap of my summer. Repeat, this is just a gratuitous catch up post. There is nothing really deep here. I hope to revive my interest in this blog and trying to come up with more thoughtful ideas for it in the not too distant future, but until then, this will have to do. ;)

It always seems that even though I love the summer, I end up being pretty lazy for the majority of it. I end up sitting in the air conditioned splendor of my apartment and not wanting to do much of anything once I get home from work.

Even though it seems like most of my summer was spent sitting on my comfortable couch, with my girlfriend and our laptops, TV shows and books -- we did manage to do some fun stuff.

We went to the Seattle area for a week in the beginning of July to visit my girlfriend's brother, his wife and their son. We had a blast which involved a decent amount of fireworks, drinking, shopping, eating and attempting to stay cool. For a place that has the reputation of being drenched in an almost constant rain, it barely sprinkled only the last morning we were there. It was hot, humid and sunny the entire rest of the week. I learned that if a toddler says "I have idea." to make sure to hold onto the fireplace lighter that you've been using to light fireworks because it will be snatched out of your back pocket. Also, if said toddler comes down from upstairs with his hands behind his back, that there's probably something that he shouldn't have in those hands.

I also turned 30 at the end of July! It was nice and low-key, just like I wanted. My girlfriend cooked me a nice dinner on my actual birthday, her mother took me out to dinner at Brown's on the day after and my family had a BBQ on the day after that. So it was three nice days of birthday celebration, but nothing too crazy.

I purchased an Acer Aspire One 8.9" netbook as an early birthday present for myself and to bring on our trip to WA. It was nice to be able to check mail, pay bills, look for things to do, check plane schedules at the airport, and more all in a tiny, portable little package. I think it was well worth the money I spent on it, even though the battery life (with the 3-cell battery) isn't great and I tend to use my Dell Vostro as my main computer when I'm in the apartment. The display seems bigger and usable than the 8.9" size suggests and it's been trouble free, so far!

I also read some decent books. I picked up a couple books by Christopher Buckley, No Way to Treat a First Lady and Little Green Men: A Novel after reading Boomsday last year. I recommend all three. They were all well written, funny and sarcastic. I also read Steve Wozniak's book iWoz, along with How Walmart Is Destroying America (And the World): And What You Can Do about It by Bill Quinn and Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom. I'm not sure if I'd recommend any of them to people unless they're interested in Apple and/or personal computer history, retailing or marketing and advertising, respectively... ;)

Last weekend we went to The Clark to see the Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence exhibit. There were a lot of interesting oil paintings, watercolors, pastels and collages there (between Dove and O'Keeffe) with one of the most humorous pairings being Arthur Dove's watercolor Happy Clam Shell next to Georgia O'Keeffe's pastel Slightly Open Clam Shell. The pictures linked above are from this review of the show by Judith H. Dobrzynski on the Arts Journal website. There is also another review for Wall Street Journal by the same author that was interesting.

I also spent some time last weekend doing maintenance on my car that I've been neglecting for a little while. I washed and waxed it and my brother and I put on Akebono ProACT ceramic brake pads, Centric rotors, McGard SplineDrive lug nuts, NGK Iridium spark plugs and NGK plug wires. Next it's getting new Bridgestone Potenza G019 Grid tires as soon as they are shipped to Firestone. (The size I need is on backorder.) The brakes are feeling good so far, the lug nuts are much higher quality than the ones they replaced and I seem to be getting a few more MPG with the fresh spark plugs and the reset computer. (Side notes: I didn't like the BF Goodrich Super Sport A/S tires that I put on last spring/early summer. They wore out extremely quickly and weren't worth the money that I paid for them. I also didn't have good luck with Gorilla spline drive style lug nuts. They only lasted one winter before the chrome was peeling off.)

I also decided to finally kill my MySpace account. I found that I hardly ever logged on and I decided not to keep it around for no reason...

There was some other fun stuff sprinkled in there but those were the big highlights... all in all it was a good summer.

FairTax, anyone?

2009-06-05T14:26:00.007-04:00

I just finished reading The Fair Tax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS by Neal Boortz and John Linder. My brother actually lent it to me months ago and I finally got around to reading it this morning.

At the time he lent me the book, we were in a heated discussion as to whether the Federal government or the State governments needed more (or less) power compared to each other and which should have more responsibility. Honestly, I can't remember how the discussion even started. I believe we were talking about Nationalized health care or something to that effect and we kind of trailed off...

Back to the book, though. I chewed through it pretty quickly. I did find that there was some repetition in the writing which kind of made it a little bit annoying to read in spots, but I understood the need to drive certain concepts home by repeating them.

The main purpose of the book was to explain the FairTax plan of taxation compared to the current web of taxes we're currently paying here in America. FairTax is a consumption tax on all goods and services in place of every other Federal tax that we currently pay. This would mean no more income tax or payroll deductions for Medicare/Medicaid or Social Security. Instead you pay tax when you purchase something new in a retail environment or you are buying a service.

The plan was created to provide the same level of revenue to the government but in a much more simple (but harder to evade) system.

A few of the benefits of this system are:

the ability to take home your whole paycheck

the end of the IRS and complicated tax code

everyone who buys a good or service in America pays into the system (including tourists and people who, through usage of the current tax code, have managed to avoid paying taxes but still benefit from living in America)

a "prebate" offsets the amount every individual would be taxed up to the poverty level of consumption (doesn't hurt the poor)

should (if all of the theories pan out) help lower costs of products and services by eliminating all of the "hidden taxes" that are passed along from companies through products and services - which, even with the added FairTax, should allow the price of things to stay close to the same as they were before the tax

doesn't tax ANYTHING used/pre-owned which would provide a slight incentive to purchase pre-owned products where possible (better for the environment?)

It sounds almost too good to be true... but I still haven't managed to put any big holes in it.

Anyone out there as interested in this as I am?

I'm making a wish list...

2009-04-20T16:12:00.007-04:00

Now that the weather is starting to get nice again I'm feeling the bug to start working on my car beginning to bite again.

I had resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to do much to my current car (a 2007 Subaru Legacy 2.5i) besides adding nicer wheels and then replacing parts with better, upgraded parts as they wore out. It's a nice car but I specifically bought a car that didn't have many aftermarket parts available for it so that I wouldn't be tempted to spend a ton of money modifying it. However there still is enough stuff from the Subaru Legacy GT that will fit my car that I've been tempted to go a little bit crazy. I've actually already started making a huge list of stuff that I want and it's getting longer every day. (Damn you Zero/Sports, Cusco, RalliTEK, Blitz, Prodrive, AVO, Samco, Tomei, etc. for making such cool toys!)

Even though I made a wish list I'm still trying to stick to my plan of paying off my student loans and credit card balances as quickly as possible so that eventually I can purchase a house (with a nice garage) and then a (hopefully better) project car will come after that. That said, though, I'll probably still end up picking up a few parts for it over the next few months, anyway.

Part of my recent re-obsession with cars has involved me checking out a bunch of car-related websites and blogs that I haven't been to in awhile (or at all). I've added links on my links page to a few that I decided that I'd like to check out more often. Auto Otaku, JDM Ego and Just Driven are among the websites I just added to my links. I've also been frequenting legacygt.com a bit more. I've been mostly haunting the classifieds hoping to stumble on a great deal on something on my list... ;)

Aside from that I haven't been up to all that much new stuff. Mostly just day-to-day stuff and working has taken up a lot of my time... I tend to lay low in the winter and not do too much. As the weather continues to get nicer and nicer I'll hopefully have a bit more new stuff to write about.

American Auto Industry Bailouts

2009-02-18T10:03:00.006-05:00

I've loved cars as long as I can remember. I remember just looking out the front window of our living room and watching cars drive by for hours and not getting bored. I could identify quite a few cars just by the shape of headlights or taillights. I had hundreds of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars that I played with constantly before moving into building model cars and tearing them apart and modifying them. I had a subscription to Hot Rod magazine when I was about 10 or 11 years old. Like I said, I've always been into cars.

I used to drool over tons of American cars including '69 Camaros, '70s Chryslers, 1990's Chevy/GMC trucks like the 454SS as well as the amazing Buick Grand National.

The problem is that the American car manufacturers haven't built anything that I am interested in now that I'm of car buying age and I have to factor in things like reliability, cost, everyday usability and stuff like that into the mix.

Sure, I'd still love to drive a Hugger Orange '69 Camaro or a B5 Blue '70 Hemi Challenger but, realistically, I will never own one and it's not really relevant to the state that the Big Three are in right now, anyway. I know that there is a new Camaro coming out and the new Dodge Challenger has been out for awhile and that they're trying to capture buyers like me with these cars. However, with the American car manufacturer's history of not having the best reliability out there, I'd be more inclined to spend my money on a Subaru Legacy GT, a Nissan Maxima or a Lexus IS. I love the styling of the new Challenger and how much it looks like one the cars I loved so much when I was younger. I'm not going to lie and say that I wouldn't drive the hell out of a new Dodge Challenger SRT8 but I can't say that I'd ever go buy one.

I think that many people feel the same way as I do. I think in many circles you're looked down upon if you drive a Malibu instead of an Accord/Camry or a Cadillac instead of a Lexus/Infiniti/BMW/Mercedes-Benz. The American car companies have lost their appeal and status and it almost seems like they might never be able to get that back.

It seems to me that just asking the government to keep pouring money into them so that they can build a ton of different "badge engineered" versions of the same crappy cars. They actually need to cut out the waste and just build reliable platforms that people actually want to be seen in and want to drive. They need to focus on the fit and finish and reliability that they've been lacking for years.

I don't think bailouts will do anything aside from delaying the inevitable. While all three manufacturers seemed to focus too much on their truck lines, GM had years to realize that people were shifting away from buying their mid sized cars in favor of the imports like the Camry and Accord. Chrysler had to realize that they were on the receiving end of a lot of hatred for building horrid cars like the Neon and Stratus. Ford is trying their hardest to make cars that are appealing but I think they're still being dragged down from their ongoing Found On Road Dead reputation.

I must take this opportunity to admit, though, that while Ford has always been my least favorite out of the Big Three they have been the only one out of the group that has been able to impress me lately with the cars like the 2010 Taurus SHO and Fusion Sport! They seem to be "getting it" a little bit more in recent history than the other two...

The Big Three have been so focused on immediate profits that they lost sight of the big picture and now it seems like it may be too late for a turnaround. While I really do hope that they're able to restructure, cut a bunch of waste, stop making different versions of the same car with different badges/brands and focus on making cars that people actually want to drive... it's not looking good.

Wii Fit

2009-01-14T10:08:00.008-05:00

I ordered a Wii Fit directly from Amazon.com (not through one of the overpriced Marketplace sellers) on Monday afternoon at 3PM EST as soon as they sent me a text message stating that they were back in stock. (It's amazing to me that many retailers STILL can't keep the Wii console or many of the more popular games and accessories for it in stock.)

Anyway, I was shocked when it was on the UPS truck ready to be delivered yesterday morning, less than 24 hours after I ordered it, even using their FREE shipping option! I'm amazed at how fast Amazon can get stuff to me most of the time. However, this isn't really a "praise Amazon" post, it's about our new Wii Fit. ;)

This saga all started when my coworker's wife purchased a Wii Fit for them around Christmas-time. Since they started using it, my coworker and I have talked about it on quite a few occasions. I was intrigued by the fact that it sounded like a fun way to work at least a little bit of physical activity into my normally sedentary life. However, I was VERY skeptical that it would be something that I would use on a regular basis. I tend to be a fairly lazy person lately when it comes to working out. Plus I have found that (for the most part) I haven't really gotten into most of the games that we have for the Wii so far and I tend to not like the Wii's controllers on many of the games I've tried. However, the balance board for the Wii Fit looked interesting. Plus, I decided, that if the Wii Fit "game" itself sucked there are a few other games out there now that use the balance board as a controller which sounds neat. So, as I mentioned earlier, I went ahead and bought it as soon as it came back in stock on Amazon.

I'm glad I did. My girlfriend and I ended up spending about 4 hours yesterday setting up our Mii's, doing our initial weigh-ins, watching the activity demos and each spending about an hour a piece doing actual activities.

If you aren't familiar with Wii Fit, it's basically a workout and balance "game" where you have a virtual "trainer" who guides you through doing activities which are broken up into 4 categories including Aerobics, Balance, Strength Training and Yoga. A few activities in each category are open initially and you unlock different activities and higher levels of repetition the more you do.

I tried a good majority of the things that were initially unlocked. I tried everything from the virtual Hula Hoop and a few yoga poses to running in place and ski jumping. I was VERY surprised at how difficult some of the Yoga poses are. I really suck at most of them except the Warrior. ;) My girlfriend had a few good laughs at my expense while watching me try to do the Tree... or pretty much anything that involved balancing on one leg. Out of all of the activities that I tried, though, I found that while I enjoyed a few activities much more than others that there really wasn't anything that I truly hated doing. It was just fun and I actually felt like I was trying to do better and repeating things just because I knew I could do better. Next thing I know I had about an hour of credited exercise time!!! On top of that, I'm actually looking forward to doing more on it tonight!!!

I'd say that I'm very pleased with the Wii Fit so far, even though it's only been one evening. I hope that it continues to keep my interest.

Long time, no post!

2008-12-02T10:40:00.004-05:00

I really haven't felt inspired to post anything here in quite awhile. Occasionally, I'll read a news article or something and have a quick flare-up of a reaction to it but I'm usually in the middle of doing something else and don't feel like sitting for a few minutes, formulating my thoughts and putting together a post. If I just posted a sentence and a link to what I was reading, I'd feel like I was being lazy and half-assed and that it's probably better that I didn't post at all.

On top of the fact that I think that I'm losing interest in this website, my everyday life has been hectic (and crazy) and I've been spending a LOT less time on my computer at home over the past month or two.

Summary & Conclusion: I think I'm settling into my blog/web-laziness that has killed all of my other internet projects aside from this one. Life is hectic and probably won't slow down until after New Year's Day. Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of this blog soon... but if not, it was fun while it lasted.

Obama's election triggers gun sales?

2008-11-07T11:07:00.004-05:00

It seems that some people are saying that gun sales are up due to Obama's election. The gun-toting "Real Americans" are scared that Obama will "take our guns from us and create a socialist society policed by his own police force" as it was so eloquently put by Jim Pruett, the owner of Jim Pruett's Guns and Ammo in Houston, Texas.

WTF, people?

Joe the Plumber isn't a plumber after all...

2008-10-22T11:11:00.006-04:00

It turns out that "Joe the Plumber" is not actually a licensed plumber. He is also not a member of the United Association of Plumbers, Steamfitters and Service Mechanics union which has endorsed Senator Obama for President. I hope this pisses off the plumber's union into getting all of their voters out there in support of Obama.

I'm kind of glad that McCain focused a lot of his energy on "Joe the Plumber" in his last debate because I think it showed a lot of people that Barack Obama's tax/economic plans benefit the majority of low to middle-class income people much more directly. The theory of "trickle down" economics doesn't make a whole lot of sense to most real world, working-class people who make less than $250,000 a year. The story of "Joe the Plumber" was crafted in the form of the old tale of the "American Dream" in order to turn Obama into a villain for taking away a little more of the rich guy's money to benefit others so they could portray him as a socialist. However, I don't think a 3% increase on income over $250,000 a year will really kill anyone. There are many other complex things in these plans that I'm not going to pretend to know about... but all I know is that cutting taxes for wealthy people and large businesses doesn't benefit anyone but the wealthy.

As I'm sure most of the world knows, as well, Colin Powell has also endorsed Obama.

Hopefully McCain can't sleep at night because of his(?) pick for the VP position. It turns out Palin has been taking her children on trips with her, with Alaska picking up the tab for flights and hotels for them. This is on top of the report that recently came out about what they're calling Troopergate.

Maverick?

2008-10-07T21:29:00.005-04:00

There's a great article on John McCain's background on Rolling Stone's website called "Make-Believe Maverick". After reading this article I'm even more frightened about the prospect of him becoming President.

The guy crashed 3 military planes, was involved in the "Keating Five" scandal, kicked his first wife to the curb for a richer, younger, non-disabled one and seems to throw temper tantrums pretty frequently.

If you're interested please do some more research on: Keating Five, Vicki Iseman and McCain's first wife, Carol Shepp.

There are a lot of other things out there but doing a little digging into these begins to paint a very bad picture of John Sidney McCain III.

If at first you don't succeed...

2008-10-02T13:26:00.005-04:00

If at first you don't succeed, throw some pork in.

"Some of those additions have been assailed by spending watchdogs as "pork," like the $6 million for the makers of kids' wooden arrows, according to a summary of the bill released by the Senate Finance Committee.

Other goodies intended to attract the votes of individual members of Congress include $192 million for the rum producers of Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands, $128 million for car racing tracks, $33 million for corporations operating in American Samoa, and $10 million for small film and television productions."

WTF!?!?! We're not bailing out Puerto Rican rum producers right now. Focus!!!

Edit 10/02/08 - 09:35 PM: More on the matter on time.com and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Bailout: Banks or Mortgage Holders?

2008-09-29T12:23:00.005-04:00

I know I'm not any sort of authority on failing banks and government bailouts but it still doesn't make any sense to me for the government to bail out the multitude of financial institutions that are failing miserably right now.

There's an article that I just came across on time.com entitled
Let Risk-Taking Financial Institutions Fail that seems to say what I hear a lot of other people saying.

However, I think the writers of the article are being WAY too gentle when they say: "Much of the crisis has arisen from miscalculating the risks involved in a large book of positions in these derivatives."

I think that it had more to do with influential people within the banks ignoring the risks because (for the moment) they were making money hand over fist (for themselves and the shareholders of the banks). I believe that organizations that have been taking huge risks (by loaning money to people who couldn't afford it along with many other risky things) should reap the consequences of their actions.

Why can't the government work out a plan that helps more of the people that are paying for it (the taxpayers that are losing their homes or watching them plummet in value) instead of corporations built on the whole concept of using greed as a business model?

Where is this magical place called out?

2008-09-22T10:13:00.008-04:00

I saw an interesting story on Time Magazine's website this morning about a guy named Dave Chameides who is not throwing any trash out for an entire year to help him visualize what his "waste footprint" is. I think this interesting because not too many people stop to think how much trash they throw "out" or where this place called "out" really is.

I've thought about how much garbage my girlfriend and I throw out and where it goes on a few occasions. (Mostly as I'm lugging it down from our third floor apartment and across the parking lots to the dumpsters at the edge of our apartment complex.)

I don't think that we throw out as much as the average partially because our apartment complex recycles most recyclable plastic, glass and cans but we still throw out quite a bit.

It seems to me that a good portion of our waste is the plastic and printed cardboard packaging that pretty much everything is packaged in. It wouldn't be so bad if all of that packaging was actually necessary but in MANY cases it's not even close to necessary.

I'll have to look into ways to help reduce this. (Buying in bulk and things like that will probably help a lot!)

Just add it to my tab...

2008-09-04T18:44:00.005-04:00

You've got to be kidding me. Apparently, George W. Bush thinks it's a good idea to "pledge" $1 billion to Georgia. (The one that's not in the U.S.)

It's a nice gesture and all but, George, are you planning on borrowing the money from China (on our behalf)?

On top of the fact that we probably don't even have the money to throw around, why aren't we helping our own country instead? I hear New Orleans is still not back to it's pre-Katrina self after 3 years.

Why don't you skip the charade and just bomb Russia? We know that's what you really you want to do...

Bad credit card companies!

2008-08-27T10:11:00.005-04:00

It turns out I'm not alone in my frustration with credit card companies lately. When I wrote my post "Goodbye to one big bank..." a couple weeks ago, I was pissed off because a major credit card company raised the APR they charged me on a carried balance by 4% for no reason. Luckily, I was able to ditch the bank and ended up making out better in the end. However, I can see that if I didn't have other (not maxed out) lines of credit open that I could easily transfer my balance to, how I could just be stuck paying more with no recourse.

Credit-Card Rage on Business Week's web site today basically tells the same story and adds some information about proposed credit rules from the Federal Reserve Board.

While, for the most part, I'm not a fan of more government regulation of anything, I'm also not happy when companies screw over their customers to add to their bottom line or to make up for mistakes they've made. (ie. Giving credit to customers that aren't likely to be able to pay for it.)

Scented laptops?

2008-08-25T09:08:00.004-04:00

Here's another product for the list of "Do we really need this?" products. ASUSTeK is rolling out a line of scented laptops.

Um... yeah. What will they think of next?

For Sale: America

2008-08-19T16:50:00.003-04:00

Right when it was announced that Anheuser-Busch was going to be purchased by InBev I started to write a blog entry that was very similar to: "The Great American Yard Sale" that's currently on Time's website. I wrote for a little while and then it turned into a rambling rant and I ended up not posting (and deleting) it.

Anyway, go check out the story. I thought it was a good read.

Goodbye to one big bank...

2008-08-16T23:30:00.005-04:00

I noticed that in June one of the two credit card companies that I am currently doing business with (which shall remain nameless) raised the APR on my account by 4% for no apparent reason (other than the fact that they wanted more money from me). I switched to e-statements many months ago and haven't used the card in quite awhile but carried a balance. I haven't made any late payments and haven't exceeded my credit limit. However, I really didn't scrutinize the statements each month like I should have. I just scanned to make sure there were no new charges each month and that my payment was credited on time and then I scheduled my next payment online. When was looking at my statement this month and I noticed that they increased my rate I sent a message through their secure online message system and received a canned response back that I should call their 800 number.

That answer was not good enough for me, so, they immediately lost my credit card balance (to a 0% transfer offer) along with my car loan (to my credit union at a lower interest rate) this week. I was shocked at how easy re-financing my car was. I thought it was going too much of a pain for only a few bucks a month, so I didn't do it. I ended up saving more than I thought I was going to, plus it was simple!

So, I guess I owe a thank you to the big, stupid bank for having the net effect of saving me some money each month for pissing me off enough to go through the "hassle" of ditching you. Goodbye and good riddance. Now I have to get rid of the other bigger bank that I have the pleasure of owing money to...

On capitalism and conspicuous consumption

2008-08-10T13:52:00.008-04:00

I've said before that I dislike capitalism but I've never really clarified or elaborated on that general statement here. However, I've been thinking more about it lately (thanks mostly to my boss) and I've edited my "shit list" on the main page of my website today to say "conspicuous consumption." instead of "capitalism. (why do we make so many shiny, awesome things?)"

I think this better reflects my views on capitalism than to just say that I don't like it and the many awesome products that it produces. I think that, as far as economic systems go, capitalism tends to be one of the better ones in practice, compared to other major economic systems that have been attempted. Human nature tends to completely kill any notion of the various socialist or communist economic systems. People aspire to improve their status in life as well as to strive to appear better than or, at the very least, to differentiate themselves from everyone else. This is where the whole notion of "keeping up with the Joneses" (which is also known as conspicuous consumption) comes in. (There are other proposed/theorized systems out there such as Natural Capitalism but they also seem to be compromised by human nature, as well.)

Pure Laissez-faire capitalism is an amazing system where the people who purchase products and services determine what is available (and at what price) by either purchasing or not purchasing that product or service until it becomes attractive or advantageous to do so. Competition between different providers helps to bring prices down and quality up among everyone offering a particular good or service. In this system the government (or regulators of any sort) should only step in to protect consumers from harm. (This system, however, is also not without it's own major drawbacks or problems... but that's a subject for another time.)

Our present system, however, seems to be a bastardization of that system where huge mega-corporations (economies of scale), government regulations/subsidies/taxes, price-fixing, monopolization/mergers/buyouts and intense advertising and marketing all are thrown in with a million other factors and shuffled up leading to a system that is unbelievably complicated but still called "capitalism".

Take that mess and factor human nature and the notion of conspicuous consumption into the whole mix we end up with a slew of products that people are led to believe will make others think that they're of a higher status than everyone else which leads to much more expensive (and exclusive) products (of no better quality) so that there can be something better still.

It's a vicious cycle that no one wins aside from the giant companies who sell us the crappy products (with the trendy brand name of the day) that are made in countries where workers aren't paid a fair wage with materials that are probably barely, if at all, different from the crap that you can buy at Wal-Mart. The only difference is that the one with the brand name commands a huge premium over the generic because we have been convinced to pay more for it just because of that brand name.

That is (part of) the side of "capitalism" that I dislike. I know that I (somewhat hypocritically) play into the whole system even just by purchasing anything that goes above and beyond just meeting my basic needs of food, water and shelter. Maybe I am a hypocrite because there are people out there that aspire to buy the products that I have, or things that are better.

I don't expect (or want) us to shift to communism. I don't want to have exactly what everyone else has, no more or no less, based on my needs. I want to be able to purchase the best quality product that I can afford and have many choices when I am shopping for something. However, I don't want to be bombarded with advertisements constantly. I don't want people to look down on each other because they don't drive a BMW/Bentley/Ferrari/Porsche or live in the biggest house in the best zip code. I don't want us to continue to rape and pillage the environment in the relentless pursuit of bigger and better products and higher and higher profits.

I'm not sure how we can change the economy, government and human nature to achieve this... or if it's even possible... but that's how I feel about "capitalism". It's better than many of the options out there but it's not without it's own set of problems. Human nature tends to make these flaws worse as we exploit the flaws in an effort to make more money and be better than the next guy...

The Ecology of Commerce - Paul Hawken

2008-08-07T09:40:00.009-04:00

I just finished reading The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken which my girlfriend bought me for my birthday last week.

It was a good read if you're into economics and the environment and you like to think about shaking things up and making the world a better place. However, I found many of the major concepts in the book to be a little too idealistic to make it to the real world without being forced in some major ways. I'm not sure who could or would step up to the challenge and force some of these concepts into practice, such as a shift toward green taxes in place of income taxes and a large reduction in military spending. If they could be implemented, there is little doubt in my mind that they would help us move towards a more sustainable economy that doesn't completely destroy the planet in the name of ever larger profits, meaningless products and never ending conflicts. Large corporations wield so much power in our current political system that making the large changes that are suggested in the book isn't a likely scenario.

One key part of the plan that doesn't seem practical on a long term basis is the entire concept of green taxes. My particular problem with them is that the government in America seems to be inclined to just keep getting bigger and more out of control and the overwhelming majority of Americans don't care or don't know how to change anything. The idea of adding green taxes into the mix but taking out income taxes in an equal amount to encourage work but discourage the use of resources seems like a good idea on paper. However, I'm sure that instead of taking away income taxes in favor of green taxes, we'll end up with both and much less real money in our pockets which will just hasten the downward spiral.

The book also seemed to place the lion's share of both improving the economy and the condition of the environment upon the idea that business (and the government) had to make gigantic sweeping changes that would (at the very least, in the short term) cause them to lose money. It also made the assumption that human nature was something that could be retrained into a state where people didn't over-consume and would be satisfied with a more simple life. I'm not sure that there is any way to go back to a more simple life at this stage of the game.

My views on the future are not all gloom and doom, though. I do think that we do need to start heading toward a direction where our progress into the future is much more sustainable. However, I am coming to the point of understanding that little changes that individuals can make such as separating out their recyclables and driving hybrid cars hundreds of miles to work aren't enough to do much good in the big picture. We do need to work out ways of improving the world we live in that do more than put a little dent in the problem. We need to start looking at the bigger picture.

Cuil - Not so cool.

2008-07-29T10:52:00.006-04:00

I've read a few stories about the new search engine, Cuil, which is supposedly pronounced cool. Cuil's creators seem to believe that it is already poised to take on search giant google.

I've tried it out a couple times now and I'm not quite so sure that it's going to challenge google anytime soon.

My first attempts last night were met with error messages stating that the servers didn't return any results because they were too busy. I attempted again this morning by searching for "tour de france winner 2008" (without the quotes) and the first result on google was: "Sports News: Carlos Sastre 2008 Tour de France Winner" which was a good result. All of the other results on the first page were similar results.

Cuil gave me results about scandals, the 2006 winner twice, the 2007 winner twice, the 2004 winner, etc. I didn't see anything on their first page about Sastre or the 2008 Tour.

I also like the way google search results are just a simple list of links with descriptions. Cuil looks more like a newspaper page with results in blocks spread over three columns. I found it hard to look at compared to google.

While this isn't a definitive test, it's enough for me to not waste my time with Cuil for the time being.

Our tax dollars at work...

2008-07-24T15:31:00.004-04:00

I was going to write about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout that I just read about on Business Week but then I came across A Fannie and Freddie Bailout=Your Tax Dollars At Work! on Red Herring while searching around on google.

Now I can just be lazy and send you there since this is just a more witty version of what I would have written, anyway.

P.S. I had even this title written before I came across the blog on Red Herring, I swear!

Staycation?

2008-07-15T09:29:00.004-04:00

Does anyone else hate the non-word "staycation" with a fiery passion? Every time I see it written or hear someone say it I cringe.

Why can't people just say "We're not going on vacation to [insert some some far-away, probably tropical destination] this year. We're going to just go on a few short local trips to save [some money or the environment or whatever the case may be]."

Instead marketers, advertisers and other hype-masters have noticed the trend of people saying that they're not traveling as much because airfare and other vacation costs are increasing (on top of their day to day costs increasing) and are trying to make it seem hip and/or eco-friendly to not go on vacation by giving it a stupid name. Now that they've got your attention they can push long forgotten local destinations (that have lost favor to bigger, badder, more distant places) and new barbeque grills, slip-n-slides and inflatable pools on you for your awesome backyard "staycation" and you won't feel so bad about not going anywhere.

It's not a bad idea to stick close to home and do a few short trips or just have a barbecue by your inflatable pool instead of going on a long, far-away vacation if you can't afford it (or for whatever reason you have) but please stop calling it a "staycation".

Now that I got that little rant out of the way: I don't think my girlfriend and I are going on an actual vacation this year. We've already been talking about possibly doing an overnight or two somewhere on our week off. I'm trying to save money to pay off debt and to possibly buy a house while property values are heading down to more reasonable levels. I don't think it was the cost of gas (or anything like that) that made the decision for us. For me, at least, I think it was more a decision as to whether it was worth it to spend $1,000+ for a few days away from home or to use it for something more long term... and I think I'm at the stage of the game where I need to focus on the long term a little more.

Minor Website Updates

2008-07-09T13:20:00.005-04:00

I bet you didn't even notice the two very subtle changes that I made to my website over the past few days. I'll mention them in a minute... but, first, there's something else that I've been thinking about. This all started when I mentioned to a friend a few weeks ago that people are actually looking at my blog (according to my web stats from my web hosting company). He was as surprised as I was... possibly even more.

I'm not really even sure who reads this blog (let alone on a regular enough basis to notice my two tiny changes). I post here mostly just to write about interesting things that I've come across, to get ideas out, to rant and complain or just to blab about my somewhat boring life. I also have a somewhat poor memory and very little in the way of an internal time line... so keeping that stuff straight is another reason behind this blog.

However, even though I'm not sure that there's really even anything interesting here, I see in my stats that there are actually some people coming here mostly because of my MacBook Pro rants and my take on an article in Rolling Stone magazine about the hardcore crew FSU and the Hudson Duster in nearby Troy, NY. (Related tidbit: In that last linked entry, I mentioned another blog entry that I found while researching my Rolling Stone FSU article post that tried to draw a line between FSU and biological weapons which I thought was hilarious (in a bad way). That post actually drew a response from the guy who wrote the blog entry that I linked to and picked on! I noticed that his post is no longer on his blog now, though.)

Anyway, now that I got that out of the way... The changes I made to this here website that you're reading were to add a categorized "LINKS" page instead of just a little column of links only on my main page. (There is a link to the links in the left side menu.) I had gotten out of the habit of posting links for the past few years on my various websites because maintaining links was too much of a hassle (with little benefit to me) but recently I've wanted to add a few new (mostly local) links and felt the column was going to get too long... so... there is the reason for that change.

The second change was to add a drop down menu to my archives section on my blog page. There were links for every month that this blog has been going all listed out and they were getting rather unruly. I doubt anyone uses them, anyway... so the menu is much neater.

Anyway, that's all for this entry. If you're reading this leave me a comment or send me an email with the contact link to the left and let me know you're here...

Thanks.

Bike parts have arrived!!!

2008-07-07T17:53:00.012-04:00

My order of bike parts from Jenson USA that I wrote about on Thursday is here already! I did spend the extra few dollars for "overnight shipping" because I didn't expect my order to even be shipped out until today since I placed my order LATE Wednesday night and Friday was a holiday. I was VERY surprised that it was shipped out early on Thursday!

I'm going to get going on the tear down of my old bike tomorrow or Wednesday and hopefully have the painting complete by the end of this coming weekend. Then I'll let the paint settle for a week or so and put the bike back together in a couple weeks with all of it's new toys.

(Re-)refurbishing my bicycle

2008-07-03T10:08:00.006-04:00

I have been talking about (re-)refurbishing my old mid 1990's Diamondback Ascent mountain bike for quite some time now and I'm actually (finally) getting around to starting it.

Last weekend I hit up a couple local bike shops to look for a comfortable new seat and more road-worthy tires. The plan is to cruise the roads to get back in shape and then convert the bike back into an off-roader or pick up a new mountain bike once I'm back in shape enough to get back off road again.

I ended up picking up some semi-slick 26" x 1.9" tires at Wal-Mart because the one local shop that had the right size wanted $22-something each for their generic, no-brand tires. They were half that at Wal-Mart. I would have rather bought them at a bike shop but I couldn't justify spending double the money for practically the same tire. I also couldn't find a seat that looked comfortable enough that was less than $50 at the local bike shops, either, so I passed on picking up a seat. Last Sunday I was going to tear the whole bike apart and get repainting (orange, of course) but I realized that I didn't have a chain tool. So, I just put the new tires on and swapped out my Manitou suspension fork for the original rigid fork and gave the bike a quick test ride. Much better... but the seat is still a horrible implement of butt torture and the stem and handlebar I put on a couple years ago still makes the steering feel weird and the riding position is too stretched out for me.

So, I went a little crazy last night with buying new parts for my old mountain bike. I happened upon some good deals at JensonUSA and I ordered a Park chain tool, Sportourer Zoo Gel seat, Easton Vice DH stem and handlebars, Avid Single Digit 5 v-brakes, Cane Creek Direct Curve brake levers, brake cables, Shimano STX/Alivio shifters, derailleur cables and a Cane Creek S-1 headset.

The slicks and rigid fork along with the shorter, higher rise (50mm-10 degree) stem, riser bars and gel seat should make the bike more comfortable to get back into riding. The other stuff will upgrade worn out (mostly 10+ year old) parts. The only stock stuff on the bike when I'm done will be the frame, rigid fork, seat post clamp, wheels, freewheel, derailleurs and bottom bracket (which might also be replaced once I get it off and see what shape it's in).

I figure that I'll either attempt to make some of my money back selling some of my replaced parts on craigslist/eBay or put them on one of my other older bikes that I gave to my father when I bought this bike...

I can't wait to start riding again!

Bands with ONLY MySpace sites

2008-07-02T10:27:00.005-04:00

People in bands (especially unsigned ones that only have MySpace pages and no website of their own) please listen.

MySpace pages shouldn't be the only source of information for your fans on the internet. I realize that you probably get tons of people that look at your page there, add you as a friend and listen to the songs that you're sharing there and it's free! That's all good but there are many employers (including mine) that block MySpace. On top of that, there are tons of people that don't like MySpace and try to avoid it as much as possible. (I tend to fall into this category, as well.)

Put up a website of your own. They're really not that expensive in the grand scheme of things. It'll cost you less than $20 for a domain name for a year and $5-10 a month for basic hosting to get you started. Divide it up among all of the band members and it'll probably cost you less than $20-25 each for the year! The hardest part of the whole process is going to be finding a domain name that isn't already taken. I'm sure you have a friend or a band member that can put up a good looking website. It's pretty easy these days.

Keep your MySpace up but also link to your own site and keep the information there up to date so it looks like you're interested in keeping your fans who can't get to (or don't want to go to) your MySpace page informed on where you are touring and what you're doing.

There are some bands out there that I'd like to link to and share with my friends... but I won't link to MySpace. I dislike it that much. This might be just a pet peeve of mine but I can't be the only one who feels this way.

Home Depot to offer CFL recycling

2008-06-25T10:20:00.003-04:00

Home Depot is going to offer recycling for Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs in all of their stores.

Many people and companies have been pushing CFL's because they use less energy and last longer than traditional light bulbs but they contain a small amount of Mercury. This isn't a problem until you have to dispose of one, though, as it was pretty hard to find a place that recycled them...

Hopefully this announcement will lead to other places that sell CFL bulbs to start recycling programs of their own.

We've switched over to CFL's in almost all of the lamps in our apartment and I have nothing but good things to say about them these days. Years ago when they first came out I wasn't a big fan of the color of the light and the fact that they didn't seem as bright or as sharp as the regular bulbs they replaced but the newer ones we have are awesome.

High gas prices put gas stations out of business

2008-06-17T15:33:00.005-04:00

Anyone out there who's had the idea that now would be a good time to own a gas station, with gas prices being so high, THINK AGAIN!

Unfortunately, this is a real issue. My father's friend owns a gas station and he has said that he doesn't really make that much money from gasoline. He used to make most of the money he earned from his repair shop. He recently expanded into a convenience-type store, as well, which seems to be doing pretty well.

A gas station in my girlfriend's hometown recently closed because they couldn't pay for their gasoline loads in the 2 days they were given to pay for them. It turned out that it was impossible to turn over their whole load of gasoline in 2 days in order to have the money to pay for it.

I wonder how widespread of a problem this is going to turn out to be. It has to be pretty bad if Exxon-Mobil is planning on selling their corporate owned and operated stations.

Mass MoCA and The Clark

2008-06-05T22:13:00.009-04:00

The past couple days were spent on a mini vacation about an hour and 15 minutes away in Northwestern Massachusetts. My girlfriend and I left our apartment on Wednesday morning and headed to nearby North Adams, MA to hit up one of my favorite museums, Mass MoCA. I have been there a few times but this was her first time.

I have seen some exhibits there that I enjoyed more such as Robert Wilson's 14 Stations and Matthew Ritchie's Proposition Player.

The highlights of this trip for me were a few of the paintings in the Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape exhibition and Jenny Holzer's Projections.

I put pictures of a few of my favorites on my Mass MoCA Picasa gallery page.

After the museum we checked into the Holiday Inn in North Adams. It wasn't bad... but next time I think I'm going to spend the extra $30 and stay at Porches. The room we were in at the Holiday Inn had a nice view and was a nice size but it could have been a bit cleaner. The windows were filthy, the desk had some sticky goop on it, etc.

The guy at the check in desk of the hotel was very friendly, though, and recommended a few local restaurants for us to try so we walked around and ended up deciding on getting dinner at the Boston Seafood Restaurant on American Legion Drive which was about a block away. I had a Chicken Parmesan sandwich with steak fries and my girlfriend had scallops that actually looked so good that I tried a piece of one. (I don't eat any seafood aside from the VERY occasional canned tuna drowned in mayonnaise or the even more occasional breaded deep fried clam drowned in tartar sauce.)

This morning I woke up early and my girlfriend was already up... so we got ready to go and after a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts we hit The Clark. I had never been there mostly because I'm more of a modern/contemporary art guy... but I must say there were some nice paintings there as well as a ton of interesting silver and some amazing furniture.

I also put up a few pictures of some of my favorite pieces at The Clark on my "The Clark" Picasa gallery page.

After The Clark, I was wiped out and ready to head home to recharge for NYC tomorrow.

Next time we head out that way I think it's time to check out the Williams College Museum of Art.

T. Boone Pickens to build large wind farm

2008-05-21T09:39:00.005-04:00

Yesterday on cnn.com I saw a headline that read Billionaire oilman backs wind power and was intrigued. It seems that T. Boone Pickens is investing in wind power to create a 4,000 megawatt wind farm in Texas scheduled to be completed in 2015.

I hope I'm not the only one out here that thinks this is an awesome thing. It's not too often that you read about people in the oil industry being interested in anything besides making money off of our dependence on oil. At the very least, hopefully this gets other people (with the means to make large investments) to see that there's money to be made from wind and other less destructive energy producing technologies, as well.

More thoughts on fewer choices

2008-05-16T11:50:00.009-04:00

Earlier this year I read a book by Barry Schwartz called The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less and gave a quick overview of it.

I've been thinking about this book (and some of the main ideas in it) more and more over the past few weeks and I wanted to write down a few more thoughts on the whole concept of simplification and having fewer choices.

Like most people I have things that I care about and want to have tons of choices and things that I just want to be simple that I don't have to put a lot of thought behind.

I looked at reviews on hundreds of different tires before I picked the set I wanted. However, walking down the cereal aisle in the supermarket and being presented with plain Cheerios^® in three different sized boxes (8.9, 14 & 18 oz.) just seems a tad ridiculous to me. How much of a waste is it to have three different package sizes, three different cases that have to be shipped to the store, three different spots on a shelf that have to be stocked, three different UPC's that have to be maintained in computer systems and on and on... all for the SAME EXACT product. Now expand this thinking to all of the other cereals... and then on to all of the other products available in a typical supermarket.

Do stores really need to carry a half dozen or so different brands of pasta? (I've never had pasta that tasted any different than any other pasta.) How is "pizza sauce" different from "pasta sauce" or "tomato sauce"? Aren't they all just basically tomatoes and spices? I'm not going to lie and say that I don't have preferences or favorite products and foods but I'm usually so overwhelmed when I walk in the supermarket that I don't pay attention to different prices or sizes and just grab what I'm used to eating but I can spend many hours spread over a few months researching tires for my car beginning months before they're even ready to be replaced.

I don't really know how to justify what I'm thinking and I'm sure that Cheerios^®, pasta and various sauces are important to some people in the same way that tires are important to me. I wouldn't just walk into a tire store and say: "I'd like to buy some tires." the same way I walk into the supermarket and grab a random box of rotini and jar of Prego^®. However, I think I'd have a meltdown if I tried to compare Prego^® to Ragu^® to Bertolli^® to Classico^® to Emerill's^® to Hunt's^® to Newman's Own^® to Muir Glen^® to Gia Russa^® to the store brand (and I could go on and on and on here...) the same way I obsessed about tires.

The whole concept of having too many choices is such a tricky situation that we've gotten ourselves into in pursuit of the almighty dollar... everything is a balancing act. Retailers don't want to piss off customers by taking away their choices and they want to keep adding new products to their lineup to relieve you of some of your cash while you're picking up your necessities but at the same time they want to save money and increase their profits. New brands pop up to take a share of your pasta sauce budget. Retail stores just keep getting bigger and more overwhelming. At many Wal-Mart stores you can have your car's oil changed while you purchase Miller Lite, shrimp, boxer shorts and a big screen TV.

I know there are other people out there that feel a lot like I do. The same simplification argument apples to pretty much everything from the supermarket example to computer software user interfaces. Sometimes having too many choices is overwhelming and wasteful... but how do we go back to a more simple existence? How do we remove choices without taking away a person's freedom to choose?

First car detailing of the year

2008-05-11T22:55:00.012-04:00

** WARNING: Boring car stuff below. **

I stopped by my parent's house to see my mother for Mother's Day. We talked for a little while but she had some other stuff to do so I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather today to clean my car. I don't like to drive around in a dirty car... and my car was FILTHY.

I went to the car wash and sprayed off all of the heavy grime. Then I clayed the entire car with Meguiar's Smooth Surface Clay Kit. In very simple terms clay removes junk that gets stuck in your paint. This was my first time claying a car and it went pretty well. I was actually surprised how much stuff it actually pulled from the paint.

After claying the car I used my Ultimate Detailing Machine that my girlfriend got me for Christmas to apply Danase Swirl Abolisher I to smooth out the very minor scratches and swirl marks.

I finished up the paint with two coats of Danase Paint Sealant and then I moved on to the windows and interior. I conditioned the leather with a leather conditioner that I picked up quite awhile ago. I forget what brand it is but it works well and smells like new car. I wiped down the dash, plastic trim and rubber moldings with 303 Aerospace Protectant (Amazon link). The 303 Protectant functions like Armor All but is not as shiny.

I still have to swap my winter heavy duty floor mats for the carpeted ones and vacuum the carpet. I ran out of light before I was able to finish.

Also, last week I picked up some new tires for my car. I decided to go with BF Goodrich g-Force Super Sport A/S tires in the stock size of 205/50/ZR17. So far, so good. They're much quieter than the stock tires that came on the car which wore out in less than 25K miles. The only bad thing is the person that mounted them chipped every one of my wheels in multiple places. Good thing I painted them myself so I have paint to touch them up...

I'm going to have to do that soon because that's another thing that bothers me. I'm so OCD when it comes to my car.

Anyway, after I finished up messing around with my car today I stopped to see my sister for her second Mother's Day. Her son, Alex, is getting so big! He's a funny kid, too! He's at the stage where he likes to "parrot" what you say.

(Edit: Removed dead links to Danase - 03/25/10.)

No way, Jose...

2008-05-02T09:31:00.005-04:00

Not that I generally hold sports stars in very high regard but I'm going to give Jose Canseco the benefit for the doubt for now and say that maybe he misspoke on the TV show Inside Edition when he said: "I do have a judgment on my home and it to me is very strange because it didn't make financial sense for me to keep paying a mortgage on a home that was basically owned by someone else."

I'm going to say he misspoke because I basically translated that statement as: "I don't understand what a mortgage is. There's no way I'm going to continue to pay for my freakin' mansion because paying for something you don't own is stupid even if you will own it someday by continuing to pay for it."

I don't know all of the details and (to be honest) I don't really care enough to find out. The only justification I can see is that his interest rate might have been way out of hand and/or he was paying an interest only mortgage. Paying even an interest only loan on a $2.5M home would suck. I couldn't do it. However, it sounds like he tries to justify letting his home get foreclosed on by saying that it's hard to take care of your family on $17-18M after taxes.

You've got to be kidding me.

America's Energy Policy?

2008-05-01T20:28:00.006-04:00

Remember that time I mentioned that we need to work on our energy policy?

Well all of the recent news headlines about the increasing cost of food, gasoline and, well, pretty much everything... lead to one thing. Yeah, we REALLY need to work on our energy policy.

Is this the end, suburbia?

2008-04-30T12:44:00.009-04:00

I read an article this morning on BusinessWeek entitled "Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?" that seemed to be right up the alley of my blog.

The article is about the predictions of a writer named James Kunstler who lives in nearby Saratoga Springs, NY. Mr. Kunstler seems to believe that the increase in oil prices is going to bring an abrupt end to suburban sprawl, strip malls and Wal-Mart.

As much as I feel that the suburban way of life is doing massive damage to our planet, I'm not sure that it's just going to end because of gas/oil prices. I'm sure that there will still be people that feel safer in a small neighborhood away from large amounts of other people. How many families will want to sell their property in the suburbs and a move into an apartment or house on a tiny city lot and send their kids to inner city schools and to play in public parks and community swimming pools instead of letting them play in their reasonably safe back yard? How many people will change jobs to be closer to work if the company they work for is located in a city with a higher cost of living or higher crime rates than their current suburb? (Or the business is located in an industrial park in a different suburban area?)

I'm definitely not anti-city. However, the argument can be made that the draw of "suburbia" isn't going to end just because gasoline is expensive. At least around here suburban neighborhoods have schools with better reputations. Residential property values are higher and seem to retain their value better. Crime rates are lower. Many large local businesses have offices that are outside of downtown areas probably because commercial property values are lower. Two income families have to find a central location between both people's respective jobs which, quite often it seems, are in different directions. Some cities have higher tax rates than many suburbs.

I guess what I'm saying that when the company I work for relocates to a nearby city (from the suburb it's in now) in about a year and a half I would love to move to a house in that city that I can walk to work from. However, that would still leave my girlfriend with a commute that's about the same distance as mine is now. We'd be saving a the equivalent of a 20 minute car ride (her approximate current daily round trip commute) for more crime, lower property values, less personal space, higher taxes, etc.

I just don't think that suburbia is going to end any time soon.

Beeeer!

2008-04-29T21:25:00.006-04:00

I've been on a slight beer kick lately. (Alright, I'll admit it... I really don't drink that much anymore. So even drinking a couple beers in a week is a "slight beer kick" to me. Anyway, though...)

After TAP NY this weekend I've been craving beer all this week. Even though I've been trying to lose weight (and being somewhat successful*) I gave in to my craving tonight and went out and picked up a six-pack of Southern Tier Brewing Company Raspberry Porter.

It's delicious and it is definitely quelling my beer craving.

In an unrelated note: I can't wait to get my tax stimulus direct deposit. I'm going to be putting mine toward paying off debt. I wonder how many people are going to do the same?

* As far as losing weight goes, I'm 11 weeks into a 12 week Weight Loss Challenge at work and as of last week I was about 14 and 1/2 pounds down from where I started out! I have a feeling that I gained a little bit back over the past week but I feel confident that I can hit my goal of losing 15 pounds in the 12 weeks.

TAP New York 2008

2008-04-27T13:03:00.007-04:00

Another TAP New York is in the history books. According to the 2008 program, TAP NY started in 1998 as the Hudson Valley Beer & Food Festival and was held at the Culinary Institute of America for it's first two years before moving to it's current location at Hunter Mountain in Hunter, NY.

Last year was the 10th year the festival was held and my first year attending. I had a blast last year. However, I ended up eating quite a bit but only sampling a few different beers (which was the main attraction) because I didn't find out about it until last minute and didn't have a place to stay. So I only tried a couple of the best sounding beers before making the hour and 15 minute drive back home.

This year my girlfriend and I prepared a little earlier. We reserved a room just a 5 minute walk up the mountain at the Kaatskill Mountain Club.

We drove up on Friday night and checked into the hotel. It was quite expensive compared to places we usually stay but upon opening the door to the room we decided that it was worth it. Our room on the fourth (top) floor had a kitchen area with full appliances, dishes and a dining room table that was open to a living area with a gas fireplace and a door to a private balcony with a nice view overlooking the Catskills. Off of the living room was a separate bedroom which also had a door to the balcony and a jacuzzi tub. Everything was very clean and neat and in good shape. Nothing was out of place or broken. There were real photographs and paintings and not the typical hotel art. I would definitely stay there again!

After we checked in we dropped our stuff off in the room and went down to eat dinner at the restaurant (Van Winkle's) in the hotel. I don't think I'd recommend the restaurant as much as I would recommend the hotel. We were seated at a table pretty quickly at around 9:30 but we waited about 10 minutes for a waiter to even come over. One waitress walked by our table multiple times actually making direct eye contact with me once and didn't respond when I said "Hello." It seemed that nobody knew who's table we were at so we ended up with a really nice and apologetic waiter named Bill. I ordered a burger from their special (abbreviated) TAP NY menu cooked medium-well and it was medium rare at best. If I wasn't starving I wouldn't have touched it. It wasn't the best burger I've had but at least it stopped my stomach from growling. My girlfriend got a pasta dish with some shrimp added to it. She said the sauce was pretty good but the shrimp were very dry leading me to make the joke that they were probably shrimp cocktail shrimp that got tossed in the microwave when they forgot to put them on the dish when they first brought it out.

Anyway, now we're up to the reason we were in Hunter, NY... TAP NY. At noon we headed down to the base lodge to meet up with a group of our friends and pick up our glasses (that appear to hold approximately 3-4 ounces) and wrist bands. At 1 o'clock the doors opened and everyone rushed in eager to drink as many of the beers as they could. Someone who is better at math than I am figured out quickly that in order to try every beer before 5 (when the doors closed) you needed to have a beer every two minutes.

I wasn't that ambitious but I did manage to sample about 22 different beers and Heartland Brewery's Berry Champagne Ale was the only one that was so bad I had to dump it out. (I can't remember the last time I couldn't drink a beer...) I do generally gravitate towards the darker beers but I tried to switch it up a little bit and sample some ales and light wheat beers. Some of them were very good... but this one (unfortunately) wasn't.

My favorites of the day definitely swayed toward the dark stuff for the most part. In no particular order, my favorites were: Adirondack Pub & Brewery's Maple Porter, Captain Lawrence Brewing's Smoked Porter, Defiant Brewery's Stout of War, Sixpoint Craft Ale's Gorilla Warfare Porter, Rohrbach Brewing's Bluebeary Ale and John Harvard's Brew House's Oatmeal Amber Ale. Ithaca Beer Company's Apricot Wheat should also be on this list even though I didn't get around to their booth. I have had this one a couple times before (plus had one with my burger on Friday night).

I was really excited that this year's food theme was chicken but it looked like the only chicken they really had (that I could find) were chicken wings with different seasonings. That was disappointing but they did have other food such as pizza, various sausages, soups, sub platters, meatballs, hamburgers, hot dogs, cheese & crackers, pretzels, mini crab cakes, scallops wrapped in bacon, etc. I definitely had enough to eat. Almost everything was included in the admission fee aside from a few of the specialty vendors. One booth was selling chocolate covered strawberries that were 3 for $1 which I couldn't resist.

Overall, though, TAP NY was an awesome time. The beer was delicious and plentiful. The weather was beautiful aside for a little rain around 9:30 on Saturday night and a cool morning on Sunday. The hotel was great and I got to see some friends that I haven't seen in awhile. All in all it was an awesome weekend. (Note to self: I need to get a jacuzzi tub and a fireplace when I buy a house!)

Oh, Apple... Where did you go wrong?

2008-04-19T09:36:00.005-04:00

I saw this headline today "Apple Backs Off Slightly on Aggressive Software Update Tactics" on Wired. Information Week is also running a similar story.

It seems that the Windows version of iTunes was pushing downloads of Safari to unsuspecting iTunes/Windows users as a "software update".

I can't believe that anyone in any software company would think this is a good idea, especially Apple, which I used to hold in high regard.

Apple, you were just knocked down another peg in my book...

Website stats and Dell Vostro update

2008-04-15T09:17:00.005-04:00

I just pulled up my statistics on my website (as I have a tendency to do on occasion) and I found that quite a few people that have looked at my blog in recent history are coming here for problems with the MacBook Pro. I've had people hit my website in the past couple weeks by searching google for: "macbook pro not charging", "why is my macbook pro not charging", "macbook pro issues with trackpad while charging", "macbook pro screen not coming on when opening it", "macbook pro cd dvd rubbing inside" and "stop importing cds on macbook pro".

So, it seems to me like there are other people out there that are having the same problems with their MacBook Pros that I did. It's sad because they're such nice looking computers. It's my feeling that Apple put form way too far above function on the MacBook Pro and at the prices people are paying for them, they should be damn close to perfect. (Which, in my humble opinion, they are not.)

This leads into a a quick update on my Dell Vostro 1500.

It's still big and it's still heavy. Since I usually use it around the house it doesn't bother me too much. However, I found out that it doesn't fit in my awesome Timbuk2 laptop messenger bag that my sister got me for Christmas a few years ago. It's not even close. So, that's a little disappointing.

The matte black finish does show fingerprints pretty easily... but again, this isn't too big of a deal.

As far as functionality, though, I've ran into one glitch with it so far. Just for the hell of it I tried to play a DVD on it over the weekend and I couldn't get the DVD to play. The media player software that it came with kept asking me to switch the region on my DVD player to Region 1 for US/Canada. I attempted to, but it still wouldn't play and it said it was still set to "Free". I didn't really care enough to try to fix it since I was sitting in front of my TV. I just popped the DVD in the DVD player and went on with my day. I'm going to figure it out sometime, though... I just haven't cared enough to yet.

I purchased Need for Speed: Pro Street a few days ago and while the graphics aren't that awesome on the game, the Dell runs it with no problem at full native screen resolution with all settings on high. Even playing with the laptop sitting on my lap it doesn't get uncomfortably hot on my legs like the MacBook Pro did under less load.

I do find the trackpad to be a little "twitchy" sometimes... but not very often. It's more responsive and seems to not have the issue of my MacBook Pro's trackpad where I had to swipe my finger a few times before it picked up that I was touching it.

Overall, though, I've been happy with the Dell so far. I've been much more pleased with it than I thought I would be and especially knowing that I saved $1,300 or so on it compared to the MacBook Pro...

New lappy (again)...

2008-04-05T11:44:00.004-04:00

I ended up getting a Dell Vostro 1500 to replace my problematic MacBook Pro. I had my choices of replacement laptops narrowed down to the Dell Vostro line or the Lenovo ThinkPad T61 or R61 but Dell just happened to be running a HUGE $500 off promotion on the Vostro if you optioned it up from the base configuration to over $1,299 before the discount. So I build a computer with the specs that I wanted:

Windows XP Pro
Intel Core 2 Duo T8100
2 GB RAM (very easily upgraded someday)
NVidia 8600GT 256MB Video RAM
120 GB 5400RPM HDD (also, very easily upgraded someday)
15.4" Matte Display
Webcam
Bluetooth
Intel Wireless N

My first thoughts on the Dell are that it's definitely bigger, slightly heavier and much less sleek looking than the Apple. However, it is much quieter and the performance seems to be very good so far.

I've also noticed that it runs nowhere near as hot as the MacBook Pro did. I haven't done any really "heavy lifting" with it yet but I'll be sure to report back on my future experiences if I notice anything funky. So far, though, it's more of a "laptop" than the MacBook Pro was.

I've said before that I prefer Apple's OS X to Windows but XP Pro is kind of like an old friend. I've been using XP for so many years at work, occasionally at home and on friend's computers that I have grown accustomed to it's quirks, weaknesses and strengths and I know what to expect. XP might not be the best looking or most solid OS ever... but it seems to get the job done. Plus I already have a lot of XP compatible software that I never re-bought for OS X.

The speakers sound pretty good. The display quality is good. The resolution is slightly lower than on the MacBook Pro (1280 x 800 compared to 1440 x 900) but for what I'm going to be using the computer for (basic internet surfing, big spreadsheets and occasional games) it's going to be fine. If I need some more screen "real estate", I could always hook it up to my 20" Dell widescreen monitor that I have my PowerMac G4 and the Rosetta running Dell on now.

The keyboard feels nice and solid and is comfortable to type on. I did like the backlit keyboard of the MacBook Pro but I can't say that I actually ever used it, so I don't think I'll really miss it that much. The front edge of the laptop is rounded so it's not so harsh on my wrists. The trackpad is responsive and the scroll areas at the bottom and side of the trackpad seem to work pretty well.

The build quality seems good. I haven't noticed any flexing or creaking sounds anywhere and I'm able to pick it up one handed from the corner without feeling any flex.

But... the best part of all is that the Dell was about $870 including DHL shipping, tax and the $500 off offer. I went to pick it up today at the DHL location by me because I was too impatient to wait until Monday for it to be delivered. Anyway, $870 compared to about $2,150 for the MacBook Pro for very similar specs seems like a hell of a deal so far. I'm not sure I would have picked this laptop if it was over $1,300 (at "regular" price) but for the $870 it seems pretty much unbeatable.

So, the bottom line is: If the Dell proves to be not as problematic as the MacBook Pro it's a HUGE win. However, even if I do have the occasional minor issue with it or gripe about it, I still saved a TON of money for very a very similarly spec'd machine. I'd still grant it a slightly less (but still HUGE) win over the MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro is gone

2008-03-26T20:29:00.012-04:00

I've written about my less than stellar experience(s) with the MacBook Pro a few times on this blog but I haven't written about it lately mostly because I have been having more issues with it and was working with Apple on a resolution. I've been a fan of Apple computers for a few years now and I wanted this computer since they were announced. I finally talked myself into to purchasing one when my girlfriend's laptop started to die and I gave her my iBook. I started to have issues with it as soon as I took it out of the box, though.

* Sometimes there was an unbearable amount of heat generated and transmitted through the bottom of the laptop. (This concern was never really addressed.)

* Annoying fan noise from the fans that ran consistently at 2,000 RPM at idle and much faster and louder when playing games or even using Google Earth or Street View. (Was told this was normal and that I'd get used to it.)

* Keyboard and trackpad intermittently not responding. The keyboard on a couple of occasions required a reboot of the machine because it wouldn't respond. The trackpad took a few swipes of my finger to recognize that I was touching it. (The keyboard issue seemed to be resolved with Software Updates but the trackpad problems persisted.)

* MagSafe adapter failure at about 1 month old. (Resolved with a new MagSafe adapter.)

* Fans surging and running very fast when the laptop was plugged in. This usually happened most when the battery was almost dead and was first plugged in while running.

* Speakers crackle a few times when I wake the computer from sleep.

* The squared off front edge of the palm rest was sometimes uncomfortable on my wrists. (Which was not a functional issue that I brought up as a problem but it did diminish the amount I liked the computer.)

* SuperDrive issues which included grinding noises when the laptop was held even slightly off level while a CD was spinning and it also randomly spit out CD's as soon as they were put in.

* Scratched CD's crashed iTunes with no warnings or errors just a solid freeze of iTunes while the SuperDrive spins up and down.

* Random program crashes (iTunes and Firefox mostly) plus the screen saver preference pane crashed every time I tried to open it. (The screen saver issue might have been caused by BOINC but since I never tried to open it before I installed BOINC, we might never know.)

* Boot Camp install of Windows XP Pro crashed and burned. It went through the initial stages to the first reboot and then booted to a black screen where it hung. I ended up having to reboot, hold the Option key to get a list of drives to boot from and pick my Mac HD and then reselect that as the Boot Drive as well as remove the botched XP partition. I had XP running previously with VMWare Fusion but I wanted to be able to run Windows natively because I work with HUGE spreadsheets in Excel, I wanted to mess around with Visual Studio again and I wanted to play the occasional PC game.

* Display not waking from sleep intermittently at about 1 1/2 months old.

I was finally prompted to contact Apple to let them know how unhappy I was with the computer after the MagSafe and SuperDrive issues (which were logged with my third Case number) but the Boot Camp and display not waking from sleep issues finally brought me to my breaking point. I contacted the person that I had previously been in contact with and asked for a refund. Before those I was just attempting to let them know I was unhappy but not asking for or demanding anything in return...

I was VERY impressed at how polite and professional the person who contacted me was. Outside of the emails that went back and forth I had a couple phone tag voice mails and a couple phone conversations that were VERY non-confrontational and apologetic.

It ALMOST restored my faith in Apple until I had to go back to the Apple store today and deal with the as... (*ahem*) associates there to claim my refund. I waited behind another customer for a few minutes to speak with the manager who, I felt, treated me like a criminal from the very beginning.

I told him I was there to return my laptop and that I had a case number. (The person I was in contact with at Apple had already contacted the store and they knew to expect me... but he gave me a hard time, anyway.)

He looked at my receipt and said I was out of my return period. I said I knew that and repeated that I had a case number and that someone from Apple was already in contact with a store manager who authorized the return. He asked me what my problem was. I explained and then he grudgingly gave the laptop an look over and focused on, examined and wiped with his finger on a smudge on the screen that he probably made opening it. (I gave it a nice cleaning and inspection last night before packing it back up.) He gave me a dirty look while cleaning it with something that he pulled out from under the register. He powered it up to the welcome screen to the fresh OS X install that I did. He (again) asked me what my problem was and politely explained that the computer had been in there three times for various issues (which I listed) and that I kept having more problems with it the latest being that the display would intermittently not wake from sleep and said that all of this should be listed in the case number which I provided to him. He excused himself and went into the back room and came back out in a couple minutes and continued to give me a hard time.

I (again) told him that I had been in contact with someone from Apple (I did drop a name and department) and repeated that the person had contacted a (different) manager at the store (who I also named) and that they had already authorized a refund. He asked if I had brought it in to the store before contacting Apple directly. I told him that I did, three times, two of which were within the return period asking for a refund or exchange. (The third was only to replace the defective MagSafe adapter.) I was only offered a return or exchange with the $199 restocking fee on the first two trips because they deemed my computer "non-defective". Both times I (hesitantly) objected to the fee and decided to just attempt to stick it out.

The manager kept giving me a hard time saying that I was past the refund period and just generally being unpleasant. I kept telling him to check my case number if he had any more questions since everything was noted in my case (which I was instructed to say if I had any problems). After a little while of this back and forth he went into the back (again) to "check something" and came back with a SLIGHTLY better attitude and processed my return with little more drama. I thought it was funny that he had the nerve to ask if I wanted to exchange it after all of that...

So it's gone. (I just have to keep checking my credit card to make sure that they post the refund, once that's done this whole saga will be over.) I miss having a laptop right now but I'm really not that sad to see that particular one gone.

I really do prefer OS X to Windows but the MacBook doesn't appeal to me. (I don't like the keyboard, glossy screen or integrated graphics.) The MacBook Air isn't functional enough plus it doesn't appeal to me. (It has integrated graphics, non-upgradeable memory and no internal CD-ROM plus I don't like the keyboard or glossy screen.) The MacBook Pro is obviously out... so I think my time with Apple is (unfortunately) coming to an end. I'm going to continue to use my old (but stable) PowerMac G4 until it expires but it probably won't be replaced with an Apple unless the MacPro comes down in price. The only issue I've had with the PowerMac is that I can't leave my iPod, printer or external hard drive powered on and plugged into the third-party add-on USB card when the computer goes to sleep or it won't wake from sleep. That's it. Other than that it's rock solid.

As far as a laptop goes: If I don't get a (Dell) laptop from work in the next couple months I'm thinking about a Lenovo ThinkPad T61p or a Dell or HP laptop will become my main machine. Anyway, I just thought I'd share my experience.

Rosetta@home redux

2008-03-22T15:23:00.003-04:00

In my last blog post I talked about past hobbies and I mentioned that one of my past hobbies was messing around with computers. I was always updating my PC and working on computers for friends and family. In turn, I always had spare hardware and hand me down computers from friends and family kicking around.

In the tail end of my switchover to Apple a few years ago I had my last personal PC running Ubuntu Linux and the only thing I was doing on it was running Rosetta@home. Eventually, though, I ended up parting out that PC and forgot about Rosetta. (I know I can run Rosetta@home on Apple computers, too, but I don't really like to run my main computers all the time and I weeded my computers down to my day to day laptop and my iTunes library computer.)

Last night my sister gave me her old Dell Dimension desktop since she upgraded to a new laptop so she could get rid of her large desk setup in what is now her son's play room.

I updated her old computer to XP Pro and put Rosetta on it. I think the research that Rosetta is doing is a worthy cause and I really don't know what else to do with the computer right now.

If anyone out there knows of other worthy projects that I can donate some distributed computing time to please send me your recommendations.

My newest hobby.

2008-03-18T13:46:00.003-04:00

I was thinking about hobbies over the past few days and I came to the conclusion that I really haven't kept up on a lot of hobbies and interests from my past.

I used to find things to do that I really liked and throw myself into them. In my past I've spent quite a bit of time doing things like mountain biking, working on bikes, roller-blading, tinkering with computers, web-design, working on cars, etc.

Lately, though, I haven't really had too many outlets that I do on a regular basis. I tend to either be working or hanging around my apartment in various states of activity (or inactivity).

I have decided that this year I'm going to get into auto detailing. Last year I spent a few full days washing and waxing my car but this year I think I'm going to put a little bit more effort into it. (Plus, I'll probably offer to do my family member's cars, too...)

I decided I'm going to spend some time doing this because I love being outside, working on cars but a lot of times I'm too nervous to put a wrench to them in fear of messing up something instead of making it better. I've always done things like putting aftermarket intakes, exhausts, wheels & tires on my cars. However, I'm currently driving my first new car with a warranty so I'm even more nervous about doing something that will mess up my warranty coverage and/or make my car less reliable. I'll probably be a little less hesitant to do things to modify it once the warranty is up (and it's paid for.) For now, though, detailing will give me an opportunity to make my car look better and keep it's resale value high while also spending some time working with cars.

I'm starting to decide what detailing products I want to purchase for my car and to add to my product arsenal to work on other people's cars. (I have a feeling this is going to be an expensive hobby.) My girlfriend got me started with the random orbital buffer that I wanted for this past Christmas which was an awesome gift!

My brother said I can try out my new toy on his beater first. [How nice of him, eh? ;) ] The paint is black and badly oxidized and it can't really get much worse, so it should be a nice first car to practice on. I'm thinking I'm going to start off by doing a little body work on it and then working on trying to get the paint in better shape.

While I'm on the topic of cars: I also just ordered an AVO high flow air filter from RalliTEK for my car, too. I'm hoping that a clean air filter might help my gas mileage which has been suffering lately, probably from the E10 fuel that we have here for the winter.

I also have my eyes on some new 18" wheels and tires in place of my current 17" setup. The original tires are getting kind of scary. In standing water they hydroplane pretty bad. So I'm thinking of selling my current wheels to offset the purchase of a new set of 18" wheels and then just buying decent 18" tires for the spring - fall and getting 17" snow tires on my stock wheels which are still sitting in my parent's garage.

Cost analysis of gasoline.

2008-03-14T10:43:00.005-04:00

I found a interesting article yesterday on CNN about where your money goes when you're pumping gasoline into your car at $3.00+ per gallon. (Around here it's staying right around $3.25/gallon.)

I wasn't really shocked to see that about 13% of the money goes towards taxes or that less than 4% goes to the gas station owners. (My father's friend owns a gas station and I've heard him say that they don't really make much on the gasoline.) I found it interesting that about 8% went just to transportation costs.

I think the part I found least surprising was that most of the money went to record profits for companies like Exxon Mobil.

Too bad we really can't just stop buying gasoline...

The high price of cookies. Only you can end it.

2008-03-13T11:47:00.009-04:00

I just came across the blog called Conditional recoil of a guy who I used to work with on a pretty much daily basis in my last job (through a link on facebook) and I think it's a great read. He doesn't have that many posts up there yet but the ones he does are the type of posts that make you think.

In particular, though, there was a post from last November titled "Where does it end?" that I felt I needed to respond to. If you know me, you'll know why. ;)

I agree with what he is trying to say which is basically that corporate America is hosing the consumers that buy it's products because in many cases they are. However in (slight) defense of the particular industry he picked as an example (and in turn, all other industries). There are many direct costs that people neglect to take into account when figuring out what things really cost. In this exact example:

* He didn't account for labor to bake, package, label and put out said package of cookies. (Plus don't forget the ever increasing cost of benefits for the workers.)

* Then there's the cost of the actual package. (Which due to energy and material costs, which you guessed it, are increasing.)

* Don't forget the energy to run the ovens and keep the lights, heat and a/c on. (Which also increases in cost from year to year. Are you seeing a trend?)

* Transportation costs to get the case of cookies from the warehouse(s) to the stores. (Fuel costs aren't going down, you know.)

* On top of all of that how much is your time worth? How much would you pay to not have to bake the cookies you'd like to eat? Your time and convenience are also worth money...

I'm not going to detail what it costs for the above things. Instead, I'm going to simplify the equation.

Companies ARE in the business of making money and that's exactly what successful companies do. The more money they make for their owners or investors the more successful they are and the longer they stay in business.

So the answer to the question "Where does it end?" is that it all comes back to the consumer. Things tend to cost what people are willing and able to pay. If there are people out there that are willing to pay $3.99 for a package of ready to eat cookies, that's exactly what they're going to cost.

[So now that we simplified everything down to the statement that things cost what people are willing and able to pay, I'm going to re-complicate it if you're willing to continue reading.]

All of the other cookie providers that are competing for your cookie purchase also know what people will pay. How the different businesses differentiate themselves is how they gain your business over the other competitors.

* They can charge slightly less on cookies and hope that you'll buy something else that they make more profit on while you're there. (How much profit is in a cup of coffee?)

* They can have a better location that makes it easier for them to get their cookies in front of you.

* They can advertise.

* They can play up the quality of their cookie and/or how they're freshly baked (and directly or indirectly that they're better than the other guy's cookies).

It goes on and on... but the end result is the same. You want the cookies, you don't want to bake them yourself and the companies that are selling cookies want as much of your money that you're willing to let them have.

The ONLY way to make the price of cookies come down is really just to stop buying them. If nobody is buying cookies the price will either go down to a price that the customer is willing to pay (at which point the customer will resume cookie buying) or the cookies will not be available any more if they cost more to produce than the customer is willing to pay. You'll have to buy the ingredients separately and make them yourself.

The things like the cost of the raw cookie dough or ingredients, packaging, energy, transportation, labor, benefits, etc. do factor back into the equation if you can lower the tangible costs of producing and supplying the cookies in order to get them back to a level where a lower price for finished cookies still leads to an acceptable profit for the company selling them. However, if we attempt to go down this path we'll see that there are many more deep "root causes" for why the cost of everything keeps increasing which makes lowering costs difficult.

* America's "energy policies" (if you can call them that) are a little bit frightening. I'm constantly reading stories about people fighting against wind turbines ("I don't want that eyesore in my backyard." and "What will happen to the birds that fly into them?") and stifling other promising energy production methods for other ridiculous reasons. On top of that there are the people who think we should take over the Middle East by force because we're entitled to drive gas-guzzling SUV's powered by imported oil. We need to find ways to lower the cost of energy and don't involve direct conflict (which costs a lot of money).

* The cost of health care and insurance really needs to be addressed. (That's enough about this one.)

* Property costs were rising at rates we're now beginning to see weren't sustainable. (Which leads to increases in cost for rents, leases and purchases of property which also leads everything to cost more.)

There are tons of issues... I really could go all day on this topic but I keep coming back to the fact that if you really don't like the price of something the only thing you can really do is stop buying it. That'll send a undeniable message that you're not willing to pay what the seller is charging. If others do the same then things start to change...

(Broken links removed March 24, 2010)

Apple praise (but more new gripes).

2008-03-05T12:36:00.009-05:00

I have one piece of praise for Apple... but a few MORE gripes about my MacBook Pro (and one HUGE one about Apple in general).

First for the praise. I brought my MacBook Pro with the non-functional power adapter into the Apple Store for my "Genius" appointment on Friday night and I was in and out in less than 10 minutes with a brand new power adapter. The "Genius" I got wasn't one of the two I've seen in the past... but he plugged in the adapter, connected it to his MacBook Pro, said "Hmmm... that's not right... How old is your computer?" and went and got another one off the shelf after I said it's about 1 month old. I plugged my computer into his power cord and it fired right up so I don't think anything was wrong on the laptop side of the not charging issue. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly I was in and out. (Although they really couldn't argue that the adapter wasn't working... and it wasn't abused... the laptop has never left our apartment except for in it's original box for it's two previous (return/exchange attempt) trips to the Apple Store.)

Anyway, moving on to the new gripes, first I'll give you all some background: I was ripping a bunch of CD's into iTunes last night for my girlfriend's brother who just purchased a new iPod Classic but doesn't have a computer capable enough to house his iTunes collection. The plan was originally to use my old iBook G4 which is now my girlfriend's computer. I took all of her music off and copied it to a spare hard drive in an external USB case. (Hard drive space on the ol' iBook was a limiting factor.) We then started to import CD's. We were then planning on syncing the iPod, backing up his music library to another external hard drive and then putting her iTunes back together.

When I realized (last night) that she'd never have it done by the time he left to head back to Washington (today) I chipped in on my MacBook Pro. I created a new account so I didn't mess up my iTunes library and started ripping when the new gripes started happening. We'll get to those in a minute, though. The rest of the plan was that I'd rip until we were done, copy the stuff I ripped to a data DVD and then import them into the iBook's iTunes and sync the iPod on that as planned. I'd then delete the account on my computer that I created to do this task with all of the music and back up all of the music from the iBook to an external hard drive (again, as previously planned) just in case we ever needed to resync his iPod again.

Here's what I noticed:

1) If I tip the computer even SLIGHTLY off level while a CD is spinning it sounds like the CD is rubbing on something inside the drive and sometimes it doesn't stop even if I level the computer back out. A couple times I had to stop the import, eject the CD and then put it back in and start again. (For the sake of comparison, the iBook did not do this, I tipped it at a 45 degree angle and it didn't make any unusual noises. I miss my iBook... well I did until we get to number 4.)

2) While importing certain CDs in iTunes, iTunes was freezing while the CD spins up and down endlessly and wouldn't respond to attempts to stop the import or eject the CD. I had to Force Quit iTunes probably a dozen times last night on 2 CD's that I remember specifically. The first time it happened the last track wouldn't import at all after a few attempts. I ended up trying just that track in my old iBook G4 and it worked fine. The second one, after trying a few times, I noticed that it was scratched pretty badly which is probably the reason for all of the drama. I understand that CD's get damaged and I don't expect the computer (or any CD player) to read them properly, the issue I have here is that there was no error message, there was nothing to indicate that something was wrong other than the fact that the CD drive was spinning up and down, up and down but no progress was being made with the import. After waiting unsuccessfully for anything to happen I ended up having to Force Quit iTunes multiple times before the application actually quit and I could eject the CD which was just spinning up and down, up and down. I've VERY RARELY had to Force Quit applications on my two previous Apple computers.

3) A few times when I put a CD in it would get spit back out immediately and wouldn't stay in until I took it completely out, pushed the eject button (which made a noise like it was ejecting a CD even though nothing was in the drive) and then tried again. Sometimes this happened more than once with the same CD... I gave up on one and then went back to it later and it worked.

4) After all of the iTunes importing was finally done (around 2:30 - 3:00 AM this morning, since he was leaving to head back to WA today while I'm at work) I burned all of the mp3's that I ripped on my MacBook Pro to a DVD and moved the songs to my girlfriend's laptop as planned. To refresh, my girlfriend's laptop is my old iBook G4. My old iBook is still running Panther (10.3.x) because I never felt the need to upgrade to Tiger (10.4.x) which I have on my PowerMac G4 or Leopard (10.5.x) which is on my MacBook Pro. Around 3:00 AM my girlfriend plugged in the brand new iPod Classic and we were met with an error message that the new iPod wouldn't work with anything before some version of Tiger (10.4.x). Seriously, what reason is there to not allow a brand new ~$250 iPod to work with an operating system that is only a few years old? I know that Tiger and Leopard are good... I use them both... but my iBook ran great with Panther.

So sometime after 3:00 AM this morning I plugged in an external drive, copied all of the iTunes library off of the iBook, created yet another account on my MacBook Pro, copied the music from the external hard drive onto the MacBook Pro, realized that the music my girlfriend tried to import to her iTunes from the DVD I burned wasn't in the iTunes library, logged out of the third account and back into the second, shared the music folder, logged back into the third account and imported the music from the second account to the third. I then deleted the second account after making sure all of the music was in the newest iTunes Library on the third account and then finally somewhere around 4:00 AM I finished syncing the new iPod.

How user friendly was that ordeal, Apple? If I was a typical person with one slightly older iBook and no other computer in the household and I bought a ~$250 iPod and couldn't get it to work with my computer how do you think I would have reacted?

Do you think I would have run right back out to the Apple Store for a copy of Leopard? (Wait, it's 3AM the Apple Store is closed.) Would I have hit up the online store to purchase Leopard? (Wait, I won't get it for a couple days and then I still have to install a new operating system before I can get my new iPod to work.) Then what if I DID decide to upgrade to Leopard and purchased a copy but my iBook had a sub 867MHz G4 processor and the Leopard update didn't work? Do you think I would have run right back out to upgrade my fully functional computer (aside from not being able to sync a new iPod) to a new computer (A new APPLE computer?) after JUST buying an iPod and a useless copy of Leopard? (Mine was a 1GHZ model, so I would have been OK a few days later after I shelled out some more money for Leopard... but... come on!) What reason is there that the iPod wouldn't work with Panther?

I know if I didn't have other computers in the apartment I probably would have been PISSED! (As it is I'm not too happy even though I was able to solve everything that came up...)

MacBook Pro not charging again

2008-02-29T10:07:00.003-05:00

I hate to sound like I'm complaining all the time about my MacBook Pro but I'm tired of the issues I'm having with it.

If you've read my other posts about my MacBook Pro you'll see that I like the display, the sound quality (for a laptop), the backlit keyboard and the battery life... but that I've been frustrated with noisy fans, a touchy trackpad that sometimes takes a few wiggles of my finger to register, the keyboard not responding and requiring the computer to be rebooted, the heat when used on my lap and now the MagSafe power adapter not working.

I've also noticed a few other odd things such as the speakers crackling a few times when I open the laptop and wake it up from it's sleep and the fans surging up to 5,000 RPM for at least a few minutes when I plug in the adapter while the computer is on. (For me who finds the 2,000 RPM baseline fan noise annoying, you can only imagine what I feel when they're revved up to 5,000 RPM.)

I called their phone tech support again today about the MagSafe adapter not working and I have an appointment at 7 PM tonight. So hopefully I'll at least be able to charge my laptop again...

Nostalgia for my Clarkson days

2008-02-25T09:48:00.008-05:00

I got to see some good friends from my two years at Clarkson this weekend. It all started about a month ago when my friend Liz sent me an email saying she was flying in to Albany to go to the Clarkson/RPI hockey game at RPI with another person we went to Clarkson with. She wanted to know if I wanted to go...

Fast forward to this weekend. I'm not a huge sports fan but the game was pretty good.

After the game we re-grouped at Ryan's Wake which despite the depressing sounding name was actually a pretty nice place. It was packed, though. I recommend getting Dooley's Cheese Board and if you like shrimp, I'm told the shrimp cocktail was good.

It was great to catch up with two of my best friends from my time at Clarkson. The time flew by, though. I know there were some pictures taken so hopefully I'll get some of those from the people with the cameras. It was also nice to meet some nice new people who are friends of friends. It's a little weird to meet people who live close to you through people who live hours and hours away.

Sunday morning I was feeling nostalgic (which usually happens when I see people I haven't seen in a long time) so I was looking around the internet for Clarkson stuff and I stumbled on a 7 part series of You Tube videos of my freshman chemistry professor's "Chemistry Magic Show". Dr. Jim Peploski was one of my favorite professors. I remember him doing most of those demonstrations in class. That was one of my Clarkson classes that I always tried my best to make it to.

I also ran into some old co-workers earlier in the day on Saturday at the store I used to work at, which was another source of nostalgia.

In other news, I'm still making a solid attempt at the Weight Loss Challenge. Saturday I went grocery shopping for healthy foods and went to work out...

More MacBook Pro issues

2008-02-23T17:41:00.004-05:00

A few nights ago when I plugged in my MacBook Pro's MagSafe connector it didn't light up and it didn't start charging. I unplugged it, waited a couple seconds and tried it again. It took a couple tries of plugging it in and unplugging it before the connector lit up and started charging. I was a little worried but didn't think too much of it.

Then on Thursday night the same thing happened but this time it took unplugging it from the wall 3-4 times and unplugging it from my laptop (ahem, I mean notebook...) probably 50 times before it lit up and started charging.

I was ready to toss the thing out the window and head to Best Buy for anything but another Mac on the way home on Friday but last night and this morning it seemed to be working absolutely fine. (I was actually going to bring it back to the Apple store again if it was still being flaky...)

I'm a little annoyed with this computer. (Actually, I'm beyond annoyed. Thursday night while unplugging and replugging in my MagSafe connector I was wishing that I paid the $199 restocking fee to return it when I was still in my 14 day return period and I was just pissed off at the noisy fans.)

I think that if it was a sub-$1,000 PC laptop I'd be a little (very tiny bit) more tolerant but for a $2,000 Apple that's supposed to "Just work." I'm frustrated that the fans are noisy in a quiet room. The power adapter is now being flaky. The trackpad sometimes takes a few wiggles of my finger before it picks it up. A couple other things have popped up here and there such as Firefox randomly freezing up a couple times and ONCE my keyboard not responding until I rebooted that have popped up that are less annoying than the fans, trackpad and power adapter issues.

Honestly, though, if I was shopping for a laptop again I would not purchase a MacBook Pro.

It's sad to say... but I think my days as an Apple fan are coming to an end. Once I get my laptop from work sometime in the next few months I'm thinking about selling the MacBook Pro for whatever I can get for it and just working my PowerMac G4 tower until it's dead and then I think I'm (sadly) headed back to PC-land even though I prefer Mac OS X to anything else that I've used in the past...

New website layout

2008-02-17T13:41:00.004-05:00

I've been a little bit inspired to be creative this weekend. I spent hours yesterday looking for a new template for my website and I didn't really find too much that was promising. I messed around with changing the colors of one and then it looked weird. I messed around with the style of another and it just wasn't flexible enough to do what I wanted.

My main issues were that I didn't want to spend a ton of time messing around with a complex layout or a ridiculous amount of graphics but also I didn't want to use something completely as-is.

So, this morning I ended up finding a couple of photos I really liked on a free stock photo website called Stockvault.net and modified them into one and then went on the hunt for a new simple, clean layout with room for one big central graphic...

So here it is. What do you think?

It's official... MacBook Pros are noisy.

2008-02-09T11:03:00.002-05:00

I've had my new MacBook Pro in the Apple store twice in the past few days complaining about the fans that run constantly.

The first time the Mac Genius said that she was not able to duplicate my concern. (Which I took to mean that I was just being overly sensitive.) I took it back home and messed around with it for another day and it was still irritating to me so I called the store directly and asked if I could exchange it for another one without having to pay the $199 restocking fee. I was told I could just to bring it in and they'd exchange it with no problem. When I got there said that whoever I talked to on the on the phone was wrong and that they had to have the Mac Genius look at it again. The second kid I got was extremely friendly and said that he could hear the fans but that my laptop wasn't any louder than his MacBook Pro and basically that they were somewhat loud laptops because of the amount of technology that they cram into the slim form factor requires the fans to run constantly. He said that he thought that it was going to irritate him at first, too... but that he got used to it. (NOTE: This is me paraphrasing his comments not EXACTLY what he said.)

So, again, I took it back home and messed around with it again this morning and in a quiet room it was irritating. So I called the Apple tech support phone number and waited on hold for less than 5 minutes. (Which was MUCH shorter than most of the other tech support lines I've called in the past.) I got a friendly guy who when I asked if MacBook Pros tend to be louder than many other laptops said. "Yes." He said pretty much what the kid from last night said that they cram a bunch of high end technology into a slim package and they tend to be noisier than other laptops since the fans have to run constantly to keep them cool. (NOTE: Paraphrasing again.)

Anyway, I guess it all comes down to the fact that MacBook Pros are noisier than other typical laptops. That combined with the fact that I might just be a bit more sensitive to noises than your average Joe makes me one frustrated guy when it comes to sitting in a quiet room with my laptop.

Aside from the fan noise I AM in love with this laptop. The display quality is great. It boots up and shuts down quickly. The battery seems to last for awhile. Plus I love OS X. I was VERY tempted to pay the $199 restocking fee to return it and get a $999 HP dv6780se from Best Buy. I don't want a computer with Vista, though, so I'd have to go through the trouble of installing XP, finding all the correct drivers, etc... and then I'd still like it less than OS X. On top of all of that, the Best Buy by me is sold out of the HP, anyway.

So... yeah. If you tend to be sensitive to noises and you like to use your laptop in very quiet places you might want to look to other computers... but if you're like most people you probably won't be annoyed with the noise as much as I am.

VMware Fusion

2008-02-01T21:56:00.001-05:00

I installed Windows XP Pro on my MacBook Pro tonight. I decided to go with the trial of VMware Fusion for now.

I have 30 days to decide if I want to buy VMware... so far it seems promising.

VMware pretty much took charge of the installation of Windows and it was probably the easiest Windows install I have ever done. I installed VMware on my mac, set up my Virtual Machine and told it I wanted to install Windows, popped in the XP install disk and next thing I know I'm playing with a Windows desktop in a window on my Mac!

So far I installed an old game (Need for Speed Underground) and I just finished installing an old copy of Visual Studio.

I"m going to keep messing around with it... but I think it's going to be good to be able to do things that I need Windows programs for again while still being on my Mac.

New lappy...

2008-01-27T17:10:00.002-05:00

I bit the bullet and purchased a NEW 15" 2.2GHz MacBook Pro last night. My girlfriend's 800MHz iBook G4 is on it's very last legs (endless beach ball while doing nothing, random freeze ups and taking forever to restart) and I told her she could have my slightly newer 1Ghz iBook G4 when hers died.

I had been eying the MacBook Pro for quite awhile but didn't really have a reason to drop the $2,000 on one since I had a perfectly good iBook to do the around the apartment web-surfing and email duties and my G4 PowerMac to do the heavier stuff like holding my iTunes collection, running Photoshop and the very rare web site stuff that I don't really do much of any more.

As far as first impressions go: It doesn't feel as solidly build as I thought it would be for the money. It feels a little bit flimsy to me. The left side fan sounds a little noisy and display doesn't fold back as much as I would like. It also gets pretty hot sitting on my lap!

I do love the display quality, though! I'm a huge fan of the widescreen aspect ratio, too... so it's a huge step up from my 12" iBook's display! The sound is pretty good for a laptop and the battery life doesn't seem too bad with the brightness down kind of low and the Bluetooth turned off. I also like the silver color MUCH more than my white iBook and the backlit keyboard is pretty awesome. Leopard doesn't feel all that much different from Panther or Tiger to me, so far... I haven't really had all that much time to dive into it yet, though. I've just been doing the initial setup things like cleaning off software I won't ever use and starting to add on software I like (Firefox, TextWrangler or BBEdit and Photoshop).

Over the next couple months I have to find (or buy) a copy of XP Pro so I can try out Parallels and VMWare Fusion and hopefully play some of my old PC games that I haven't been able to play in a long time. I'm also hoping to put my old copy of Visual Studio on it so I can mess around with a few programs I've been thinking of throwing together for the past couple years!

So, in short, I love this computer but I just wish it would run a little cooler, feel a little sturdier and have a quieter fan! I think the noisy fan is the thing that is the most irritating to me. My iBook was almost silent compared to this one and I paid $1,400 less for that one (albeit, very slightly used). I'm debating dropping by the Apple store to see if the other MacBook Pros are this noisy or if I got one with a bad fan.

PS: If you're a Firefox user check out Speed Dial. This is the one feature of Opera that I loved and missed in Firefox (even though I still preferred Firefox overall).

PPS: If you're into ambient pop/downtempo music check out Ambient Popsicle on iTunes radio or on their website. Sometimes I get in moods where I need to listen to something other than metal/hardcore/punk/screamo and this is a good alternative. ;)

The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less

2008-01-23T12:56:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted much up here lately. I've been very busy at work and when I'm home I've been keeping myself pretty busy doing things around the apartment. When I haven't been painting, cleaning or buying things for the apartment I've been reading a lot of books instead of spending as much time as usual on the internet.

One of the books I read last week is: The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz.

It's an excellent book and I highly recommend it.

The central idea of the book is that there are too many choices available for practically everything in our lives. In contradiction to what you might expect, this freedom of choice doesn't seem to be making us happier overall. Instead, we seem to feel overwhelmed that everything is a choice where there are a large amount of options that have to be considered. When all is said and done and the decision is made we tend to feel like there's still something better out there. (A lot of this also ties in to my views on how advertising promotes this feeling of never being satisfied with things that merely meet your needs because there is always something cooler, better or newer available.)

I found the book to be well written and somewhat funny at times and I blew through reading it very quickly.

For anyone who is interested, I came across a preview of the book. (Note: It is deliberately missing pages for copyright reasons but it should give you a little bit of a feel for the book.)

I also JUST came across a video of a Google TechTalk presentation by Barry Schwartz that I haven't had a chance to watch yet... but I thought I'd link it up here anyway.

If Jeremy Clarkson ruled the world...

2008-01-10T16:17:00.002-05:00

I think that most people who know me in person know how much I LOVE the show Top Gear on BBC. A couple days ago I read a blog entry on autoblog about increasing public support for Jeremy Clarkson (one of the Top Gear presenters) to be Prime Minister of Britain. Today I came across some of his views on major issues... and I'm even more in support of Jeremy Clarkson for Prime Minister of Britain. (I wish he could run for President here...)

Who should you vote for to be President?

2008-01-03T12:19:00.001-05:00

I stumbled on this website earlier called Glassbooth and I haven't had a chance to look at it too in depth but on the surface it looks like a nice tool.

First you assign 20 points according to how strongly you feel about 14 issues and then you take a quiz to measure how much you agree or disagree with certain points related to the issues you feel strongly about.

It then gives you the candidates who most strongly match your positions and allows you to compare others who weren't your top matches to see how closely they match your positions.

I don't think this would influence how I'd vote but it allows you to kind of see how the candidate you are interested in compares to you and gives you some things to think about and look into.

I FINALLY saw SiCKO

2007-12-18T11:01:00.001-05:00

Over the weekend I finally saw the Michael Moore's movie SiCKO. I had wanted to see it when it came out but didn't make it to the theater when it was playing. and it had popped into my head again a week or two ago when it was available "On Demand" on our cable box. I was SHOCKED when my roommate came home from the movie rental store with it amongst her choices and asked if there were any of the movies that she brought home that I was interested in seeing...

Let me start this off by saying that I'm not attempting to "review" this movie and admitting that I am a fan of the other Michael Moore documentaries that I've seen including Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11.

I like the satirical approach that Michael Moore takes to asking questions that I would have never thought to ask. I appreciate his incredibly sarcastic and dark style of wit and humor. I AM, however, the type of person who likes to attempt to do my own research when trying to formulate opinions on controversial issues. I don't like to just take someone else's opinion as fact. I tend to like his movies because they make me think. They make me wonder why things are the way they are instead of just ignoring what's going on.

SiCKO was another one of those movies that made me think. It seemed to bring up the questions:

* Why does America have a health care system that is focused on little more than profit?

* How do you hold organizations accountable that benefit financially from not paying for adequate care for the people that pay into them?

*Why do these organizations have departments that look to invalidate claims and claim "fraud" over "preexisting conditions" instead of having a trusted network of doctors that do what is medically necessary and are compensated fairly for their work?

* Why do Americans with health care insurance of some sort feel comfortable letting "for profit" corporations "take care" of them?

There are a MILLION more questions raised by the movie so I'm recommending that you go rent it and ask some questions.

I'm going to leave you with a a blog and a review of the movie that I found interesting.

* Frank Robbins: "Sicko"

* KPBS Movie Reviews: "Sicko"

First week impressions

2007-12-07T13:03:00.001-05:00

Well, I'm mostly through my first week of my new job. I like it very much so far. I've been learning a lot of new stuff including a couple new custom software packages and an overview of my job functions. I've helped out on a couple of projects so far which have mostly just involved some messing around in Excel. (I'm a dork and I like spreadsheets.)

Everyone I work with seems to be really nice, straight-forward and VERY helpful. There's definitely a LOT more teamwork in this job than my last one and that's a very good thing in my eyes.

I'm in an office with two other people and they're both great and friendly. Our office is on the other end of the building from where I used to be so that's nice, too. It's pretty quiet down here.

So, yeah, overall it's been a great first week and I think I'm going to like this job...

Only 7 more workdays...

2007-11-20T15:36:00.002-05:00

... until I'm supposed to start my new job.

I'm getting nervous and excited. I'm nervous because I am going to have to learn a lot of new things and wrap up a ton of old things in the next few days. I'm excited because it will be very nice to have a change of responsibilities and scenery. Everyone I've met that I'll be working with seems really nice and they have actually said that they're going to bring me up to speed before they throw me in so that'll be a really nice difference from my current job.

Not too much is new other than work being crazy this time of year. Trying to wrap up a ton of stuff on top of all the craziness has made for some incredibly busy days. I'm really looking forward to getting things wrapped up here and moving on to my new job, though.

I'm going to spend Thanksgiving with my family at my sister's house this year. Hopefully I'll remember to bring my camera this time so I can take some pictures of my nephew. The last time I saw him I couldn't believe how big he's getting.

White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives?

2007-11-14T10:59:00.001-05:00

Why have I never heard about the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives before?

This all started because I was reading an article on Microsoft in Business Week online. Toward the end of the article they had a comment from the Reverend Ken Hutcherson who apparently said "I am one of the worst nightmares that this company has had." at a recent Microsoft shareholder meeting.

So, thinking this comment was funny and that this Ken Hutcherson guy was a nut-job I googled him and came across the Wikipedia page on him and was skimming through that when I came across a reference to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Why have I never heard of this?

What the fuck does the White House have to do with Faith-Based anything?

It's just gloom and doom...

2007-11-08T10:29:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite things to do when I get a free minute is to look at stories on somewhat "controversial" issues in the online media and then read the comments following the article.

I'm shocked that some people out there that think by calling a story "gloom and doom" and accusing the media of being "liberal" or "leftist" by publishing certain stories that the issues are just going to disappear or that they're not even real issues in the first place.

The article I was reading this morning on Wired "The End of Oil is Upon Us. We Must Move On - Quickly." was one of these articles that was the target of these type of ignorant comments. (Although there really weren't that many in this particular article, there were a few...)

One only needs to take a look at what we're currently surrounded by to see that there are real issues out there that we need to start dealing with including:

* Oil prices at record highs leading to high gasoline prices
* Current military actions and rising tension in the Middle East where there is a supply of oil (Operation Iraqi Liberation = O.I.L.)
* Large increases in home heating & electricity costs
* The falling value of the US Dollar
* The sub-prime lending problems that are hitting hard now

I'm bothered by certain comments because there are people out there taking the time to attempt to shoot down stories and issues that seem troubling by calling them names like "liberal" or "doom and gloom".

If they're so not concerned with the stories or the issues why are they even wasting their time reading and commenting on them?

Everyone else who responds to these comments with logical, reasonable and well thought out responses are also just wasting their time. The person making a comment that a story is "gloom and doom" isn't going to be convinced that there are real issues out there beyond what new gadget they need to buy. (I know I'm a bit of a hypocrite on some of these issues because I like new toys as much as the next guy...)

However with the way things are looking we really need to find a way to align en masse and attack the problems that we're facing. Why are we wasting our time dividing ourselves according to non-issues and labeling ourselves as being a "Democrat", "Republican", "conservative", "liberal", etc? Why are we wasting our time attacking each other?

18 more work days...

2007-11-06T13:44:00.003-05:00

I have 18 more work days until I am to start my new job. My current boss wanted to keep me for even longer but my future boss and his boss agreed to let him keep me until the beginning of December.

I can't wait to get started in my new position. I've been pretty stressed out in my current job for awhile because I have a lot of things up in the air and I feel like I never have enough time to get everything done. I'm constantly interrupted with things that NEED to be done immediately and it seems like the other major projects I have going suffer... but my job performance is measured largely on those major projects.

I'm so excited to have a chance at doing something different, with set responsibilities that are more in line with my interests and education.

In other news I cashed in my credit card reward points for some Amazon gift cards to put towards things for the apartment in December. We've decided to stay in our current apartment for at least another year. All of the places that we've been looking at were right around the same price range but much smaller. The only things that other places seem to have over this one are the other perks such as indoor pools and stuff like that... but I don't think that I'd use those other things as much as I'd enjoy to keep the amount of space we have in our current apartment.

I got to see my nephew a couple weeks ago. As soon as I got there I was pissed that I forgot my camera. He's so adorable. He was dipping chips in dip and was SO NEAT that I couldn't believe it. He's not even two yet but it's amazing how big he's getting. I have to start spending more time with my sister and my nephew.

New job!

2007-10-22T16:24:00.001-04:00

I have some GOOD NEWS!!!

I got the promotion I interviewed for quite awhile ago. I'm still working for the same company but for a different department in a different location in the building. My new title is going to be Pricing Coordinator and I'm (hopefully) going to be starting in a couple weeks. The new job basically entails analyzing data and setting prices for products.

I was officially offered the position (and accepted it) today. Tomorrow should be the day to sign all the paperwork and figure out exactly when I'm going to be starting, exactly what I'll be responsible for and find out exactly what my salary is going to be.

I'm excited because this new job seems to be more suited to my education and strengths than my current position. On top of that, I'm making a move from the hourly Administrative/Clerical level to salaried Administrative Management, and it pays a LOT more! (Which is ALWAYS a good thing!)

Other than that I haven't been up to too much. I've been stressed out waiting to find out about whether or not I got the job. My girlfriend and I have been holding off on signing a lease on a new apartment until I found out either way. Now that I know for sure that I got the job I'm going to look for an apartment closer to work than the one we picked about a month ago that was slightly farther than where we currently are. Hopefully we'll find a nice one at the complex we're going to be looking at next week. It'll be nice to not have to drive quite so much every day! (They also have some nice perks such as outdoor & indoor pools, a jacuzzi and a sauna that our current complex doesn't have, too.)

Anyway, nothing too deep here on the ol' blog again today. I've been busy with wrapping up projects at work and I spent this past weekend going through more accumulated junk at my old house. I went through boxes of car parts that I took off of one of my old cars that have been stored in a shed there for years. I decided it wasn't worth it to save them so I divided them up to be sold for scrap.

I also helped my father go through a ton of stuff from our other shed and we found a ton more stuff to send off to the scrapper... fun, fun, fun!

Knowing is half the battle...

2007-10-17T09:41:00.001-04:00

I know everyone has their own thoughts about the old: "It's not about what you know, It's about who you know."

I'd like to take this opportunity to add my version of this old standby. I was laying in bed last night trying to fall asleep and I was just having all of these thoughts when this one popped into my head...

"It's not about what you know, it's about who you know and whether or not you can convince them that you seem to know what you know." (Yes, I just quoted my own thought like it was someone else's words.)

Anyway, I think the magic part of the equation is not just knowing someone it's convincing them that you know relevant things.

What is knowing something anyway? I think the way we use the word currently it means that you've internalized something into your memory and/or belief structure the way it was taught to you through whatever method. Thus, you know something if you learned it in school, if you read it in a book, saw it on TV or if you've actually experienced it firsthand. The issue, though, isn't really whether or not you know something, it's convincing the people that you come into contact with that you actually know things.

Back to why I was thinking about this, though... In my humble opinion, I think that I know a reasonable amount of things and I know a good amount of people in the company I currently work for... but the part that I really have trouble with is letting the people I know in on the secret that I actually know things.

The World Without Us

2007-10-14T21:13:00.002-04:00

I was just flipping past Current TV and caught a mention of a book by Alan Weisman called The World Without Us.

The brief description that I was able to catch on Current was VERY interesting to me, so I immediately went to the website for the book. The basic idea of the book is what the world would look like if we were no longer here and how long it would take for all traces of our civilization to disappear. This is something that I don't really find myself thinking about but I must admit that I found the whole premise of the book fascinating.

The website also included a link to a segment from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart which I thought was pretty funny...

Anyway, I guess the purpose of this blog entry is to say that I found yet ANOTHER book to add to my Amazon.com wishlist.

I get in these moods...

2007-10-10T12:21:00.001-04:00

I get in these moods where I want to start being better to myself. I don't know what brings them on and I normally don't follow through on my plans for all that long... but I'm thinking I'm in one of these moods again.

These moods usually strike at the most inopportune times:

* I generally feel like I want to go work out (run, ride my bike or *gasp* lift weights) at the beginning of a work day in the middle of the week and by the time I get home I don't feel like doing anything... so I don't do anything.

* I feel like eating more healthy on days when they have the absolute worst (and usually most tasty) foods in the cafeteria for lunch.

* I feel like doing specific things like riding my bike when we're having a blizzard or snowboarding in the middle of July. (Obviously not the most feasible times...)

I did, however, do a few good things:

* I picked a new dentist (well, my girlfriend picked me a new dentist, really...) and had my two cleanings this year. I'm also going for my first ever filling in a couple weeks...

* I went to an optometrist, had my eyes examined and got new glasses to replace the ones I've had for YEARS. I can't remember the last time I had an eye exam before this past time. (I didn't really have a reason not to go since I actually have halfway decent vision insurance... and I found myself squinting with my glasses on while trying to read stuff on the TV...)

Even though I feel like I'm in one of my "moods", I'm not going to set any goals because I know that I SUCK at following through at doing healthy things for myself... but I'm going to try to make a more solid attempt at actually eating a little better and exercising a little more... Yeah, yeah... I've said it before...

I'm still in the process of trying to simplify all of my material possessions, too. Over the past couple months I did manage to sell off a few CD's and misc. items on eBay and craigslist and give away 3 big garbage bags worth of stuff to Salvation Army/Goodwill.

I put up my guitars (that I never play) up for sale on craigslist a couple weeks ago but had no serious interest. I'm thinking I'm going to have to lower the prices more than I really wanted to in order to sell them. I'm not sure about selling them for lower than the latest prices I had them up there for... but on the other hand I NEVER play them... So I guess any money plus some more space in the apartment in exchange for something I NEVER use is probably a decent trade-off...

Work update & possible promotion

2007-10-08T11:53:00.001-04:00

Just checking in... It's been a busy past few weeks.

On the work front: I have a huge project that is due on Novemember 1st that I've been spending a ton of hours of my work days on. On top of that, we're headed into our busiest season (Thanksgiving/Christmas selling) and we're building in a TON of new products... so I've been swamped over here...

I interviewed for a big promotion at work a couple weeks ago and I was one of three finalists who was picked to take the personality & aptitude testing which consisted of 3 take home personality tests and 3 math/problem solving tests. I'm still awaiting the results of the testing and the decision on whether I got the job or not. Hopefully I should hear this week. I'm really hoping that I got this one. It seems right up my alley, so to speak. It's a lot of data analysis and computer work... and a nice raise... so, yeah...

I haven't had much time to look at the news and other fun stuff like that so, unfortunately, I'm going to have to stick to this personal update for now... Hopefully I'll have time for something more "meaty" in the near future.

Political Reform: Nonbinding Resolutions

2007-09-25T13:32:00.001-04:00

Warning: Today's entry is another political rant...

What the fuck is the deal with politicians wasting time on "non-binding resolutions" and other meaningless things to that effect?

I touched on this in my last blog post when I wrote about how the Democrats passed "a resolution" on how the MoveOn.org ad in the NY Times about Gen. Petraeus pissed them off...

Thinking more about it the whole idea of wasting time putting together meaningless resolutions seems to me like something we really have to find a way to change.

I guess I understand the point of the act of coming together to propose and vote on a a resolution. (Which, as I see it, is to put on record the fact that a group of politicians dislike something that they seemingly can't do anything about.) The problem with that whole idea of a "non-binding resolution" is that it seems like a huge waste of time and energy to attack something that can't be changed by just saying: "We don't like what you're doing but feel free to do it anyway." It seems more like an exercise in saving face than a meaningful act.

Now I'm going to take a HUGE stretch and assume that there are at least some intelligent (and maybe even a couple honest) politicians out there... Why can't they get together and find a way to actually do some damage to things they don't agree with? We didn't elect them to pass non-binding resolutions because someone is making them feel sad/mad/powerless. In electing them, (speaking very loosely in some cases) we've basically said that the majority of people who voted agree with their views/platform/record and have given them the power go out and make their will happen. If they stray too far from what they lead us to believe were their intentions and ideals they won't be re-elected.

The main problem is that it's pretty obvious that the current system isn't working in this manner. People (if they bother voting at all) have a tendency to vote on name recognition, strict party lines, whether or not they feel the candidate represents them morally or even worse: whether they take the same stand on one issue such as war, gay marriage or immigration. So it seems to me that once elected a politician can do whatever they want as long as they don't change their name, change their party affiliation, piss off the people with the same morals or views on the half dozen or so "hot button" issues. Take that and throw a lot of money and pressure from lobbyists and "friends" into the mix and everything gets all the more complicated.

Once you take all of that into account I can see why it seems like the politicians are interested in saving face so that they don't piss off the people who voted for them based on one issue such as their stand on the Iraq war or the fact that all the other good Republicans are voting one way, why aren't they?

I really don't know if there is a solution to the mess we're in. It actually seems more and more hopeless the more I think about it. We're so far down a path of apathy and ignorance that most people feel that their vote doesn't matter and in many cases it doesn't. How do you change things that seem like they can't be changed? Wait, I've got it... I'm calling for a non-binding resolution for our government to not waste their time on anymore non-binding resolutions until they get some real shit accomplished... yeah... that makes me feel better... now you all know I'm on your side.

Let's pass a resolution...

2007-09-21T12:21:00.001-04:00

I was reading the headlines that I have set up in my gmail (as I have a tendency do) and I came across this story about how everyone is still all pissy about that MoveOn.org full page ad asking "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?".

I also have a tendency to pick out one little part of a story to get really pissed off about. That little part in this article is where they mention that the Democrats "passed a resolution 72 to 25 expressing its own outrage" on the ad. It seems like a resolution to express their outrage about the MoveOn ad is the only thing that they could pass, though, because they failed in passing "a bill lengthening the home leaves of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq" which seems to me to be a much more worthwhile pursuit.

Why are they busy saying: "Hey guys, lets have a vote to say: You suck, MoveOn!" when they should be working harder on the fight to pass measures that help to end this pointless war?

Now I'm waiting for the next MoveOn ad... Hopefully the next one will be targeted at the worthless sacks of hypocritical shit in the House and Senate.

I thought I was in SERIOUS debt...

2007-09-19T16:31:00.002-04:00

... but it doesn't seem so bad when you read about the fact that our "actual" national debt is currently reported to be over $9 trillion and the "official" debt number is projected to exceed our "debt ceiling" of $8.965 trillion by October 1st.

I was sick enough reading these stories... but I'm even more sick of the "partisan" spin that "news" outlets put on stories like this, though. From the article: "Democrats blame Bush's tax cuts and the war in Iraq for pushing the debt to record levels."

I think EVERYONE should at least partially blame Bush's tax cuts. I'm guessing that the approximately 64% of Americans who currently disapprove of Bush's job performance don't think the ill-conceived war in Iraq is a good idea...

We need to find a way out of war (and debt) now. Maybe Bush needs to find himself a second job... If I should, so should he.

(All joking aside... What can we do?)

Edit: Reading through the comments to the first article I linked to I'm seeing that some people actually have some ideas... but is it even possible to make all religious institutions pay property and income tax, revise the tax code to drastically limit the the amount of write-offs that big business take, etc.?

I'm sure it's possible... but how would we even go about something like redesigning all of the tax laws? I would love to see a simpler, more fair tax system...

I think this might be strike 3, MySpace...

2007-09-18T16:07:00.002-04:00

I just saw this headline: "MySpace Will Use Member Info to Tailor Ads".

I understand they need to make money to survive. I understand that in order to make money they need to sell ad space... but to tell the truth I think I was just waiting for a third strike to be pissed off about MySpace for so that I would feel less bad about deleting my profile there. This latest "revelation" isn't even that big of a deal (most businesses use their customer's data to put products in front of people who are more likely to buy them) but I don't really have an excuse to keep my profile up on MySpace but for some reason I feel compelled to keep it there.

I've already gone over the fact that I hate the horrible layouts that many people have, I seriously dislike the attempt to block spam using "msplinks" and I'm not a huge fan of their "beta tracking software" for parents.

On top of those things, I don't use MySpace ever. I can't get to it from work so I only pop on at home for a minute here and there at home to delete the friend requests I get from bands I don't like and random non-existent girls with the same exact profiles but with different names and pictures. I couldn't be less interested in collecting slutty, fake girlbot trophy pictures as "friends".

The last time I actually used MySpace for anything it was to send a message to my brother. I didn't need to use MySpace, though, I could have also emailed him, called him or stopped over to his place to tell him. I have already taken down my one link in my profile (to my blog) in protest over "msplinks". So I guess there's really nothing left there aside from a list of things I like and a collection of friends that I know and/or have known in real life...

Is there any reason I should stay on myspace?

P.S. Google, you kind of suck, too... but I like Google search, Gmail and Blogger... so you'll escape my wrath this time. ;)

Apartment hunting, movies & more.

2007-09-17T10:14:00.001-04:00

Saturday I went out apartment hunting with my girlfriend and I think we found where we'd like to live. Now we just have to wait a little while and see if they're going to have any open apartments when we need to move. (Hopefully they'll have a second floor 1 bedroom with gas heat available in the middle of December.)

Sunday I did a bit of stuff around the apartment and watched a couple movies that my girlfriend and I rented on Saturday night. I happened to see the the movie "Everything's Gone Green" which was written by Douglas Coupland sitting on the shelf so I picked that as my choice...

It was a weird movie but overall it was pretty much what I expected. It was basically one big sarcastic (but not very laugh-out-loud funny) pop culture joke. In short is was the kind of backhanded satire on various things such as the lottery, get rich quick schemes/scams, fancy cars and clothes that I've come to expect from Douglas Coupland.

I won't write any spoilers or plot detail into this blog post because I know a few of my friends are Douglas Coupland fans but I'll definitely recommend that you fans out there pick this movie up (as a rental) just to check it out. It's not awesome... but I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Apartment hunting & sister's house remodeling

2007-09-10T14:47:00.001-04:00

This weekend started off busy but ended pretty quietly!

I took Friday off from work to look at apartments with my girlfriend. (Some of the places we wanted to look at first aren't open on the weekend.) We didn't find anything we really liked but we did manage to rule 4 out of the 5 complexes we looked at.

Two were too expensive and two were disgustingly filthy. The one left was only so-so. Both of the expensive ones were nice, of course, with hardwood floors and other neat features but the whole point of renting for another year or two is to try to not spend a ton of money, pay down debts and save up to purchase a house in the not too distant future.

After we got back from looking at that first batch of apartments (and meeting some interesting people who were showing the apartments) we started to make a list of other places to look at over the next few weekends. Hopefully we'll find someplace that doesn't stink plus have mold growing in the bathroom or doesn't have a rusty mini grill in the front lawn with one leg broken off and clover growing out of it but isn't expensive to the point where it doesn't make sense to rent.

Saturday I spent the entire day helping my father and brother rip out a wall of a back porch room at my sister's house and then re-frame it. We are eventually putting in a sliding glass door to a porch that still has to be constructed. Unfortunately Sunday was going to be the day the giant, heavy sliding glass door and windows went in but it poured rain pretty much all day. I spent a little while helping my father reorganize materials and stuff in my sister's basement while waiting to see if it would clear up enough to do anything. The rain didn't show any signs of letting up so I went home and didn't do much of anything for the rest of the (rainy) day aside from hanging out with my girlfriend watching previously recorded TV on the DVR and re-listing stuff that didn't sell on my last batch of eBay auctions.

I was pretty wiped out from working on my sister's house on Saturday plus helping to move some heavy stuff around on Sunday (including a washer, piles of lumber, carpet, flooring, etc.) so it was good to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing. My legs are still sore, though... I'm so out of shape.

I asked my dad about having a (vegetable) garden at their house next year and it seemed like he thought it was a good idea. We talked briefly about how we thought it would be a neat thing to get the family together around the garden and I reminisced about picking and eating snow peas and green beans from the garden my family used to have when I was little. Hopefully that works out...

National Cheese Pizza Day & politics!

2007-09-05T15:27:00.002-04:00

I was checking out slashfood today and came across a day I can get behind. Today is National Cheese Pizza Day!!!

On a more serious (political) note: Is it just me or does it seem like politicians are dropping at an incredible rate from their posts?

Paul Gillmor (R-Ohio) was found dead today.

As I'm sure you all know: Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was deemed a liability to the Republican Party and was called to resign due to the fact that he allegedly did a gay little foot wiggle in a public restroom and was caught in a sting operation. The article linked above paints a picture of a "closeted" Republican who did nothing but vote the party line. I guess his forced exit from politics might hopefully prompt him to do something in the area of human rights for a change. Well, that is, if he doesn't un-resign first...

Tony Snow, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, "Scooter" Libby... The funny thing is that among all of these people who have seen their political careers come to an end, the ones who HAVEN'T been forced/asked/coerced to resign (or died or whatever the case may be) are really the ones who have been doing the most to fuck up America.

I mean, really, Larry Craig... Who the fuck cares if he's gay and wanted a little man-on-man-lovin'? (Well, I guess aside from the gay sex proposition that got him in trouble, he's a hypocrite, too, which REALLY sucks... but seriously... caught in a sting operation to rid an airport bathroom of the gays...) Why can't we find ways to get rid of some of the bigger bad guys instead? I'm sure there are ways to catch others doing things that are MUCH MUCH worse than Larry Craig's "sins".

Affluenza and more.

2007-09-04T14:40:00.002-04:00

First let me start out with a quick update to my last post: The scale at work is definitely broken. I might have lost a few pounds... but not anywhere near 15. I'm still trying to eat a little better and exercise a bit more, though.

This weekend was pretty good. I guess it felt more busy than it really was, though. I spent most of Saturday hanging out with my family and washing & waxing my car. (It was FILTHY!) I went to a BBQ at a friend's apartment on Sunday. Great food and awesome friends always makes for a good time. Yesterday morning we picked up our roommate from the airport and then spent most of the rest of the day relaxing for the most part. I read a little more of Affluenza before bed. I'm slightly into the third section which deals with ways to cure affluenza. So, expect to see some entries in this here blog thingy about that in the near future as I finish up the book. So far I've found it well written and funny. Most of the stuff they're saying makes sense to me but I'm hoping that they have some real ways to cure the problem written in the end. I'm afraid it's going to fizzle with no real solutions...

I was talking with my mom on Saturday and the topic of having a vegetable garden came up. She was saying that she missed having really fresh tomatoes after I mentioned that I don't like tomatoes anymore. I remember liking tomato sandwiches as a kid... but now I even pick tomatoes off my $0.99 Wendy's Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers. We used to have a garden when I was growing up and I remember picking and eating fresh snow peas, green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and much much more. So, I'm trying to talk her into starting a garden at her house next year. My parents definitely have enough room for a decent sized garden there... I think the main issue that I'm going to run into is the fact that my father has been busy working on my sister's house the past year and they still have a lot left to go there. I know it's going to be a TON of hard work but it'll be good exercise and hopefully we'll get some good fresh vegetables out of it. At the very least I'll spend more time with my family and hopefully learn something about gardening, canning and cooking.

Also, I'm also in the beginning stages of a hunt for a new apartment. I have no idea where we'll end up as of January 1st... but we'll still be in the Albany/Troy general area. I'm taking Friday off to look at a few different complexes and I guess we'll go from there. Once we get closer I'm going to look into some private owner type apartments, too. I'm also thinking that we should try to negotiate with our current place to see if they'll lower our rent to be more competitive with other places that are including heat, hot water, plus cable and internet! I kind of like our current apartment but it's going to get too expensive once our roommate moves out in the end of December.

On losing weight... maybe?

2007-08-31T12:42:00.002-04:00

I just weighed myself on the scale in the bathroom at work... and either it's REALLY broken or I lost about 15 lbs. in the past few weeks.

Even with my sneakers on plus my iPod & earbuds, phone, keys and wallet in my pockets it said I was at 196 lbs. I haven't been under 200 in awhile on the same scale. The last time I weighed myself on it I was at 213 lbs in dress shoes and my work pants but with all the same things in my pockets... I know my dress shoes and work pants don't weigh 17 lbs more than the jeans and sneakers I'm wearing today... so either the scale is broken (possible) or I lost some weight.

I really haven't been doing that much differently. I've been eating the same types of foods for dinner. I haven't been eating breakfast that often (like usual). I don't snack all that much at work, which hasn't changed. I went for a short walk around my apartment complex with my girlfriend once... (Which is once more than usual, I guess... but not REALLY all that different from normal.)

The only things that I've been doing differently for the past couple/few weeks is avoiding the can of energy drink that I was drinking almost every day of the work week for awhile, drinking more water instead of sweetened soft drinks and bringing my lunches to work most days for the past couple weeks. (Sandwiches, pretzels and bananas instead of whatever the cafeteria had on special with fries.) A couple days where I brought a banana to work I ate that mid-morning so I wasn't as hungry at lunch time.

So, I guess either the scale is broken or those things really are adding up!

The good thing about this is even if I haven't lost 15 lbs. (or anything at all) it's making me want to start being a little better to myself. Not only is it cheaper to bring my lunches to work and skip the $2.15 a day energy drink - if I can lose a few pounds, as well, that's awesome!

Aside from that not too much is going on. I've sold 4 CD's that I had listed on eBay and at this point I've made a few bucks over the cost of listing all 13 items that I put up on Sunday and anything going forward is basically making money. I'm going to attempt to get more stuff up on eBay this weekend.

If the weather is nice I'm also going to wash and wax my car really well since I haven't cleaned it up in awhile and it's pretty filthy.

Aside from that I'm hoping it's a nice quiet, uneventful long weekend. I'm looking forward to three days off from work!

Books and eBay.

2007-08-27T08:56:00.002-04:00

I finished reading The Working Poor by David K. Shipler on Saturday. I must say that it did end up being a somewhat depressing book. It was basically a collection of stories about the histories, circumstances and lives of people who were attempting to work their way off of welfare or who were forced to get off welfare. I was hoping that it would have a lot of insight into how to work your way out of the "working poor" trap but I didn't really find too much that was helpful (especially to me). The people in the book did run into some good people who helped but it sounded like the basic tenets of the book were:
* don't drop out of high school and go to college if you can (a degree is almost a necessity these days to get a "decent" job)
* vocational training should have less of a stigma attached (we're always going to need people who work in trades like plumbing and carpentry)
* don't do drugs
* health care shouldn't be so much of a burden for people with low incomes (but maybe making it a government responsibility isn't a good idea either)
* if you're poor don't get sick because you'll get poor care and if you're really sick chances are pretty good it will ruin you financially
* doctors who work with lawyers and case workers tend to get more accomplished in the overall situation of poor children. (They can sic the lawyers on the parties responsible for poor housing conditions and for denying aid to people who are qualified, etc.
* be a good parent to your children because if you're not you'll fuck them up for life and they'll end up stuck in the same trap
* it's extremely helpful to have a strong support system of friends and family to help out

Other than those obvious things I picked out of the book there really wasn't too much meat there... just a bunch of sad stories about people who were in horrible situations.

The next book I started to read last night was Affluenza by John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor. I think that I'm going to like this book a lot better than "The Working Poor". For one thing it's written in a sarcastic, funny style. I laughed out loud dozens of times in the first few chapters and I had to read half a dozen things to my girlfriend as I was reading them... but at the same time it has very serious information in it that makes you think...

Yesterday I put some CDs, a book and some random stuff up on eBay. I'm hoping to get some of my computer guts and other stuff on there tonight...

Why is this so hard?

2007-08-26T13:45:00.001-04:00

I went through some of my CD collection this morning to try to weed out some that I can stand to part with. I have a box of promo singles and a small stack of 9 sitting here next to me that I wouldn't miss if they were gone. The issue is I have probably around 600 CDs. (I'm too lazy to count them.)

I'm sure there are more than 9 pieces (plus the 25+ free promos) in my 4 racks of music that I can bear to sell.

Why is it so hard for me to get rid of these CDs? I hardly even listen to CDs anymore. I could use the money more than I need the CD.

Why can't I part with them?

Is there something wrong with me?

Come on! I have both the clean and explicit versions of House of Pain on CD. Really, when was the last time I listened to House of Pain on CD? It probably wasn't even in this decade. I have CDs that I know I haven't even listened to ever. (Sprung Monkey?)

Does anyone else have a collection of things they don't use, don't need but can't talk themselves into getting rid of?

The Working Poor.

2007-08-22T11:50:00.002-04:00

I decided to start reading The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler first out of the three new books that I picked up in the past two days with my birthday gift card from my parents.

Last night when I was just starting the book my girlfriend asked if I found it depressing and wondered how I could read it?

I didn't even have to think about the answer to her question: "Yes, it's depressing... it's about me. I'm one of the working poor." On paper I might make a little more money than some of the people that are normally thought of as 'poor' but I left my first college after two years with no degree, about $20,000 in student loans and no idea what I wanted to really do with my life. I was stressed out over my lack of direction but I decided I needed to keep going to school or I would never go back. I put my next two years of college at a local community college on my credit cards along with all of the necessary books, supplies, etc. I spent the money I made working crappy jobs on minimum payments and living expenses.

Fast forward about 6 years.

I'm working in an office that has nothing to do with my AAS degree in Computer Information Systems. I'm still neck deep in debt from college, my ridiculous overspending and a few other unforeseen events that were completely unavoidable. My bills just about equal my pay. I understand, though, that I am where I am because of choices I've made. I don't think that anyone has held me back besides myself.

I'm hoping to finally find what it is I want to do with the rest of my life.

I'm trying to get myself motivated to learn new things and take more chances at what might be better opportunities.

I am attempting to curb my overspending and to find a way to live within my means. (No more buying toys that I don't need, no matter how much I talk myself into thinking I need them.)

I'm trying to talk myself into selling things that I never use like my guitar equipment (three guitars, amplifier & effects pedals), books I've already read and won't read again, CD's I don't listen to, sporting goods I won't ever use again (snowboard, skis, golf clubs, freestyle bike, rollerblades), computer parts, car parts, bike parts and MUCH MUCH more.

On top of all that I'm probably going to get a second job (at least for now until I figure out what I want to do next).

I have a feeling I'll be posting a lot in this vein in the near future. Hopefully I'll continue feeling like I need to correct the mistakes I've made in the past and work on improving my situation instead of just writing about it...

More new books.

2007-08-21T20:21:00.002-04:00

I stopped at Borders on the way home to return the ridiculously overpriced PHP book that I bought last night and picked up The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler and Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins.

While I was at Borders my freshman year roommate from Clarkson called. It was good to hear from him and it sounds like he's doing pretty well.

Amazon wish list.

2007-08-21T11:41:00.002-04:00

I started an amazon.com wish list last night and I think it's getting out of hand already...

This all started because I put all of my accumulated pennies, nickels and dimes for the past couple months into a Coinstar machine and it was free to change it into a merchandise certificate for a few businesses such as amazon.com or iTunes. I still had $13 credit in my iTunes account (from birthday gifts) so I decided to go with amazon this time. I ended up with $24.94 to spend there. (I should have just rolled the change and brought it to the bank... but where is the fun in that?)

Anyway, I'm going to stop at Borders tonight and return the overpriced PHP book I bought last night with the gift card my parents got me and hopefully pick up a couple of the other books on my wish list and then I'll use the Coinstar certificate to get a couple more from amazon. After this I'll have books to read for the next year or so...

Any other recommendations for good books while I'm on a spending spree?

New books, strange new people and work.

2007-08-20T21:29:00.002-04:00

I went to Borders after work today to spend the gift card that my parents gave me for my birthday. I picked up Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H Naylor and PHP for the World Wide Web by Larry Ullman.

Hopefully I'll get to put the PHP one to use on my website soon. I actually think I'm going to return it and get it on amazon for 1/2 of what I paid at Borders, though.

I met a strange guy at the bookstore tonight. He seemed really friendly but I think he is going to try to get me to sell energy drinks. We talked for a few minutes about our histories and he asked if I was interested in doing work outside of my current job and I said "possibly" when I should have said "no". He ended up giving me his business card and when I looked up his website when I got home it looked like a generic template that you get when you pay into one of those businesses that let you resell their crap products.

My supervisor came back to work today, too. I NEVER thought I'd think this... but I'm glad she's back from vacation. Today was a million times more productive than any of the days last week. My phone didn't ring off the hook. It actually didn't ring that much at all. I have a meeting with my newest boss on Wednesday. Hopefully that goes well...

Work and headaches suck.

2007-08-18T16:02:00.001-04:00

I started to write a REALLY long blog entry about work yesterday. It was mostly about my current job and some of the reasons I dislike it so much. I decided it was too long and boring to post, though.

The summary is: Last week was a shit week. I was swamped all week with stupid tasks because my supervisor was on vacation and my reward for doing my job and hers was to get bitched at because I'm behind on one of my projects. I took my beating and then went to talk to the the newest of my 3 managers. I have a meeting with him on Tuesday where he's supposedly going to help to take some of my "roadblocks" out of the way and help me to enjoy my job more. Haha... we'll see. I'm going to polish up my resume and get that out there in the next couple weeks.

Other updates: I spent a few hours today going through some more old shit that I have stored at a house owned by my family that I used to live at before where I am now. I filled my car's trunk with shit to be thrown out and I have a new pile of stuff to donate to salvation army or goodwill. I'm going to see if my sister wants to take the stuff since she takes write-offs on her taxes and I don't (or can't).

Now I have another one of my infamous headaches so I decided to chill for a little while and then do some cleaning around my apartment. I have to clear some stuff out of here so that I have room to bring over some of the things that I actually want to keep.

I'm hoping to get some stuff up on eBay tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

Checked out my "stats" on my blog today.

2007-08-16T09:40:00.002-04:00

It's looking like I'm getting a little bit of traffic from google searches on various search terms included in my blog from two nights ago on the FSU / Punk Rock Fight Club / Rolling Stone article. Sorry to everyone who was expecting the article or something more interesting than my LAME commentary and links. ;)

I also got a few hits from people looking up "suburbicide", so I searched it on google and found that I'm the first (main page) and second (blog) links. I also found out that there's a Pinkerton Thugs song named "Suburbicide" that I'll have to hunt down on CD. There was also a band from MA (?) that broke up in 2000 and an older hardcore band from NJ that both called themselves Suburbicide. The coolest link that I found, though, was for an artist named Greg Daville who has a project going that he is calling Suburbicide.

Also, a quick website update: Last night I combined the stuff on my main and about me pages of my website in preparation for putting up some of my rants and 1990's "teen angst poetry". I've blogged about the craptastic stuff I wrote in my teen years before and I'm sure I'll write more in here about it when that's really getting going.

I've been in a somewhat restless, creative mood lately so I'm hoping to get some work done on getting some real content on my website and getting some of my junk sold on eBay this weekend.

The late Hudson Duster in Troy mentioned in a Rolling Stone story on FSU (not the Seminoles)

2007-08-14T21:53:00.005-04:00

In the August 23, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone magazine there is an article called Punk Rock Fight Club by Mark Binelli. (Sorry, I can't find a link to the story.) Lately, I just quickly skim Rolling Stone, laugh at the reviews and occasionally read a political article or something that catches my attention. This was one of those rare articles that drew me in, even with the stupid title.

The unfortunately titled article was basically an overview of a "crew" in the hardcore scene that is known as FSU which stands for Fuck Shit Up or Friends Stand United, depending on who you ask. Overall, I found the article somewhat well written and it sounds like the writer tried to do his homework for the most part. The article tried to paint an almost sympathetic picture of a group of hardcore kids that started in rough Boston neighborhoods getting together to rid their local music scene of Nazi punks and then spreading and getting out of hand.

One major thing that caught my attention in the article was the fact that the (now closed) Hudson Duster in my hometown of Troy, NY was mentioned in the article as the site of one of the fatal killings linked to FSU. Back when the fight happened in 2005, I had heard that there was a fight outside of the bar and that someone died (apparently of a heart attack during or right after the fight) but I didn't really hear too much more about it. After reading the article in Rolling Stone I decided to look up more information.

First I came across a story that was a feature in our local alternative newsweekly, Metroland, called "Hardcore Issues" which was about the Hudson Duster and the problems surrounding it.

I also came across a quick follow up blurb to the "Hardcore Issues" story that reported the fact that was also mentioned in the Rolling Stone article that out of the six initially charged in the death, the charges against three of them were dropped. It also stated that one of the men charged, Lionel Bliss, who was a bouncer at the Hudson Duster at the time was kicked out of FSU and that "FSU is not involved in illegal activities" and that FSU were "made scapegoats in the death" and "for violence in the hardcore scene in general".

The final article I found was from one of the local papers, The Record. (Updated dead link - 11/25/2010) This article reported on the sentencing of Lionel Bliss and briefly talks about the other two people who were charged in the incident.

Also, for a quick laugh to cut some of the glum feelings out of this blog post check out this really disjointed blog that tried to link the Rolling Stone article to this article. WOW is all I can say about that. I think he's expecting to see FSU using biological weapons against the Nazis or the maybe the ever lame fashioncore fucktards? WTF is this nutjob talking about? I doubt he read the Rolling Stone article... or he's some dumb fuck who's scared of ME in my black hooded sweatshirt.

Now that I got all of the links and background out of the way, I feel like I should be taking this opportunity to write some scathing commentary about the "scene" but the reality is that I'm completely out of touch with it.

I was never a "hardcore kid" in the first place. On top of that, I haven't been to more than a half dozen shows in the past couple years. I love music and I try to support the bands I like by buying their music and t-shirts and catching my favorite bands when they come to town. I have always been a person who likes music and tries to get what I can out of the lyrics (that I can understand) but I've never been one to fall into following the politics or ideals of the bands I listen to.

I guess when it comes down to it, these days I'd much rather listen to music in my car than at a show where I'm paying attention to whether I'm going to get kicked in the face instead of listening just to the music and watching the guitarist(s). I guess I'm getting old. (I do miss the days of going to see shows with my brother, though.)

[Updated 11/25/2010 to fix a dead link to the Troy Record story and add another link to the Troy Record about charges being dropped against three of the suspects.]

Brazilian Chicken, gross out food TV and crappy sleeping.

2007-08-14T09:41:00.002-04:00

I went to dinner at a friend's apartment last night. It was our host, her boyfriend, our friend Jon and my girlfriend and I. Before dinner I talked with Jon mostly about cars and music. She made a dish she calls "Brazilian Chicken" which is made sort of like this and it's delicious.

After dinner we sat around and listened to the funny, random songs on our mp3 players and then watched some TV shows where the host goes to different countries and eats foods that look disgusting. There were snakes, bugs, fish sauce, civet coffee, and lots of testicles among many other foods that looked completely unappealing to me.

When I got home I was pretty tired so I got ready for bed, laid down and then I couldn't sleep. I laid there for probably close to 2 hours before I fell asleep and then my girlfriend woke up having a coughing fit. After that I tossed and turned again for a little while and then slept in little chunks for the rest of the night. Surprisingly, I'm not as tired as I thought I'd be after sleeping so horribly last night. I really need to find a new job because that's pretty much the cause of most of my stress. Which, in turn, was the cause of my crappy sleeping.

Tonight I think I'm headed to my old house again to go through more junk. I really want to put another dent in what I have to get done over there and hopefully find some more "treasures" to sell on eBay. I'm also hoping to dig out some of my old toys to clean up and give to my sister to use for her son until I have kids someday. I'm going to have to post up some pictures of Alex soon... he's getting so big.

Fluffernutter cake and more.

2007-08-13T13:20:00.001-04:00

My girlfriend just forwarded me this link to a blog post about a fluffernutter cake that someone who calls herself "E" created and I want one!!! It looks really tasty to me...

On the job search related front: I sent my resume in to a company near where I live that is looking for an HTML Editor. That's something I'm sure I can handle. They didn't specify a pay range, though, so I'm hoping that the pay is at least more than I'm making here at my current job. I hope I hear back from them soon! I really need to find a new job.

I think I talked myself out of applying for the computer recycler job I posted about a few days ago. I can't live on the pay unless I sell my car and I'm not ready to take a huge loss on my car just to have a different job.

Now on to something music related: Yesterday, I was trying to spending my $40 in iTunes gift cards that I received for my birthday from my nephew and my roommate and I came across Sky Eats Airplane which I guess used to just be two guys who describe their music as "electronic nintendo metal from Fort Worth" in their web site's description. I listened through their CD start to finish last night when I couldn't sleep and I thought it was pretty good. So if there's anyone out there who likes their screaming metal/hardcore/screamo vocals mixed with weird electronic sounds give them a listen. (I'm reading that they're evolving into a proper 6 person band, now, though. Hopefully they won't change their sound too much.)

suburbicide now my main site.

2007-08-12T20:17:00.001-04:00

I had my web host Spooky Media switch over my hosting from smushybrain to suburbicide and I was really happy how quickly they did it... but there's one bad thing. They must have changed their basic account from when I signed up because now I can only redirect one outside domain name and that's got to be suburbicide.net ~~so I can't redirect smushybrain or scenebot back to suburbicide any more... That doesn't make me happy.~~

~~I've been thinking about looking for hosting with more bandwidth and features anyway... I guess this gives me another reason.~~ I really like Spooky Media, though.

I don't have any mail at any of my domains any more, as well. I'm eventually going to set some up at suburbicide, probably, but not right now.

If you see anything that doesn't work at suburbicide or on my blog please let me know so I can get it fixed.

I'm off to go get some dinner now.

UPDATE: A quick email to Randi at Spooky Media and I have my 5 add on domains back. I'm happy again. I'm off to bed.

What should I do?

2007-08-10T11:36:00.001-04:00

I've decided that I hate my job completely and that I'm not going to get anywhere by sticking around here any longer. I was due for a review and a raise in June and it still hasn't happened yet, mostly because I haven't pushed the issue because I'm not looking forward to another shitty review saying that I'm not doing a good job at doing other people's work on top of my own. I'm going to wait a few weeks until my review is done and I get my back-pay for my raise before I decide to leave for sure, though. I'm going push for a decent raise this year. If it doesn't happen I'm definitely gone sooner rather than later.

My MAJOR issues are that I haven't found a job that:
* pays what I'm currently making or more.
* I'm interested in AND well qualified (on paper) for.
* I'd enjoy doing more than the boring office work that I'm currently doing.
* is "entry-level" but doesn't require experience. (Don't get me started on this one.)

I don't want to do any call center or help desk type jobs. I'd consider tech support stuff as long as it didn't entail TOO much travel. I don't have the experience that employers are looking for when applying for programming jobs or the art-school education for creative jobs. After all is considered, I basically think I'm pretty much limited to stupid office type jobs.

I did find ONE job that seems interesting and appealing to me as computer recycling tech. It appeals to my desire to do something that's a little more "green", it's ONLY about a mile from where I live and it is related to computers. The issue is the pay SUCKS VERY MUCH, even more than my current job.

I currently make about $27K/year and I have to drive about 12,000 miles a year JUST to get to and from work. With gas at it's current high prices and the likelihood to stay that way, would it make sense for me to take a job that's interesting to me and only about a mile from my apartment that only pays around $23K to start (with some sort of a bonus after 120 days)? 12,000 miles at a rough average of 25MPG with gas at around $3.00/gal. equals roughly $1,500 spent on gas for the year that I wouldn't have to spend. I'd be working basically the same Monday - Friday hours I'm currently working but I'd be taking apart computers and sending them out to be recycled instead of dealing with all of the office politics at my current job.

I guess I'll have to see if it's possible for me to even live on the lower pay. I'm sure I could if I sold my car and got a beater but I don't know if I want to do that.

I hate making decisions related to big life changes. I just wish I didn't hate my current job more...

Domain name switchover...

2007-08-09T10:45:00.002-04:00

Over this weekend I'm going to back up everything on my web host and switch my main domain from smushybrain to suburbicide officially with my web host.

I currently have it set up with scenebot and suburbicide as "subdomains" at smushybrain so that I can host everything on one hosting plan since I don't have that much traffic to warrant separate hosting for each.

I'm still 99% sure that I'm going to let smushybrain and scenebot go at their next renewals and focus on suburbicide as my only domain. I pay too much money for domains that I never use and have no real plans to use. I'm going to actually pick one and stick to it... and I like suburbicide the best.

I've said all this before, though. I'm just writing this again because if anything looks weird, is broken or missing over the next week or so it's probably because of this transition. I have to back everything up and then they're going to switch my account over and I'm going to put back up just the things I want up. (There's a lot of clutter including pictures that I have linked in forums and stuff like that that I'm going to take down.)

I also have a few new ideas of things that I'm going to put up here on suburbicide in the (hopefully) near future.

* I have some rants that I wrote awhile back that I'm going to dig out, type up and make into a feature section of my website.
* I'm thinking of ditching Picasa which I'm currently half-heartedly using for pictures and switching to a gallery software package (maybe coppermine) that I can integrate with my current site design a little better. (Picasa seems a little slow to me, also.) I want to get more into taking pictures, too. I have a new digital camera that I need to use more...
* I MIGHT go through some of my old "teen angst poetry" that I wrote about a couple days ago and put up some of the ones I like in a "poetry" section like I used to have.
* I also have some photos and "digital art" that I made years ago that I want to rework and possibly sell prints of... I'm not sure on this one yet.
* The last thing I'm thinking of might actually turn into a separate project of it's own some day, but eventually I want to compile a list of SIMPLE things people can do to be a little more friendly to the environment. I want to hunt down good sources of information already on the web and link to them and also compile lists of my own that anyone can do for little or no money to help make a difference in consuming less energy, making less waste and just being better to the earth.