Aisle 10 . Net

everyone is so damn sue happy

Filed under: ranting

As I have said before, I really hate the iPod for numerous reasons. Justified or not. But this is just stupid

Apple sued over iPod Nano replacement feesIf you buy a product that is a piece of shit, or can’t hold up to normal everyday use. That is your fault for buying it. Trying to sue the manufacturer over it is just hiding the fact that either you can’t take care of your own belongings, or that you made a horrible buying decision. My mp3 player had plenty of abuse and never had a scratch on it. That is irrelevant though. If I went and found some discount radio shack brand mp3 player for $10 and it fell apart after a week, that is my fault for buying it. Not the manufacturer for suckering me into purchasing their shoddy product. I doubt it said anywhere on the box for the iPod Nano “this thing never will get scratched!” or “still looks new after years of abuse!”

so just shut up and accept the fact you bought a piece of crap. Be happy that Apple is only charging you $25 to replace it. Even if it does scratch easy, go buy one of those stupid iPod cases and call it a day.

screw the ipod and peter towshend. Get good headphones

Filed under: Music, ranting

One of the stories that is all the rage today is how Peter Townshend is speaking out about how there is going to be a hearing loss epidemic because of “the iPod”.

Some might think it is a bit coincidental that all this buzz is coming out right around the same time that the who is annoucing their big “reunion tour”..which is funny by itself since they have a “reunion” almost every year. but that is a side note.

Pete Townshend a complete tool for a variety of reasons which I will conveinantly list for you:

1. He has been playing the guitar since what, the early 60s? so after over 35 years of being in and around loud music, live performances and god knows what else, he came to the conclusion that his hearing loss is because of “the headphones I used in the recording studio”
2. He decided that he played a crucial role in “inventing and refining a type of music that makes its principal components deaf” how full of yourself do you need to be? guess what, music was going along on its own road long before the who existed, and if they never did exist I would be willing to bet whatever people were listening to today would be played just as loud, and it would probably be the same music all together.
3. he is yet another moron who refers to anything that plays music as “an iPod“. When I still had my mp3 player, I had a Rio Karma, so I guess I shouldn’t be worrying about anything, because it wasn’t an iPod, and even though the music coming out of my computer and into my headphones can get plenty loud, I still don’t have to worry. It’s not an iPod.

Deep within the crap he is preaching is a grain of truth. Headphones obviously can cause hearing loss. I don’t need any research to prove that. I also know that large amplifier stacks blasting music into your face during countless tours can cause hearing loss as well.

The real problem that around now, and yes, the infamous iPod is partially responsible for this (as is basically any piece of handheld personal audio equipment) is the use of “earbud” style headphones. Sony and every other headphone manufacturer has been making them for years. For the record, the earbuds that come with the iPod are actually pretty crappy audio wise (and color wise, and in every other way)

The reason why earbud style headphones are a problem is because the driver in the headphones is partially in your ear. But they do nothing at all to block out any surrounding ambient noise, so in order to hear the music (or drown out your co-workers) you crank up the volume. That loud volume, combined with the driver being in your ear, equals to some really loud localized sounds hitting your ear for prolonged periods of time, which…causes hearing damage. I read all this in an article last month. It was from a reuters story, and actually has some research behind it, as opposed to some lame guitarist wildly making claims.

The easy solution is to buy good headphones. The fancy overpriced noise cancelling headphones that companies like Bose are making do a real good job of blocking out ambient noise, and so does the less expensive, but still plenty of money “in-ear” headphones that companies like Shure, Etymotic, and to a lesser extent even companies like Sony. These are basically earplugs with headphones built into them. The sound is great, and it blocks out everything around you just like a pair of regular ear plugs would. Obviously if you really like listening to insanely loud music, either way your going to damage your hearing but for the regular average joe, you’ll be much better off, get superior sound quality to crappy ear-bud style headphones, and above all, be able to tune out everything going on in that harse cruel world around you.

The gist of my whole story is that Pete Townshend is a tool, the iPod sucks, the iPods headphones suck, go buy a decent pair of headphones, and you’ll be just fine.

Also, I have hearing damage. I also listen to music often, but I am willing to bet that the hearing damage was from when I took a “charge” from my fathers impact hammer, which is basically a bullet, and smashed it with a hammer in our not-yet-completed cellar. The cellar makes a great place to echo loud sounds. I would put the blame on that, not my headphones.

Or maybe I just got hearing damage from listening to The Who. Thankfully I don’t make a habit out of that one.

Now go read the real article, its much better than anything Petey boy has to say

I never liked coldplay anyway

Filed under: money, ranting

aside from their “clocks” song, which I liked only because it was easy as hell to play on the drums…even though most of their music is. One good reason to not buy their new CD, or any CD from Capitol Records for that matter, is that your legally not allowed to listen to it.

It is actually sad that Coldplay, and whatever other artists are under Capitol Records probably have no say, and probably don’t even know how Capitol Records is alienating their fans, and basically driving them away…at least from bothering to pay for the overpriced CD’s in the first place.

On the good side, I can’t think of one band that has come out with a CD in the past 2 years that I really would want to even download for free. So it really isn’t a problem for me until some artist comes around that actually tries to not suck.

on street parking

Filed under: ranting

I grew up in saugus, ma, which is pretty suburban. I lived on a quiet little side street with plenty of driveway and on street parking. Now I live in Medford, and am getting used to the glamour associated with on street only parking, and better yet, one side of the street only parking during “snow emergencies”

Luckily the street I live on now isn’t too busy, so there are plenty of spots…even when you can only park on one side of street. Except for one small problem. I am surrounded by assholes. My neighbors on both sides, usually going maybe 3 houses down, including my landlord which lives below me all park in the middle of both spots in front of the houses. Normally you can easily fit at least 2 cars in front of the average sized house. But instead of doing the nice, polite thing to do, they all park in the middle, so only one car (theirs) can fit in front of the house. Sure, I could see this being justified if they were holding the other spot for a roommate or a loved one, but no….they never move except when they leave for the day. They are just being complete assholes.

Now, as stupid as I think it is, apparantly there is some unspoken rule that if you put an object in the spot on the street your car was parked, like say….a chair, a trash barrel, a baby….anything like that. You “claimed” that spot, and noone else will touch it. It seems like a load of crap to me, mostly because most people would just move the object and take the spot anyway, but…after being told by both Aimee and my landlord (who at the same time has his truck parked in the middle of the front of our house…and he NEVER drives it) I put a trash barrel in place of where my car was parked the other day. I figured I would give it the ‘ol college try.

I get home later that day, and not really much to my suprise, the people next door, where I had parked my car, and later “saved” with a barrel put the barrel on the sidewalk, and then parked their stupid piece of shit forest green (like everything from ford) ford explorer in the middle of both spots. In my mind, that right their is an act of war.

I can see moving the barrel and taking the spot, although it is still an asshole thing to do. I can even see parking in the middle of both spots to save it for someone else you live with. But these fuckheads arn’t saving the spot for anyone. I have never seen another car aside from my car, and their stupid ford explorer parked in front of their house. They only have one car. They are a bunch of spanish guys that pile in and out of the explorer like it is a clown car.

So, yesterday, after they left for the big top or something, I parked my car in one of the spots in front of their house when I came home, and later aimees friend parked in the other spot while she was over. When Aimees friend left later on, within minutes that green ford explorer was parked in front of their house. Which, again is fine. But this morning, when I leave for work, I notice they had already left for the day, and saved their spot with a chair. Now this is where the line gets drawn. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t disregard the stupid “spot saving” rule, and then do it yourself while you are gone, and you can’t park in the middle of both spots for no good reason.

So, now, I am going to take up both spots whenever I get a chance, and if I get home before them, I don’t care if miraculously the entire street is empty, I am taking the spot they saved with the chair. Sure I might get shot or stabbed, but at least on principle, I tought them a lesson.

So, in the event this is the last thing I write before a bunch of spanish people do some thuggish gang banging in their snazzy ford explorer. I am going to have a nice little web cam pointed at the spot, where they may either:

1. stab me
2. shoot me
3. slash my tires
4. key my car
5. all of the above

At least I will have it recorded. Or maybe if I see one of the fuckheads outside, I can have a nice little talk with them instead. I guess we will just have to see what happens

Permalink Comments (0) emjaydee Jan 3, 2006

How much would you be willing to spend to save a pets life? (Cont…)

Filed under: money, pet, ranting

A while back I read a post on Free Money Finance about how much people are willing to spend to save their pets life.

The author, obviously had a difference in opinion about how much to spend on a pet, and didn’t agree with my comments. Read the last paragraph of this post to see his response to my comment

Read the post I made on that a while back where he completely missed the point I was trying to make.

He made another post about it today, and I think further misunderstands the way things are for pet owners who actually treat their pets as anything more than a car purchase.

Pet insurance doesn’t work anywhere near the same as health insurance for people work. All the pet insurance companies I have come across drop you as a customer when your pet reaches a certain age, with my dog I think it was around 8yrs old. Also, the insurance benefits long run out before any form of a major problem is taken care of.

The one thing he is right about is that there are plenty of reasons to think over before you get a pet. If you can’t take on the responsibility, or just toss a pet to the curb as soon as a problem comes up, then no, you (or him) should not have a pet.

A massive mesh network

Filed under: Hardware, ranting

Since I obviously have a major say in the business decisions of companies like Clear Channel. I decided that since all their billboards are usually around normal building height, and almost all of them have power to light up the stupid signs at night, they should install WiFi routers, or any preferrably a better high speed wireless technology in all the signs. They could make a massive mesh network out of property they already own or lease, They could probably throw a couple cell phone repeaters in there as well, but for all I know they might be too low.

From the 30 seconds of research I did, Clear Channel alone ownes over 775,000 billboards nationwide. If I spent more time writing this I could probably mention how many other companies owne, but I figured this was enough information for someone to steal my idea.

In the end my only goal is for comcast to actually have some competition in the broadband internet access market so the market will force them to lower theirridiculously outrageus prices on their over-exaggerated bandwidth claims

used stuff sucks

Filed under: ranting

I had to get up at around 5:30 this morning to spend until 8am scrubbing the inside of the refrigerator in my new apartment with a crappy sponge that pretended to be a brillo pad and a spray bottle of “formula 409″ which might actually have just been water with a shitty scent. Used stuff sucks. So does cleaning….and waking up.

 

However the new commute to work is awesome. It takes me around 10 minutes in traffic to get to work, and it used to take over an hour. 

when did beta become cool?

Filed under: ranting

Why is it that the new rage is to produce a service, either for free or for profit, release it to the public, and then call it “beta” for years to come?

 

I think Google pioneered this stupid idea, since every service they provide prominently displays its “beta” status, yet GMail has existed for how long now? same with Google Groups, and Froogle. Flickr is next in line as well, and they have no excuse. In my opinion, you’re product is no longer in “beta” as soon as you start requesting people pay for your product.

 And then the herd follows and now everything is beta. Microsoft does it now with their Anti-Anti-Spyware package, and I am sure any day good ‘ol innovative Steve Jobs is going to release his new “iBeta” program, which will do nothing except redraw your screen white and put a gay little pressure sensitive rotary dial on your screen.

This site is beta too. Which is why I still don’t have a spell checker on here 

How much to spend on a pet

Filed under: ranting

(12:17:45) me: weee, i made it into someone elses blog post

(12:20:38) Darren: nice!

(12:20:39) Darren: who?

(12:22:37) me: this blog I subscribe to the feed of. Its called “Free Money Finance” this guy posts all this stuff on saving money/investing and such

(12:23:24) me: like a week ago or so, he posted an entry asking how much money people are willing to spend to save a pets life

(12:25:34) me:

http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2005/11/comments_how_mu.html

(12:25:55) me: so the guy posted a recap today about all the comments he got (one of which was mine)

(12:26:10) me: i think he actually ended his post by calling me an idiot

(12:26:19) me: not in those exact words

(12:27:07) me: however, I did win the prize for spending the most money on a pet

(12:28:18) Darren: “prize”?

(12:28:31) me: yeah, the “prize” being a massive amount of debt

(12:28:33) Darren: he sounds fairly unsympathetic

(12:28:56) me: haha, the thing is, I think he completely missed the point I was trying to make (as poorly written as it was)

(12:29:28) me: I know kids and pets arnt the same. I was trying to say that if you dont want to be responsible about it, you shouldn’t have a pet or a kid

(12:29:54) me: who says flat out before even having a pet (or any living thing for that matter) “the most I will spend is $2000″

(12:30:08) Darren: from his opening sentense, i got the impression he was going to interperet the comments in light of his own opinion, i.e., you can’t compare kids to pets

(12:30:21) me: so what happens, when you drop that last $1, you say “well spot…tough shit…get into the trash compactor”

(12:30:34) Darren: his view is also very narrowminded

(12:31:01) me: usually everyone he writes, and everyone that comments on his blog are a bunch of cheap stingy bastards

(12:31:05) Darren: i wonder how much he would spend on keeping a pet alive if his kids had grown up with the pet and were too young to understand that animals get sick and die

(12:31:10) me: which oddly enough, is the name of another blog I subscribe to

(12:31:19) Darren: would his daughter’s happiness be worth $15000 to him?

(12:31:20) me: thats a good point as well

(12:32:07) me: in my mind it would be worth it

(12:32:56) me: think about this, most of the comments he posted said they would spend at 2000-$3000 on their pet

(12:33:08) me: the average life expectancy of a dog for example, is like 7-15 years

(12:33:31) me: mine, lived 12, 12 years of cable TV costs more than $7,200

(12:33:44) me: so i bet everyone on their is willing to spend more on TV than on a pet

(12:34:17) Darren: if your pet lives for 15 years and you are only willing to spend $2000 on it (max life, min cost) then you’re only spending $133 yer *year* on the thing

(12:34:18) me: hence my last sentance in that comment I posted. you cant get that kind of return on anything else

(12:34:29) Darren: that’s not even enough to feed a small dog for more than a few months

(12:34:39) Darren: i don’t think people really thought through their answers…

(12:34:45) me: i was hoping that those figures were for “emergency costs”

(12:34:58) me: like if your dog had to go to the hospital, and the doctor gives you the price quote

(12:35:10) me: you know, when you, your wife and your kids (who are crying) are standing around

(12:35:20) me: and then you go….$5000? nope, just kill him

(12:35:24) Darren: which goes back to my original thing

(12:35:24) me: hahaha

(12:35:45) Darren: how do you tell your daughter that if the doctor was just *this* much cheaper, fido would be coming home with them?

(12:36:34) me: what is worse, is that its not a matter of you not being able to get the money, its that you have it, but the line item in your budget called “fido” only allows you to spend up to $2000

(12:36:56) me: then the kid can go home thinking that she has a maximum amount as well

(12:36:59) me: haha

(12:37:09) Darren: heh

(12:37:27) Darren: on the other hand, everyone has a limit to what they can/will spend

(12:37:45) Darren: if the doctor had told you, up front, that it would cost $15000 what would have done?

(12:37:49) me: yeah, everyone does, but I dont think you can really know what the limit is until you need the money

(12:37:53) Darren: what if he said $30000?

(12:37:59) Darren: that’s what i wonder

(12:38:03) Darren: and that might be his point

(12:38:18) Darren: if it’s your kid, then the only limit is what you can beg, borrow, or steal

(12:40:31) me: with my dog, the only reason he ended up being put to sleep was because there was nothing else that could be done. If he had made it past that last hurdle, at the way things were going, I think i would have easily hit the $25,000 range, but I couldn’t live with myself with knowing that the only reason he died was because I didn’t want to spend the money on him. Like how can you go and blow money at dunkin donuts or something like that, and be finewith it, but then your pet has a problem and you say no way

Damn good luck

Filed under: ranting

This friday I was over Johns house hanging out, just having a fun ‘ol time. Around 1:30am hits, and I decide its time to go home, so I head out to my car, and the passenger side door (facing the street) is wide open. I go to check out why, and sure enough someone stole a bunch of stuff from my car. They grabbed my two bags, which have close to everything I can think of in them. They didn’t bother with the case of CD’s or the radar detecter a foot from where the bags were.

The first bag was my “laptop backpack” and it had in it my works laptop, my digital camera, my little GPS receiver, the wireless card for my laptop, my glasses, and a little portable hard drive. It sucks enough that all that got stolen, but what sucks even more is that I kept putting off (for some reason) backing up all the stuff I had on that laptop, so now I lost countless hours of stuff, all kinds of important files, just a ton of crap that i’ll never get back.

the other bag had all my papers and stuff in it. like bills, and the paperwork involved with my “reckless driving” case. I had tons papers and bills in there because sometimes I work on that stuff at work, sometimes at home.

Ironically enough, one of the papers in that bag was a supeana to appear in court for the time I was mugged 3 years ago, when they stole…

My laptop bag and my portfolio bag, both containing earlier versions of what was stolen this time.

I figured I would waste some time and call the Saugus Police, but as usual, not wanting to lose their reputation, they were completely useless. Not only did it take them a full 30 minutes to make it to a location probably a mile and a half from the police station, but the loser that arrived didn’t even get out of his car. He just told me “you should have locked your door” He then claimed that in his “10 years working this area, he has never heard of any problems on this street”. That was after I mentioned to him that last year, someone drove down the street smashing windows with a bat or something. Also, John’s next door neighbor had his jeep broken into, they cut open his soft top and stole the stereo. Oh, but no problems at all.

I have a couple ideas of who might have done it, but not really any way of proving it, so as it always works out, I am sure they will get away with it, and too bad for me.

Maybe the kid that stole it will make enough money pawning all my stuff that he overdoses on whatever drugs he used the money for.