Category: Activities

I tried watching Bulworth, which I’d Tivo’ed off of VH1. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a movie on VH1 before, and I don’t think I will again. They bleep everything. And not just real swear words, but stuff you hear on network TV all the time, like “God damn”. And not just a nice blanking out of the word, or a simple “bleep”, but what sounds like the beep they use for Emergency Broadcast System tests (before they went to the modem-tone noise they use now). Most of the movie sounded like a Western Union telegraph office.

I think I’m going to have to join Netflicks just so I can get movies like this.

I was wondering why I still haven’t got the return box for my iPod. Since I’m what you might call “experienced” when it comes to returning iPods, I know how long these boxes usually take, and 6 days is too long. So I called AppleCare.
Continue reading “Apple, can you *please* get your act together?”

Ok, it’s time for one of my world-famous quick quizes.

Suppose you are in the business of selling computers with Linux and other free operating systems on them, and you just posted an announcement to comp.os.linux.announce about your latest deal. Somebody emails you to tell you that you spelt the URL wrong in the announcement, and not only that on the very front page of your site you’ve used the word “suit” several times when referring to OpenOffice.org when you really meant “suite”. Do you:

• Thank him for helping you project a more professional image, and fix the front page of your site and look for other typos and grammatical mistakes before resubmitting an announcement to comp.os.linux.announce or
• Send him what is probably a very witty retort in your native language, even if you’re not 100% sure how to translate it into English.

If you chose the latter, then there might be a (very short) future for you in retail sales.

To quote in full the response I got: “I don’t mind your criticizing that way. It shows you are only just THOSE kind person!”

I think “I am only just THOSE kind person” will become my new catchphrase.

So much for Rants and Revelations: And some ever better news about the iPod. Last night, with the iPod down to only 3 out of 4 bars showing on the battery charge meter, I tried several times and found I had about a 1 in 5 chance of actually turning it back on after an auto-shutoff. And sometimes when I did the menu+play hard reset, it would take forever to come back up again.

Strangely enough, it seems to work great while it’s plugged in. Since 90% of the time I do have it plugged in at work, I’d be tempted to just forget it and say this is as good as it’s going to get, except I had over a year of an iPod that worked right, so this one is too damn annoying.