Category: general

With the weather having improved so much, I was finally able to re-start my biking to work thing this week. This morning’s ride was a record-breaker, making it from home to my time-check corner in 11min flat, a full 3min off my previous best time (making all the lights makes a big difference). Since it’s supposed to be in the mid 70s this week, I went ahead and made the call that it’s high time to ditch the jeans and usher in the season of shorts. Sure, it’s a tad cool during the morning ride in – but it’s worth it for the warmer ride home. I went full-on head adorned, sporting my helmet, earbud headphones playing the Helio Sequence, and sunglasses – it’s a wonder my neck could support it all.

Tonight was a quick-dinner night. We don’t have many planned, high-prep dinners – so it’s often something quick: chicken and rice, pork chops and green beans, soup and sandwiches, frozen pizza, etc. Tonight it was Hamburger Helper. Y’know what the worst part of Hamburger Helper is? Surprisingly, it’s the hamburger. I love a good steak, I love hamburgers, beef is good to me. But for some reason, the pound or so of ground beef that’s supposed to be the signature ingredient, the culinary glue holding the Hamburger Helper dish together, ends up being the crappiest part. It’s just crumbly, dry, and tasteless… it just gets in the way of the yummy little pastas and their sauce. From now on, if I have to resort to Hamburger Helper, I’m saving money and doing it vegetarian style – sans the hamburger.

While browsing Nokia’s website today for some cool-looking faceplates as a replacement for the dull silver on that came with my new 6230 (which don’t seem to exist except for in Hong Kong) – I was shocked and appalled to come across a product announcement for the new 6230i. It’s nearly the same phone that I just got, except it’s got a 1.3 megapixel camera and a tiny extra little button on the d-pad which alleviates the accidental directional-instead-of-down push problem. I know, I know, it’s not out yet – but I still got a little bummed that the one-up to my phone hit the webpage like two days after I bought two of ’em. Such is the always catching-up game of new and cool gadgetry.

Sunday night I decided to attend mass with Pat. Aside from being baptized Catholic as a child before my folks went humanist and we stopped attending (I don’t remember going as a child) – the last time I went to a Catholic mass was in 6th or 7th grade with a friend. I’d forgotten almost all of the ceremony, but the motions were vaguely familiar. I wanted to go to check it out, since there’s so much history and ceremony associated with it – and because I’m fascinated with religion in general. Mass was fine, I enjoyed it – it was a lot more contemporary than what I’d been exposed to previously, with modern songs and such. The reason I’m writing, however, isn’t about mass. It’s about the kid who was sitting in the pew in front of us at mass.

The family in front of us consisted of two kids and a mom. Kid One, the kid I’m writing about, was about 7 or 8 years old (by my extremely poor age-estimation standards), his big brother was maybe 12. Like a lot of kids, Kid One had a pad and pencil with him so he could keep himself busy doodling during the boring service. At some point I glanced down and caught a glimpse of what he was doodling: chain necklaces weighed down with medallions, hands with rings, cellphones, and cars. All of these items were emblazoned with logos: G-Unit, 50 Cent, Tha Game. I couldn’t believe it. This 7 year old kid was doodling rap-crew-monogrammed bling. If I’d had more guts, I’d’ve snapped a cellphone picture when they went up for communion.

Before I go, some link-dropping. I saw this post the other day and really got a kick out of it, enjoy.

Goodnight lovers, goodnight lonely, and goodnight lonely lovers.

I don’t think I’ve ever been late for work simply because I “slept in.” Until this morning, that is. The first thing that I noticed on waking was the amount of sunshine poking through the slats of the blinds. Something wasn’t right. Grabbing for my cellphone on the windowsill, the clock said 8:45am. Crap… somehow I missed the alarm. At first, I jumped out of bed in a rush, flying around the room. Then I realized, there’s no reason to rush. I took my shower, did my morning hygiene stuff, emptied the cat’s litter and took off. Getting to work at 9:30am sure makes the day more tolerable. Maybe I’ll make that my regular thing.

The tissue-paper toilet seat guards hanging above the commode at work are called “Life Guard.” Is my life really at stake here?

I don’t know if anyone actually ever notices whats on rotation in my Winamp over there in the sidebar – but if so, you may have noticed I’ve been listening to some different stuff the last couple days. Old NIN? Skinny Puppy? What the hell is all that? I don’t care what people say about Skinny Puppy, Rabies and Too Dark Park were landmark albums during my brief industrial phase. Along with NIN, Frontline Assembly, Nitzer Ebb, and of course Ministry… they sustained the dark, gritty, beatlust that my 10th grade ears so craved. I can remember one brief embarrassing month (maybe not even a full month, who knows) where my standard-issue uniform consisted of shin-length black shorts, black socks, black steel-toed shoes, and black t-shirts. It’s a wonder I didn’t wear eyeliner and dye my hair. I guess sunlight-blocking visqueen velcroed to my windows and patchouli incense isn’t too far off.

After my rant yesterday about my wireless woes, I decided to try another brick-and-mortar store today to see if I’d have different results (y’know, kinda like getting a second doctor’s opinion or something). While the 2nd store did have some more promising Cingular rate plans, they still couldn’t look the other way on the $18 migration fee. So on a suggestion from a friend at work and as a last resort, I called the sales department. Turns out, I was able to negotiate a killer deal over the phone with their corporate sales department (previously, with AT&T, we got some decent discounts through work, and some apparently carried over to Cingular). In the end, I scored two Nokia 6230s (one for me and one for the Mrs.) for $150, what they wanted to charge me for a single phone in-store. On top of that, our monthly rate when down by a buck under the new Cingular plan, and we got 100 additional minutes plus rollover. Not bad.

The new phone is what I’m excited about though. Not only is it slightly smaller than my current phone, it’s got camera and video functionality (a first for me, as I’ve always valued the reception over the frills). In addition, it’s got a built-in MP3 player. The really cool thing though, is that both the camera and MP3 player utilize memory on a removable MMC (multimedia card) – and you can currently get them in 2GB sizes (and I was just there, I wish I’d known). That means, in addition to my first video/camera phone I’ve also just scored a 2GB portable MP3 player. Nokia touts a 10hr battery life for MP3 playback, but extra batteries are only $20… so I could always buy a backup for long trips if I find the actual performance to be less. The only slightly-less-than-awesome thing I could find to pick on is the fact that the camera is only 640×480, whereas some of the more recent phones have 1MP+ offerings.

Goodnite.

Having TiVo is great, but it’s also an unexpected obligation. When you’ve got 20hrs of programming sitting on a hard drive – you feel somewhat bound to watch it. I liken this desire to “clear” the TiVo to a Scientologist’s yen to “clear” their soul of sticky body thetans. But rather than cash-money, which Scientologists use to rid themselves of thetans implanted into their soul 75 million years ago when the evil intergalactic overlord Xenu exploded an H-bomb in a volcano on the planet Teegeeack, TiVo owners are obliged to waste their time by “clearing” the many hours of CSI, OC, Desperate Housewives, and Daily Shows from their hard drives. Luckily, these shows were not “implanted” into our hard drives by evil space aliens – they were, in fact, chosen by us! TiVo owners, hear me now: Only you can liberate yourselves from the hours and hours of Aqua Teens and Family Guys, only you have the power! Drop that remote, cancel those season passes, free your time from the bonds of PVR. Oh, hang on, I gotta go – I got an episode of Dateline to watch where they talk about BTK… peace out.

You wanna know what really burns me? I’ve had AT&T as my wireless carrier for nigh on five years now. Recently, they were bought out by Cingular. No big deal really… as I didn’t see any changes other than the neon above the local AT&T store. Then today, I decide it’s time for a new phone, as mine’s getting real old-‘n’-busted looking. So, I go down to the AT&T Cingular store to have a peek. I perused the offerings, and decided on a cool little Nokia cameraphone with video and bluetooth capabilities. Talking to the rep, he mentioned that no more phones were being sold under AT&T plans: all new phones are Cingular. No problem, I’ll just switch over to Cingular – I mean they bought AT&T so it was inevitable anyway. That means I have to switch my wife’s phone too, which is under the same account. Again, no biggie… let’s do it. Wait… the only Cingular plan that’s close to my current AT&T plan costs $10 more per month. That sucks. But here’s what really bugged me: there’s an $18 charge per phone to “migrate” the service from AT&T to Cingular.

Let me get this straight: Cingular buys AT&T, makes it so any new/upgraded phone bought by a former AT&T customer has to be bought under a Cingular account, and then charges me $18 for the compulsory switch. Is that legal? To me, it sounds like Cingular is passing off the cost of acquiring AT&T onto their customers. For AT&T customers, every phone in the store costs $18 more than it does for an existing Cingular or new customer. I might expect some kind of migration fee were I really choosing to switch providers… but I have no choice here. I did ask the rep how long I could keep my AT&T phones/plans, and he said indefinitely. While that’s some small comfort, since I like my cheaper AT&T plan better than anything Cingular offers, there will come a day when I want to or have to get a new phone. I tried to rationalize this by equating it to a hypothetical situation in which AT&T just ceased to exist or went out of business, but realized I’d then be the same as any no-wireless-havin’ Joe off the street – and wouldn’t have to pay a fee to “migrate” from anything. Monopolizing punks.

I can remember in college, being quite the little pirate wannabe. I would horde illegal copies of applications, serial number and key generators, program patches, etc. I think going to work for a high tech company made me realize that I didn’t want to steal software anymore. So, I bought what I needed, and went freeware/open-source for everything else. I don’t have a single piece of pirated software on my machines anymore, I even got legit copies of Windows. I’m also a lot less forgiving of other forms of piracy: I pay for my DirecTV and go to the movie theater. For some reason though, I still download music like it was the college heyday of Napster free-music love. I don’t know why my late-blooming morality hasn’t extended to MP3s, there’s really no explanation I have. I mean, I’ve tried in the past to justify the habit by the concert revenue and at-show CD sales I generate for the artists – but my plain-out stealing outpaces the the money I give back at the ticket counter. I dunno, maybe it’s my last bastion of reckless youth.

It’s not like I haven’t ever filled the music industry’s coffers… I own thousands of CDs which I bought with my own hard-earned cash. But nowadays the only CDs I buy are at concerts, where, for some reason, I’ve got the idea that more of the money actually goes into the artists’ pocket (a regular philanthropist, ain’t I?). Beyond that, I continue to download new music and listen without guilt. What is that? I can justify it in some ways, like if I’ve actually purchased the music at some point – perhaps in another form of media. I think that, once I’ve paid for the right to listen to something, I should be able to listen to it whenever and however I want – even if that means downloading a copy of it. As for the stealing of music I’ve never owned… I’m at a loss to describe how I justify it. Perhaps my conscious will eventually catch up with me, and I’ll sign up for iTunes or something.

I get my haircut at a place at a local place in town that only has two Singaporean employees working it’s eight chairs. It’s usually not that busy, which I like because I can get in and out quickly. My regular guy doesn’t speak too much English, and never remembers what number guard to use on my fade. In the past, he’s made the comment, “not much to cut” while trimming up the top. He also tends to mix up his method every once in a while, to keep my on my toes. He’ll clip the top with scissors sometimes, using the traditional knuckle-and-comb method; other times he wont even use scissors, just use a comb and the clippers. Today I realized, if you take these things together, they makes a strong case for my regular dude being a bad barber. Then, while I was sitting in the chair for my clip today, the guy actually burped into my hair. Offering no apology, he just kept on trimming. The guy burped onto my head. As I was leaving, I noticed that the pen they had chained to the counter was actually a stolen from some hotel. I guess when your sole qualifications for a barber are fast and cheap, it should come as no surprise that your $15 gets you a pretty ghetto experience.

Andy Wilderotter sucks balls. Goodnight.