Fucking parents

Damn parents spoiling their kids. Today I was at the Apple store using what will be the iMac I get after I become employed when this guy and his two sons came in. They walked out with two 20" iMacs. One was for the teenager dude who looked to be about 16, and the other was for his younger brother who must have been 8. This guy bought his supposedly 8 year old son a $1200 computer. My parents wouldn't do that for me now, and we can definitely afford it. No, they wouldn't do it because they're right minded. My iMac of the moment was $1k which was more than I expected them to spend on me at the time, and more than I'll expect to spend on me again. I mean they will never get me another $1k computer because by the time I need another one I'll be of working age, and by that time there is no way they are getting me anything expensive. 

I also saw that kid walking around with an LG Voyager. I wasn't scoping this out either, they were on the other side of the table I was using. Damn other people's parents.

Why does anyone start smoking?

This isn't going to be one of those "HELLO FELLOW TEENAGERS SMOKING ISN'T COOL AMIRITE" type things, just so you know.

Anyway, why does anyone today start smoking? I can't understand it, and normally when it comes to this sort of thing I can see it from other people's point of view. I've tried this, but I just can't think of a reason for anyone to start, in any mindset. You are literally making a decision to spend lots of money on an early, painful death. I can excuse people who've done it always because they grew up when smoking was "good for you." But when people start today, they are basically flying a huge, smelly flag that says "I AM A MORON." It's true and you know it.

I FUCKING HATE MICROSOFT OFFICE FOR MAC

I don't know why Microsoft shipped this, it's clearly not finished. I would forgive an occasional bug here and there but I really can't use it for two minutes without having some problems. I took a break from writing a paper for school to write this post because I need to vent. This software will make it take much longer than it needs to. I've only just started it and I've already experienced the following:

- Disappearing cursor

- I've got two windows open, one full of notes and the one with the actual paper. If I'm in my browser space and my documents are in another space, clicking the Word icon in the dock or in the app switcher will bring my last active Word window into that space. But not the other one.

- Random space switching. If an app wants your attention for something, it will bring you to the space it's in if you aren't already in it. Several times I've gone into the space with all my word windows (keep in mind, it was all of my word windows) and it went into another space. A space with no word windows. 

I honestly think Microsoft left these bugs in to try to bring some users back to Windows. There's just no way they could have shipped this and not seen all of these bugs, because they reliably come up after a few minutes of use. When I'm not typing something for school that requires a certain number of pages, I use Text Edit, which is Apple's stock text editor. It doesn't do as much as word, but at least I can use it without wanting to break a house down with my face.

So sue me

This has been killing me for a while now. Does anyone else hear sosumi (the Mac's infamous error sound for years) at the end of It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) by REM? Tell me in the comments if you do. I hear it every time and it's slowly making me insane. The first few times I didn't know it was the song so I went through all my spaces and open apps looking for the error message.

PT Cruiser being discontinued!!

That's right. I'm so happy about this. They're going to keep them in production until the end of the summer if I recall correctly. Soon no one will be able to buy a new one, and then some day everyone who owns one/wants to buy used will find out about it's side crash test ratings and then no one will ever drive these. Life is good

And yeah, I'm probably going to ease up on the PT Cruiser posts now.

Voice of the Dollar-Theater

You see, this would have been a better slogan for Altec Lancing because I have never, ever, heard a speaker from them that wasn't absolute shit. Maybe they were good when they still made theater speakers, I wouldn't know. Everything I've heard from them was terrible. Something I've learned to always expect from their speakers is a total disregard for anything over 14khz (which is a shot in the dark, but probably not far off) and most of the sound coming from the cabinet. I'm not going to go on though, I just wanted to complain about "The Voice of the Theater."

Scene kids are a myth

C'mon, how many of these guys have you seen in real life? They make a big deal of them on Gaia (yes I know Gaia sucks) and I can't find out why. In case you don't know, Gaia is a site you go to where everyone is talking about the same things forever, so if you like talking about gay people, abortion, scene kids, the Jonas Brothers, etc, it's a great site. Anyway, everyone there and on various other sites seem to love hating scene kids. I don't have an opinion on them because I have never seen one. As far as I'm concerned, they only exist online. Chances are, scene kids are regular kids who just put on all the scene stuff so they can piss off Gaiafags. Assuming that's the case, I love scenes.

Anyway that was all I really wanted to say. I'll believe they're there when I actually see one. Until then, I will continue to believe they don't exist. Maybe some day some insecure kids who don't want to be preps will assume that other people do it and pick up on the scene thing, bringing them out of fiction. But only time will tell.

I've got this wonderful idea

So if you're a man, I'm sure you've put up with the frustration of people peeing in stalls with the door open. And if you're one of the people causing the problem, go stick your face on the nearest stove and turn it on.

Anyway, I may have found a solution. Basically, you go on Cafepress and order some bumper stickers that protest the act on it. I was thinking for mine I'll put "When did it become socially acceptable to pee with the door open?" I'll use a really dainty font. Maybe the one used in the Ambulance LTD logo. Then you just stick them above the toilet, at what is about eye level for most people. Or on the seat. Just put it where people will see it.

You can also use a sharpie, but I advise against it. If the management wants to take it off (but if it's a guy then he probably won't) then don't make it hard on him. Plus, a sticker looks a lot less "vandialismy" than some scribbles on the wall, so the management will probably be less tempted to remove it in the first place. It's a good idea.

And if you don't want to spend money on this, I've got another solution. Basically you kick the guy really hard every time you go to a stall and find this. Go for the upper back.

Youtube users who dedicate themselves to people they don't like

So I took down most of my YT videos recently because they were bad. I've gotten a tiny response so far. Some are from people who subscribed and are sad to see them go, but others are from the typical "yor juts sad kuz u cant get any abercrombie" folks. What amazes me about these people is how much free time they have to let me know how much they don't like me. It's clear that someone who didn't like my videos wouldn't subscribe or keep tabs by typical means. Since my old videos are gone though, this can only mean that some people have so much free time that they visit my page often to leave comments I won't read. If that wasn't true, they wouldn't be commenting me now.

I never understood their motives, either. People see one video they don't like, so they go through all my videos to leave some bland insult that doesn't bother me because internet insults are meaningless. What's funny is that when I still read my YouTube comments (after a while I just let my account sit there and didn't pay much attention to it) they were usually something like "DIS GUY HAZ NO LIF!!," and still I never went and left the same comment on all of their videos.

I don't know why I'm posting this, though. It's pretty common knowledge that YouTube is just one big cluster of every person with an IQ below 70, plus a few people who will grow up to do more than work at a convenience store.

Oh yeah regarding that post on graphics tablets

I found out that the reason mine sucked so much was because it was too small for my screen. It would often skip over several pixels when moving horizontally, so you may want to disregard that post until I get a new tablet.

50's cars

Specifically 50's Buicks. They're beautiful. I love the styling. The chrome accents look awesome, and I love the bit of white close to the bottom. Why don't they make awesome looking cars anymore? I've been looking at 50's Buicks on Flickr all day and they all look so fantastic. They used to be so iconic, all cars of different brands looking so distinguishable. Now they all look largely the same, save for certain brands having stupid looking grills across their entire line (take Jeep for an example). In fact, grilles seem to be the only distinguishing factor between brands anymore. Different genericars of different brands may have slightly different appearances, but they all look so similar. 50's cars are the best, especially those from Buick and some from Ford. C'mon car companies, can we see some revivals of some amazing 50's cars? I'm not talking new cars with similarities to retro cars. They tried that with the PT Cruiser and it came out horribly wrong. It's like a McDonald's cheeseburger in comparison to a $20 cheeseburger you got at a wonderful restaurant. This might be a bad example though, because there's a number of ways they could make a retro-looking car that's not as sinfully ugly as the Cruiser. But I digress.

If they started remaking all the Buick models from the 50's and just gave some subtle differences (maybe a different name for the car, like instead of  "Special" it could be "Special Revival") to distinguish them from the rarer classics I'd definitely get one. I mean I like these like I like the Mini.

Also, I take back that the PT Cruiser is the ugliest car. I was wrong, I have decided that the ugliest car is actually the PT Cruiser Convertible.

Smart Cars: Why?

Why do they make these? They look strange and are small as hell. I'm told they don't behave well on highways and although they get some pretty good milage, you can have better milage with a Prius. A Prius also gives you more room to move and a backseat and a trunk that is bigger than a box of Triscuits. They do cost a somewhat hefty  bit more (a Prius starts at 22k while last I checked, Smarts started at 17k), but for the extra money you get more room, a back seat, a trunk, colors that don't look crazy on that car, no weird plastic on the sides, better milage, a car that hooligans don't tip over for fun, and some neat styling. You also get some nice customization options.

There's been the possibility of a hybrid Smart. Unfortunately, I'm sure the reason that doesn't exist is because they'd have to make it bigger for the hybrid components. It may have been nice before hybrids caught on, but their moment of glory was very short-lived. If they'd just make it a bit bigger, maybe make a "family" version with a back seat, they could make it a hybrid. That could make some sense. But almost immediately after typing that, I realized that there was already a family hybrid Smart, and it's called the Toyota Prius.

You might like a Smart for it's strange design, so whatever, get one. I'm just saying if you're buying it for the environment, take a look at the Prius. Hell, if you don't mind getting slightly less (as in it is hardly worth mentioning the difference) milage, you can also get a Mini Cooper, which starts at a mere 1k more than the Smart. The Mini gives you a backseat, trunk, great handling, and confidence that your car is unconditionally better than everyone else's. Think about that.

Edit: Further research (see: boredom) has lead me to realize that I was wrong about several things in this post. Feel free to disregard most of it.

Windows 7

Finally, they're getting it right. After six major Windows versions, there's now one I want. It runs well on weak hardware, it's more stable, it's basically got the qualities that made me switch to OS X.

So will I stay on OS X with future computers? Depends on whether or not Apple can top them. They'll sure-as-peas try, because you know how Apple is. I'm definitely getting me a copy of Windows 7 when it's out, though. And I do mean I'm getting one as soon as I can, because Microsoft has made it pretty apparent that they don't want to lose any more users to Mac, so they're really stepping up. You probably know of how they're beta-testing it. If you don't, they're giving a public beta to everyone who wants one. There's millions of beta testers. It can't fail. I haven't gotten the beta though. This is because I don't want to go through installing it (plus my computer doesn't have a DVD burner for to burn the disc image) and I can wait for the final, perfected version. I'll have to clear up quite a bit of hard drive space for it, though. Maybe I'll get a second external drive.

I think I'm going to hold of getting a netbook even longer so I can get one with Windows 7. It'll be a little while, but the wait will pay off when they're pumping out cheap netbooks running Windows 7 at good speeds. Maybe I'll get an iPod Touch to hold myself off for now. That isn't a bad idea. 

Next I'd like to see a Windows 7-esque version of Windows Mobile. Aren't we on version 6 right now anyway? It'd make sense. And if it lives up to the name, then on top of a Windows version I'd want, they'd also have out a mobile OS I'd consider.

And since we're talking about Microsoft, isn't the Zune great? I have no idea why people don't like them. They're just as good, if not better than iPods (though I say the Zune 120 beats the iPod Classic). If I wasn't a Mac user (or if the Zune worked on Macs) I'd probably have gotten the Zune 80 (as it was known at the time) instead of an iPod Classic. After the installation of Windows 7 though I probably still won't get one. It's unfortunate, but I pretty much decided that if I get a new MP3 player, it'd be an iPod Touch.

OPPO Muse G11

http://gizmodo.com/5120847/oppo-muse-g11-the-chinese-pmp-with-a-d+pad-and-classic-game-emulators

For the first time, I want one of those Chinese "MP4 players." You know, the "I've never heard of this brand" ones that seem like they will fall apart if you look at them too hard. Except from what I've gathered by a google search, this doesn't appear to be a cheap product. 4gb of internal memory isn't much (is that mentioned in the Gizmodo article? I may have read that somewhere else), especially for $160, but it's got a funky swivel screen and it plays SNES games and somewhere I read it comes with Sennheiser headphones. I hope this is slated for a US release, because I will buy one. After reading some reviews, of course.

DSI coming to the US on April 4 for $180

And for the first time, I'm not excited at all about a new Nintendo system. Not only is this hardly a major upgrade, but I realized the other day that I didn't buy or even consider buying any DS games during 2008. This is because they have failed to come out with any good ones. Not only is it lacking mildly fun games, but it's also lacking really engaging games. I'm talking Pokemon engaging. I didn't get the new Pokemon games because Pokemon games got old around Sapphire. Sure, cameras and a built in music player and SD card slot and browser are all nice, but my main focus when buying a video game system is playing video games with it. I'll get one when I see one or two good games come out. And I do keep my eye on them.

Actually, Nintendo's just kind of sucked in recent years anyway. They lost all the fun. Plus, they've already released all the latest editions of their 1st party series. Mario, SSB (By the way, Brawl was just Melee with worse levels and some boring gimmiks), Animal Crossing, etc. The only one I have is the new Paper Mario which I rarely play and haven't beaten. And 3rd party games for Nintendo systems have been worse than ever.

They're all shitty pieces of shit made by shit developers. Seriously, no one wants to play "TAKE CARE OF SOME HORSES" or "HERE IS A BABY." I've only ever bought one Wii game. It was whatever the Wii Paper Mario was. It was decent at first but got boring and since then the Wii has gathered dust. I think the reason Sega excretes so much Sonic crap on Nintendo systems is because even though new Sonic games are absolute shit, playing them on a Nintendo system makes them better by comparison.

I'm sure if Nintendo fanboys read this, they'd be pissed. But everyone knows it's true. When's the last time you really had tons of fun with your Wii? Not for a while, I bet. I have a friend who's only system was the Wii and was a Nintendo guy his whole life. His mom wouldn't let him get other systems until quite recently. He hated the Wii. There was next to nothing out for it and the future was dull. He sold it and all his games and got a 360 and he has been happier since then. I'm not kidding. Nintendo's trying to save themselves with these "Wii__" games, but they are hardly games, and no amount of Wii___ games will ever make it worth $250.

But I've done a blog post about the Wii before, so I won't go on. Goodbye.