Pissed

I’m furious at all the politicians on the state level who made a mess of the this year’s budget. Most of the blame belongs with the Republicans, of course. Their no-new-taxes-regardless stance precipitated the crisis. However, the Democrats are also culpable for caving to the minority. The whole fiasco has me so disgusted that I am going to vote against every incumbent for the next couple of elections. Doesn’t matter what party their from, the entire lot needs to be pitched out.

Dear Crutchfield

I bought a simple ground loop isolator from you to get rid of an annoying hum that comes from the new DC adaptor required by the latest iPhones and iPods. It’s nice because yours has mini-jack connectors on each. Just plug it in. And it was only $18. The $7 shipping charge seemed annoying but even with it you had the best price.

The gadget arrived yesterday and it works great. I’m a happy camper.

Except why did you ship it in such a ridiculously large box? I mean take a good look at that picture. The thing is solid state electronics and presumably tough enough to survive the bumps and jostles that come from life in a car. Why in the world does it need a shipping carton 100 times its volume? And you filled it with those damn styrofoam peanuts. Now I’ve got to find a way to get ride of them. Thanks.

Maybe if you used more efficient packaging, you wouldn’t have to have a 40 percent markup for shipping. Just a thought.

Palm Pre-clued

Must be slow news day because so many sites are clucking over the completely unsurprising news that the most recent iTunes update breaks the hack Palm used to glom music sync onto the Pre. Even mainstream outlets have picked up on the non-news.

If you’re a Pre owner and you’re surprised by this development, well, let’s just say you probably should deal with the bigger concerns in your life. Like the earth-shaking news that the a big yellow orb will rise above the horizon in the neighborhood of 6 A.M. or that the Republicans are showing their asshole side to Sonia Sotomayor.

What I find totally puzzling are the semi-normal people postulating that iTunes/iPods represent a monopoly that needs to be broken up. I just don’t get that thinking. iTunes is software that you use, among other things, to manage a hardware peripheral. Apple is under no obligation to support other company’s devices. Folks who have tried the approach of supporting all comers get killed with incompatibilities and upgrade difficulties (Hello, Windows Vista).

Or here’s another analogy. Buy an HP printer and you get a bunch of software to edit photos, assemble picture albums and drive the printer. Imagine if Canon woke up tomorrow and decided it’d be easier just to glom onto HP’s software rather than write their own. Think HP would stand still for that? Of course not. The big difference is that HP’s photo editing software sucks. Anyone with common sense or good taste buys (more likely steals) Photoshop.

I suppose the real difference is that Apple had the gall to make iTunes so good that everyone wants to use it. Then to add insult, they give it away absolutely free. You don’t have to buy any Apple hardware or pay any sort of fee to download iTunes and import/manage/play media on your PC.

How very monopolistic of them.

M.A.D.D. Goes Crazy

A brewery I’ve never heard of decided to honor its home state by naming a line of beers after NJ’s greatrst (only?) cultural assets: Turnpike exits. Brilliant bit of self deprecation. But the humorless ninnies at M.A.D.D. missed the levity, of course. They’re waging a PR campaign shrieking about the flimsy connection between drunk driving and a amusing beer branding stunt. Do the people at M.A.D.D. have oatmeal for brains? Such a finding would explain why they so consistently manage to miss the bigger picture and scream their pious heads off over the tiniest bit of harmless fun.

I know I’m about to veer far, far from the politically correct but I just don’t give a damn. M.A.D.D. is a lunatic fringe organization that needs to be stopped. The surface mission is noble. Mothers out to stop criminal drunk drivers. But in reality, the organization is pushing an agenda that would eventually take us back to the bad, bad days of Prohibition. You shouldn’t be intimidated just because they claim to be mothers. They’re crazy fuckers.

If you disagree with me, I don’t care. Just close the window and don’t visit this site again. But most of all, don’t bother to comment. I’m not going to let your senseless rants get published.

Other Shoe

Sarah Palin’s abrupt resignation seems suspicious. She’s either even dumber than anyone suspected because she can’t manage to write a book and govern a state with a population smaller than the city of San Francisco at the same time. Or someone has some serious dirt on her and she’s trying to keep it under wraps. Either way, I hope today proves to be an end to one of the more embarrassing aspects of recent American life.

Europe 2009

I’m slowly uploading to Flickr my selects from the last month’s European adventure. In the meantime, Rich has culled the 1332 images we shot down to a few for each city/town we hit and put them on the Mobile Me gallery. Take a look if you’re terminally curious. Though unless you’re as ravenous about world war history as my husband, you might want to skip the Verdun Monuments and Third Reich Historical collections. I won’t tell him if you don’t.

Last Two

Final two iPhone-related observations for awhile, I promise.

First, the AIM app finally makes sense, thanks to the notification service. For the past year, AIM was all but useless on the iPhone because you only got messages when running the app and your iPhone screen was on. Who wants to stare at the screen while your buddy types? Insane. IM works on the desktop because it’s modeless. You easily, unconsciously even, flit between chats and real work or entertainment. Now that the AIM app can finally use the much-touted notification service, it finally behaves the same way. Send a message then switch to the web browser or even put the iPhone to sleep. When a response comes in, an alert pops up much like with incoming SMS or meeting alerts. It’s sweet.

Second, why have so many reviewers taken to parroting that the 3G to 3Gs jump isn’t as significant as the original to 3G changeover? 3G added a slightly faster cell connection (at the expense of battery life and reliability) and GPS (but not true turn-by-turn directions). In comparison, this year we get much faster processor, twice as much RAM, double storage capacity (for the same price), much better camera, video recording, video editing, voice control, compass (allowing self-orienting maps), Nike+ and volume control on the headset remote. Seems like a lot more this year. But silly me. I’m forgetting the most significant differences. The original to 3G involved a case redesign. Anyone looking at you holding your phone could tell whether you were using this year’s model or not. Whereas the 3Gs looks identical to the previous one. Why should it be important to upgrade if no one around you can see the difference?

I Waited

Very patiently for almost two weeks. Er, 10-ish days. Okay, to be precise, eight days. Hey, that’s more than a week after the initial availability.

The OS 3.0 rollout went well according to reports so I pulled the trigger and installed it on the original iPhone after that first weekend. Definite improvement. Then the initial experiences with new 3Gs units seemed to be going well. I figured what the hell. When I got a personal shopping appointment on Saturday, it seemed like kismet.

Now I’ve got a white one that can hold my entire iTunes library; the husband has contrasting black. The claimed speed bump is very real. No regrets.

And once again, I didn’t have to stand in any bullshit line.