Makes me sick

Tomorrow (Nov 1) Jerry and Mike from Penny Arcade will play Tekken 6 against fans on XBOX Live. I knew that, because their website told me so. They also included a link to the XBOX calendar: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/calendar/gamewithfame/2009/1101-tekken6.htm "The Penny Arcade web comic has been so popular over the years, that it has spawned numerous imitations. And the creators of that comic, as well as the masterminds behind the annual Child’s Play charity event and the insanely popular Penny Arcade Expo will play Xbox LIVE Gold Members in Tekken® 6. If you're a Gold member (if you're not a Member, upgrade now!) join us Sunday, November 1 starting at 10:00 P.M. ETfor the event." Again, I knew in advance about the event. I had to read that page three times to understand that they were trying to tell me what I already knew. It's especially irritating because I've been "trying" for over a year to get into a position where I'd be creating content like that (ok, "trying" is in quotes because it hasn't been a concerted effort, but the resumes are out there and I've actually talked to people about it). Sad.

Paranormal Activity

Um, I don't know what movie the people in the ad trailers were watching, but I almost fell asleep during this.  Stop- don't give me the "you just DIDN'T UNDERSTAND IT!" line of shit.  I got it alright and it was effing stupid.  Here be minor spoilers.  If you can come to grips with having a FUCKING DEMON in your house, then why for the love of God would you try to provoke it?  We're not talking about Casper here, it's a demon. If the guy in the movie had shown ANY hint of character progression (fascinated>curious>concerned over his findings>scared but vigilant>scared shitless> "leave me alone!> dead), then I might have been a little more emotionally involved. But he just went from "haha sweetie, you have a ghost following you" to "Cool, it's a demon- we have to fuck with it! (in his best brother from "boondock saints" voice).  Then BAM! he's dead.  The last 15 minutes were worthwhile, but it was the kind of "quiet in the house then sudden loud noise" kind of "scary" (so I'd say starling more than scary).  Also completely predictable if you have any clue how demonic possessions might work.  I suppose if you have only a passing interest in the paranormal then it might have been scary. All I can say is I'm glad I didn't pay to see it.

Movie rentals -and- Microsoft products are just a little too connected...

The wife and I have been renting movies from blockbuster using their online service for at least a couple years.  It's been good, but over the summer they changed the model.  It used to be that you could "rent" a movie in exchange for a mail-in movie and the "rental" was treated like a regular rented movie- but your new mail-in title was being processed and shipped while you still had your movie from the store.  I think they stopped because they weren't really charging late fees for these movies and I'll bet a lot of people did what we did- we hung onto ALL the movies until we were ready to do another round of swaps.  Then they said "well, you can still swap movies but you can only have a total of 3 movies at a time."  So we'd trade in two for store movies and then one mailer would be processed... Fast forward a little.  We decided to give NetFlix a try through the XBOX that I got for Yule last year.  So I bought 50 feet of Cat5 cable, drilled a couple of holes in a couple of walls, strung the cable and connected the XBOX to the internets.  I also bought a one year XBOX live Gold subscription.  Here's where I get a little disconcerted. WSU changed their email product to web-based Microsfit Outlook lite.  Now, somehow when I went to set up my XBOX live account, my WSU email address was already in the "login email" address field... weird. But, I figured maybe I tried to set up a live account and forgot about it.  I went through all the steps and we watched 9 episodes of "The Office" last night (well, no commercials and we skipped the end credits, 9x19/60= just under 3 hours of TV- still less than ONE of the extended "Lord of the Rings" movies).  I told the wife what the password was and she thought it might be best if I changed it to fit better with the pattern we have for all of our other joint accounts (like the blockbuster account).  So I figured, what the hell.  Then I went to log in to my WSU email this morning... My freaking XBOX live account password change changed my WSU email login password.  That's not cool.  There really needs to be a way to differentiate between XBOX and my email for my university classes.  And it's a little scary to think that M$ is that involved with my life... but I still want the Windows 7 upgrade disks that I ordered for my new Vaio...

Always on the cutting edge- power denim

I had to laught when I read this: http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/108042/the-relentless-rise-of-power-jeans   "Power jeans are increasingly common in high-ranking business and political circles. Indeed, jeans are now a legitimate part of the global power-dress lexicon, worn to influential confabs where the wearers want to signal they're serious—but not fussy—and innovative."   See?  That means I'm LIGHT YEARS ahead of these people.  I've been wearing jeans (clean, no rips, stored on a hanger so they have a crease), a polo shirt and polished black leather Red Wing shoes to the office for years.  I try to get people to understand that I have Ideas (with a capital "I") and that I'm innovative, etc.  But screw that!  Now I'm shooting for world leader, sponsored by Eddie Bauer (provided they're not completely bankrupt by the time I complete my rise to power).

Shoes...

Damn, why is it sooooo comfortable to take your shoes off at work?  It's almost like a freaking energy drink, but from your feet (but not gross like you'd expect an energy drink from your feet to taste like...)

Rhapsody update

Um, I don't select songs because I want the first couple of seconds cut off, or because I want a skip in the middle.  Thanks for screwing with my music crapsody... EDIT: to add- turns out it's the slow ass network at work. Rhapsody works alright on the machines at home.

Goddamned public transportation

I have to attend a seminar on Thursday for school.  It's a 1 credit class that will probably take 3 hours of seminar time, and I'll be there a little early to meet with my advisor.  I checked the map of the place we're meeting. They have a total of about a dozen visitor parking spaces and it's a dollar for 2 hours (so I'm gonna need to bring $3 cash, cash is something I don't carry).  I figured, well, it's a 20 minute drive plus the pain in the ass for parking.  I'll check the bus schedules.  AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAA!  Or-  WTF?!??!?!?!?  According to the trip planner it's no less than one transfer and will take no less than 1h25m.  Fuck that.  I mean, I get that pub transit isn't EVER the fastest way to get anywhere in this region, it's rarely comfortable and there's usually at least one obnoxious freak that I'd like to push out that vent in the roof.  But it's gonna take four times as long AND I'll need to pay the Everett transit fare, so I would not only need cash, but coins to get this done.    Fucking public transit... (BTW, I'm driving, in case you're wondering). EDIT: I drove to the seminar and it took, seriously, 12 minutes to get there once I was on the freeway. The god news is, that morning I had an email with a parking pass PDF attached. I printed it at Kinko's and managed to park in the spot nearest the front doors (on a regular school day for Everett Comm Coll.) Sweet.

Pandora vs Rhapsody

The wife set up my new laptop as another computer on her Rhapsody account over the weekend.  I've been a Pandora.com devotee for a few years now.  It was on and off for a while, but I've listened to over 40 hours of music a week (at work and on weekends) for the past several months.  I like Pandora, but there are some things I would change.  Rhapsody has its benefits but there are some things it doesn't do as well as Pandora.   Pandora Pros- it just plays music.  Random shit sometimes, but that's how I heard about MC Frontalot, most of Mike Patton's non-Faith No More and non-Mr Bungle work, and most recently Kid Cudi.  I don't have to play DJ, I just turn it on and let it go.  If I don't like a song, I skip it.  If I hate it, I give it a thumbs down and it won't ever play again.  If I think this song fits better with another station, I can move it into that station's rotation.  It's free if you want ads and listen to less that 40 hours per month.  The subscription removes the time limit and removes ads for $3 a month.   Pandora Cons- I can only skip 6 songs per hour per station.  Sounds like a lot until you realize that there are thousands of songs in their database and a lot of it is unsuitable for my tastes and sometimes I just want a station to have a theme.  It's hard to "make" a station, like I said, it just palys songs and guesses at what you might like.  Sometimes it's WAAAY off.  Why do I want to hear Toby Keith Christmas songs on a station with MC Lars and Jonathan Coulton?  I don't.  But, Pandora reasons that Coulton's "Chiron Beta Prime" is a Christmas song (sort of) and that it has country roots (hardly), ergo I must want to hear more Country Christmas songs.  Now, why it doesn't use that same kind of direct logic when I give a "thumbs up" to MC Chris songs?  How do I then end up with Backstreet Boys? I don't know either. Also, no equalizer, you get what you get (though I did email support and they said it was a good idea- very diplomatic of them).  No rewind on a song and no replay.  You get what you get- they say becasue of the royalties they have to pay they can't give on demand product.   Rhapsody Pros- wanna hear a song?  Play it (if it's in the library).  The library is huge.  They have an equalizer (I like to have depth to my music). You can make playlists as long or as short as you want.  You can rewind songs and replay them.   Rhapsody cons- I have to play DJ- that's really time consuming, especially at work.  The music quality seems to be a little lower than Pandora because I get a lot of static in my headphones (I've listened to a few songs back to back to confirm).  Rhapsody is $15 per month.   So I'm not as familiar with the ins and outs of Rhapsody, but it seems pretty straightforward- it's a music player. Pandora has some quirks and it's not like having a huge MP3 library at your fingertips... it's more like a jukebox in a really eccentric bar. Given that the "cons" list is so much longer for Pandora it would be easy to guess that I don't listen anymore, but that's not at all true.  When I just want music with a minimum of thought on my part (which is most of the time) I'm right back to it.  It's when I need to hear a particular song that I head back to Rhapsody.

MOD "Spuer Fast" pizza, my ass

In the building I work in, there is a pizza joint that opened up last year called "MOD super-fast pizza."  And at first, they lived up to that.  You could walk in, order your pie (and customize as much as you wanted), pay for it (all pizzas are one price) and then wait about eight minutes.  This slowly progressed to over ten minutes as they became somewhat victimized by their own success- and sometime the lines were out the door and into the building's lower lobby.  But, I persisted and ordered the same pizza two or three times a week (like I said, it was fast and it was the cheapest lunch you could get for blocks around).  Hell, it was like "Cheers" for a little while.  I'd walk in and at least two people would yell "SteveDave!!" (which was the name I gave them because my real name is so common that three or four of us would walk up at the same time and have to argue over whose order it was). But, I stopped going there as much because of my 30 minute lunches and their long lines.  Imagine my glee at finding out that you can now order online.  Hooray!  So I tried it earlier this week.  Golden. I ordered from my desk, walked down a half hour later and walked right back out with my pizza at perfect eating temperature. Not today. Today I ordered at 12:30 and was told it would be ready by 1:05- which is when I wanted to go to lunch anyway.  So I leave my desk at 1:02 and trot down there to the pick up counter.  "Uh... hold on... yeah, it's in the oven now.  Should just be a minute." It took and ADDITIONAL FIFTEEN MINUTES to get my pizza.  Worse than that? People who ordered in the restaurant while I was there had their pizzas before I had mine.  Worse than THAT? They fucked up my order.  They put nasty ass pepperoni on my chicken pizza.  God damnit!   So MOD is now just another eatery and one I probably won't consider going to again for a while.  I was so pissed it took me about 10 minutes to even think about eating the pizza (yes, at this point I hadn't even opened the box, imagine how much better I felt when I saw the pepperoni on it).  As it is, I have half of the thing sitting on top of my filing cabinet and I'll probably just throw it away.  Thanks for capping off a horrible fucking week, MOD.