A movie that's better than the book...

I posted before about snobbery- specifically people who go on and on about the book being better than the movie. "The Ninth Gate" with Johnny Depp and Frank Langella is quite a bit better than the book it's based on, "The Club Dumas."
I'd heard good things about TCD and wanted to like it when I read it. The story is thin and the author tries to do too much- two plot lines that are supposed to intertwine as Corso reveals the connection between a lost Dumas manuscript and the book about summoning the Devil. It sounds interesting, but it's really not. It's pulp disguised as high culture. On reviewer called it "a beach book for the intelligentsia." I guess. If the intelligentsia in question like to nap on the beach.
So why did the movie end up being better? Every reference to the Dumas manuscript was removed. Right there you save a lot of superfluous story- the same group of people are going to be be covetous of the same two books... really? The "characters" (because that's what Reverte wanted them to be- memorable characters, like in a pulp novel) from the bar were removed, except Corso's friend (who dies early on in the movie).
I tried to read it a second time this summer- haveing COMPLETELY forgotten that I read it about five years ago. That's how bad the book was- I pushed it from my memory. Of course, it all came flooding back. Like a dream you'd rather forget but can't stop piecing together.

Dear Republican Congresspeople...

I know times are tight, and you're probably just trying to create more jobs in the paper industry- but stop printing the healthcare bill in inventive and ridiculous ways, just to make it look as big as possible. From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_health_care_legislation_inflation/print   Seriously? double wide margins? printing copies to tape together to unroll on the steps of Congress? Longer than "War and Peace"?  Maybe an abridged version... Official Congressional size?  209 pages.  Now shut the fuck up, read it and stop wasting trees, assclowns.

POP3 mail...

I wouldn't say I'm in love with my Tilt2 yet... I like it, and I like it more, the more familiar I get with it.  I think it will grow on me simply because it's a little more work than I'm used to with a phone or computer.  On the other side of the coin, I think I would get frustrated with what appear to be iPhone limitations- this way I'm frustrated up front and can figure out workarounds.   So I figured out how to set up my alchemyforge and yahoo email accounts on my phone.  The Yahoo account was easy, and it seems to respect the spam filter.  That's nice.  When I set up the alchemyforge accounts, I think I pulled everything from the spam folder and put it in my inbox... damnit.  If this keeps up, I may have to dump it.  But we'll see.  It's not like I get a lot of mail, but it will be frustrating to have to wade through dozens of messages to cherry pick the good ones.  I did limit the amount of the message that will come through initially and I only have it set to grab/keep a few days' worth, so I won't have a bazillion messages.  It's definitely an instant solution with temporary storage, whereas the actual accounts are (hopefully) permanent.   Cheaper than texting :)

R2D2 in Star Trek

I sort of accidentally bought the BluRay of Star Trek this week.  I thought it included the DVD but it's just the BD.  Oh well, the new laptop came with a free BD upgrade on the DVD player so I can't complain.  We watched it last night in all of its high def glory- gorgeous movie. I didn't see the little guy at first, but some rewinding and frame-at-a-time viewing showed that an R2 unit (purportedly R2D2 himself) went flying past Sulu's head at 47:39. He's easy to miss (actually almost impossible to see) because it's the scene where the Enterprise warps into the graveyard of Federation ships that attacked Nero's mining ship.  For those keeping score at home, the "Green Girl" was on one of the destroyed ships (Farragut?), so don't expect to see any more of her this series (here's your moment to briefly mourn)... There's one frame that looks like R2 was photoshopped in and the rest are fairly blurry.  I'll leave you to find the screen captures- my BD player won't let me do a cap (no, PrintScrn and alt+PrintScrn didn't work, either).

Then they pull this...

My phone won't be here until Tuesday.  See, when I said "two day shipping" Amazon interpreted that to mean "three business days."   Sigh… I get that yesterday was "day zero" because that's the day the package was shipped from Amazon in the midwest somewhere, and UPS doesn't count that as a "day."  But today's a day.  So is Monday (UPS is lazy and doesn't work on weekends, regarless of how much we argued that we wanted to work weekends and that it would give a competitive advantage). See, today and Monday, that's two days.  So why is the phone not scheduled for delivery until Tuesday?

Amazon does good...

I ordered a printer Monday afternoon, and it was scheduled for delivery last night.  When I checked the porch I had a door tag from FedEx. Not Happy.  Then I read that the printer wasn't left because of "Security Concerns." Less Happy. The tag also indicated that they wouldn't be making additional attempts at delivery and that I'd have to pick it up in Bothell. Livid. So I go on Amazon and basically tell them that if I wanted to drive 16 miles to get a priner, there are at least a half dozen places I could have driven to to make the purchase- in essence, Amazon is not the only game in town.  But I buy from them because of the convenience of home delivery. I calmed down some.  The Mrs asks "what did you pay for that again?" "$148 plus tax... I think" So I go back to Amazon to look at my order. While there I decide to check the item description to see if I missed something about it being a particularly dangerous piece of equipment and lo and behold- the goddmaned proce went from $148 to $99!   FUMING!   So I called Amazon customer service and I get a lady who's obviously in Bangalore.  Now, I'm used to this because my day job is arguing with insurance companies.  So I start on my rant about home delivery and how I've had $2000 laptops left on the porch, musical instruments, car parts, etc. and I can't fathom why a printer would be considered such a security risk that they couldn't just leave it. And what about a refund for the difference in purchase price?   She puts me on hold. No problem. Again, I'm used to this.   She comes back. The printer is now rescheduled for home delivery tonight, with an instruction to leave it on the porch.   She puts me on hold again.   She comes back. "Sir, we are going to refund the $48.12 difference in purchase price and the $4 in taxes."   Wow.  It didn't take any arguing (though I don't feel bad about being a little ramped up when I called) and in about 10 minutes they fixed both problems.    Despite what you read here, I'm not one to bitch.  I'll let lots of shit just slide on by.  But last night I'd had enough.  I'm very impressed with their customer service.  So much so that I ordered the aforementioned HTC Tilt 2 through them this morning.  I expect it to be on my porch no later than Monday evening.

You Thought it Was Over...

You thought I'd decided on an iPhone, didn't you?  HAhahahahahahahah...   Yesterday afternoon a coworker said "what about those HTC Tilt 2 phones... those look nice."  Goddamnit.  It didn't take long to realize that the only real downside to these things is the propreitary headphone jack. It's a Windows Mobile device (meh) and from what I read it's sort of a happy middle between the iPhone (the safe area for kids to play) and the Droid (sort of a Wild Wild West of apps and functionality).  The Tilt 2 has a keyboard (though the design will take some getting used to), has a Windows Mobile Office suite, decent web browser, 3.7" screen, GPS, etc.  What I'll be doing now is looking at retiring my Eee PC, which is essentially a glorified PDA because 90% of what I use it for is the Open Office spreadsheets to log my debit card purchases.   It's on its way from Amazon...

feeling better about waffles already...

Found the following at: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of-facebooks-massively-popular-iphone-app-quits-the-project/   It's a blog comment (what's that?) so there's no vouching for the credibility, but this isn't the only person expressing this POV:   Janey- 11/16/9: The almost non existent bar for entry to the Android Market has done nothing but allow hundreds if not thousands of buggy, crash prone, half assed applications onto Android phones. It's also opened the door to useless spam apps that exist solely to generate ad revenue from banner ad clickthroughs. I ditched my Android phone for an iPhone and don't regret it at all. I haven't found one single application that had banner adverts in it, but this was a regular find with Android apps.   Hmm.... not surprising given that Google's revenue stream seems to be entirely based on banner ads (see problems yesterday and earlier this week).  I'm feeling better about today's decision.  Sure, I'll be paying upwards of $5 for apps but at least there's a modicum of QC.

Call me the Waffler

Reminiscent of the 2004 election, I'm waffling again.  I've been doing more reading about the Droid and Verizon's service.  I thought about just how much free time I don't have, and how I told my wife that the next time I buy a car, it's going to be fun right out of the box and I'm not going to tinker with it. I decided I need the same right-out-of-the-box functionality from a phone.  I got burned by the Sidekick2.  It was supposed to be this spectacular device that turned out to be a detuned turd and at the time T-mo charged even more for data.  I don't want another SK2. I don't like that the directional pad on the Droid is on the right.  Who thought of that?  They've obviously not played any video games after Atari or Colecovision.  Like many, I'd rather see a larger keyboard and no dir pad than have it on the right. I'd have to wait for an app to get multi-touch functionality.  Apparently it's in there somewhere, but Moto couldn't include it because of Apple's patents. My wife thinks apple is brilliant for doing that, I think it's shitty... if I was any kind of programmer, I'd be on the open source bandwagon, but I'm not so I just consider it a good idea. On that note, when I bought my Eee PC 4G I had a choice to get it with Linux or spend just a little more for the next get and get a machine that ran XP.  "It's Linux for me" I thought.  Turns out, it's kind of a pain because I didn't need a machine that was a hobby, I just needed a machine that worked.  Sure, it's virus free after two years but even *I* can't remember how to put anything on it. That's kind of how the Droid is being discussed- it's great if you like to tinker... problem is I don't when it comes to software-type stuff.   So where am I heading with this?  I think I've decided on a White 3GS.  With the discount from my company my plan will only be $5 more per month than what I'm paying now, I'll have rollover minutes (see below- current use is still under 10 minutes since 10/23) plus unlimited (5Gb) of data.    I know, it's like going over to the dark side... but the Emperor makes shit that works.

Thoughts on banner ads...

This http://blog.pelland.com/?tag=banner-ads got me thinking.  You guys really were doing a good job.  According to that article, the average click through rate is about 0.2%.  One of my blogs had about 500% click through a couple of times and each had about 100% click through- so I can see why AdSense thought something was fishy.   The article also confirmed my gut reaction- people don't really like banner ads.  According to the article, 94% of people dislike banners, just 1% less than the number of people who hate pop-up ads.  Wow.    So even if AdSense reactivates my account, I probably won't reactivate the ads.  I have a hard enough time keeping any semblance of respectabiltiy, I don't need to shoot myself in the foot on top of it.

Ads...

I've had a few emails this morning asking me what happened to my ads. My AdSense account has been disabled, but Google won't say why (it's a "trade secret").  I did submit a help request last week asking why I wasn't getting page impressions but I was seeing ad clicks- no response (surprise). I appealed the disabling of the account and we'll just have to see what happens.  I guess you folks were just -too- curious about the advertisers.   I may have to reinstate the paypal buttons.

Then again...

I decided to look at Tmobile's plans for voice and data... W. T. F.?!  So if I want to get the reasonably priced plan, I get screwed on the phone.  The G1, MyTouch3G and CLIQ are all $400 if you go for the Get Moer Plus plans.  The plan I was looking at was $59.99 for 500 minutes (I've currently used 6 minutes since Oct 23...) plus unlimited texting and 10Gb of data (that's their definition of "unlimited").  But if I want to get the reasonably priced phone ($130/150/200 respectively), then I would be paying over $70 per month for my services.  Their service isn't worth $40 a month, much less $70+. So I decided to wait until I came in to work this morning to check on corporate discounts.  I would have saved $10 a month on voice and data and would have paid $200 for the Droid.   I'm going with Amazon Wireless.  The Droid is $150, I'll get a 450minute plan for $40 a month, 5Gb "unlimited" data plan for $30 and the service is through Verizon... after I wait 5-7 weeks for my phone.  But, I know I'll get decent if not great service most of the places I want to go.  I know, I know.  I said no on Saturday.  But damn, there aren't really a lot of attractive options for people in my situation.  I guess I'll just jump  on the WiFi at work if I need to use a lot of data.  I'm running a bandwidth monitor at home, so when I have pandora running I can get a real idea of my internet use.  Somehow I used nearly a Gb on Saturday.  Weird.   Now that I'm done busying myself with cell phone nonsense, I can get back to really working on my degree.  I have a paper due on the 4th about a "paranormal" topic.  That's tough because there are so many good topics with so much back information.  Plus, my first grad school app is due on the 5th and I have one complete essay to write and I need to revise the others.   Fingers crossed.

Stressful jobs that pay badly...

From:
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/108148/stressful-jobs-that-pay-badly?mod=career-salary_negotiation
 
6. Membership Manager
Median pay: $42,600
% who say their job is stressful: 67%
You know the guy who calls you during dinner to ask why you let your membership lapse? Well it turns out he's not thrilled about bugging you at home either. Reaching out to existing and former members of museums, fitness centers and health clubs in order to meet sales goals is not an easy way to make a living. The callers have to deal with insults, hang ups, and other bad reactions to the unwelcome calls. Plus, they often work long or odd hours so they can catch people at home.

 
Here's a win-win: stop doing this.  We don't want you calling us, and you're not thrilled to have to do it.  Do us both a favor and find another job.  $42,600 isn't a bad salary, but I'm sure you can do at least as well and have less stress.  I mean, you probably got the job because of your award winning people skills... use them for good.

Why I won't be getting an iPhone or Droid

My wife has a new iPhone 3GS, provided by her office. It's a pretty cool device and having the 3G network has come in handy a few times while we've been in the car.
But if I'm gonna pay for network usage, I'm gonna make that shit work. AT&T and Verizon both have 5GB caps on their bandwidth usage. That sounds like a lot (not really). But as previously blogged, I listen to a lot of music. At 196kbps I can only listen to three hours of music a day before I hit that 5GB cap- and that doesn't allow for any use of the network beyond streaming music.

From what I've read, AT&T's cap is "soft," that is they'd prefer that users don't hit that cap, and they might ask you to curb your use. Verizon's cap is much much harder. According to their terms of use, there's no legitimate use for 5GB of data per month. They assume that anyone using that much data is up to no good and will drop your data service, which breaks your contract.

The message boards are PACKED with people who feel the same way- you MUST be a criminal if you're even approaching 5GB. They argue that it's somehow "unfair" that users might want to use a service they're paying for. They argue that because these devices have WiFi we shouldn't need to use the precious 3G bandwidth resources. Here's my problem- I'm PAYING for a broadband internet service, I shouldn't have to jack into a WiFi signal. Besides, jacking into someone's WiFi is not only borderline illegal (some have proposed that wardialing (as it's called) should be illegal) and there's the problem of finding open WiFi signal. So why should I pay $30 a month for "unlimited" internet access, when in fact it's very limited and the "solution" is to not use the service?
If I choose a non-Droid phone with Verizon then I have to choose from even WORSE data plans- $10/month for 25Mb or $25/month for 75Mb... are you serious?! I've had Pandora running for just over an hour as I've surfed and I'm already at 130Mb. Ridiculous!

Other problems- it'll take up to 7 weeks for me to get a Droid and my current Tmobile contract ends next week... I suppose I could live with them for the rest of the year, but why would I? AT&T doesn't even have service in the places I'm considering for grad school, so an iPhone isn't a reasonable choice. I'm sick of T-mobile and their phones that are always detuned, plus the BS from last year still has me irritated.

Elevators...

I've been meaning to post this one for a while.  People, don't try running onto an elevator. Wait for the damned doors to open and let the passengers off, first.  If you think I'm not going to run you over, just try me.

buh-hull shiiii

I made my bi-annual trip to Eddie Bauer last month to replenish the wardrobe.  It's been a couple of years, and as many pants sizes, since I last shopped there- a testament to the durability of their jeans and khakis, as I'm kinda rough on clothes.  But I call bullshit on their electronic payments system.  I didn't receive a statement, but my payment is due next week.  According to their system, the email address I gave them is either invalid or blocked their message as spam.  Nope.  It's a good address, and I don't use it for very much so I only get about 200 spam messages per month.  I make sure to check the box before I delete, too.  They simply didn't send it.  It's a damned good thing I checked because I would have to have a late fee over this.

No More Dollhouse

According to:


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091111/ap_en_tv/us_tv_dollhouse_canceled

Fox's sci-fi drama 'Dollhouse' has been canceled

By FRAZIER MOORE, AP Television Writer Frazier Moore, Ap Television Writer 1 hr 2 mins ago

NEW YORK – "Dollhouse" will soon be going out of business.

The Joss Whedon fantasy drama ends after its current 13-episode order, with the series finale scheduled to air Jan. 22, according to a person familiar with the show who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss it.

Off the Fox schedule during November, it returns Dec. 4.

"Dollhouse" is about a high-tech prostitution service, with Eliza Dushku (ee-LYE'-zah DOOSH'-koo) starring as an escort who can be implanted with different personalities to accommodate each client.

Created by Whedon, best known for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the series arrived last February with great fanfare, but struggled to find an audience. Its cancellation was first reported Wednesday by the Hollywood Reporter.

I don't know that I feel all that bad about this. As the guys at Penny Arcade spoke about in their podcast "The Whedonites Dilemma" I was one of the hopefuls, while still having reservations. That Joss Whedon was on board gave me hope. That Eliza Dushku came up with the idea and would star made me cringe. After the last episode, the preview for the Dec 4 epi told us that Summer Glau would be showing up playing -surprise- a mentally unstable person (which is THE character that Summer Glau plays). I knew Dollhouse had jumped the shark. The highlight of the show has been, and will be, Miracle Laurie. Hers was the only character with character and I, like many, appreciated that a major network finally cast an attractive real-sized woman in a real role (as opposed to it being a gimmick for the show).
It became analogous to a book- information is only shown in two dimensions. We somehow trust that the entire thing has three, and occasionally we see the edge of that third, but are relegated to the two that hold the information we're currently working with. Maybe that's not a great analogy. Even trying to make the argument that the characters weren't suposed to be very "deep" becasuse they're amalgamations of personalities implanted into people doesn't explain why the non-dolls couldn't have multidimensional personalities. To stick with the metaphor, there were moments where the characters seemed to be have a moral dilemma or other problem that couldn't be solved by simply reverting to the norm- but they were rare, and without much prompting, the character did what we would have expected them to do. As a consequence, all of the drama appeared manufactured and the solutions were too "easy."


It was a vast, and unfortunately not-very-good, departure from "Firefly" (in particular) and reminded me a little of the flatter "Buffy" episodes. That the article refers to this as a prostitution service is telling, as the early buzz on the show was clear that the sex aspects would be minimized. We were expecting something more like the Matrix, where people can have skills and traits downloaded for a particular job. In the actual playing-out of the show, the implanted skills aren't suitable for even Fox on a Friday night, but I'd probably rent a DVD of THOSE adventures if it were available.

Edit: to add a ZING! from Scott Kurtz over at PVPOnline.com

Quit bitching about cell phones -and- some bitching about cell phones

I'm going to be switching wireless carriers at the end of this month.  I've been with the current folks for 10 years and every time my contract is coming to an end I tell myself it's time to switch. This time, it's for real.  Last year I took a "sabbatical" from work, and in preparation for Thanksgiving at my brother's house, I ended up being the main contact person.  My plan only had 350 minutes on it.  I used something like 500.  You'd think after 9 years of customer loyalty that I'd be cut some slack.  Nope.  Worse, they were having a problem with their SMS servers, so every time I had to check my voicemail the system registered it as a test message and charged me 20cents.  So I'm looking at AT&T and Verizon.  VZW has a few more options in what I'm looking for- basic phones that make calls. My employer has a deal where we get a 12% discount.  With AT&T we get 24% off, and most of their phones have a noise cancelling feature so call clarity is supposed to be pretty good.  But, the only "basic" phone that they have (with good reviews) is close to $200, the rest of their "basic" phones have pretty spotty reviews. the rest of their phones have a keyboard or are "smartphones" and require a $30/month data package... decisions, decisions... Now as I'm reading these reviews there are all kinds of complaints about "weight" and the fact that you have to carry a charger for what is basically a computer.  Suck it up, bitches!  You can't get a phone, camera, web browser, MP3 player, etc into a 3x3x.75" package and expect it to not weigh anything.  On the other hand, phones that don't have a lot of weight are described as "cheap feeling" and people question the phone's ability to take a reasonable tumble (I know a guy who was getting out of his lowered Mitsubishi, his phone tumbled from his lap and the screen shattered- that's not cool.)  Plus, I've had to carry my charger with me for years.  Even when I don't -need- to, I carry it just in case.  The one time you don't bring your charger is the time you're gonna need it- Murphy's Law. I do have to wonder why battery technology hasn't kept up with the needs for laptops and phones.  We're constantly adding features and tools to these things and battery life seems to be creeping downward.  My Vaio has about 2.5 hours on just battery if I use it normally (normal brightnes, WiFi on, etc).  That's the same battery life that the standard Toshiba batteries had four years ago when my other laptop was introduced.  Maybe batteries have kept up but my expectations are just higher.  Dunno.  But I liked being able to play an entended version of "Fellowship of the Rings" on battery power with enough power for web surfing for 20 minutes.

Windows 7 arrived

Hooray!  Win7 is on my machine.  Between the OS upgrade and the Vaio specific driver upgrade it took about 3 hours. I like the new interface and already I don't feel like I'm slogging through unnecessary drop downs, and the intuitiveness seems improved.  But... the wife is grumpy that I got it before her friend who works at M$ could get her a copy.  Oh well, I think I'll find a way to live with myself :)

Gotta be careful...

I've been listening to a lot of comedy on Rhapsody this past week: Redd Foxx, Chris Rock, Bill Hicks, Christopher Titus, Lenny Bruce, Sam Kinison... but I gotta be careful.  I'm sure you can imagine that there's a lot of language that isn't suitable for the workplace, or most places for that matter, but it's pretty entertaining. I'm trying to figure out how these ads are generated.  I think it's keyword sensitive, because when I talk about my Sony Laptop, memory from Newegg, Xbox 360, Rhapsody, Netflix, Blockbuster, or earning an online degree... those are the ads that show up ;)  Of course there have been a few real oddballs, but we won't mention those.

Thanks for holding it...

To the older gent on the elevator last week, here's a belated "thank you" for holding that fart until I was walking out.  That would have been really uncomfortable for the both of us.

This is why I'm a genius...

"An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly. In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed. While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine." G'head, ask my wife :) snippet from another blog, in turn stolen from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8339647.stm

New Vaio+Vista+Promise of upgrade to 7= disappointment

This is where I work a little reverse psychology on the universe.  See, every time I send an email asking where my shipped items are (in cases where no tracking number was provided) I unfailingly find out that it was delivered that day and is patiently waiting for me on my doorstep. The wife was good enough to buy me a Sony Vaio FW laptop for my birthday, to replace the Toshiba laptop she bought me for my birthday three years ago.  The question on my mind (as with everyone else) was to wait for Windows 7 to launch or buy the Vista machine and risk the upgrade.  I went with the Vista machine.  I don't recall what the impetus was, beyond just wanting a hot new machine to work with (and the Mrs wanted me to have it before my birthday, so waiting for the launch would have not fulfilled that requirement).  The vendor that Sony went through to process the requests for the upgrades required nothing more than a copy of a purchase invoice… more specifically one that included a purchase date and order number.  Guess what info does not appear on Sony's packing slip?  It's almost as if they don't want you to know what the piece of paper in the box is for.  So I went to my SonyStyle account and did screen shots of the purchase and included them as attachments with my order for the upgrade. I've read from several people online that they received their upgrades within a few days of launch.  They weren't forthcoming with when they purchased their machines.  I'm hopeful that it's a first-come, first-served situation and I'm on a list to have my upgrade shipped.  It wouldn't be a issue to just buy a copy of 7 except that 1) it's expensive (we only know one full time M$ employee and she can only buy 6 copies) and 2) the official upgrade includes updated drivers for the Sony-specific hardware on the machine. I imagine those are handy to have around. So I will wait, impatiently.  Though I hope this complaining to the aether will prompt the Upgrade Gods to smile upon me with a fairly plain, padded brown envelope stuffed inside my mailbox.