Ah lovely spam

Lately I seem to be getting more comment spam. I wonder if one of the search engines has finally indexed my blog and made it more visible to the spammers.

Just a re-cap for all of you spam loving fiends out there, your comments will never see the light of day past my inbox, if they show up in my inbox at all.

Not like this does much good, most of those things are automated, but I figured it was worth a shot.

Why I didn’t jump on the iPod bandwagon.

Recently in an online chat channel, I made a confession that I own a creative zen micro. The reaction I got to this surprised me. “I can’t believe it. Isn’t each state only allowed to have one zen owner?”

The next morning the news articles started coming out with rumors of Microsoft’s “Zune” player and those articles put Apple’s share of the mp3 player market at 80% of all mp3 players owned. It made me think hard about why people wanted an iPod, and why I didn’t choose to get one.

The biggest reason is probably that I already owned a Sony PSP. The PSP is a supreme device for watching portable video on, with great sound and even better video. The video iPod did not tempt me with its small screen and sound quality that true audiophiles rate as being not bad, but not all that, even with high quality headphones. So when I went looking for a device, I didn’t need an all-in-one. I had the PSP for that, the only complaint I had with the PSP is that it’s almost too bulky to be portable for someone who wants music on the go, and the remote is poorly designed for a driver to mess with while operating a vehicle.

I needed something that fit in my pocket with clean menus that you could navigate at a stoplight without having to dig six layers deep and push numerous buttons. That’s when I started looking at the other music only players on the market.

First, I took a long hard look at the iRiver H10. It’s a nice player, loaded with features and has a color display. Great sound quality, nice player. But after playing with the device at an electronics superstore I found that I hated the slide bar navigation. It was difficult to use because the device did not fit comfortably in my hand. I have small hands. I even had to buy my own separate controller for our PS2 because the standard PS2 controllers were too bulky and made my hands hurt. The other thing that turned me off of this player was the price. 300$ is a chunk of change for a portable music device that I could easily lose. I wanted to spend less than 200$. This meant that I had to look at players that sported less than 20 gig hard drives, which was fine by me. I didn’t need 20 gig of portable music on me at all times anyway. That’s when I started looking at the iPod.

The reviews of the iPod had some info in them that really turned me off. Shipping the entire unit back to Apple and paying 59$ to have the battery replaced when it started to flake out (and they do flake out after about a year) by Apple wasn’t something that made me happy. Especially since I’d been able to buy replacement lithium ion batteries for my cell phone ever since I bought my first one. This seemed like a raw deal designed only to get more money out of consumers on Apple’s part and in my opinion was a low blow. Especially since it was possible to design the device with a battery compartment that was separate from Apple’s precious DRM technology.

Since portability was important and video wasn’t something I was interested in, I looked at the iPod nano. At the time, Apple had just discontinued the mini, which might have been a great fit for me, but I wasn’t about to purchase one off eBay without a warranty. The iPod nano seemed like it would have been perfect. I carry small purses, the nano fits well with my need to carry impossibly tiny hand bags. I had nearly decided that I wanted one of these cute little devices when I started reading up on iTunes.

The iTunes software is proprietary. Good for it, I kind of figured on that. What I didn’t figure on was that I would have to suffer through software that was nearly as bad as Sony’s SonicStage for its line of digital media devices. No drag and drop file transfer, all transfer would be through iTunes only, and heaven forbid that I ever had a hard drive failure… if the hard drive on my laptop ever failed then I would lose every song I’d ever downloaded from iTunes and the minute I plugged my iPod into a computer with a newly installed iTunes, all of my music would go away. I don’t know that this is still true of iTunes, but it was at the time that I was looking at mp3 players. Every computer I have ever owned has had a major hard drive failure in the course of its life, including the one I am using now.

All of this is well and good, but there were three final strokes that explained to me that I just didn’t need an iPod. The first, was the audio-phile frequency ratings on the iPod and the zen micro. The zen micro has a wider frequency range than the iPod, which means better sound quality over all. The final stroke… is that iTunes does not sell Japanese Pop Music. I’ve looked through their catalog, I haven’t found Gackt or Hyde or Boom Boom Sattelites or any of the music that I listen to on a regular basis. So either way, I’m stuck importing CDs from Japan.

The last stroke was the price. My zen micro was 169$ for a 6 gig player. The 2 gig iPod nano is currently 179$.

Do the math.

I call bull****!

Since Sony’s press conference yesterday with regard to the PS3, every major news network on the planet has been reporting a delay in the release. The problem with this is, there is a delay, but not for the North American market. Sony never promised the North American release of the PS3 before November of this year. Not once, ever. I dare you to find an article to prove it.

Sony had announced that the PS3 would be ready for Japan “some time in late spring of 2006 with a worldwide release following it some time in the late fall.” If those aren’t the exact words of their statement, they are incredibly close. We weren’t going to see it before Christmas anyway.

Just had to share.

Real Rock.

When I think of the phrase “real rock” images of Bad Company, Stevie Ray Vaughn and The Rolling Stones come to mind. I think of the good old days of rock and roll that I can scarcely remember, but have a vivid mental picture of. The days when guys trotted up on outdoor stages to play for the benefit of undulating audiences who loved them above and beyond all sense of passion.

So when one of my local radio stations claims to be “Real Rock ” I expect to hear some honest to god, real rock and roll.

Unforunately, on more than one occassion, I’ve been denied.

The first time I paid attention to what they played after they said the phrase, I caught wind of a sound that was so distinctly Def Leppard that you couldn’t avoid it if the spandex and ripped jeans were a million miles away. It wasn’t even *good* Def Leppard. It was quite possibly the worst Def Leppard song to ever get airplay. F-f-foolin? Well you’re certainly not f-f-foolin’ me.

The second time, there was hope. I heard Ozzy. I don’t care what you say, Ozzy is real rock. At least… he is if you forget about that really bad period in the 80′s when he sang with Lita Ford and hosted Friday Night Videos with Dr. Ruth. The choice was the hideous “Shot in the Dark”, quite possibly the worst song Ozzy has ever loaned his talent to.

I finally gave up on the radio station’s promise of “real rock” today when the liner was followed by Great White’s “House of Broken Love”. While it does have a really cool guitar solo at the front, it’s 80′s hair rock at its core. It fails to pass the real rock test.

I’ve got a better shot of finding some real rock on my j-pop infested mp3 player.

I’m a liberal now.

Forget the fact that my blog has worn the “blogs for bush” button since… um… well at least the last election. I’ve never bothered to take it down. Forget that I voted for Bush not once, but twice, and am a fan of trickle-down economics. Forget that I thought Kerry and Gore were both full of crap, and blogged extensively on why I thought Kerry was in idiot in ’04. Forget that I was brave enough to walk on a college campus in this country with a “Bush Cheney ’04″ sticker stuck boldly to the back of my binder for everyone to see.

Forget all of that.

Because I disagreed with a conservative (several of them) in the comments on another blog, I am a “liberal”. My father, a card-carrying democrat, would heartily disagree and is highly disappointed that his daughter is a “right wing conservative nut-job”.

I’m not here to gripe about the guy that labeled me a liberal. I firmly put him in his place and I am sure he now feels like an idiot, as he should. That’s good enough for me. What I want to discuss, is this growing concern that I have for the dangerous practice of our society to categorize things in groups and apply all aspects of those categories to the people within it, regardless of whether those aspects are true or false.

I guess it is our lot in life, to be slapped with stickers that say that we are this or we are that. We are part of some stereotype that someone else doesn’t like because we disagreed with their ideas. If this is the way life is to be, then I guess I’m a liberal.

Personally, I think stereotypes are born of ignorance. How can you possibly define a human being using a single word? Attempting to do so is to ignore the other facets of the person and choose the one that fits your ideal of them for the time being. It paints a poor picture of who they are, and often is simply dead wrong. If all stereotypes were true, my pillows would be soaked with brylcream and I’d be picking pocket protectors up off the floors because my husband is a nerd. He doesn’t wear pocket protectors, nor does he use brylcream, but the stereotype says he should because of that label, so it must be the truth, right?

So many people have been wrong about me in so many ways, that I have formed a decidedly bad reaction to someone labeling me with any sort of name. I get mad. I think everyone should get mad when they are unfairly labeled. In my view, this is an honest reaction to being shoved into a category by someone who has no idea who you are. The person who gave you that label has taken a look at who you are based on some very skimpy evidence and has chosen your core values for you. The idea of someone passing judgment on you on such shaky ground is simply offensive. It’s only natural that we would get angry about it. This is a very shallow and unfair basis on which to judge a person.

This leads us to the question of what we can do to stop stereotyping. The answer to this is very simple, but it requires you to make a choice. Do the benefits of stereotyping outweigh the consequences? I leave that for you to decide and think about.

The Things You Don’t Do.

Every significant other knows what the topic of this post means. There are things you don’t do when it comes to the person you care about. Doing those things is tantamount to romantic suicide.

When it comes to me, you don’t call me paranoid. I associate that word with the phrase “paranoid schizophrenic” which was a phrase used to describe one of my relatives before he shot himself. It’s also been used to describe another relative who locks himself in his house and won’t go outside. I do wish he would email me, when we were kids, he was an awesome person to be around.

Another thing you just don’t call me is fat. I spent the whole of my 13th year on this earth being berated, belittled and otherwise endlessly teased about my weight.

Now that I’ve put it into perspective, you can probably see why this would be a huge relationship faux pas, but if you didn’t have that perspective, how innocuous does that word seem to be? How innocent and lacking in offense?

You never know.

I find it fascinating how our minds associate words with things that have such powerful impacts upon us. If I were to say, “yellow” what would you think of?

I’m a self-centered person. I’ve learned to be that way out of self-defense. My whole life, I have surrounded myself with people who are self-centered, who think of themselves first who assume that I get upset because of something someone else did, not because of something they might have done to me.

I’m tired of being like that. I’m extremely tired of defending myself against perfect, pristine ghosts. I get even more tired of being the only person in the world that does everything wrong.

Long ago, I accepted that I am not perfect, that I do do things wrong. It really sucks when people go and rub that in your face when you’ve long since known the truth about yourself.

The truth about ourselves.. now there’s a deep thought. That’s something we hide from everyone, even the people we claim to love. Why do we hide it? Is it out of fear?

The 411 on Rathergate

Mary Mapes’ book is out and she’s being torn apart across the blogosphere.

I think that everyone who was blogging a year ago did some blogging on Rathergate. I photoshopped this rather amusing image.

The point is, you couldn’t be a blogger and not blog about Rathergate. So… being called a hyperconservative that spread vitriol about Dan Rather is something I have to say I take offense at. If I were a hyperconservative, I wouldn’t be able to survive attending community college!

Why just today, my instructor was asked, “What if we want to give our speeches on a famous person?” and her response was, “Well you could do them on someone, like the president, but I don’t think any of us wants to hear about him.”

Did I go postal and injure or maim innocents? No.

I laughed along with the rest of the class. This, my friends, is the difference between a hyperconservative that spreads vitriol about people and a liberal moonbat. Of course, they are no better than liberal moonbats that spread vitriol about bloggers because the blogosphere is simply a thing that they can’t wrap their tiny little brains around..

Hey… I think I know what I’m giving that speech on…

Roberts Confirmation.

I have to admit, I’m not a fan of Roberts on several levels. I don’t like that little is known about his political perspective. This is becoming increasingly important as the bench becomes mired more and more by the political leanings of the justices on the bench.

Some things about him are obvious though, he’s a conservative. He’s so conservative that it gives most good conservatives a bad name, if you listen to what the Democrats have to say about him. I find myself scoffing at those statements with the following rebuke; “Like this is a bad thing? What did they think Rehnquist was, Susan Sarandon?”

They weren’t unhappy with things as they stood under Rehnquist’s term, nor should they have been. Certainly, I also don’t believe that a vote to confirm Roberts is a vote against Roe vs. Wade. The Roe v. Wade decision, while politically charged, is hardly of such critical legal implication that it becomes worthy of note, this is particularly true when circumstances have become such that it is unlikely that Roberts will ever have to come to a decision on that particular matter.

I guess, what I would have liked to have seen… was a woman as chief justice, but I suppose I can’t ask for that. Women on the supreme court are a rare beast, there have only ever been two, and both, while quite different in political leanings, are women to be admired. Condi Rice could be like that.. but she’s not a judge. So I guess that leaves us where we are. I also might have liked to see Roberts get a bit more flak over his joke regarding Sandra Day O’Connor’s appointment to the bench. He really deserves it, regardless of whether the statement has any impact on his confirmation itself.

In the words of the immortal Forest Gump, “And that’s all I have to say about that.”

Laptop Blues

My laptop blew up around the first of the month. I took it to the store I’d purchased it from for repairs, and they sent it off to get checked. I got my laptop back yesterday, and this morning, after running the machine for two hours, it promptly blew up. What really got me, was when I pulled out my paperwork folder, I looked at the note that I’d written for the techs the first time around. The note was a verbatim copy of the blue screen that windows XP presented to me when it crashed, oh so spectacularly.

My machine gave me the exact same error this morning, down to the error identification number.

Needless to say, I was livid. I was so angry in fact, that I had to spend ten minutes pacing around the house and cursing before I could call my husband and leave a message on his voicemail to let him know what had happened. On top of this wonderful news, the brilliant, useful (note the sarcasm) techs at the store’s repair facility in Seattle stole my 512 meg ram chip out of my machine.

So, I called the computer/gadget/electronics store and told them my issue, and read them the error, then explained to the tech on the phone that the error I was experiencing was a hard drive related error, and that I had told the tech I dropped the machine off with that before it was sent out. The guy was nice. Whatever anyone says about the chain store in question, the staff at the Geek Squad rocks. He took my laptop and told me he would personally spend the day trying to kill the hard drive, then he would run all the diagnostics that the repair center should have run on my machine himself. He even called me back before he went home today to let me know that it was a hard drive failure and that the chain store would be replacing my hard drive and reinstalling windows XP for me and that all of this would be done in the store, it would not be going back to Seattle.

What really had me giggling though, was when I got there and I told him that they took my ram. He opened up the slot, then he turned around to his co-worker and said, “Dude! Check it out! They took her RAM!” The co-worker looked over at it and got this disgusted look on his face after he checked my receipt to make sure the machine was supposed to have the extra chip. Then he said, “We sent it to Seattle didn’t we? I’m giving them a call.”

So.. supposedly, my ram chip will be found, or replaced.

I am hopeful that I will have my laptop back tomorrow.