It must be the fault of the Germans. I hate capitalizing a lot of stupid words for no reason. Monday for instance. Monday, does NOT deservered to be capitalized; unless it just happens to be lucky enough to sit at the front of a sentence in which case it's ok, but only for a little bit.

Often I don't capitalize names; unless they are important or deserve respect. For instance, Norah Jones I will capitalize. Same for Trader Joe's. On the other hand, sbc, twc, george bush and osama bin laden can suck off and go to hell. Heh.

Places work pretty much the same as names. I didn't think much of cleveland, but San Francisco rocks. I can't wait to again visit France and Canada both, but I wouldn't cry if I never made it back to england.

Doesn't this make more sense? I think so.

Posted by ra at 23:35 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Once again I have been having charging problems with my stupid verizon-branded motorola v710. This phone is a real piece of shit.

I got a completely new phone two months ago because the original one quit charging. You could plug in the wall cord or the vehicle charger cord, but neither one would get the phone to say it was charging the battery.

The replacement v710 worked ok for a while, but then it started to do weird stuff related to charging and battery strength. When I did actually manage to get the phone to say that it was charging the battery, the next day I would find that the battery really had almost no charge at all, despite being plugged in all night.

So I convinced myself that this problem had to be the battery. Not possible that I had two bad phones, right? I bought a new motorola battery on ebay and just received it today. Put it in the phone. Nothing. Charged it a while and tried again. Nothing.

I stopped by verizon this evening and gave them the POS and told them what was happening with it. After a few minutes they tell me they are replacing the phone (free, under warranty) but not the battery. Ohhhhhhkay.... so I take the new POS v710 #3 out to the car and plug it in. About 20 min later I unplug it and find that it actually did charge the battery, as is actually usable.

WTF? These phones are shittier than total crap. How long is this one going to last? Have cellular phones really become so disposable that you should go through more than 2 phones in one year? I guess verizon's next promotion will be "sign up with us and get a new phone every 4 months!".

Posted by ra at 23:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Why do we put up with corporations restricting what we can do with shit we buy?

DVD restrictions... I LOVE movies, and I love DVD's. SO much nicer than the age of VHS. No rewinding, no ffw'ing. I've been buying DVD's since the days that only a couple dozen movies were even available on dvd at BestBuy, etc.

But over the past few years I've noticed a disturbing trend. More and more often, the movie studios are creating DVD's that restrict your ability to navigate the damn disc. Nothing pisses me off more than a disc programmed to not allow me to go to the menu screen because the studio wants me to watch their fucking previews first. BULLSHIT!

Some discs even disable both menu keys and chapter nav keys and then politely suggest that you FAST-FUCKING-FORWARD through the previews if you don't want to watch them. Like Harry Potter says; RIDICULOUS!

I am going to start a list of which movies attempt to force the viewers to watch something that may not interest them (previews) by disabling the menu and/or chapter nav keys. For those movies, I might have to look into some of the software out there that allows you to copy a dvd while leaving out select parts of it (like the PREVIEWS!) and/or disabling the navigation restrictions.

Or; if I want a movie that has those restrictions, maybe I'll just download it from a p2p network instead of buying it. That should score me a copy without previews. Although I've purchased a ton of DVD movies over the years, and never once downloaded one illegally, why should I support the release of these restricted discs by continuing to purchase them?

Posted by ra at 00:36 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

"The group says in return for agreeing to adopt the Christian faith, the indigenous people receive basic health care and literacy classes."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4705740.stm

This just isn't right. What does health care and literacy have to do with religion? How can they justify tying the adoption of a belief to the rendering of these valuable services? Seems unethical to me.

Posted by ra at 23:39 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Sometimes I have scentbacks. A certain smell will remind me-- no; take me back to-- an event in the past. The other day I smelled the cabin of an Air France jet bound for Paris; and I was so there.

Every once in a while I return to a childhood vacation in Florida. A certain scent triggers memory of the smells near the condo we rented for a week.

My favorites are probably the ones that take me to France. They are also the ones triggered most infrequently. Go figure... this place doesn't smell much like France.

Posted by ra at 00:33 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I'm at this moment watching the 2nd half of the last episode of the first season of this show.
My overall opinion of this show is coming to a head. I will reserve judgement for the end of the episode but right now the words BULL and SHIT are on my mind.

I will say that what started out as a reasonably interesting series, gradually degraded into a rather tiresome sequence of theologically-heavy musings and secret agent dramas; laced with peeks at one of the writers' sexual fantasies--perhaps. What follow could be called spoilers, I suppose.

Posted by ra at 01:36 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

when I realized that my parents were going to have to give up their speakeasy.net dsl. They've had five years of perfect internet service. But I guess this is the end... soooo sad.

We've signed them up with the devil's own internet services. At least they got a good deal; I guess. (wait, what's this clause about turning over your soul...) They are shipping a new dsl modem from hell, which should be arriving any day.

The cutover from goodness to absolute shit happens next Monday. Oh woe is me.

Posted by ra at 18:56 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)