NFL 2015

Wow. 2015 is the first year in the history of the NFL and in my 50+ years as an American that I will not be able to see all the NFL playoff games  because my $80+ per month cable subscription doesn't include ESPN.

I guess you've all decided that my meager $1,000 that I pay my cable company each year doesn't entitle me to simply watch the NFL playoffs.

FUCK YOU ESPN.
and FUCK YOU NFL.
and FUCK YOU Charter Communications.

--SDP

Another Microsoft Joke

Microsoft continues to be such a fucking joke. Tonight I try to find a song I might want to purchase. Under Windows 8.1 I get passed to some random app. I type the name of the song I'm looking for ("My Endless Love") and the results send me pretty much to everything I don't want: first it says I should update my "Xbox" app. What? I don't own an Xbox, I never have owned an Xbox, and I will never own an Xbox. What the hell?

Nearly all the "wonderful" apps that came with Windows 8.1 require me to have a Microsoft login. Hint: I've never had a Microsoft login, I don't currently have a Microsoft login, and I never will have a Microsoft login. Thank you very much, idiots.

And if you think that Apple is any better, THINK AGAIN.

Thank {Gg}od for Amazon.  I can search for what I want and actually get taken to the correct place, where I can buy a song for a buck. Good luck doing that with Microsoft or Apple.

Amazon, your next project, aside from a brick and mortar joint, should be an actual complete OS, based on Android/Linux/UNIX. Or get Google to help. You're the only vendor that has made any actual sense to me in the past 20 years.

--SDP

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.  I get a new smart phone.  Salesperson says: "Oh sure; turn on 'EZ' mode at any time you want; you can always turn it off again".  So I turn on 'EZ' mode through "Settings".  Now, not only can I NOT turn off EZ mode, but none of the apps work--when you tap them, they only give  you the option of removing their icon from the screen.

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.  And I did it anyway, and now Verizon and Samsung have screwed me royally. I'm not dumb--been doing IT for 30 years and the fucking phone screwed me anyway. Good luck anyone who calls: I probably can't even answer the phone in "EZ" mode.

What a fucking $700 joke. Next phone: pay me $700 to me to use it.

Oh yeah: I forgot to mention. At least half of my "notifications" have been for me to buy additional services.  It's nice to know that I spend $700 on a phone and a ridiculous amount of money per month just to use it and I'm slathered with hourly "Here's a cool service; only $10 per month; please use me!" messages. Perhaps we all need to email-bomb our carriers with service messages too.

--SDP

Spawning

I come from the ocean.
And once I'm done spawning,
I die.
           --SexDrgsSalmon

Oy; yet another Late Night change

Oy. Fallon on Leno last night. While Leno seems to put on a good face, he's also giving a huge "FUCK YOU" to NBC et. al. as the censors allow.

And you know what?  I don't give a SHIT about Leno. After what he did to Conan, good riddance to Leno.

Fallon is at the top of the world right now and I wish him the best in his new job as Tonight Show host! I hope he'll have Conan on sometime in the near future to discuss real life.

--SDP

"Do Not Hump": A 3-Picture Story from KARE11

I'm posting this story just as an interesting, goofy, fun thing I noticed while watching TV, not in any way as a complaint or criticism of KARE11 or NBC.

Over the course of about 20 minutes on 1/15/2014, TV station KARE11 in the Twin Cities in Minnesota (NBC affiliate) broadcast the following image three times. The first image appeared at about 5:57 PM as a teaser during NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. The second image appeared at about 6:00 PM as a beginning-of-newscast teaser, and the third image appeared at about 6:12 PM during the actual story.

All this is just fine and good. It's a procedure done hundreds of times a day by legions of TV stations. The story, in this case, was about why commuter trains were sitting idle despite the fact that construction on the new track was apparently complete.

But as I watched the KARE11 news broadcast, I noticed that the images were different. Aside from the KARE11 footers, it's somewhat difficult to see with a casual glance what might be different about these three images.  But if we zoom into the location highlighted below in each image, the difference becomes apparent.

Zoomed images below. I remember seeing the "DO NOT HUMP" notice painted on the train's cover during the first teaser at 5:57 PM. I thought the phrase "DO NOT HUMP" was funny and could perhaps be interpreted as a little controversial :-). Was KARE11 subliminally trying to make a political statement that folks should practice sexual abstinence? Nah, I figured that it might just have something to do with trains, maybe train lingo warning not to stack the train cars or something...

Then, as I was watching the news at the top of the hour, the image appeared on the screen again. I noticed something was different, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. So I reversed my DVR and saw that sure enough the "DO NOT HUMP" sign had disappeared, along with a small "window" in the train cover! If you have some experience with editing digital images and you look closely at the following image, you can see that sometime between 5:57 PM and 6:00 PM, the image had been edited probably by copying a plain blue rectangle from another part of the train cover and pasting it over the sign...

Too funny! But by the time the complete story actually aired around 6:12 PM, the image inexplicably changed again!  This time, the little window in the train cover re-appeared, the "DO NOT" portion of the sign re-appeared, and the word "HUMP" had been blurred out (sometimes called "air-brushing")...

Now, again, I'm not meaning to complain or criticize, just detailing a fun goof I saw!

And, I also wonder what the conversation taking place between KARE11 broadcast executives and the graphics team must have been like: "Did that teaser just contain a picture of a sign saying 'DO NOT HUMP'?" "Yep." "We better change that quick..." "Sure. No problem." Then later: "OK that was a nice quick edit, but maybe someone will notice the difference in the picture. Can  you change it again so the window and the 'DO NOT' come back, then blur out just the word 'HUMP'?" "Sure. No problem."

By the way, this interested me enough to actually research what "DO NOT HUMP" means in the context of trains.  Cecil Adams wrote an excellent explanatory article about this in 1986, which you can read here!

(I took these images off my TV screen with a digital camera so I apologize for the poor quality)

Valerie Harper Cancer

OK; yeah, so I watched the special on Valerie Harper's cancer situation tonight.  Poignant, Interesting, Familiar.  But the fact is that if she hadn't been a long-ago TV star, the 74-year-old actress would have been completely ignored by Meredith and everyone else.

NBC, I'd much rather have watched a show about a young, unemployed, unlovable homeless guy who had survived undiagnosed cancer for 10 years with no health insurance than Valerie's story (sorry, Valerie).

--SDP

?

What did one beta amyloid say to the other?
I forget...

Guns

"The only way to stop a Republican/Conservative with a gun is a Democrat/Liberal with a gun".

Be fore-warned, people: the current political divide in the USA is likely to only get worse, to the point of violence coming from the right.  Make sure you've purchased the most powerful legal guns with the biggest legal clips to defend yourself from the coming horde.  When someone threatens you with harm, don't be afraid to use whatever means you possess to defend yourself!  Yay freedom!  Yay 2nd Amendment!  Yay USA!!!

--SDP

Robin, Dear Robin

All other things being equal, I'd rather be watching Robin Meade!!!

--SDP

Poor media grammar, especially CNN

I don't claim to be a perfect writer.  If I make a typo, misspell a word, use incorrect grammar, or clearly don't understand a word's definition or correct usage, I'll usually correct it without pouting if someone points it out to me.

Twice this past week CNN fucked up big.  In one segment covering the Feb. 2013 east coast blizzard, they showed a vendor's sign saying "Due to the inclimate weather...".  INCLIMATE weather?  What the fuck?  Either tell the vendor to change it to "inclement" or just don't display the sign on your world-wide newscast at all.

Earlier this week, CNN had what they claimed was a law expert talking about a case.  Twice during the interview with her she referred to "voir dire", an important part of trials and juries.  But she pronounced it "voy dye-er" instead of the correct "vwar deer".  If she had even pronounced it as "vwa dye-er" I could understand since a lot of English-speaking people think a trailing "r" in French is usually silent.  But "voy dye-er"?  Good grief.

I don't spend my life looking for errors in the media, but items this huge should be addressed by an editor or producer before they even get aired.  I once read an article on the front page of a prominent media web site that had FOUR errors in the first sentence.  Either I'm getting much more picky in my old age or the entire media world is getting dumber.  I'll leave it to you to figure out which is more likely.

--SDP

Chobani Greek Yogurt

UPDATE 2/15/2013: Just a couple days after posting my original opinion, I heard from a Chobani representative offering me a chance to try different flavors.  I *SO* appreciate hearing from them about this, especially since they somehow found my very obscure tiny little corner of the web in my blogspot blog.  So I probably won't try any other flavors, but I hereby change my opinion from "sux" to "not for me, but kudos for their great customer service!".

---------------------- Original post below --------------------------

I was looking forward to trying "Greek" yogurt after seeing a report on Chobani on 60 minutes or some such program.  I bought a cup tonight and tried it, and IMHO it sux!  Long live Yoplait!

--SDP

Tebow and the Jets are LOST

As I'm writing this, it's Turkey Day 2012 and I'm watching the Patriots/Jets game on NBC.  The Pats just scored their SEVENTH touchdown in the 2nd quarter and lead the game 35 to 0.

I'm not a fan of the Jets to start with, so I'm happy seeing them getting creamed tonight.

I've seen a few Jets game this year, or at least parts of those few.  Problem is they've got their starting quarterback Mark Sanchez AND Heisman-winning Tim Tebow, and the Jets are TOTALLY FUCKING UP their management of the two quarterbacks on the same team.  I've seen them play one QB for a few plays, then the other for 1 play, then both for a play, etc.  The whole thing just seems completely erratic, random, and lousy to me.

And the two people who are getting the raw end of the deal are both Sanchez and Tebow.  Tebow has gotten screwed more than any Heisman winner in recent memory by two teams--the Broncos and the Jets.

At least the Broncos recognized the bad situation for Tebow and let him go.  Now the Jets need to do the same thing--they need to make Sanchez their starter and let Tebow go play for a team who could really use him as their first-string QB.  Plenty of teams out there would work for him, I think.  One of Kansas City, Jacksonville, or Carolina should try to get him in the 2013 season and make him their first-string QB.  The Jets should let him go.

Tebow has taken lots of crap for his open Christianity on and off the field.  SO WHAT?  Primarily, he needs to find a team that he can lead as a QB or his once-promising career will be toast.

The valley

I've been living in the valleys with foes and tears for decades.  I lift my eyes and I know that God and His angels are there, but I see them only through a mist.  I want to see them clearly.

--SDP

"Mandy" == "Sandy". BOOOOO! TheRoots beat me to it! :-(

It was pretty interesting and cool tonight to view both the Letterman show (CBS) and Jimmy Fallon (NBC) without any audience tonight!  Both of the New-York-City-based shows essentially sent their respective audiences home due to what they're now calling "SuperStorm" Sandy.

It was a true "insert-your-own-laughs-here" experience.  Dave chose to basically talk to Paul instead of doing a monologue, and Jimmy stuck to his usual format sans audience.

But I'm a bit pissed at Jimmy's band "The Roots".  Sometime between Fallon's show taping, and the show actually airing, I came up with the idea of re-writing the lyrics to Barry Manilow's "Mandy" with more apropos lyrics regarding hurricane Sandy.  Alas, The Roots pre-stole my idea before I had ever thought of it, and played/sang "{SM}andy" during the intro to one of the guests or some other post-commercial ex-tro.  SHIT!  *I* wanted to do that!  Dammit!

At any rate, unique shows like this in late night don't come around too often, maybe once a decade, and they generally don't get repeated either.  So it was fun to be a small part of this phenomenon, if only as a passive viewer!

--SDP

New Bejeweled Blitz Fan Site

If you love playing internet games, I recommend the game "Bejeweled Blitz", available on facebook. There is now a new web site containing tips and other useful information about this game at http://www.plainsboro.com/bb/

--SDP

CNN Invents new word: "kilabyte"

On the morning of 7/10/2011 (MDT), CNN's main news channel broadcast a report on how cell phone companies are going to remove their unlimited data packages and start to charge users based on their data usage. In the report, a couple of the graphics they used trying to illustrate how much usage different services use (such as email, web browsing, and downloading music) contained the word "kilabyte" with an "a" rather than using the proper word "kilobyte" with an "o":


[red arrows and ovals pointing out the error are mine]

Now, I make typos all the time, but this was a big one, IMHO. With their resources, CNN should know better than to display a graphic like this on live TV.

If I had been the "expert" they used during the story and I saw this mistake later, I'd have been pissed.

I probably wouldn't have minded the typo, except for this additional error: they reported that 1 GB of data == 1024 bytes * 1024 bytes * 1024 bytes == 1,073,741,824 bytes. This is technically correct, but in fact it's an industry standard these days with hard drive vendors and network vendors that 1 GB ==~ 1,000,000,000 instead, a 7.3% difference.

According to the story and to vendors, new rates based on usage will be approximately: $30 per month for 2 GB, $50 per month for 5 GB, and $80 for 10 GB.

So therefore, additionally, while I personally do not use a cell phone for any data uses other than the occasional picture or text (at 20 cents per), I also think the prices per month for this amount of data usage is absolutely absurd. These days you can get a 1 TERAbyte hard drive for around $100, or about $1 per 10 GB or 10 cents per 1 GB. While I understand there's a difference in price between hard drives and bandwidth, I don't believe the difference should be 100-fold (100 to 1 or 10,000 percent), especially with the new 4G and 4G LTE networks that actually deliver that data so much faster. At this rate, if you watch a single HD movie on your mobile device, you've already exceeded your monthly allotment of 10 GB for $80. Yikes. $80 to view a movie. And this fee is collected monthly.

Good luck, all. This change in data rates has made me re-think my upcoming decision on what mobile devices to consider.

--SDP

bin Laden is dead

I'm writing this about just a few hours after the President of the United States and Commander in Chief Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed.

In terms of how I received the news: I was playing an internet game at the time and was also watching "Undercover Boss" on CBS when I did some TV channel surfing at about 8:25 my time (Mountain Time). I saw that channel 35 (Fox News) and channel 37 (MSNBC) had announced that the President was going to speak momentarily. The original time scheduled for the President's speech was 10:30 PM Eastern time (8:30 PM Mountain Time).

After the time for the announcement came and went, I decided to go have a cigarette in my garage in preparation for viewing the announcement. During the 5 minutes I was smoking in the garage, I thought hard about what kind of announcement Obama would make so late on a Sunday night: Gadhafi dead? Nuclear attack on the USA? And of course I thought: bin Laden dead? After some thought I decided there were few things that would merit an announcement so late on a Sunday other that bin Laden had been either captured or killed.

Sure enough, when I returned to my TV around 8:45 Mountain Time, I saw the announcement on the bottom of the screen on one of the major networks that bin Laden was dead. I confirmed this to myself by surfing to a couple other news networks, and by this time they were all reporting the same: that bin Laden had indeed been killed.

Shortly thereafter I called one of my close friends in the Central Time Zone encouraging him to check out one of the news channels. We had expected Obama to speak momentarily so it was a short phone call. And there were a few more false starts: announcements that Obama would speak in 2 minutes, then it was postponed. Finally, Obama spoke starting around 11:35 Eastern (9:35 PM my time) and ended about 9 and a half minutes later. During the speech, Obama announced the killing of bin Laden and spoke of the significance of this event.

I recall being pleased with this announcement. And the two words that I thought about when examining my emotions at the time were "relief" and "closure". Sure enough, interviews of folks either in Washington DC or in Times Square in New York City mirrored both of these emotions: "relief" and "closure".

Not too much else to report at the moment other than my initial feelings. However, since the President's original announcement, I've thought that this will be in the news for awhile, at least the next couple weeks, and secondly that I'd like to see the picture of bin Laden dead (maybe a bit morbid on my part, but my desire nonetheless).

--SDP

Is Amazon Kindle as "robust" as iPods?

I wrote in my previous post: What the FUCK is it with Apple music stuff? that I'm pretty much done with Apple now that they've screwed me over time and time again: me buying into the hype that iPods are the best music players, Macs are the best computers, iPhones are the best cell phones, iTunes is the best way to buy music.

And what did I get for this? An iPod that broke, then hosed my Dell desktop computer's motherboard at the same time, no way now to play any of the dozen or so songs I've purchased through the iTunes store, and a G4/G5 iMac that now is pretty much worthless because I bought it JUST before Apple moved to the Intel platform and nixed the G4/G5. (Not to mention that it'll cost me around $400 just to upgrade to their latest OS, which I'm guessing they'll stop supporting within a year or two.)

THANKS, APPLE, YOU ASSHOLES.

Now I'm wondering if I'll be making the same mistake buying an Amazon Kindle for books. Lately, I've been reading mostly fiction, mostly in paperback form. This has been fine, but I'm in the process of moving, and after packing 39+ boxes with books I wonder now if there might be a better way. I'm considering a Kindle because:

• Like I said, I've got too many real live books to keep hauling around the country
• A paperback-sized skinny Kindle might be a better option for reading at night with a cat sitting on my chest
• It's relatively cheap now, and many books are either free or cheaper than their paper counterparts
• Seems like the Kindle will hold thousands of books, plenty for me, and that the books you've purchased will be available for re-download if you break/lose your kindle or get a new one

I've considered waiting for E-Ink Triton (color) to get incorporated into Kindle, but lately I think that I don't care about that (because it'll be much more expensive for a few years yet), nor about being able to surf the net on the same device. If I wanted to do either thing I'd probably get a Motorola Xoom tablet instead.

However, I am a bit worried that I might be making the same mistake with the Kindle as I did with the Apple iPod. That is, if I commit to Kindle format then at some point I lose or break my Kindle or something happens that pisses me off as much as Apple has and I can't or won't get a Kindle replacement, that I might then be the proud owner of hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars worth of Kindle-formatted software (books) that are totally useless to me.

Plus, I'm a bit concerned that lately I've been seeing Kindle-download-format paperback books selling for the same full retail price as a real paperback. The same price is fine, except that I can get paperbacks for 30% cheaper buying the actual paperback at Walmart or Sam's Club. Given that it is SO SO SO much cheaper to sell an electronic copy of a paperback book, why is it that authors like Lee Child are insisting that years-old electronic format have to sell for the same full retail price?

If anyone has advice opinions or answers to my questions, I'd appreciate comments. Thanks.

--SDP

What the FUCK is it with Apple music stuff?

OK, yeah; I've been a computer user/administrator/programmer for well over 30 years now. I've been around long enough to really understand, deep down, the whole Apple thing. Their neat competition with IBM, the 1984 Macintosh super bowl commercial, the whole "art people like Macs and business people like PC's" thing that happened for a long time. I understand the Macs are easy to use vs. PC's have the software you want thing. I'm not on either side, particularly; I own an IMac, but I use my various PC's daily. I've lived through the mp3 craze, I own about 4 mp3 players and an Ipod, the whole shebang.

So why the FUCK does Apple make things so fucking ridiculously HARD sometimes? Sure; I eventually figure out that nobody has done things quite as nicely as Apple has with regards to buying and downloading music. In fact, there's a lot I really LIKE about their method of doing things. In the beginning, it's: (a) download itunes onto my PC; (b) import all my CD's into mp3 format into itunes; (c) enjoy the music; (d) visit the apple store and find the songs I really would like to buy for just 99 cents apiece (this is a hell of a lot nicer than having to spend $10 on a CD with one song you like and 9 that you don't want).

BUT since this nice beginning, things have gone way way downhill way way fast way way frustratingly. And here's the deal:

(1) Ipod breaks my PC: after realizing what a nice product Itunes was, I took the next step and bought an Ipod. Hooked it up to my PC, downloaded the songs I wanted; for awhile, it worked great. I'm noticing, however, that sometimes if I attach my Ipod to my PC via USB to sync it or revise my downloaded songs, if I forget to detach it before I shut down my PC, my PC won't boot. Fine; I just manually power down the PC, disconnect the Ipod from USB, then my computer will boot. Then one day, unimaginably, I have once again left my Ipod docked when I shut down this PC. It doesn't boot. So I do the usual: shut down manually, remove Ipod from USB connection, press start button on PC again. Guess what? PC doesn't boot at ALL. Now, this is a PC that has booted for me guaranteed working perfectly for 2.5+ years and now it doesn't boot at all. Long story short, the motherboard is hosed, it's next to impossible to fix the thing, so I'm down a computer. Luckily for me I'm rather paranoid about backups and I ended up not losing any data. Now some folks might say that 2.5+ years is a great lifetime for a Dell computer, but I'm telling you that this was just about the biggest headache in my 30+ years of working with computers and the whole situation sucked big time. It is my researched opinion that the lovely wonderful Apple Ipod was the main culprit in beginning the demise of this Dell E521 desktop computer. It completely hosed it, caused me to lose a fair bit of money trying to fix it, I received NO support at all from Dell, and it was one of the most frustrating situations I've ever been through. To top it all off, I was UNABLE to use my Ipod after this. It wouldn't play anything, it wouldn't be recognized when hooking it up to another computer, the little reset switch did nothing. It was completely hosed. Thanks, Apple, for a horrid little piece of hardware. You can be assured I'll never again buy an IPod, Iphone, Ipad, or anything else that will potentially break other hardware and end up not working.

(2) Itunes changes: I was pretty comfortable using the itunes shopping cart at one time, then they took it away in some convoluted new version. ASSHOLES

(3) No can play: On my replacement computer, I now try to create a CD for my car of some of the tunes I've bought from the Itunes store. I had just bought 3 new songs that night. Guess what? I could make a CD out of those 3 new songs I just bought, but I was UNABLE TO MAKE A CD FROM PREVIOUS SONGS I HAD PURCHASED FROM ITunes! This is fucking ridiculous. I try things like changing my password someplace, nothing worked. Now for the forseeable future, not only can I not play songs purchased from itunes on my broken Ipod, but I also can't play them on any of the many CD players I own. Wow you guys are wonderful. I can still play songs on an old cassette player on cassettes that I purchased 40+ years ago, or records on a record player, but songs I've bought from Itunes in just the past few years I can't play anywhere. This is fucking great. Way to go, Apple. You guys are truly gods. Gosh guess I'll go and buy a bunch more songs in your convoluted can't-be-played-anywhere-format from your store.

(4) Blank screen: Now tonight I want to do one simple thing: try to match a song I heard in a movie with one on itunes so I could possibly buy it. I open itunes, go to the store, and the screen IS BLANK! I do a search, a few icons eventually appear on my screen then the itunes store screen goes BLANK yet again! So I figure OK I'll reboot the PC; might be the PC's fault. NOPE. No dice. First application I open is itunes store and the screen is BLANK. Icons flash for a moment, but then the screen goes blank again. Wow what a cool bunch of really neat and smart engineers you are to be able to make this cool and really useful product. An application that shows a blank screen. I'm just astounded. This is Itunes 9.0.3.15. Yeah I'm sure some really smart young person or engineer will contact me and say: "Oh yeah; 9.0.3.15 doesn't work anymore. Download the latest version and you'll be OK". Well, I want to tell you something. Over the course of several years, I've ALREADY downloaded the "latest version" at least a dozen or so times already. Ya know what? At least one thing that used to work in the previous version was broken or obfuscated in the future version just about each time.

Buh-Bye Apple!: I'm fucking sick and tired of all this. I'm fucking sick and tired of having to "figure things out" for several hours just to play a song on my computer in this convoluted format. I'm sick to death that I can't play any of these songs that I bought on any other portable music player. I'm sick to death about nearly everything Apple these days. Yeah I understand Jobs may have some health problems, I met the guy once at a talk at Princeton and I wish him the best. But ya know what? This is probably the final nail in the coffin that makes me swear off any Apple products now and ever more.

Good luck everyone! Let's hope that another alternative besides Microsoft and Apple appear in the near future.

--SDP