The Question Elicitor

-

It really annoys me when people say or do something just so you can ask them a question, instead of just coming out and saying it, or at least asking you if it is ok if they vent their lame problems to you.

Example: Person 1 walks in, does an overly dramatic sigh.

Person 2, "What's wrong?"

Person 1, "Oh nothing, it's just that blah, blah, blah, etc. etc."

Person 2 (in their mind), "Fuck me, why did I ask?"

I figure they just want to tell you something, but they don't want it to seem like they are whining or bragging, depending on the circumstances, so they do this lameass deflection of a conversation starter. They might walk into a room and say, "What a shitty day". And we, like idiots, all feel some need, through social conditioning or whatever fucked up norms we are accustomed to, to pounce on this response with a "What's wrong?" or "Why do you say that?". I have never figured out why I am always a sucker for this. I say sucker because 99 out of 100 times, I wish I had never fell for this suicide inducing trap in the first place. What I have effectively done, is invited a conversation I am pretty sure I never wanted, all because I have been conditioned to bite at these conversational dog biscuits. It's even worse when they have follow up statements. At that point I have no idea how long I'm stuck in this mess, and once it's started I can't dismiss it because then I become the asshole. After all, I asked what the problem was. I get relegated to the role of conversation prolonger, throwing in a "uh huh" or "oh really", counting the moments until this verbal waterboarding is over.

I have tried to simply ignore this mental chess game, however, the only thing worse than sitting through an unwanted conversation is the awkwardness of the person repeating the process in order to get you to bite. The reason it's worse is because the person will give up on the statement and just come out and say what they wanted to in the first place, lameass deflections be damned. Better to just get it out of the way.

So for my sake, if you've got something to say, just say it. You know I'm going to listen, it's not like I have a choice in the matter.

Where have they gone?

We live in a world far more advanced than the one we grew up in. In the last 15 years we have gone from America Online Dial Up connection, that disconnected when a family member from overseas would call the house, to an era where you can browse the web while talking to your family member from overseas and at the same time downloading the new Jay-Z music video and keeping track of how many miles you have ran and how many calories you have lost, all on your cellphone. We live in an age where we have electric cars, little robot vacuum's that sense the dirt on the floor, chairs that give you a Swedish massage, TIVO and freaking laser eye surgery.

That all being said we have, as a society, severely digressed in one very important area... Cartoons. This morning I woke up and thought to myself "hmmm, it's Saturday, maybe I should re-live my childhood and tune in to some cartoons." As most of us late 20 year old and early 30 year old's remember, Saturday morning cartoons were the best. You had G.I. JOE, He-Man, Transformers and Voltron which would as a young boy breed your inner warrior. After watching those shows I would be all wired up ready to save the planet by killing any and all forces of evil. Then of course you had the ever inspiring trio of Duck Tales, Rescue Rangers and Tail Spin. By the time I would be finished watching those three I was ready to go to Africa and search for the hidden treasures of King Solomon. (Shout out to Smurfs, Dennis the Menace, Gummi Bears and my favorite Thunder Cats). Yet this morning to my shock and disappointment I was confronted by Dora the Explorer, Pokemon, Sponge Bob Square Pants and last but not least Tele Tubbies. What in the name of everything holly happened to cartoons? What are we feeding into our children's minds with these for the lack of better term retarded shows? Tele Tubbies will be giving me nightmares tonight...

The most surprising part of all this is that kids these days are more advanced than we were as children. They fill up places like Howie's Game shack, spend $4.50 on an energy drink and plug their minds into some online death match for seven hours. So the question is how is it possible that the same kids that grow up watching these lame cartoons turn to Halo and crazy first person shooter gamers while those of us who watched G.I. Joe ended up playing Tecmo Super Bowl or just would go outside in the fresh air and shoot a basketball?

After several minutes of contemplation I could only come up with one answer... It's a conspiracy. You see the more lame and retarded you make the cartoons you push the kids away from them. By pushing the kids away from the television (that the parents would pay the monthly bill on anyways) you are creating a market for video games, internet game software, more powerful computers, energy drinks and ADD pills. Case in point, when I go to Best Buy or Toys-R-Us this morning to buy my little one year old cousin a xmas gift what I am going to run into is a bunch of parents running around frantically fighting over the last new edition of Modern Warfare or Command and Conquer for their zombie look alike 13 year old who has had way too many red bull drinks for 10 am, who still doesn't like girls and who thinks John Madden is currently a great quarterback in the NFL because his name is on a video game.... So Sad.

So my solution, well I don't have one... or at least have not had time to contemplate yet. But for now I will resort to downloading my favorite cartoons from torrents and by the help of my friends connecting my computer to my television and to live stream an old G.I. Joe episode through a hub network from a torrent that was uploaded in India in a zip file... Oh my god I am turning into one of them.... FML.

P.S. Deadline met.

The Great Bluetooth Bamboozle

I want to see a report chronicling the effect that the laws concerning using your cell phone in the car have had on the drivers of California. We haven't been able to talk on the phone (without a handsfree headset or device) or text message for quite some time now. I bet there hasn't been much of an effect, and I would also bet that we were just the pawns in a massive chess game perpetrated by the Bluetooth lobby of California. They outlaw holding the phone to your ear in the car, and Bluetooth sales go up. Then bluetooth sales stagnate for a bit, after people decide, "screw this, I'll just text people instead", so they outlaw that too.

Somewhere along the line, I bet the huge Bluetooth conglomerates got together and decided that they needed to expand their target markets. "No more can the future of our companies rely on sales limited to attention whores and douchebags," some insightful executive must have said. "How shall we make it so that the commoner will buy our product, and in effect, become the very douchebag he hath loathed for lo these many years?" he pondered. (In my mind, the Bluetooth lobby meetings take place in a Shakespearean play, apparently). "Eureka!" he exclaims. "We shall scare the masses, make them believe that actually holding one's device to one's ear makes it dangerous!" (forget the act of having a conversation as a distraction). And so, the scare tactic worked, they got their lobby to get Schwarzenegger to pass the bill, and I'm out 50 bucks on a headset that makes me look like an also-ran in a "Real Douchebags of Orange County" contest.

But wait, another exec would counter with "But m' lord, what about those that doth text whilst operating their motorcars?".

"Ne'er you worry" he counters, "We shall strike down thy texting privileges as well".

And there you have it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I am going to put my phone on speakerphone and hold it near my face while I am driving. That way if a cop rolls by I can drop the phone to my lap but still continue my conversation. Some might say I doth protest too much.

reverse-bump

 
Pretty self explanatory, so uh, yeah...

My Apple Beefs

If you know me, you know I love Apple. After years of being blinded by the window, seeing the iPhone made me switch, and so far, I haven't looked back. Windows 7 won't change that either. It's not even close. Having said that (sorry Larry David), I do have some Apple beefs:

• Lack of Mail features and Slow Mail Updates
  We all know that Snow Leopard was not a feature upgrade, but was mainly for under-the-hood changes to help future iterations of OS X. One area where I was hoping Apple would make a major exception is in the Mail application. Mail is an integral part of everyone's daily computer use and having an application that cannot easily compete with Microsoft's paid offering is unacceptable. Features such as previewing mail vertically and being able to send email at a set time should have been added a long time ago. I understand that Exchange throughout Mail, Address Book, and Calendar was a huge new feature, but to all of us not using Exchange, that upgrade is meaningless. Apple needs to either have a business centric mail as part of iWork or consider updating Mail more regularly and not just with each OS upgrade. Mail is just too important.
  
  
• iPhone/MobileMe OTA sync with Notes/Tasks
  For $99/year, it is very odd that Apple does not allow iPhone users to sync over the air with Notes and Tasks. You can sync notes locally, but there is no way to sync tasks at all. Why is this? It seems like Apple is adding these feature check marks in each version of the iPhone, with an entire strategy organizing strategy. This should have been done a long time ago, especially for a paid service.
  
  
• Installing & Uninstalling
  Another area where Microsoft shines slightly brighter is the installation and uninstallation of programs. Yes, you can just drag and drop a program in Applications, but which ones? Some have you install, some have you drag and drop, and some even install in your preferences pane and not in the applications folder. There should be one consistent way of adding and removing programs. Additionally, once you have decided to delete a program, you don't know with 100% confidence if there is an uninstaller (take Adobe for example) or if you can drag and drop the program into the Trash. It's even worse with Preference Pane programs. Even if you can drag the program into the Trash, it still leaves items behind in your personal or system wide library. There are 3rd party utilities like AppZapper, but there should be a built-in program to delete the remnants that programs leave behind. Apple is about simplicity and consistency, but there is nothing consistent about the process of adding and removing programs.
  
  
• Monitors not updated? LED monitor $899?
  The monitor issue is very frustrating. Apple's Cinema Displays have not been updated in 4 years. Last year, Apple added the 24" LED monitor to its lineup. Even at that time, the $899 price tag was ridiculous, and now with 22" LED monitors going in the 200s, Apple's monitor is seriously overpriced. You can argue the built-in iSight and speakers, but there is nothing in this monitor that justifies its $899 price. At first, this monitor was designed for the MacBook Pro family with the mini display ports. However, now that there are adapters and Mac Pro's with display port built-in, Apple still ships the monitor with a short cable. Did you just buy a $900 monitor and have your $3,000 computer under your desk? Too bad, you're stuck with your old monitor since your cable is too short. Apple should immediately drop the price of this monitor and ship it with regular length cables so that Mac Pro users, (the big money spenders) can at least use their top of the line monitor.
  
  
• Magic Mouse
  At first, the Magic Mouse seemed like a big step back for Apple. Yes, it had a cool touch technology. Yes, it looked sleek, but it was missing a key feature that even the terrible Mighty Mouse (now call the Apple Mouse) had. You could squeeze the mouse and go into Expose or you could push down on the entire mouse and go to Dashboard. These features are no longer present (by default) in the Magic Mouse. Expose is a vital part of navigating in OX X. I really hope (and, like 4 finger gesture on older MacBook Pros), I think Apple will add this feature in a future update. My hope is that a deadline to get the software out before the iMac's were introduced was the culprit. How about a 3 finger swipe down for Expose and a 3 finger swipe up for Desktop view?
  
  
• Screen Sharing App
  An application I often use locally and through MobileMe is Screen Sharing. The app launches and works fine, but the problem is the terrible feature set. There isn't a true full screen mode, I cannot drag and drop between the computers, and copying and pasting is not seamless. To make matters worse, the hidden features were removed in Snow Leopard. When not on the local network, Screen Sharing will not replace LogMeIn anytime soon, but I wish it could. Having the ability to use a screen sharing program with at least some power user features would be very helpful. Also, how about an iPhone app for MobileMe users, much like LogMeIn Ignition? I'll pay for it. Note: purchasing Apple Remote Desktop is not an alternative.
  

As a bonus, for those of you that want to use Camino as your main browser, I can recommend it, but with a large caveat. The program has a major memory leak (at least for me) and can cause the system to use over 1 gigabyte of memory while in use. You will notice slowness in your browsing and if you want to watch Flash videos… Good Luck.

Screenshot:

The Restroom Agreement

Is it too much to ask that a guy wash his hands after using the restroom? I don't consider myself a germophobe, per se, but I try to practice good hygiene. I don't think it's too much to ask the same of others, especially when the opportunity is in front of you. Especially when someone else is in the restroom with you, and can corroborate claims of your disgusting nature. I was the victim of a rather brazen attack today. I walked in to use the urinal, and saw that there was a gentleman using the stall (performing a number 2) next to me. I finish up before him, and I go to wash my hands, as I always do in a public restroom. There are two sinks, and as I was washing my hands, I thought that when he came to wash his hands, we would have one of those awkward moments in the office restroom, where you know the guy but you're not friends, and you're not really sure what to say, like "Hello" or "How's work?" or "Crazy weather, huh", or some other throwaway comment people make to other people they don't like because the comment, though lame, beats an awkward silence hands down. Most of the time, what you really want to say is "Jesus, what did you eat? Mustard gas?"

Anyway, as I was looking down to get the soap, homeboy up and walks out of the bathroom. I heard the door slam and thought, "Well clearly, someone else must have walked in, because Gentleman #1 has not used the sink yet". But I was wrong. Gentleman #1 performed a rather ungentlemanly act, and left the restroom after having touched himself in places I would rather not think of. I mean, using the urinal and bouncing (albeit just as annoying) is more commonplace, but this left me flabbergasted. Did he not see me? Did he think I wouldn't notice? Does my desire not to contract a disease matter? What's worse, is now I gotta go around looking for the dude with the brown shoes and wondering if he is touching the same door handles as I am. Is he a client? What if he wants to shake my hand? How the hell do I get around that? If he extends his hand, should I say, "No thanks. If I wanted to touch your genitals, I would buy you dinner first."? Yeah, that's what I'll say.

What am I saying, of course I won't. I'll shake his hand and spend the next few weeks at home with some variant of the swine flu because this inconsiderate person didn't wash his hands, and I was too chicken to call him out on it. Take note, America, wash your hands after using the restroom. The life you save could be mine.