Adapt Your Apple

Venturing into the land of computer programming is a risky move.  Yet so many people are doing it, what with the new Ipods and all sorts of mod-able devices.  My good friend recently acquired a brand new Ipod Touch.  After toying with it and marveling over its beautiful touch screen for about a week, he decided he needed more.  So, enter our resident hacker, we will call him ‘Gregor’.  He discovers software that, once downloaded to your Touch, allows anything to be put on it.  All sorts of applications, games, anything.  He has even been known to make the Ipod walk his dog.  With all these hacks getting crazier and crazier, more people are wanting in.  Gregor has had more business lately than ever, showing people how this works.  If you aren’t careful, I wouldn’t be surprised if you you end up with  a bigger problem on (in) your hands.  As the application creaters get better and better, they also come up with great games, such as Chuzzle.  Chuzzle is a game with fuzz balls of different colors which must be put in rows.  Tetrominoes, a Tetris knock-off, is also a rather good game.  There all sound great, right?  Makes you want to go run out and buy a $400 Ipod Touch?  Ok, but consider that with all the new hacks and software comes a few issues.  1. If it screws up your Ipod, you are screwed.  2. Something tells me that overriding Apple’s software with the other guy’s software somehow voids the warranty (it does).  When things void their warranties, generally the company won’t take them back and fix them once you’ve dropped them out your window, or some other equally bad thing.  So, remember that before you call Gregor.  

Myspace Give Me My Space!

There are millions of them.  And none of them have a life.  Otherwise they would not have a myspace page.  I myself don’t have one, and look where I am now.  There are two main things that I don’t like about it.  1. People are overly obsessive about it, and 2. It is a way for people to get murdered.  We will not talk about the second one, however.  So moving on to the obsessive people; I am going to begin with a brief anecdote.  A few days ago, I was hanging out with some friends at the local park, when my buddy walks over and says, “Hey will one of you go to the library and help me fix my Myspace?”  To this, my other friend replied, ” Sure, I have to go check my buddy requests, I haven’t checked since this morning.”  This illustrates my point better than Van Gogh could have, even with two ears.  It is not ok to be this obsessed with a non-human  web page.  It is just too much; too much pressure to join and too much pressure to keep up with requests, leaving too little time to interface with actual humans.  And now there is even more pressure to keep up with the constant influx of new options on your page that make your it look like it belongs to a D-list celebrity frantic for crowd approval.  So for now, I am withstanding the constant nagging for me to make a Myspace, so why don’t you try it too?  Maybe you will have some free time to, oh I don’t know, get a real life!

BOAT! RUDDER! STRANGE! MOUNTAIN!

Heavy metal.  We all know it as that one type of music that is impossible to understand.  That is because of the vocalist.  If you want to be the next singer for Slipknot, then all you need is a face mask and the ability to yell really loud.  I strongly dislike this kind of crap, so imagine how happy I was when i learned that there were a number of parodies of these metal bands on Youtube.  Take this one of the band Trivium, done by Paranoiddave.

Hopefully you know understand what a saviour people like Dave are.  Without them, you would be sitting on your bed listening to Slipknot and Trivium without know what the were saying.  Now, the whole reason for all of this unintelligibleness: two things; all heavy metal singers have long hair, and they were yelled at too much when they were babies.  Professional wrestlers have the same problem, minus the hair.  What can you do to stop hearing metal?  Well, first of all, you could turn off the radio…  But seriously, there will never be an escape from death metal, so you will have to learn to live with long haired people screaming about boat parts and mountains.

10 Things I hate About AIM Part II

6.  The Profile-This allows people to express themselves for all to see.  They write all sorts of junk about how much they still love their ex’s.  They will also post song lyrics and links to their favorite sites.  So, what do I hate about it?  Well, let me give you an example of what some people will write.   “Oh Phillip, I still love you, I think about you every waking moment.  I’m always thinking of you.”  Enough said?

7.  Screen Names-Aim allows you to pick your screen name, and that is a good thing, but not when people choose to incorperate words such as babe, chick, love, hot, or sexy.  So a screen names such as xoxsexybabe111 is not good.

8.   Acronyms-AIM users have this nasty habit of using acronyms to express what they are thinking.  Such usage is unnecesary.  I have compiled a small dictionary of some popular acronyms.

LOL- Laugh Out Loud.  Let’s face it, no one really laughs out loud.  Unless you are a complete dork, just say ‘hahaha’.  Easy enough?

LMAO- Laughing My Ass Off.  Physically impossible.

ROTFL- Rolling On The Floor Laughing.  Not sure why you would get up out of your chair, lay down on the floor, and roll around laughing.

ROTFLMAO- Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off.  A combination of the last two.  This is even more rediculous than ROTFL.

ROTFLMAO WAFFLE- If you say this because you think you think it’s cool to attempt and ryhme, then you should go off and live in a hole.

IDK- I Don’t Know (how you could not know what this acronym means).

NVM- Nevermind.

NMU- Nothing Much, You?  In respnse to ‘What’s up?’

9.  Emoticons (or whatever they are called)-Retarded little smilies that only girls seem to use.  There are all sorts of them: happy ones, sad ones, even ones that look like they want to kill you.  Do not use them.  Ever.

10.  Fluffy The Dog-What does this have to do with AIM? Simple.  Aim has ads for Alltel Wireless, and the one commercial that they show where the ‘other networks’ attampt to threaten someone with a dog that isn’t hers.  It belongs to this super buff tough guy with a pug named Fluffy?  Yeah, that is what I wondered too..

Well, there it is.  All 10.  So that’s all for now, or should I say STAFN…

Star Qualities of Charbucks

Yes, Starbucks has some really good qualities, I know.  But given who I am, I will be starting off with the not-so-good ones.  First off, their coffee tastes burned (at least to me, my family, my extended family, and all of my friends), thus the name ‘Charbucks’.  Secondly, they seem to think that they are better than us because they refer to to their coffee sizes, somewhat exotically, as tall, grande, and vente, instead of small, medium, and large, like normal people.  Also, the people behind the counter are baristas, rather than employees.  If you order a medium latte, the somewhat haughty response is, “You mean a grande?“  What happened to the good old adage, “The customer is always right.”  At Starbucks, there is probably another word for customer…  These oddly named coffees are then priced about 97.6% over competitors, but for some reason, people still pay $3 for a cup of (charred) coffee.  They think they are paying for quality, but all they are paying for is the name.  Last of all, the wi-fi.  Now, like most people, I know that Starbucks offers wi-fi.  What I was uninformed of is that it costs money.  Well, technically, it is free for the first 24 hours, but after using up that first 24 hours, T-Mobile HotSpots charges you about $6.50 for the first login, then $.10 for the following hours.  I could not believe it.  I always thought it was FREE wi-fi!  That is why I always go to Panera.

But we are now moving on to the good things.  They make some pretty flippin’ sweet marble cake.  They have clean shops and comfy chairs.  And good lattes.  That’s it.  In my opinion at least.  There is a bit of irony here though; at this moment, I am typing this is a Starbucks in Connecticut.  I am only here, however, for the 24 hours of free wi-fi.  And a slice of marble cake.  

10 Things I Hate About AIM Part I

I know I have written posts in the past about AIM and its problems, but I have now compiled an actual list of the things that I can’t stand about the program. 

1.  The Bots-They are these annoying computer programs designed to act like, for instance, a 17 year old girl.  We will call her Emily.  When you talk to her, she will ask you who your friends are (you type in their screen name), and she then sends out emails to all of them telling them that they are your friend.  This is the kind of crap that AIM Bots do to you. 

2.  AIM Triton-This is basically the professional version of the standard AIM.  A few of my friends and I made the mistake of trying out this version (it was free), thinking that it would give us an overall better experiance.  We were sadly mistaken.  Within a few minutes of the download, Triton had completely commandered my computer.  It had convinced my computer that it was a Barbie obbsessed 7 year old named Barbara Sue.  It also put me on both the Jenny Craig AND all of the televangelist mailing lists.

3.  The Buddy Icons-AIM makes these crummy buddy iconas that say things like, “I don’t mind if he catches me staring, because then I know he was staring back.”  That kind of thing.  In my opinion, it makes you sound like a ‘teeny bopper’ as my grandmother says (she IS cool). 

4.  The Size-The size of the AIM program is rather large.  As a result, your computer is substantially slowed down.  This is not true on my computer, however, because it is faster and better than yours.

5.  The Plug-ins- These are small AIM prgrams that are designed to enhance the fun factor of AIM.  They have things like location which allows you to see where other people are, and Musiclink, which allows the people that you are chatting with to see what you are listening to.  But the worst plug-in is the Buddy Icon Maker.  Once downloaded, it allows you to design and create your own buddy icon, which is usually worse than the standard ones…

Well, that is the first half, and the last five will follow, as soon as I get to it.  I know you are waiting for it…

Smiting Humans 101

The number 1 way for someone up there to smite us humble humans is to make the temperature soar to a stiflingly hot 100 degrees.  In fact, the other day, the temperature was a mind-numbing 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit.  At temperatures this high, the tar on the streets melts and sticks to your $65 BMX shoes.  Then, you track it inside, and it ruins your floors, incurring that wrath of your parents.  Another thing the heat does is soften any gum that is on the sidewalk (but what kind of loser spits gum out on the sidewalk anyway?).  That way, it too gets stuck to the bottom of your $65 BMX shoes.  This happened today to one of my friends.  He got gum on the bottom of his shoe, which in turn transferred it to his board.  We took it back to my house, where we successfully removed the gum from his skateboard, but we were unsure about how to do so with the shoe.  We ended up using my belt sander to remove the gum and a layer of rubber from the bottom of his shoe.  Success!  Another result of the heat is laziness.  While I was up at the center today, a woman called 911 because she was having a baby.  The fire fighters and EMT’s drove the 50 feet to the center from the station.  They could have walked there in half the time.  Then again, they were a little late getting out, as they were in the middle of grilling up a nice steak or five, but that is off topic.  So whenever the next heatwave hits, avoid sidewalks (might have gum), and streets (might have wet tar).  Also avoid culinary obsessed EMT’s, and crabby pregnant women.  On second thought, don’t even leave your house.  It’s not like you have anything to do with your summer anyway…

I’m (not allowed to be) a Big Kid Now

I was recently visiting a local Toys ‘R’ Us to peruse their very meager stock of ‘toys’, when i heard a kid who was looking at the video games say, “That game sucks!”  The sales associate in that department responded, “Hey kid, we don’t say bed words here.” This person proceeded to follow the kid’s family around until they left.  I found this amusing because this employee was only 18 or 19 years old and probably used that word more then you would want to know. This ridiculous situation underscored an important point; the reason that the bigwigs at Toys ‘R’ Us don’t like the word ’suck’ is because Toys ‘R’ Us sucks!  Countless stores have gone under and those remaining have next to nothing in them.  So, for your sake, next time you’re at Tyrants ‘R’ Us, keep your opinions to yourself so you don’t get followed around by hypocritical salespeople.

Maximum Security……Daycare?

I was sitting in the local laundromat the other day (yes, the laundromat.  It’s spring, and you are going next Sunday so shut up.) observing the world, when I noticed that the church next to the laundromat runs a maximum security prison, er, daycare.  There is this little playground fenced in with heavy duty chainlink fence, and for every one kid out there, two teachers are present.  When these kids go on walks, they are put on leashes.  When they go for rides in the strollers, each child is required to wear a 5-point locking racing harnesses.  There has been one lapse in security, however.  A woman (hopefully the mother), left with a little boy (hopefully her son).  One of the teachers had to chase the woman down the street to get her to come back.  Surprisingly, even after all of these safety precautions, the kids seem quite happy.  They are all having fun.  This raises the question, do inmates at a maximum security jail have this much fun?  And I suppose they do.  They harass eachother on a daily basis and work on making shivs out of razors and toothbrushes.  So, in hindsight, yes, maximum security institutions can be regarded as fun.  But don’t go trying to get in one.  We are talking about jail and daycare, neither of which are appropriat places for anyone from the ages of 7-21 years of age.  Remeber that, and if you don’t, you might find yourself in a maximum security daycare (a.k.a prison for the minor leagues).

Behind the Beard

I feel that I need to clarify a few things here about Chuck Norris.

1. He cannot really fight, it’s the beard and his breath that knocks out the other guy.

2. Yes, he is the only person on Earth that can believe that it is not butter.

People always tell jokes about how Chuck once kicked a man so hard that it killed him and all of his extended family and friends. This is false. It was the BEARD!!! That patch of hair is the beastliest face of hair on the planet. Chuck Norris has also never seen a breath freshener, and this seems to work to his advantage. Mr. Norris is also the only man on Earth who can break a table in half with his fist. Impressive? No, that table, my friends, was made of 100% all natural balsa wood. This man has become the central hub of ‘Chuck Norris’ jokes all around the world, and this is so utterly ridiculous, that it actually makes people laugh. This is why the Walker Texas Ranger Lever is a great invention. So, please, enjoy this lever.