Fast food restaurants in the near future may be seeing an upgrade in customer service! As pointed out to me by The Raw Feed (the blog formerly known as Mike's List), [thanks Mike], new stand-alone, self-serve, automated cashiers are coming to the fast food market that will let you skip the line at Wendy's, McDonalds, Burger King, etc...provided the franchisers buy them.
I, for one, say it's high time that we got the cashiers at these places to understand English again (damn it, I said 6 piece nugget meal with a DIET COKE, you MORON!!!). I am so sick of walking into McDonalds, waiting in line (#1) and getting up to the cashier who just got off the boat [or whose parents didn't realize they'd need the English language to get through life]. I'm not knocking immigrants (well, not legal ones) at all. But if you're taking my food order, you should at least be able to pronounce the farking menu items, don't you think?!?!?
If you're a franchiser, I can just imagine the drool coming off your lips right now. Buy these! Buy them NOW and install them in your lobby. Do away with half your cashier staff during rush hours!! Do away with countless wasted training dollars!! Do away with the added liability of barely trained minimum wage, non-English speaking workers in an area where burns, slips, trips and other hazards are waiting to drain your worker's compensation coffers. Minimize your staff to one or two trained counter personnel to handle problems and the drive-through window. Save a ton of dough, and make ME, the customer happy on top of it.
Just so you know, yes, I DID buy stock in the company. I think it's a fantastic idea, and think that if you don't pick up a piece of this action, you're going to soon wish you had a nickle for every ATM installed in America's 7-11s.....think about it, investors...[RBSY] on the pink sheets.
January 04, 2006
Timewaster of the Month Club
The Dead Awaken - an online web-browser based game that my son turned me on to. While not the best of games, it does have a strange addictive quality to it. Fortunately for the user, it is turn-based and you're only given a full set of turns each day. While you can earn extra turns, the site is probably best visited at most three times per day if you want to use all of your turns.
On the site, I play a zombie - but it's your choice, human or zombie. You can visit the graveyard and go grave-robbing, head down to the mall to kill some wandering zombies/humans, or even head down to the subway for a mission of smearing blood on things to attract more zombies (and get paid for it).
The game harkens back to the like of the old BBS games we played and wrote back in the 1980's. Trying to become top zombie will probably take you awhile, though. The game rewards those who've played the longest, so I'll probably never hit the Top 10 lists on this site.
It's an interesting diversion, and very different from the MUD experience. Give it a whirl and let me know if you like it.
On the site, I play a zombie - but it's your choice, human or zombie. You can visit the graveyard and go grave-robbing, head down to the mall to kill some wandering zombies/humans, or even head down to the subway for a mission of smearing blood on things to attract more zombies (and get paid for it).
The game harkens back to the like of the old BBS games we played and wrote back in the 1980's. Trying to become top zombie will probably take you awhile, though. The game rewards those who've played the longest, so I'll probably never hit the Top 10 lists on this site.
It's an interesting diversion, and very different from the MUD experience. Give it a whirl and let me know if you like it.
January 03, 2006
New Years Resolutions?
I'll write these down - but I'm old enough to know they won't happen (*grin*):
1. Lose weight (again) - 20 pounds this year, please?
2. Get and stay organized.
3. Throw away all the useless crap I love to accumulate.
4. Work Harder.
5. Play Harder.
6. Buy Less Crap. Don't we all have enough toys already? I've got to stop buying them.
Rich
1. Lose weight (again) - 20 pounds this year, please?
2. Get and stay organized.
3. Throw away all the useless crap I love to accumulate.
4. Work Harder.
5. Play Harder.
6. Buy Less Crap. Don't we all have enough toys already? I've got to stop buying them.
Rich
January 02, 2006
The MobiBLU
That's right - it has 7 buttons (8 if you count the reset pin), 1 input jack, a necklace clip and an OLED screen on 5 of it's 6 square inch sides. This thing is SMALL! It came with necklace earphones, a charger, some software to update the BIOS (when they release new ones [or when someone decides to load Linux on it?]).
I charged it up with music from my collection, (it takes protected WMAs [evil] and MP3s) and took it out to play. It has a volume setting that goes up to 30. With it set to its highest level, I could hear it on top of a club band at an oldies club on New Years Eve, although it didn't drown them out (doh). At level 16, it sounds loud enough for my ears in a roughly noiseless environment. At level 20, I can't hear my wife calling me from the next room (bonus!).
You can play in repeat 1/repeat all/random/random all modes, and you can browse for songs (although the song names obviously have to scroll on the screen, which displays 3x5 from a text perspective. They could have cut out the graphical part of the tree display to give you up to 8 characters. Maybe they will in a future upgrade. I found only one problem with the player so far, and that is the number of folders it will actually read from the player. Even though I stored 100 folders of stuff on it, only the first 20 or so [I didn't count] deep showed the file contents when I was playing the music. Even on random mode, it didn't pick up those files.
All in all, it's a good value, but you need to know that it's not compatible with any of the To Go services like Yahoo or Napster. You can buy protected WMA's from Walmart (where I got the player) and it comes with 5 free songs. On top of that, you will need MP3 files, so you'll have to rip your own content or play mostly independent music that can be found on the 'net.
January 01, 2006
Happy New Year - Courtesy Please..
Bowling courtesy, that is. When I was younger than a teenager, my father brought us to the bowling alley. The first thing we learned was not how to toss the ball down the lane. No, the first thing we learned was bowling courtesy. This includes not standing on the approach (the wood of the lane) until it was your turn to bowl, and to wait for the player in the two lanes to your left and right to finish bowling before even thinking of getting on the wood.
In today's world, courtesy seems to be a lost art. Yesterday I attended a bowling New Years Eve party. The one thing that irritates me more than ANYTHING when I'm at a bowling alley is when the lane next to mine has children and ADULTS!! that completely ignore bowling courtesy. Not only can it be dangerous as all hell (Hello, I'm swining a 16-pound ball through a half-arc; maybe you should keep your children on their own lane, and wait till I'm done?!!), but it's annoying, and distracting.
I don't even mind when your child misses his lane and throws his ball down my lane. Indeed, I even find that to be cute, and it's to be expected when you hand a 5 pound weight to a 5 year old to throw down the lane - it's not a problem, no ma'am, but could you please keep your stupid little brat behind the wood when it's not his turn to bowl? Thank you very much.
On top of which, it's very difficult to approach a parent who themselves doesn't seem to know common bowling courtesy and ask that they preach it to their children. It's embrarrasing for one, and you're trying to tell them to control their family, always a mother-bear reaction just waiting for you. Sigh - well, I bowled a 168,169 and 142, so didn't do too bad, but I'm sure I could have done better if I wasn't worried about cracking open Junior's skull in the next lane.
In today's world, courtesy seems to be a lost art. Yesterday I attended a bowling New Years Eve party. The one thing that irritates me more than ANYTHING when I'm at a bowling alley is when the lane next to mine has children and ADULTS!! that completely ignore bowling courtesy. Not only can it be dangerous as all hell (Hello, I'm swining a 16-pound ball through a half-arc; maybe you should keep your children on their own lane, and wait till I'm done?!!), but it's annoying, and distracting.
I don't even mind when your child misses his lane and throws his ball down my lane. Indeed, I even find that to be cute, and it's to be expected when you hand a 5 pound weight to a 5 year old to throw down the lane - it's not a problem, no ma'am, but could you please keep your stupid little brat behind the wood when it's not his turn to bowl? Thank you very much.
On top of which, it's very difficult to approach a parent who themselves doesn't seem to know common bowling courtesy and ask that they preach it to their children. It's embrarrasing for one, and you're trying to tell them to control their family, always a mother-bear reaction just waiting for you. Sigh - well, I bowled a 168,169 and 142, so didn't do too bad, but I'm sure I could have done better if I wasn't worried about cracking open Junior's skull in the next lane.
December 29, 2005
DRM sucks!!!
I bought a USB hard drive with the money I got for Christmas (and Best Buy gift cards.) For the past 2 or 3 nights I've been trying to figure out the best way to get music that I want onto this portable drive so that I can play it:
1) On all 4 computers in my house, Win 2000/Linux/XP Home and XP Pro all included
2) In my CAR, which plays MP3's off CD, and regular CDs
3) In all 3 MP3 players owned by various family members.
Boy, what a bunch of bullshit these 2 days have been. The RIAA sucks as far as I'm concerned. And those of you who contribute to their fantasy dreams by buying DRM-protected content can all go to hell too. This is a capitalist society, and you're ENABLING them buy buying their DRM bullshit. STOP DOING IT!
1. You have a choice. You can listen to content on the radio, and you have a right to record the radio to any device capable, for your own private time-shifting use. This includes Internet radio (since they're paying the same fees broadcast radio is paying now!). There's a fairly famous judge's ruling that pretty much validates this right with respect to audio/video recordings (Betamax/VHS ruling.)
2. By enabling them, you're giving your rights away. You're demonstrating both that they have the right to charge you to make copies of what you already have the right to listen to on your own schedule, and you're showing through 'common-practice' that they can do what they're doing.
3. Unbeknownst to you, your DRM content will eventually break down. Don't believe me? I've had several different DRM's break on me in the past year. Does anyone remember downloading movie content from filmspeed.com on the Internet? You have the movie file, but you can't play it - why not? Because it can't call home. How about the software product that no longer has a support web page to get its temporarily running license because they went out of business? History teaches us about the future; we have only to listen. DRM will break down when it is no longer supported by the infrastructure. Some DRM has to phone home. Try doing that with your laptop in an airplane at 25,000 feet with no Internet. Some DRM needs software LOADED ON YOUR MACHINE!!!! to run (Hello Napster, you bunch of hucksters!). What happens when you want to listen to your content on an unsupported OS? OOoops, too bad...What, you upgraded to IE 7? Are you SURE that web-based DRM form will continue to work? What, they put in a firewall at work and you can't get your license file any more? Too bad, no refunds forthcoming from Napster, I'll bet...
If there's anything we should have learned from software in the 1980s it's that SOFTWARE PROTECTION DOESN'T WORK. DRM is SOFTWARE PROTECTION. It's broke out of the box.
4. You can buy what you want elsewhere. Legality of sites such as AllofMp3.com and other Russian-owned sites are still up in the air. Wikipedia articles and web sites argue over and over about whether these sites have the right to continue. AllofMP3 has been running over a year and haven't been shut down by the Russian government yet. Do you have the right to import purchased content from other countries? From what I have read, you have the right to transfer in personal use items, and the onus seems to be on the content owner to restrict you from that right if they choose to reserve it.
5. You can buy what you want HERE, in THIS country. Visited a pawn shop lately? I'll bet that CD of your favorite 80s hair-band is sitting there on a shelf, just waiting for you to buy it for $1 and go home and rip it. Granted, it'll take a bit of know-how, but you can do it..
Reasons 6-10 - DRM blows and is the brainwashing tool of the RIAA. And remember, they suck - don't bow down.
Back to my own experience? NOBODY can give me what I want. The best I could do would be to pay a service like Rhapsody TWICE for my content. Once - a monthly subscription fee to listen to what I want (program my own radio station) and they a SECOND fee to burn the music to a CD so I can take it with me. And if I prefer a different format for convenience? I'll have to rip it myself from the CD I payed them to let me create. How nice of them.....but 90% of what I want to listen to is already in my home library, on either CD, VHS, cassette or DVD. What good are they doing me with the dumb-ass system?
I've about made up my mind that DRM content is EVIL. I will NEVER buy another DRM track. I bought ONE - from Napster - and paid .99 for it. That's the last dollar the DRM-happy folks will see from me, ever. I'm debating maybe paying Rhapsody or Yahoo, or some other service to play the content that I want (on their subscription/playlist option - $3.99 a month?) and then record it for timeshifting later (with windows recorder?). But splitting up the files is going to be a pain in the butt.
What the RIAA and the content folks need to realize is that I am READY and WILLING to pay $.99 a track - but I want a nice MP3 file I can take to any platform, not the crap they're trying to sell me.
1) On all 4 computers in my house, Win 2000/Linux/XP Home and XP Pro all included
2) In my CAR, which plays MP3's off CD, and regular CDs
3) In all 3 MP3 players owned by various family members.
Boy, what a bunch of bullshit these 2 days have been. The RIAA sucks as far as I'm concerned. And those of you who contribute to their fantasy dreams by buying DRM-protected content can all go to hell too. This is a capitalist society, and you're ENABLING them buy buying their DRM bullshit. STOP DOING IT!
1. You have a choice. You can listen to content on the radio, and you have a right to record the radio to any device capable, for your own private time-shifting use. This includes Internet radio (since they're paying the same fees broadcast radio is paying now!). There's a fairly famous judge's ruling that pretty much validates this right with respect to audio/video recordings (Betamax/VHS ruling.)
2. By enabling them, you're giving your rights away. You're demonstrating both that they have the right to charge you to make copies of what you already have the right to listen to on your own schedule, and you're showing through 'common-practice' that they can do what they're doing.
3. Unbeknownst to you, your DRM content will eventually break down. Don't believe me? I've had several different DRM's break on me in the past year. Does anyone remember downloading movie content from filmspeed.com on the Internet? You have the movie file, but you can't play it - why not? Because it can't call home. How about the software product that no longer has a support web page to get its temporarily running license because they went out of business? History teaches us about the future; we have only to listen. DRM will break down when it is no longer supported by the infrastructure. Some DRM has to phone home. Try doing that with your laptop in an airplane at 25,000 feet with no Internet. Some DRM needs software LOADED ON YOUR MACHINE!!!! to run (Hello Napster, you bunch of hucksters!). What happens when you want to listen to your content on an unsupported OS? OOoops, too bad...What, you upgraded to IE 7? Are you SURE that web-based DRM form will continue to work? What, they put in a firewall at work and you can't get your license file any more? Too bad, no refunds forthcoming from Napster, I'll bet...
If there's anything we should have learned from software in the 1980s it's that SOFTWARE PROTECTION DOESN'T WORK. DRM is SOFTWARE PROTECTION. It's broke out of the box.
4. You can buy what you want elsewhere. Legality of sites such as AllofMp3.com and other Russian-owned sites are still up in the air. Wikipedia articles and web sites argue over and over about whether these sites have the right to continue. AllofMP3 has been running over a year and haven't been shut down by the Russian government yet. Do you have the right to import purchased content from other countries? From what I have read, you have the right to transfer in personal use items, and the onus seems to be on the content owner to restrict you from that right if they choose to reserve it.
5. You can buy what you want HERE, in THIS country. Visited a pawn shop lately? I'll bet that CD of your favorite 80s hair-band is sitting there on a shelf, just waiting for you to buy it for $1 and go home and rip it. Granted, it'll take a bit of know-how, but you can do it..
Reasons 6-10 - DRM blows and is the brainwashing tool of the RIAA. And remember, they suck - don't bow down.
Back to my own experience? NOBODY can give me what I want. The best I could do would be to pay a service like Rhapsody TWICE for my content. Once - a monthly subscription fee to listen to what I want (program my own radio station) and they a SECOND fee to burn the music to a CD so I can take it with me. And if I prefer a different format for convenience? I'll have to rip it myself from the CD I payed them to let me create. How nice of them.....but 90% of what I want to listen to is already in my home library, on either CD, VHS, cassette or DVD. What good are they doing me with the dumb-ass system?
I've about made up my mind that DRM content is EVIL. I will NEVER buy another DRM track. I bought ONE - from Napster - and paid .99 for it. That's the last dollar the DRM-happy folks will see from me, ever. I'm debating maybe paying Rhapsody or Yahoo, or some other service to play the content that I want (on their subscription/playlist option - $3.99 a month?) and then record it for timeshifting later (with windows recorder?). But splitting up the files is going to be a pain in the butt.
What the RIAA and the content folks need to realize is that I am READY and WILLING to pay $.99 a track - but I want a nice MP3 file I can take to any platform, not the crap they're trying to sell me.
December 22, 2005
My MIMO
Why I love my MIMO - My neighbor bought a 2.4Ghz phone last Christmas. Since he hooked it up, my 802.11g network has been cutting in and out, most likely due to interference from his phone (I have a 5.8Ghz phone for this reason). Before he got the phone, I had no problems. The day he hooked it up - my wireless network would drop out at least twice a day. Just last month, I purchased a Netgear Wireless Access Point, a MIMO 802.11g access point. Ever since I hooked that puppy up, I have had no interference problems. The MIMO router has 11 antennas in it, and the router intelligently reconfigures itself on the fly for best possible signal transmission to the cards that it is receiving signals from. I've turned off wireless on my firewall/cable router and am using just the access point. In the past month, it hasn't dropped a connection once.
December 06, 2005
Idiot Kills Himself
Today's DUMB-[CENSORED] award goes to Steven Zorn, also proud winner of the Darwin Award. Holding a loaded, single-chamber weapon to his head, Steven clicked the trigger, thinking that the weapon would not fire because it had not fired two times previously. Not only is Steven now dead, but liberals the world over will now jump on this instance as proof that guns (of whatever form) are dangerous, and should be kept out of the hands of citizens. (Steven was playing with a 'pen-gun', which I'd probably classify as useful as a deringer, but more innocuous.). Quite seriously for Steven's family, I'm very sorry for their loss, but he's really pissed me off.
Gun control lobbyists don't need any more reasons to come after the citizen's right to bear arms, and it's dumb shits like this who apparently don't have adequate brain cells to protect their own lives that fuel the liberal movement. In the past, I've been called a liberal, a left-leaner, and other non-Republican names, but if there's one thing that I don't believe in, it's laws made to protect ourselves from our own stupidity. Kitchen knives are dangerous, but do you see us trying to outlaw them? Why not? Some Brits are... Firecrackers are dangerous enough to cause their outright ban in many states of the union, and we all know what those dangerous drugs are outlawed, right? When are we going to stop babying the people of the United States? We probably spend more money protecting potential Darwin winners than we do on the real problems of this country, such as unemployment and homelessness. You know what? If we had fewer DUMB people, that would help solve the unemployment rate! Jobs wouldn't go away - they'd have to hire replacements. And the homeless could live in the now empty homes of the deceased idiots.
What pisses me off more than the well-meaning lobbyists trying to curb our right to be responsible adults and play with what we want to play with, are the assholes who give them the incidental evidence they need to fuel their fire. This is why Steven has earned today's Dumb [CENSORED] award, because he has contributed to their cause.
Gun control lobbyists don't need any more reasons to come after the citizen's right to bear arms, and it's dumb shits like this who apparently don't have adequate brain cells to protect their own lives that fuel the liberal movement. In the past, I've been called a liberal, a left-leaner, and other non-Republican names, but if there's one thing that I don't believe in, it's laws made to protect ourselves from our own stupidity. Kitchen knives are dangerous, but do you see us trying to outlaw them? Why not? Some Brits are... Firecrackers are dangerous enough to cause their outright ban in many states of the union, and we all know what those dangerous drugs are outlawed, right? When are we going to stop babying the people of the United States? We probably spend more money protecting potential Darwin winners than we do on the real problems of this country, such as unemployment and homelessness. You know what? If we had fewer DUMB people, that would help solve the unemployment rate! Jobs wouldn't go away - they'd have to hire replacements. And the homeless could live in the now empty homes of the deceased idiots.
What pisses me off more than the well-meaning lobbyists trying to curb our right to be responsible adults and play with what we want to play with, are the assholes who give them the incidental evidence they need to fuel their fire. This is why Steven has earned today's Dumb [CENSORED] award, because he has contributed to their cause.
December 04, 2005
Why Britney Spears is Rich
Ok, besides the fact that she's had some hit songs, has a really cute face, and is 'da bomb' in the body department, Britney's people must really be looking out for her. I was shopping with my wife today, and we came to a perfume counter at a mall store that smells like the mixture between a greenhouse and a still. The lady behind the counter cornered my wife into trying out a bunch of fragrances, many of which I instantly turned up my nose at. The last one I agreed on with my wife was Blue somethingorother, and it was what I would say is a livable fragrance. After finding out the price tag, I was ready to turn around and walk out of the store, when out of the corner of my eye I saw displayed Britney's new fragrance Fantasy.
I couldn't help myself. I turned to the counter hawker and told her that my curiosity was piqued, and I just had to know 'how bad this smelled'. She said she'd show me just how bad it smelled, mimicking me, as I'd mimicked 90% of the crap cologne she was pushing. I was prepared to make fun of Britney's marketing team, figuring that she'd probably just tacked her name onto something new that they wanted to push, and that it would rank with the rest of the toilet water. You see, I'm a smart-ass consumer, and a smart-ass who laughs when people make fun of Mrs. Spears-Federline, even while harboring not-quite-secret fantasies about her, me and a night or two in Vegas.
Back to reality, I grabbed the sniff card from the salesperson, whiffed and cried out immediately, "Honey!". You see, this is my 'Eureka' voice. When I've found the golden chalice, I call out to my wife. You see, not only didn't Fantasy SUCK as I fully expected, it was fantastic! It smelled like a young woman should. It was innocent, sweet, romantic and sexy as all hell get out. With a strong smell of strawberries, but more than just that, it is one of those perfumes that I just know I can count on to drive me wild. The perfume is one of those that will turn your head when you smell it. If you got a whiff of it, you'd immediately turn to see what hot young thing was passing you by. This perfume BECKONS to a man, the way a perfume is meant to reach out its tendrils and wrap them around your hair in its loving embrace.
So, you see, Britney Spears is rich because no matter how much we prepare to make fun of her (as a 39 year old man I am very ready to do so because she's so pop-icon, yet so redneck-trailer-trash in the news/media), we still find ourselves humming her stupid songs, drooling over her Pepsi commercial(s) and trying to imagine ourselves dancing in her bed [sorry, did I say that out loud?].
So, depending on why you're reading this post, I hope you got the point. I am ashamed to say that I love her perfume, and further ashamed to say that I bought a BIG bottle of it for my wife. This is what women's perfume should STRIVE to be. There are two perfumes I've found in it's class: Red and Exclamation! that I buy for my wife. Almost every other perfume stinks to high heaven, and women wear way too much of it. But there are a very few good ones out there, and Britney has stuck her name on one that will bring her riches for a long time.......DAMN HOW I HATE BEING WRONG.
I couldn't help myself. I turned to the counter hawker and told her that my curiosity was piqued, and I just had to know 'how bad this smelled'. She said she'd show me just how bad it smelled, mimicking me, as I'd mimicked 90% of the crap cologne she was pushing. I was prepared to make fun of Britney's marketing team, figuring that she'd probably just tacked her name onto something new that they wanted to push, and that it would rank with the rest of the toilet water. You see, I'm a smart-ass consumer, and a smart-ass who laughs when people make fun of Mrs. Spears-Federline, even while harboring not-quite-secret fantasies about her, me and a night or two in Vegas.
Back to reality, I grabbed the sniff card from the salesperson, whiffed and cried out immediately, "Honey!". You see, this is my 'Eureka' voice. When I've found the golden chalice, I call out to my wife. You see, not only didn't Fantasy SUCK as I fully expected, it was fantastic! It smelled like a young woman should. It was innocent, sweet, romantic and sexy as all hell get out. With a strong smell of strawberries, but more than just that, it is one of those perfumes that I just know I can count on to drive me wild. The perfume is one of those that will turn your head when you smell it. If you got a whiff of it, you'd immediately turn to see what hot young thing was passing you by. This perfume BECKONS to a man, the way a perfume is meant to reach out its tendrils and wrap them around your hair in its loving embrace.
So, you see, Britney Spears is rich because no matter how much we prepare to make fun of her (as a 39 year old man I am very ready to do so because she's so pop-icon, yet so redneck-trailer-trash in the news/media), we still find ourselves humming her stupid songs, drooling over her Pepsi commercial(s) and trying to imagine ourselves dancing in her bed [sorry, did I say that out loud?].
So, depending on why you're reading this post, I hope you got the point. I am ashamed to say that I love her perfume, and further ashamed to say that I bought a BIG bottle of it for my wife. This is what women's perfume should STRIVE to be. There are two perfumes I've found in it's class: Red and Exclamation! that I buy for my wife. Almost every other perfume stinks to high heaven, and women wear way too much of it. But there are a very few good ones out there, and Britney has stuck her name on one that will bring her riches for a long time.......DAMN HOW I HATE BEING WRONG.
December 01, 2005
My New (Old) Passion
What have I been doing with myself at nights that I no longer post nude pictures of my cute little shih-tzu? I've been busy helping to ressurect an old bad habit called FoxMUD. Fox is a Multi-User Dungeon based on the Diku Code base (huh?!) and was created back in 1993. Since then, it's seen half a dozen sites, and LOTS of players and wizzes come and go. I've talked about Fox MUD before, and if you're interested, click on the link, and give us a whirl. Worst you'll do is waste 10 minutes looking at it, and saying WTF. Best you'll do is log in, get addicted, play 20 hours a day and get fired from your job, divorced from your family and die from dehydration like those kids in Japan and South Korea.
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