Sarah Palin is resigning her job as governor of Alaska, and picked the sketchiest possible day of the year -- the day before the Fourth of July -- to do it. Why? No one knows. The smart money is on a scandal about to hit, but in absence of that, it just looks like sheer spineless brittleness -- her inept public persona, her mafious political tactics, and her intolerance of dissent have combined to make her a laughing stock of her among all but the 25 percenters. The rightbloggers are trying to spin it as a strategic move to get into conservative activism or to save her energy for a run at the White House in 2012; everyone else sees it as symptomatic of being a quitter. I certainly don't think I can take her seriously as a political force anymore; while it's obvious she's never really been able to make a niche for herself on the national stage, I guess this shouldn't be that surprising.
Comcast for several weeks has been doing commercials knocking off Verizon's FiOS commercials. While I don't have a terribly high opinion of either company, I have to tell Comcast this: go get your own ad campaign. Are you trying to out-smarm Microsoft's pathetic "I'm a PC" campaign? You do realize ads like that make you look like a second-stringer, right? (Also, note to Verizon: when you do get FiOS to Cape Cod, can you please make sure there's some copper to carry current? The whole point of hanging onto a land line is to make sure you can still call out during an extended power outage; an 8-hour battery will not do the trick, especially in an area with a dodgy grid like ours.)
I need a new camcorder, and I'm a little ticked that MiniDV gear is getting increasingly hard to find. Maybe that makes me a deadender, but I still like the DV codec. Hell, I'd even be willing to do without tape if someone could make a DV camcorder that could record onto a high-capacity flash drive or SDHC card.
On a final note, I got a chance to try out the Dr. Dre Beats headphones today. Allowing for the fact that the demo station was unbelievably loud, the sound quality was pretty much everything promised. However, the price... well, I have a pretty firm policy of avoiding any Monster Cable product unless it's absolutely my only option, and I feel safe in saying that the $300 tab is probably about twice what the phones are actually worth; poking around on B&H's website, where finding a pair of studio headphones over $200 is something of a chore unless you're looking for some in-ear dealie only Paul Oakenfold can afford, would seem to back me up on this. And, hell, I checked out some reviews, only to remind myself that audiophiles would give rave reviews to a party hat scraping on vinyl siding if it cost $500 and had "reference" scrawled on the hat in crayon. So yeah.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
From here on in, analog goes to the wall
(Extra credit to anyone who spots an extremely obscure reference.)
Well, the analog TV era is over. I would have rather seen DVB-T than ATSC, but we get what we get. Rescan your tuners and get some higher-gain antennas if you're still getting broadcast.
Now if only some of these stations could see fit to using the extra channel space for, you know, original programming and the like...
Well, the analog TV era is over. I would have rather seen DVB-T than ATSC, but we get what we get. Rescan your tuners and get some higher-gain antennas if you're still getting broadcast.
Now if only some of these stations could see fit to using the extra channel space for, you know, original programming and the like...
Monday, June 1, 2009
Janet Napolitano and her permanent headache
I had planned on posting some choice snark about the comedy troupe "The Whitest Kids U Know", but the murder of Dr. George Tiller intervened. The irony of the right wing's temper tantrum over the Department of Homeland Security's report on right-wing domestic terror threats is so obvious it's painful. I don't envy Janet Napolitano her job right now -- her office is probably the busiest place in Washington right now.
Call it what it is: a terror attack. The murderer (currently suspected to be anti-government extremist and likely Operation Rescue member Scott Roeder, currently in custody) shot the man down in his church and seems to have been obsessed with Tiller for years. Tiller performed the thankless and harrowing job of terminating wanted pregnancies in situations where the fetus couldn't be carried to term, a tiny specialty for which he knew he took his life in his hands every day he got out of bed in the morning. For this he lies dead, and I can only hope the man who shot him is the man in custody.
Maybe it's a character flaw on my part, but I like Dantean punishments. I want his murderer to be shivved up the ass in prison with a sharpened coathanger. And I hope that there is a doctor somewhere in this country brave enough to take Tiller's place.
Call it what it is: a terror attack. The murderer (currently suspected to be anti-government extremist and likely Operation Rescue member Scott Roeder, currently in custody) shot the man down in his church and seems to have been obsessed with Tiller for years. Tiller performed the thankless and harrowing job of terminating wanted pregnancies in situations where the fetus couldn't be carried to term, a tiny specialty for which he knew he took his life in his hands every day he got out of bed in the morning. For this he lies dead, and I can only hope the man who shot him is the man in custody.
Maybe it's a character flaw on my part, but I like Dantean punishments. I want his murderer to be shivved up the ass in prison with a sharpened coathanger. And I hope that there is a doctor somewhere in this country brave enough to take Tiller's place.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Wingnut flameout
Sonia Sotomayor maybe isn't the best of all possible choices when the Supreme Court is heavily slanted towards the Scalia wing, but she's pretty good in absolute terms. I've heard reservations about her attitude towards church-state issues, and that could be an issue, but overall she seems like a very solid choice. (In fact, it does seem Obama went out of his way to pick someone with a long track record -- what he said in his introduction speech seems to bear out on examination.)
Of course, as Amanda on Pandagon pointed out, the wingnut world is reacting predictably, calling Sotomayor an affirmative action appointee. Now here's a question -- is there anyone n0n-white that Obama could have appointed that wouldn't get that label? Of course not.
On Prop 8: it sucks. It was probably a legally correct decision, and at least the California Supreme Court refused to void the marriages already performed. But good lord does it suck. Best of luck to the CA LGBT community on the 2010 election.
Of course, as Amanda on Pandagon pointed out, the wingnut world is reacting predictably, calling Sotomayor an affirmative action appointee. Now here's a question -- is there anyone n0n-white that Obama could have appointed that wouldn't get that label? Of course not.
On Prop 8: it sucks. It was probably a legally correct decision, and at least the California Supreme Court refused to void the marriages already performed. But good lord does it suck. Best of luck to the CA LGBT community on the 2010 election.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Crap commercial
The "I Married My Dream Girl" commercial from freecreditreport.com is nothing more than "bitch set me up" set to music, and I'd prefer never to see or hear it again. I'm inclined to think any guy who wishes he hadn't gotten married because of his wife's credit score deserves to be shitcanned.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
It's Wingnut Boilover Day
How do we stop the extremists in this country from thinking their opinion is the only one that matters?
Can we prevent the Eric Rudolphs and Timothy McVeighs of this country from bringing back the bad old days of lynchings and Red Scares?
When will the wingnuts stop shitting all over our shared national symbols? First the Minutemen and Michael Savage's laughable Paul Revere Society, now the reduction of one of the great symbols of humanity's right to consent to its government to a juvenile sex joke supporting greedy, ignorant cheapskates' right to be greedy, ignorant cheapskates.
I wore a flag sticker on my backpack for about a year after 9/11. When it became clear that things were returning to business as usual and that the right-wing hawks and lunatics had every intention of appropriating the flag and the symbols of our history for their own purposes, the sticker came off. We of the American Left need to take our symbols back and remind the people who are abusing them that back in the day, they'd probably have been Crown loyalists. Update: Teabaggers at the Hyannis Airport Rotary. I drove by screaming they were a disgrace to the flag and flipping them all the bird. They booed me. Heh. Not concerned. (Well, except for the part where they were causing a traffic jam worthy of August.)
AmazonFail update: I would categorize their response as barely adequate -- they have more or less admitted fault and mostly repaired the problem, but haven't explicitly apologized, nor have they been really clear about what happened. They will be watched, and have already lost a lot of customers to places like Powell's or AbeBooks. At this point, I think it's a judgement call as to whether to boycott or not. I have already made one of the purchases I was planning on making at Amazon at another location and though I will resume doing Vine reviews soon, there's a very good possibility I may do my self-bought reviews here or at Off Season for a while. Which is just as well, as many of my upcoming review choices probably should be at Off Season anyway, if only to get more traffic. Update: see Clay Shirky's analysis of the response to AmazonFail, which I thought was somewhat justified myself but bordered on a witch hunt.
Can we prevent the Eric Rudolphs and Timothy McVeighs of this country from bringing back the bad old days of lynchings and Red Scares?
When will the wingnuts stop shitting all over our shared national symbols? First the Minutemen and Michael Savage's laughable Paul Revere Society, now the reduction of one of the great symbols of humanity's right to consent to its government to a juvenile sex joke supporting greedy, ignorant cheapskates' right to be greedy, ignorant cheapskates.
I wore a flag sticker on my backpack for about a year after 9/11. When it became clear that things were returning to business as usual and that the right-wing hawks and lunatics had every intention of appropriating the flag and the symbols of our history for their own purposes, the sticker came off. We of the American Left need to take our symbols back and remind the people who are abusing them that back in the day, they'd probably have been Crown loyalists. Update: Teabaggers at the Hyannis Airport Rotary. I drove by screaming they were a disgrace to the flag and flipping them all the bird. They booed me. Heh. Not concerned. (Well, except for the part where they were causing a traffic jam worthy of August.)
AmazonFail update: I would categorize their response as barely adequate -- they have more or less admitted fault and mostly repaired the problem, but haven't explicitly apologized, nor have they been really clear about what happened. They will be watched, and have already lost a lot of customers to places like Powell's or AbeBooks. At this point, I think it's a judgement call as to whether to boycott or not. I have already made one of the purchases I was planning on making at Amazon at another location and though I will resume doing Vine reviews soon, there's a very good possibility I may do my self-bought reviews here or at Off Season for a while. Which is just as well, as many of my upcoming review choices probably should be at Off Season anyway, if only to get more traffic. Update: see Clay Shirky's analysis of the response to AmazonFail, which I thought was somewhat justified myself but bordered on a witch hunt.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Amazon, WTF?
Well, if it hasn't reached you yet, it will soon -- hundreds of books on GLBT, teen sexuality, and women's issues vanished from Amazon.com's sales ranking lists over the course of Easter Sunday. The blogosphere has, quite predictably and understandably, shit a brick over this, especially as the problem seems to have been outstanding since February.
Now I do not personally think this was a corporate decision, but Amazon customer reps have been sending out form letters calling it a "glitch" (after an initial round of form letters that would seem to indicate that they had no idea what was going on). They have yet to post anything on the front page, though at least a few people (including me) believe that the system was intentionally trolled during a time when most of Amazon's US staff was probably home for the Easter weekend, and at least one person is claiming responsibility (though his credibility is in grave doubt, based largely on his lack of programming mojo). (There is an ongoing Twitter discussion at #amazonfail.)
Amazon knows this has been a disaster for them; many people have canceled orders, and I myself sent a note saying that I would not only postpone any purchases I'm considering (I had a couple in mind, including the new Michael Ruhlman book and a deck of Spanish playing cards) but that as a Vine reviewer, I won't be submitting any content until it's resolved. I'm willing to grant them a presumption of innocence, but even if they are innocent, they're handling it poorly and deserve to lose massive amounts of money over it.
Now I do not personally think this was a corporate decision, but Amazon customer reps have been sending out form letters calling it a "glitch" (after an initial round of form letters that would seem to indicate that they had no idea what was going on). They have yet to post anything on the front page, though at least a few people (including me) believe that the system was intentionally trolled during a time when most of Amazon's US staff was probably home for the Easter weekend, and at least one person is claiming responsibility (though his credibility is in grave doubt, based largely on his lack of programming mojo). (There is an ongoing Twitter discussion at #amazonfail.)
Amazon knows this has been a disaster for them; many people have canceled orders, and I myself sent a note saying that I would not only postpone any purchases I'm considering (I had a couple in mind, including the new Michael Ruhlman book and a deck of Spanish playing cards) but that as a Vine reviewer, I won't be submitting any content until it's resolved. I'm willing to grant them a presumption of innocence, but even if they are innocent, they're handling it poorly and deserve to lose massive amounts of money over it.
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