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I’m moving my Rants over from it’s old home on my site into my blog. I’ll release them gradually, offering time for comments.

You can tell it’s a rant by it being in the Rants Category.

Although these rants appeared before my WordPress blog started, I’m dating them appropriately. So for the time being, you’ll find all my Rants in a pile as the very oldest blog entries. I have not changed the text from the original. I may feel differently now but I haven’t updated them yet… all in the fullness of time…

Don’t take these rants too seriously but don’t dismiss them either. Rants are, by their nature, usually a topic for (heated) debate.

R?nt:
noun:
– Violent or extravagant speech or writing.
– A speech or piece of writing that incites anger or violence
– (Chiefly British) Wild or uproarious merriment
verb:
– To speak in a loud, pompous, or prolonged manner

Cordless phones are a huge disposable industry. How many cordless phones have you owned in the past 10 years? A good phone that is made to last is hard to find.

For corded phones, you lose a lot of credibility with me if you don’t have at least one corded phone in your house… they are reliable as anything. I’ve had the same 2 corded phones for 10 years+ I’ve lost track; they don’t break.

First, more megahertz doesn’t equal better phone. That is a STUPID idea that people apparently willingly buy into. That’s like saying you’ll get better reception on a radio station at 107.9 than a similar station at 88.1. To use another analogy, it’s like saying that a Miata will get you across town faster than Cadillac during rush hour. Additionally, every 5.8 Ghz phone I’ve seen so far isn’t really a 5.8 Ghz phone; it’s 5.8 Ghz from the base to the handset and either 2.4 Ghz or 900 Mhz from the handset back to the base. This means you get the worst of both worlds; each of these technologies has certain problems with reception… maybe it’s trouble going through concrete walls or bouncing off a refrigerator. By using both technologies in one phone, you’re guaranteed to have more trouble.

Excellent phone: Uniden Digital Spread Spectrum 900Mhz phone with answering machine model exs9800. This phone was a new model in about 1999. Excellent and adjustable handset speaker sound quality, people tell me they hear me perfectly, good heft to the handset (I like very much that it feels like a “real” phone in my hands, I’ll save the ity bity phone for when I want to put it in my pocket on the road), digital spread spectrum keeps radio snoops out as well as the best encryption, excellent sounding answering machine, easy to use answering machine (big, simple buttons et all), excellent range in a concrete and steel high-rise building.

Crap phone (that masquerades as an excellent phone): Olympia / Wave Industries OL2400 2.4 Ghz phone Pluses: stylish looking, good interface to a lot of features. Minuses: hard to hold with your shoulder, hard to hold handset speaker to your ear (the speaker only pushes sound out of a tiny opening so you must place it precisely or not hear your party, only moderate speaker sound quality, only moderate microphone, the case creaks loudly directly into your ear as you hold it up to your ear and move about (this drove me INSANE), received some interference in the form of lower sound quality and occasional pops when within 10′ of my 2.4 Ghz wireless network router.

Good phone: I only used this phone for a few weeks before moving away from it but it might qualify as an “excellent phone” Radio Shack 43-3570 2.4 Ghz Expandable Cordless Telephone System. First, it was less expensive than many of the $200 double handset phones I’ve found. $200 for a phone?!?!?! Good interface, excellent sound quality, expandable to 4 phones in $40 handset increments, useful “voicemail waiting” blinky light, though when I hold the Radio Shack phone closer than 6 feet to my laptop running wifi (IE, sitting at the computer while on the phone), the wifi bandwidth suffers a bit and the phone crackles a bit for about 15 seconds (I assume the phone is switching channels or something). It’s kind of annoying. It would take getting a 900MHz phone to fix that issue since wifi is 2.4 GHz. I tried switching wifi channels to no avail. It has enough heft to hold it comfortably. And it has this nifty feature where the phones can work as walkie talkies without the base being nearby. I haven’t given it a real-world test but it sounds neat enough.

I have so far purchased (and returned) 2 CRAP double handset 5.8 Ghz phones. The most amazingly stupid problem I had with it was that you could only have 1 handset off the hook at a time. I’ve spoken about this before.

Ok, enough ranting about phones.

I clicked on one of those stupid SPUR-M spam emails. The ingredients are claimed to be:

Each tablet contains:

Salabmisri 130mg, Kokilaksha 64mg, Vanya Kahu 32mg, Kapikachchhu 32mg, Suvarnavang 32mg

Extracts:

Vriddadaru 64mg, Gokshura 64mg, Jeevanti 64mg, Shaileyam 32mg

Since I had never heard of these ingredients, I googled for them. I was suprised (and impressed) to find 6,400 google references for Salabmisri. Then I checked on Kokilaksha and again found 6,400 references. It seems that every ingredient has just about exactly 6,400 references. And they all say exactly the same thing. Google went so far as to offer me only 30 unique results out of the 6,400 hits.

Jeez, what a job, going to all manner of web sites and pushing your shit on them all day.

PS. (emphasis mine)

FDA Disclaimer:
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (although our pills are produced in state of the art pharmicitual laboratories, using the latest technology, fully in complient with stringent WHO standards). This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

update 9-23-05 The page you are looking at is ranked as the number 1 site for “Kapikachchhu” in the world in Google. That’s pretty funny.

I’m well.

Home is nice. Housemates are nice. It seems that every time I get home, I’m offered a beer. The place itself is ‘ok’; not the nicest, not the worst but it’s got a very good location (see next line-item) in The Mission, it’s near stuff, near busses, and near highways :-) And nice housemates go a long way. Rent is a cheap $650/month.

It’s almost always sunny in my neighborhood :-)

I went to a Fire Arts Open House at The Crucible last week. It was way cool. Giant Tesla coils, lots of crazy flaming things including The Hand of God a sculpture that shoots burning gasoline(!!) 200 feet in the air. Gasoline is much more dangerous to use than the usual propane or LNG. When they were getting it ready to fire the thing, all the fire fighters suited up and they pushed the crowd back about 200 feet, yipe!. They also had all manner of beautiful flaming structures… a super-powerful wood stove that shot amazing sparks 30 feet in the air, a propane heated metal sphere that glowed white hot, and other flaming structures. There was flaming Simon Says game: you stood inside a 10′ ring and 4 buttons were positioned around you; flames shot up from each station and you had to push the buttons to mimic Simon’s flames. :-) Favorite concept of the evening was Dance Dance Incineration. Start with Dance Dance Revolution and go from there. The player puts on a shiny silver fire-proof suit with respirator and plays DDI in front of a projection screen TV. When you do well, it shoots timed jets of flame into the air; when you do poorly, it shoots jets of flame IN YOUR FACE! And yes, the video game title bar reads “Dance Dance Incineration” with a cute icon of a dancer on fire.

I took a welding course this weekend.. 10-6 Sat & Sun. It helped to get me going in ARC welding and Oxyfuel cutting but to be honest it wasn’t the best class in the world. I might have done better to just buy an ARC welder, watch some videos and practice in the back yard all weekend.

My part-time job has just about started. I signed the contract but it’s taking a little while to get going. My boss/co-worker was out for a few days with his brand spanking new daughter.

I really like that a couple days ago, I was able to walk out of the house to a good restaurant. I went to Herbivore on Valencia. I’m not veggie but I like trying different foods. Their (veggie) ceviche was excellent! :-)

I still need a bicycle and I’m still thinking about the idea of getting a motorcycle. Still looking…

I bought a used desk from this couple in Palo Alto. It’s an Ikea Jerker computer desk. I liked it so much I went to Ikea and bought an extra shelf for it.

I’m having trouble with the idea of buying food for the house. You see, there is this place down the street that sells gargantuan (and yummy) burritos, including chips and salsa for four bucks. I’m not sure but I think it’s cheaper to eat there than it is to eat at home. And burritos are rich in many vital nutrients!

I’m figuring out the tight parking around here. I got my first parking ticket just a few days after I moved in but I think I’m doing well. I see a lot of cars with boots on them. You get a boot by having 10 unpaid tickets. One of my housemates decided to let the city keep his car when it got towed away; the tickets cost more than the car was worth. Well, since it’s going to take a while to get a CA drivers licence, I got a 6 week visitor parking permit for $30. What is the deal with cities sweeping their residential streets every week? I’m thinking that it’s just a money making venture. When I lived in Jersey City, there was a brand new street that didn’t have cleaning yet; I watched the dirt and garbage pile up for 6 months. I would say that it took 3 months before the street needed to be swept. So of course the city put in 2x per week sweeping. I’m sure the tickets issued paid for the street-Zamboni in no time. I just noticed today that on some of the really steep streets in the area, there is no street sweeping. I’m planning on using that to my advantage now!

I miss Vickie and the kids, Julia, Melis, Noni and Bamph!

My UPS Ground boxes arrived on Friday. It was a pain in the neck to wait around for the UPS guy all day but it’s done. My 2nd day air computer boxes computer arrived too. Some of my stuff was damaged a little. Maybe I’ll follow up with UPS… grrr.

It’s all coming along!

I sat around ALL DAY waiting for UPS and my stuff never arrived. Of course, I should be happy that I’m going to save $350 because the delivery was “guaranteed by end of day”. But I just ended up loitering in the house all day getting frustrated.

I was supposed to go buy a bike today. I set up all these meetings with folks on Craigslist today but I’m sure that most of those bikes are already sold by now. GRRR.

So, I’m outa here. I’m going to go do…. something. Anything not in the house!

Certain readers of my blog have expressed how they haven’t read my blog until now because wasn’t syndicated on Livejournal. I just wanted to show these people how I read their blogs, be they on Livejournal, Blogspot, WordPress, or a custom system like The BBC or New York Times.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

1. Get Firefox. It is good. It is free. It makes your web surfing experience faster, it’s less prone to viruses than Internet Explorer and it has a few terrific features like tabbed browsing that will make your internet experience even better.

2. Get the Sage RSS reader extention for Firefox.

3. Open the Sage sidebar. There are many ways… one is to hit Alt-S while in Firefox. I prefer to use Tools | View | Customize to drag the Sage icon onto the toolbar; Then I can just click on the icon next to my Firefox Refresh button.

4. Go to your favorite blog.

5. Click on the little magnifying lens icon in the Sage sidebar. It will find the RSS feed for the blog automatically. Choose a feed with your mouse and click “Add Feed”.

6. Do steps 4 and 5 for all your favorite blogs. Some of mine are BoingBoing, TJIC, the Technical Video Rental.com blog, BBC News, Gizmodo, CNN, Craigslist Bikes for Sale in SF, My sister’s blog on Livejournal. All of these sites have RSS feeds. My list is a lot longer but it’s on my desktop computer, which is still being shipped to me. (it should be here today… goodie!)

7. Whenever you’re wondering if any of the blogs in your list have been updated, click on the little Refresh icon. It will automatically check all of the blogs in a couple seconds and indicate to you all of the new content.

There are RSS feeds for a tremendously wide array of websites. RSS is an internet standard. It’s good that way. Use it. You’ll like it.

Neo: I know what you’re trying to do.
Morpheus: I’m trying to free your mind, Neo…but I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.

In 2003, Gary Fisher Bikes offered about 40 different bicycle models. Most available in 4 different frame sizes. In 2004, the line was about 20% different with 43 bikes offered. In 2005, they are offering 58 different basic models; 1/3 of their line has completely changed since last year.

It should be noted that they ONLY sell mountain bikes

Gimme a break with all this marketing crapola. I know that it’s all about going into a store and having the salesman put you in the bike that is “for you”. It gives you that warm fuzzy feeling that allows you to plunk down three grand on a bike.

Of course, it’s all big business… If they sell one of every bike they make per year, there’s (58*4*$2000) $5 million dollars in retail sales.

I’m poking around craigslist for a bicycle to ride in SF and take to the playa. After being out here 2 weeks and seeing the traffic and parking situation, I’m considering buying a motorcycle. The city heartily encourages motorcycles. In areas with parking meters, you can always find a spot designated for bikes. Where a car pays $0.25 for 10 minutes with a 1 hr limit, the bike meters are $0.10 an hour with a 10 hour limit. In areas with no meters, you can always find motorcycles parked on the sidewalk or tucked into tiny parking spaces… sans parking tickets. In addition, most of the major local streets have a bike lane. Of course those are supposed to be for human powered bicycles but they lend greatly toward getting a motorbike to the front of a lineup of cars at a red light.

So I’m definitely getting a bicycle… I need it for the playa. I wouldn’t dream of using an internal combustion engine in it’s stead on the playa.

Now there’s the question of a motorbike. I did a little browsing on craigslist for prices and such. I don’t know much (read: nuffum) about motorbikes. I found a couple used bikes and googled about them. Here was a 1994 Ninja for $1,800. Hey, I’ve heard of the Ninja. Google .

Oh . . . my . . . . god.

You expect certain things from the Ninja. Power. Quickness. Agility. Focus. Bravado. Attitude. Heavy on the attitude. Still, unless you catapult-launch F-18 Hornets or 6500-horsepower Top Fuel dragsters for a living, this Ninja is a revelation. Prepare yourself for the strongest literbike in the world. Understand that it’s lighter than most 600s. And while that’s sinking in, make a mental note to pack an extra Depends.

One hundred mph arrives before the 13,000-rpm redline in first gear. Shift into second at triple digits and a practiced throttle hand can lift the front Dunlop for obscene distances. The 10R covers a quarter-mile in less time than it takes to read this sentence, and it punishes incompetence, impudence and stupidity even more quickly. Too much throttle, almost anywhere, and it’ll stick you in the ground like a golf tee.

This Ninja doth not suffer fools. It eats them. Whole. Any sportbike commands respect and first-rate skills. Kawasaki’s all-new ZX-10R demands more of both than any motorcycle currently for sale, along with simply heroic willpower. Nothing in any showroom punts you forward with such pure, concentrated, brute force. Its predatory silhouette alone makes small children, domestic pets and impressionable girls hyperventilate. If it lived next door, the ZX-10R would bet heavily on the Oakland Raiders. It would own an overwrought Rottweiler named Cujo and play all 11 Metallica albums every weekend with the dial cranked up to 11. Your mother wouldn’t approve. Your black-sheep uncle doing time for armed robbery would advise against it. Twenty years after the first 900, Kawasaki’s latest literbike is entirely stunning and unmistakably a Ninja.

Wuw.

And this blows what’s left of my mind…

And here’s the kicker. Add that 433-pound wet weight to the 170-pound rider we use for spec-chart calculations, divide by 161.9 horsepower, and you have a weight/power ratio of 3.72 pounds per. It just doesn’t get any better than that, sports fans.

My model airplane brain goes off on this, thinking (this line of thinking isn’t technically accurate but phoey on you, it’s my blog!)…

1 hp=750 watts… so each pound get’s it’s own 200 watts to drag it along. My 1.5 lb model plane peaks at about 180 watts.. or about 120 watts per pound. So this bike offers almost twice the power per pound as my looping, rolling, 0-90mph in 5 seconds, nearly vertical performance model aircraft! If you put a propeller on this bike, it would perform dramatically more powerf^H^H^H^H^H^H dramati^H^H^H^H^H^H^H intens^H^H^H^H^H^H betterer than my plane.

This from the Federal Trade Commission: (page moved to here)

Your Access to Free Credit Reports

Soon you’ll be able to get your credit report for free. A recent amendment to the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies to provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every 12 months.
…

Q: How do I order my free report?

A: The three nationwide consumer reporting companies have set up one central website, toll-free telephone number, and mailing address through which you can order your free annual report. To order, click on www.annualcreditreport.com, call 877-322-8228, or complete the Annual Credit Report Request Form and mail it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. The form is on the back of this brochure; or you can print it from www.ftc.gov/credit. Do not contact the three nationwide consumer reporting companies individually. They are only providing free annual credit reports through www.annualcreditreport.com, 877-322-8228, and Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.

You may order your reports from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies at the same time, or you can order from only one or two. The law allows you to order one free copy from each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies every 12 months.

Read more about it.

I found 1 error on my Experian credit report… I had paid off a loan 3 years ago but they had it listed as being past due. It’ll take 1-2 months to fix. Better to do this kind of thing now than when I want to buy a house or something and time is more important.

update 8-8-05 Experian just got back to me and fixed the error. The loan is now “Paid, Closed”. That was easy. :-)

I blogged last year about my confusion with buying multi-vitamins. It comes down to knowing how much vitamins to take and how much is too much. I’ve found a good reference. Consumerlab.com is a free resource available to Oxford Healthcare members… of which I am.

I got the Puritan Mega Vita Min tablets today with my 10% Oxford discount. (hint: if you call them on the phone, they don’t verify your Oxford membership)By taking them, I hope to live forever. I’ll get back to you in a century or so to tell you if it works.

Here’s the Consumerlab research:
Continue reading ‘Vitamins’ »