The coldest winter I ever spent
Oh and my mother’s 33 day old EMachines computer just died. Like dead. The power supply probably got fried by an electrical storm a few nights ago. Funny though, nothing else in the house was effected. The warrantee people are sending me a new power supply fer free.
I just want a cordless phone that works. That’s all I want. Well ok, that’s not entirely true. I want a cordless phone that has:
What I’ve found is a quagmire.
First off, our house is filled with crummy cordless phones. There is the one behind the bar that rings well enough but makes your callers sound like they are in a deep pit (it rubs the lotion on it’s skin). Upstairs, there is the analog 900 MHz phone. It sounds like shit too and it has crappy range. Then there is the Olympia OL-2410 we’ve been using; it sounds… not like “total crap” but just “poor” and the display recently went south.
What phone do I use? It’s the kind of phone that you can pummel an assailant with. It’s a corded Southwestern Bell Freedom Phone. It’s unapologeticly heavy, sounds great and feels good in your hand.
So, last week, the Olympia 2 handset phone system broke after 1 1/2 years of service. I called Staples and used the extended service plan I got to get an $80 credit. While I was waiting for the credit to arrive, I plugged in my old Uniden 900 MHz digital spread spectrum phone. This is a great phone. Great range, sounds like a corded phone, long battery life, enough heft in the handset to leave a welt on an assailant (especially since you can throw it across the room at him), a well designed answering machine… da da da…
The credit arrives so I go to Staples and pick up a Vtech 2.4 GHz phone. It was great except for it’s horrid range: less than 50 feet. Admittedly, compounding factors include that the range problem was between the 1st and second floors and we have 2 Wifi networks in the house. But shouldn’t these devices SHOULD be able to coexist in the same band?
I returned the phone.
I went back to Staples looking for a phone. After looking at all 30+ different phone models they had (think I’m exaggerating? Take a peek at Staples.com) I concluded that, unless I wanted to spend $220 on a phone, I wouldn’t get what I wanted. $220?!?!? $220?!?!?!? Two Trimline phones would cost $40 and work flawlessly for at least the next 20 years. And think how cordless phones have been around for 20 years now. Are you starting to smell a rat? I am.
So I forged my way over to Radio Shack. I was bedazzled by their selection as well. So many 
flavors of….. vanilla. With the help of a self-avowed over-achieving salesman, I picked out a $70 5.8 GHz phone. To be specific, it is a Maxus 5.8 Gigahertz Dual Handset, Radio Shack # 43-3585. I got it home and plugged one of the phones in. I didn’t dare take everything out of the box until I knew it worked because, I swear Radio Shack must employ master jigsaw puzzlers to pack their products. The corners of my mouth started to curl up as the dual-frequency hum of the dial-tone remained steady in my ear while I walked from room to room. Satisfied, I ripped the rest of the packaging open.
After everything was all set up, I opened the manual to figure out the intricacies of the Memories and such. It was there on page 13 that my heart died.
Conveniently, your cordless phone allows you to transfer outside calls from handset to handset simply by pressing DELETE/TRANS. Conversations will not be interrupted; only one handset at a time can talk with an outside caller. The second handset cannot go off hook to listen to conversations or make an outgoing call while the other handset is in use.
What?
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Only one handset can be used at a time?! So why the frig did I buy a two handset phone? Is it a freaking backup for when the first explodes unexpectedly?
I threw everything in the box. The ecstatic guy at Radio Shack can repack it himself.
Tomorow I will go shopping for telephone system number 3.
I’m half-watching some TV show while geeking. It’s called Design Invasion. They come into your house and…. you can guess the rest… blah blah…
Well, this 50-something woman, with her husband standing behind her just traded her grandmother’s Samifar (spelling? (it’s a large metal Jewish urn)) for “what was behind the door”. It turn out to be a big-screen TV. When she saw what she had won, she looked like she had just won the lottery.
To put this in perspective, she had told us in the previous scene that, of all the items in her living room, it was the thing that was most precious because it was the only substantial thing she had from her grandmother.
That turns my stomach.
Now they’re showing pictures of the before and after rooms. The room looks like….. like every other “after” I’ve ever seen.
I’m looking to backup my data. I’d love to hear comments from the peanut gallery
Here’s what I’ve got so far:
What does this all mean? I have to go back to Staples and return the Maxtor One Touch I just bought. I stood there torn about getting the extended warrantee. I mean, if my backup drive dies with all my data on it, a $200 drive is a drop in the pond next to all my writings and family photos and such.
Friggin Staples ONLY carries Maxtor One Touch external drives (which have serious reliability issues) and “consumer” Maxtor drives, which also have reliability issues.
There are some serious marketing brain-farts here. All they have to do is sell the two drives in retail stores as “fast with a 1 year warrantee” and “slow with a 5 year warrantee”
update 6-8-05 I just bought via mail-order a Maxtor MaXLine Plus II 250G 7200RPM 8MB ATA-133 8MB Cache Hard Drive – 7Y250P0. It’s a “high reliability midline” internal drive. I’ll stick it in an enclosure I have lying around.I’ve played with Trucrypt and it looks excellent.
update 6-9-05 Wow, the new Maxstor MaXLine Plus II drive is incredibly quiet! I’m formatting it right now and if it weren’t for the flickery light and the progress indicator, I’d say that the only thing powered-on in the drive enclosure is the itty bitty fan. Yes, I made sure to get an enclosure with a fan. It’s a bit oversized too. Lots of room for air movement.
update 6-9-05 about an hour later I don’t understand why it takes so long to format a 250 gig drive. I mean, it’s only 2,000,000,000,000 binary elements.
I haven’t actively pursued any Bay Area jobs… on purpose. I want to go and “see what happens”… “let the cards fall where they may”…. da da da…
I am all abuzz happy-like. I just got a tentative job offer from a company that I think would be great to work for! I’ve got an interview in New York City on Friday for this Bay Area job.
More as things develop….
My sides are hurting. Really. Oh my god those are funny!
Thank TJIC for the pointer.
In celebration of me upping my web hosting plan with Spenix, I present to you two videos that make me smile very very much.
A British Volkswagen advertisement for “The new Golf GTI. The original, updated.” It features Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain… updated. (5.6 megabytes)
An advertisement for DC Shoes, “March Madness at the DC Training Facility” wherein the improbable is commonplace. (8.6 megabytes)
Hint: I usually prefer to right-click save-link-as and then play the video full-screen. The resolution isn’t as tight but I can’t stand trying to watch postage-stamp sized video when I’ve got a 19″ monitor in front of me.
And of course, downloads of these files are going to blow my additional 10 gig of transfers/month in no time…. but hey!
Wow. 
When I went looking for a newspaper to find an apartment in the Bay Area, I came up extremely short. Newspaper listings were very slim and the ones that were in the paper didn’t look very good. That is when I realized that, in the Bay Area, print is dead.
If you want to find a job, a place to live, a relationship, a couch, most things… you go to Craigslist.
Now, taking this whole inter-web thing one logical step further: www.housingmaps.com
It’s amazing. It’s easy to use. It’s…. obvious. After years of nobody thinking to put all these kinds of elements together, this match is (in hindsight) perfectly obvious and perfectly terrific.
The days of print classifieds for a variety of items are numbered.
Is 
it live or Memorex?
This guy created some amazing CGI/real-life crossover images. He says, “…and anyone with a camera and a relativly fast computer can make this.”
I almost believe him. It’s still astounding that some guy with a computer and a little drive can make these images, which are more realistic than the best movie special effects from 5 years ago.
He goes on to mention
All you need is:
A digital camera
A reflective sphere (which you see in a few photos) to capture the lighting of the real-life scene which you want to composite your model into.
A small program called HDRShop.
Big program called 3D Studio Max.
and finally you need a good renderer such as VRay.
Then of course you need the tools to get HL2 models into 3dsmax: GFScape, a HL2 Model importer, and a texuture and model converter
(He neglects to mention the approximate $5k price tage of the software, but hey)
You 
know the cliché, “Hindsight is always 20/20”. Well, I should have realized that Panther Valley wasn’t the place for me as soon as I read the Rules for living here.
There are 15 numbered and 24 blue Roman Numeraled pages of rules to living in this place. The rules cover all the mundanity… everything from “burning of rubbish on Common Property is prohibited” to “no poultry of any kind shall be raised, bred or kept on any lot”. I’ve got no problem with any of the rules… well, some of them irk me a little but I realize that sometimes sacrifices for the common peace make for a better society.
The thing that should have told me to leave was how they started this manifesto. They could have opened with parking regulations, or noise ordinances, or garbage guidelines. But no. They opened with shit.
1. Defecation in the open by dogs and other animal pets shall be immediately removed and disposed of at the residence of the person owning, keeping, harboring or in control of such animals. Burying of pet fecal matter anywhere within Panther Valley is strictly prohibied.
I have no problem at all with this rule. Actually, I’m pretty much in favor of it. It’s just that…. they opened with…. shit. Or more precisely, “shitting”. Take a look at how the sentence reads. Putting that passive verb at the start of the sentence there is just a bit out of place. I’m convinced that they worked hard to intentionally phrase that so the word “defecation” would sit there at the top of the page.
Now, the rules aren’t really put in any purposeful order but we all know that the first things on any list are the ones you are going to remember the most. Why didn’t they put the more serious rule about firing weapons (not allowed!), or loitering, or poultry first? Obviously, the most important thing in Panther Valley is controlling and retaining shit. Isn’t there some Freudian archetype concering this?
I’m just not down with an organization who’s guiding principles put anal retentiveness at the top of the priority list.
Village III, Rule XI: Ball playing and group games shall not be permitted on all roadways and common property.
What the frig, man?! Playing ball in the street is a mainstay of growing up in America! And I won’t hesitate to mention that Village III is consisted mostly of a group of 20 very quiet, dead-end streets linked together by 2 main streets.
Village IV, Rule Q: No immoral, improper, offensive of unlawful use shall be made of any Unit…
That last condition, “unlawful” is clear enough, but who defines those first three conditions? Hmmm. I’m not liking this. Happily, I live in Village III so I can be as immoral, improper, and offensive as I want to be! If I’m imaginative, I could work it so this clause cancels out the doggie doo clause. Think about it!
You can find the full set of Rules and Regulations on the PVPOA website.