Adamga's personal BLOG

Well, my buddy's wife was away for a few days, and in the spirit of, well, in really no special spirit other than to consume some spirits, I popped over to his place. Had dinner out, and then went back to watch some movie on the tube.

Turns out, he had the whole season of Rockstar Supernova on his PVR. He wanted my opinion of some song, so he put it on. We got in an argument over what I call the "American Diva" sound - you know that sound: when you listen to the national anthem at a sporting event in the states and the female singers trick the notes around.

Anyways, we watched a couple of more performances, and I was hooked. We pretty much caught the whole season, and then last week I watched week 9 all by myself!!! Willingly.

Now I'm hooked.

Crap.

Man, it took forever, and I'm not a handy guy, but I finally finished my basement office and have my machines set up again. Not a square angle in the entire office, but I did it all myself.

It's funny how you learn how to do it right after you did it wrong....

You know, it still amazes me that Microsoft employees are buying iPods. There are a couple of reasons for my amazement:

1) You work for a company that has created an incredible ecosystem for digital media, including legal music downloads with DRM. 

2) The iPOD, I'm sorry to say, is just an overpriced MP3 player. Can you say laptop hard disk, USB (?) port, and a nicely designed plastic shell. BIG TIME OVERPRICED!

3) The iPOD does not play WMA format. No real DRM support.

4) MP3 quality compared to WMA quality is noticeably lacking

5) The array of incredible devices out there that can do MORE than the iPOD for far less money is staggering

6) If you can't plug in a device to a USB port, should you really be working in the high tech sector?

7) It's a generally accepted idiom that you should not bite the hand that feeds you. Even my dogs know that. 

From Mark Relph's Blog

iPods at the 'Soft...

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,66460,00.html

Nothing like good old fashioned sensational journalism. 

I have a blue badge, I have a Creative Zen.  I'd rather quit Microsoft than buy an iPod.

By a lot, Microsoft's 2nd Quarter earnings beat the street by 2 cents, and the company raised guidance for the remainder of the year. But the stock is little changed. What is going on?

So it was my Dad's birthday. 55 years old. It's nice to have a young father.

So everyone was shocked by the scope of the Tsunami disasters in Asia. It's amazing to see the scope of assistance going to relief efforts, from all over the world.

My Dad took all of christmas presents back to the store, returned them for money, and donated all of the money to the Red Cross Tsumani relief fund.

Instead of getting him a birthday gift this year, Steph and I decided to donate some money to the relief effort on his behalf. He was thrilled.

Coolest dad in the world.

I'm sorry, but the person who invented wallpaper glue needs to be hurt, badly.

Just spent a half day stripping wallpaper from our main bathroom. I tried a wallpaper steamer (crap), tried a router (crap), and ended up with a two-phased approach that worked- strip the facia off the paper, leaving the main part of the wallpaper on the wall, and then after that's done, go around and soak the remainder on the wall, and scrape it (pull it off).

Next time, fire might be the best answer.

The name of the book is obviously catchy :), however, it is a great book so far. It's goal is to deal with general modern technology issues, in layman's terms. Things like cloning and how it's accomplished, Robotics and AI, and Quantum Physics/Mechanics in regards to teleportation.

An engrossing read, highly recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1594740089/qid=1104684508/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-7964673-4984032?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

So it's Christmas eve, and my five year old is all excited. She's trying to get her mom to put the stockings up, so she can get to bed before Santa comes...

I'm at my desk goofing around, and she asks me where Santa is and when he's coming. So I do what every contemporary father does, open my browser, and navigate to the norad santa site (through a little help from MSN search).

So I get there, and guess what? You can't do squat without installing RealPlayer. Fine I say, even though I'm running on a Windows XP Pro box with Windows Media Center 2005, and of course, all the codecs installed for Windows Media Player, I'll install it.

After diligently ensuring that I OPT OUT of all their Spam options, I go through the install (by the way, why should I have to opt out ?). It downloads their installer through an ActiveX control, and then proceeds to offer me RealOne Gold or Basic. Where is just plain old RealPlayer? I don't want no subscription service!!! So I pick basic. So it goes ahead and infects the heck out of my registry, installs all it's run entries, and then takes me to the RealOne home page. Gee thanks.

Navigate BACK to the Santa Norad site, and my daughter (having patiently sat on my lap this long, anxiously waiting to see where Santa is on Radar) is all excited. So we click on the link, and Wammo! You need to have Quicktime installed as well! What the F@#$!

So now, I go and install the Quicktime runtime (another fine piece of work, NOT), and then, after 10 minutes of trials and tribulations, my daughter can finally see where the heck Santa is.

And I do this for a living. I can't imagine how many poor kids couldn't see the site because they couldn't get all that viral crap installed.

Anyways, I promptly removed their crap, and I will now BOYCOTT any site that doesn't use standard pages I can play in Media Player, or at least through some sort of simple, single step installation.

BOOOOOO to Real Networks!  BOOOOOO to Apple !

Let's take a fictional case:

Single Income, @ $100,000

Income tax paid: approximately $40,000 (this is a guess, maybe a little high)

That leaves $60,000 to live off

Let's add expenses to the mix:

Mortage Payments: $1500 /month

Car Payments (assuming 2 cars): $1000/month

Property Taxes (this varies with locale): $300 /month

Insurance(good drivers, both cars, plus home): $300/month

Phone Service: $60 / month

Heat: $120 /month

Hydro:  $250 / month

Sum: $3530/month, after tax income

On 100,000 per year, we see a monthly income of $5000

So, that leaves a person with $1470 to pay for food, cloths, gasoline, car service, and anything else that they need. God forbid you add diapers, formula, etc. to the mix. All of the above listed items are taxed again at 7% minimum (GST).

NO WONDER PEOPLE ARE LEAVING CANADA? HOW DO PEOPLE LIVE ???

So, i get this free blogging site, where I can put my personal opinions about life the universe and everything.

cool

Look for some "fun" ranting on this site in the near future... I can rant here safely, me thinks!

Some topics I will be covering:

1) Overtaxation, under-representation

2) My awesome MP (yes, you read that right)

3) The lack of integration in home technologies (Entertainment)

4) Why Halo 2 rocks my world!