| home | who | photos | archives | contact | professional | |
I'm Mark, Your Host
From my cameras
From my life 
|
|
Friday, October 10, 2008 More proof Verizon sucks. Greedy bastards aren't satisfied with charging consumers to receive each and every SMS. I love the lame quote from the PR hack. "It is not a free service. It didn’t cost us zero to build or to buy spectrum rights." As if that justifies charging twice for the same service. It's time people woke up and recognized that SMS is an antiquated service that belongs in the technological dustbin. The only thing that annoys me more than receiving one is the fact that I can't turn the service off. Just use email. Please. 08:54 PM |
Tuesday, October 07, 2008 Continuing the bane-of-the-conservatives theme, another film worth seeing is Slacker Uprising from Michael Moore. And in a historic move, Moore has made the film available as a free download to anyone residing in Canada or the USA. It's nice that Michael made sure that even his friends at Lehman Bros can afford some quality entertainment. 12:07 AM |
Sunday, October 05, 2008 Go see Religulous. You will laugh. Then you will cry. 05:13 PM |
Monday, September 29, 2008 We joined a historic trend today. Disconnected the home landline. From here on out, it's strictly wireless phones for us. I'd kept the landline around primarily from habit because we were using AT&T DSL for internet. But now that Webpass has us surfing at speeds 10x faster than AT&T, it's time to cut the cord.
06:23 PM |
Sunday, September 28, 2008 Can someone please explain to me why Facebook. Myspace, et al exist? Yeah, yeah I know. Social networking and all that crap. But really, the best I can synthesize is that their sole purpose is to unite blogging, messaging and photo galleries for people too lazy to pull together the independent (and superior) services. Maybe I'm hypocritical because I do have accounts on both sites. In my defense, acquaintances encouraged me to create them and I thought I might be missing something. But no, the services offer nothing original to my eyes. Maybe I'm missing something but I'm having trouble seeing them as much more than AOL for the 2000s. 12:09 PM |
Monday, September 22, 2008 Sarah alerted me tonight that something was wrong with my commenting system. I hadn't made any changes to the script. Maybe there's a temporary error at my host. Maybe one of the spam bots that's been hitting me lately with goofy, nonsensical comments and random URLs fucked something up. Maybe one of you dear readers really really hates Al G. and took it out on my poor little server. Who knows. But it's as good an excuse as any to take a step I've been contemplating for awhile now. Kill the comments. From here on out, the entries will have no comments by default. I don't see this as a drastic step. For the past year or so, everyone who comments also has my email--except the spam bots of course. And if you don't have my address? Well, I really don't give a damn what you think. 12:08 AM |
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Al Goldstein has a blog! Who knew? I was going to do an Al-style Fuck You to Thomas Keller and a quick google revealed the G-Spot. If you weren't in New York when Midnight Blue ruled Manhattan Cable's Channel J, watch enough YouTube clips to get Al's voice in your head then read some of his current gems. I mean, you gotta love the First Ammendment when you find this stuff. Rude. Profane. Absolutely over the line. but oh-so hysterical.
Monday, September 15, 2008 I have a new enemy. Thomas Keller, I hate you, your pretentious restaurants and your straight-jacket policies. Good thing you know how to work the PR because you certainly are not in the service business. I routinely get better treatment at In-N-Out. Plenty of fools must be willing to keep throwing buckets of money at you; you clearly don't want or need mine. You turned what should be an exciting, joyous event into one filled with uncertainty, contention and stress. Never again. You've lost a customer for life. Anyone reading from the Bay Area should avoid at all costs The French Laundry, Bouchon, Bouchon Bakery and Ad Hoc. You'll be much happier spending your money with restaurants that want to actually serve customers.
Sunday, September 14, 2008 For the record, we're back from vacation. Have been for several weeks. I've shied away from posting here recently because I'm toying with the notion of switching the backend over to WordPress. My host makes it really easy since the latest version is pre-configured on the server. And WP has an iPhone client. And this MT installation is positively ancient (circa '03). But procrastination has taken hold. I did get so far as to export all the entries and import them into a test install of WP. It worked the second time after I followed the instruction to create an author identity for myself other than the default admin. Then I ran smack into the template issue. Do I use a canned version or whack at one to make my own? Rather than make a decision I simply did nothing. So typically heroic.
Monday, August 18, 2008 Technically, we're on vacation this week.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 I felt a bit of sunshine this afternoon when I heard on the radio that Bennigans and Steak & Ale went into Chapter 7--meaning the companies will be liquidated, not reorganized. Not that I'm happy about hundreds of people being unemployed. More that I see chain restaurants--particularly themed ones such as these--as a blight on the landscape. They've contributed to making almost every part of the country seem and taste like just about every other part. Drive across the country. The level of homogenization is frightening. I see it all too vividly when I'm visiting my family in suburban San Antonio. If we go out to eat, we have hit chains because there are no other choices. It's so sad. Worse, the food they serve is wretched. Sugar and fat ladened. Pumped full of artificial flavors. Battered and fried. Eeech. Of course later, I saw the nytimes piece which states that only the corporate-owned locations will close. Franchisees will stay open. So I guess my happiness at the removal of some blight might be a little premature.
Friday, July 25, 2008 I love Apple products. I don't love the company. As their customer, I have no complaints. Having them as a client, that's another story. And from talking with friends who've worked for and with them, I can say that my experiences were mild. But they've been around long enough that no one who reads should really be surprised. So I'm amused by the NY Times article on Steve Jobs' health and the cult of secrecy, as the article puts it, that's grown up since Jobs returned. Nothing really groundbreaking. Just more carping from what seem to me are spoiled media types. The writer seems indignant about having to speak off the record yet he still caved and had the conversation with Jobs. Makes me think Mr. Writer was more concerned about satisfying his personal curiosity than delivering The Truth to his readers. I also teeter back and forth between amusement and annoyance as the writer wraps himself in indignation on behalf of Apple shareholders. Oh please. Apple's been pulling this shit for more than 10 years. If you don't like it, go put your money someplace else.
Saturday, July 19, 2008 I just discovered that DirecTV is running the X show from SXSW on channel 101 this month. The band sounds great. Possibly better than any of the numerous times I saw them live in the 80s. And if you don't have the magic satellite hookup, not to worry. Something called Crackle.com has several clips. It's fun even if the vocals drop out coincidentally for each bit of profanity and racial slur. From Crackle:
Sunday, July 13, 2008 Thought I should update the iPhone 2 status. Ryan reminded me about the restore option in iTunes. Funny how you can forget the basics when frustration sets in. Anyway, wiping and starting over had helped. Contacts in particular behave more like before. I'm still seeing some sluggish responses when changing apps or typing but it's gotten better. Enough that I don't want to head into the tech voodoo required to go back to the 1.x software. For what it's worth, my 72 year old father didn't see my previous post so he went ahead and updated his iPhone yesterday morning without a hitch. Now he's sending me tips on the new apps to check out.
Friday, July 11, 2008 I of course jumped in first thing this morning and installed the iPhone 2.0 update. Then ran into the well-documented server issues. Managed to get through and re-active the phone by 9:30. At this point, I've been using it for 10 hours or so. I am not happy. If you have an original iPhone that's still running 1.x, leave it that way. Do not update. My upgraded phone feels sluggish--scrolling, changing apps, typing are all affected. Using the Contacts app seems particularly bad. I've been in the All Contacts view and pressed one of the letters on the right side to jump down the list. Nothing will happen for two maybe three seconds. It's like using a Windows Mobile handset again. I've also had two serious crashes. Launching the new Remote app just now caused the phone to completely reboot from the Apple screen--not just revert to the home screen as before. You have been warned. At this point, I'm looking for info on how to revert to the 1.x software.
|
