Saturday, January 16, 2010

Fly Like an Eagle

Work has been pretty slow since the holidays.  It’s warmed up a little lately and since the airport stopped playing Christmas music, I can actually stand being there again.  It’s now my third year with American Eagle, and time is literally flying by.  A yearly checkride is coming up in the middle of February.  Otherwise I am very much on cruise control.  I still like what I’m doing, and it definitely beats having a real job.  Coming up in the next year will be the jet/prop question: Keep flying the prop for better schedules or switch to the jet for better pay?  Don’t quite know the answer to that one yet.  It depends how fast we grow this year, I guess.

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Thursday, January 14, 2010

10 Small but Annoying Things That Bother Me

I’ll jump on this blogging meme.

1. Stale Candy Bars
Milky Ways especially.  Most people don’t eat candy bars all the time so when you buy one, it’s usually a treat.  You’re all excited, looking forward to something special…man this candy bar is so bad for me but tastes so good…this is gonna be awesome.  Only then you bite down into it and the hard chocolate shell explodes into fucking glass shards in your mouth, breaking teeth and scraping and tearing your gums into unusable bleeding useless shards.  You cry in pain and disappointment, heavily tempted to throw the evil chocolate bar away…but after spending all day scrounging up enough change to actually buy the candy (who carries change anymore?) you just can’t bring yourself to abandon it.  With tears in your eyes, you suffer through the rest of the candy bar hating yourself the entire time and swearing to never buy that brand again.  Until next time.

2. Toll Roads
Why the hell can I drive between Cleveland and Dallas and all the cities in between for free, but to go from Cleveland to fucking Pittsburgh it costs $5 each way.  To hell with that.  Public roads should be public roads.  Every city has toll roads these days and it’s got to stop.  Public land, public use…so public funds.  The Cleveland I-80 was supposed to be a toll only to the point where they recovered the cost of building the road.  But then they decided “to hell with what we promised…we like money!”  Whiny people say “wahh…I dont want to pay for a road I don’t use”  Well tough, you pay for lots of things you don’t want to, and you benefit from it.  You benefit from your neighbor’s street because when he can get to work, the city’s economy benefits.  So stop taxing us twice and just be honest about it.

3. People who write their names at the bottom of forum posts
Especially this guy.  If I care who wrote what you said, all I have to do is look 5 cm to the left or right to see your online forum name.  Not only that, but your name doesn’t really mean anything to me anyways.  The only thing that matters is what you wrote.  You could just be a number for all I care, or it could show nothing at all.  I don’t really care.  You’re wasting hard drive space and my bandwidth, making me download all those extra bytes.  Stop it.

4. That fucking Bowling for Soup song that keeps interrupting my Top 25 playlist
Ok so I’m rocking out to some nice classic rock and all of a sudden without warning my ears are assaulted with “SHE SAID SHE NEEDED A BREAK A LITTLE TIME TO THINK” and I’m screaming obscenities in response, fumbling with my ipod…misclicking and being sent back to the main menu…can’t stop the song….  And I’m thinking, how did you get into my top 25, bowling for soup?  I don’t listen to you.  I mean, the song gave me a laugh so I downloaded it, but I certainly haven’t listened to you enough to earn a spot in the top 25.  And why can’t I get rid of you?  You’re louder than any other song in my library and I live in constant fear of you being the next song in the rotation.  I need a break.

5.  Over Politeness
In today’s service based society, the customer is always right.  This makes service employees constantly afraid of inciting any type of negative response, to the point where they’ll rip out their own kidney and give it to you as a spare if you ask.  I had this experience with AT&T recently when my internet kept going out.  I call them up and every other word out of this guy’s mouth is “Oh I’m sorry to hear about your trouble sir.  I understand and I’m going to do my best to serve you” blah blah blah for 5 minutes until I can actually get a word in to explain my problem.  Then he says the exact same fucking spiel all over again!  Stop apologizing to me!  You’re just making me madder!  I feel like a slaveowner about to beat his slave as he pleads not to be beaten…that’s not a good feeling.  I know you’re a human and I know you didn’t break my internet. Just help me fix it or transfer me to someone who can.  If you’re so fearful of being yelled at, you’re in the wrong job.

6. People saying “Roger” inappropriately.
This is a work related one.  At one point in time I was terrible on the radio too.  I admit it.  But I got better.  The point is, “Roger” doesn’t mean “yes”.  “Roger” means “I have received your transmission.”  So when ATC asks you something, and you say roger, I always want to say “…..and?….”.  It’s like answering a yes or no question with “I heard you”.  Ok, so what?  But the point is no one ever does anything about it or corrects anyone.  Like there and their, lose and loose, your and you’re, two too and to…There are mistakes and there is willful ignorance…

7. People who are walking in front of you and then stop suddenly
I don’t know where I’m going!

8. Chick-Fil-A is closed on Sunday
It might as well be said that on the seventh day, god wanted to eat some chickens because every time I want to go there it’s a freaking Sunday and they are closed.  I get that you are a private company and if you want to be all Christian go ahead, but hire some Non-christians because there are people who want to eat on all days of the week.  Jesus fed the poor with some bread and fish, except on Sunday when he said fuck you and watched the football game.

9. Fox cancels everything
Dollhouse and Firefly mostly.  At least they played the Dollhouse episodes in order.  Then they have the nerve to ask Time Warner for more money.  Only in the USA.

10. Some people don’t like Star Trek
They can go to hell.  Star Trek is awesome.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

50,000 plz

Today Valleywag announced bribes for early access to the rumored Apple Tablet. 

I swear I saw Steve Jobs with one the other day!  Oh yeah, here it is:

$50,000 please :D

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Proper Magic Mousing

Alison got me one of the new "Magic Mouse" mice from Apple for Christmas, although I just got it yesterday. They were readily available for about a week after they were announced, and then they were gone. It's taken forever to find one actually in stock. It's the first time I've actually been excited about a mouse from Apple. Always trying to reinvent it with each iteration, it's always seemed like a better idea just to buy a $10 usb mouse and sell the ones they come with for profit. So I was pretty skeptical when the Magic Mouse was released. Apple is all about the multi-touch tech these days and it surprisingly kicks a lot of ass. Like its predecessors, its "virtual buttons" make it not ideal for gaming but most of the time my Macbook Pro sits in the corner of my desk, and having a nice bluetooth mouse will make casual web browsing and OS use easier.

Like all Apple mice, it gets a lot of hate from people who haven't used it or are using it wrong, so I thought I'd take some pictures of its proper use. There are two types of mice it seems: the big "palm" mice like the microsoft intellimouse of a few years ago, and "finger" mice like my favorite Razer Copperhead. With palm mice, you rest your hand over the mouse and move your arm at the shoulder to move the mouse around. Finger mice are for those who keep their arm stationary and move the mouse with wrist movements. I'd definately put myself in the finger mouse camp. I hate big mice. So if you're like me, you'd probably like the Magic Mouse too.

	Here's a view of the Magic Mouse surrounded by my other two mice, the Logitech G5 (left) and the Razer Copperhead (Right). As you can see, the mouse is a little smaller than the other two, but not by much. The whole surface of the mouse is like a giant touchpad, and simply moving your finger up and down the mouse acts like a scroll wheel. I had to put them on a box since my desk is black and so are the other mice :D
It's hard to show just how thin the Magic Mouse is. Pic on the left is the MM in front of my old Razer Copperhead. The MM is about half the height of my already thin finger mouse. The G5 is more of a palm mouse so it's bigger, and the picture on the right shows the MM about 1/3 the height. The MM is wide and thin, made well of aluminum with a plastic top. Feels nice and sturdy. Not too heavy to move around, yet it stays in place when gliding your finger(s) over the surface.
	Here's me holding the Magic Mouse incorrectly, like a palm mouse. When you hold it this way, your fingers don't have any room to scroll up or down, and the bottom corners of the mouse dig into your palm a little. So when you hear people complain about its sharpness, you know they are holding it wrong.
Here's how you actually hold it, thumb and ring finger on the middle of the mouse, where it's tallest. Your index finger should be right in the middle of the mouse and free to move all the way up or down, making scrolling a dream. It's so much nicer than a scroll wheel, and if you like the two finger scrolling features macs have, this feels just like it, and maybe a touch better.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Rumors and Previews

People are actually paying attention to CES now, since so far there have been no Apple announcements to overshadow it.  Of course, the mere rumor of the new Newton device, “iSlate?” is what everyone there is talking about anyways.  What I’m really interested in is updated macbook pros, since I’ve been thinking about going down to the 13” size.  I think I can get around $750 for the 15 inch mbp I have now, so it’d only be 500ish to upgrade.  It feels wrong to buy a laptop without true dedicated graphics, but I honestly only use them for the Ohio LANs where we just end up playing Quake anyways.  However, with the tablet right around the corner - one must pause a moment and consider it.  The 15” could last a bit longer if the tablet is priced right - which it won’t be (this is apple).  But I’m sure there will be something that will make it stand out from the rest of the last decade’s tablet PCs.  I didn’t think apple could make a decent phone, yet now I swear by mine.  And it was so far off predictions that now I don’t pay as much attention to rumors as I used to.  But in place of that, I know that it’ll be something more than just an iPhone with a huge screen.  And it’s worth waiting to see just what it is they have up their sleeve.  You know what that means - July release date…

What’s also cool at the CES show is the Boxee Box, which is a dedicated little computer running Boxee as its Operating System.  Boxee has always been a good idea and I tried it out briefly on my AppleTV, but the AppleTV was just too slow to run the software.  What I like about the Boxee Box is that it’s a real competitor to the AppleTV, and probably packs more than a Celeron processor.  Hopefully it can do real HDTV.  I want Apple to finally update their crippled AppleTV and make it really HD-Capable.  What’s not good about it is the actual design of the box.  I get that it’s supposed to be hip and cool, but it looks like it wouldn’t even fit in my TV stand.  I think it’s a pretty small device which means it could probably fit even with its corners poking out, but “If it doesn’t look right, it doesn’t fly right”.  I hope Boxee got hulu back, or else there’s no real point to getting one.  The PS3 and Xbox can do everything else like streaming divx, so why waste the money?  Of course if you have iTunes content, you need the AppleTV and then you might as well hack it and run Boxee.  I want the Boxee Box to do well, because I want Apple to have a reason to give a damn about the AppleTV again.

Boxee Box!