a public therapy session to release all my frustrations with the magnificent machine marvel...as well as any other rants regarding my personal technological mishaps
It's New Year's Eve. The last day of 2008. Now, I'm assuming you're already used to my m.o. these days. I always have something to complain about. My family likens me to Mady from Jon & Kate Plus 8 (If you don't know who she is, I highly suggest you click the link to find out, though the clip doesn't quite do her justice). But I'm not that bad, I swear. It's just, there are some times when I don't like the way something is being done, or how someone isn't listening to me, or how someone looks. Those are legitimate reasons to complain, right?
Considering my narcissitic nature, and my worldview that everything revolves around me, I'm actually going to do something different for a change. I decided to host a blog carnival to let other bloggers (yup, that means other people) pour their hearts out to me regarding things that "grinds their gears." And as it turns out, there is plenty to complain about. And I'm not the only one who does it. Among the many submissions, and I'm talking 15+ in a span of 3 weeks, I chose the best ones:
This is my psychic Walter (his pseudonym is the Amazing Siez [pronounced SIGH-ez], but we're on a first name basis because I go to him so much). This is what he told me the other day.
Eight years from now, it will be 2016. Obama will be at the end of his second term in office, and Miley Cyrus will be completing her 2nd stint in rehab. And eight years from now, I'll probably still be complaining about my petty issues with technology.
Comcast has this new technology called the "DVR Voice." Instead of using the faulty remote to control the DVR, every command is by voice recognition. The vision, itself, seems promising, but the execution of the product fails miserably. It mistakes me saying "rewind 20 seconds" for Be My Sloppy Seconds, a new FOX reality show promoting one night stands and promiscuity (apparently, FOX hits an all-time low in ratings in 2016, and they don't fail to disappoint with this charmer).
Another feature with the DVR Voice is the record aspect. I set my series recording for the 7th season of The Wire, which was brought back in 2014 due to a speech during which President Obama mentions it's his favorite show of all time and wishes it would have lasted more than 5 seasons. And ala the Oprah Effect, a flood of letters were sent to HBO demanding for a revival, and it enters its 7th season in 2016. But because its a show brought back to the TV schedule, the DVR Voice doesn't recognize the difference between seasons and therefore, thinks that every season is new. Before the 7th season premiere, HBO spent an entire week recapping seasons 1-6. So, I end up with all 70 some odd number of episodes on my device. This would be great, if the DVR allowed for more memory, and because it's still a fairly new product, the memory space is very limited. Which meant that on the day of the season premiere, I missed it because the DVR didn't have enough memory.
Through all of this, I'm convinced that the DVR Voice is a POS, and throw it out after about 1 month of use.
Walter also said I would be the 4th richest person in the world (behind Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Guy Richie), and he said that I would have a cat named Muffin. Which is ridiculous, right? There's just no possible way, ever, not in my wildest dreams...that I would have a cat, let alone name her Muffin. Maybe Walter was having an off-day. It happens.
I found the most awesome Facebook group ever. It's titled "I HATE when kids suck at putting together the shrine of the silver monkey." If you grew up in the 90's, you know what this is in reference to. Everyone my age, including myself, was obsessed with the Nickelodeon game show Legends of the Hidden Temple. Everyone knew the Blue Barracudas were the best and the Purple Parrots were losers, duh! And Olmec...he was a G, no one f'd with Olmec.
The whole point of the game was to win as many team challenges as you could in the hopes of being the last team standing, which would in turn mean, you get a chance to enter the temple. Should you retrieve the artifact* in one of the rooms in under 3:00 minutes, then you get to go to Space Camp! However, beware of the temple guards because should you get caught without a pendant, you die! (Well, you don't die, but you can't continue, and then it's up to your partner to finish the course).
The temple consisted of 10-12 different rooms that required you to complete some sort of task** to open the door to get to the next room. One of the rooms was called "The Shrine of the Silver Monkey," and all it needed you to do was retrieve three pieces of the silver monnkey on the shelves and put it together. It really wasn't that hard, but some kids truly sucked at it. And that's what this group was about. (tip: read the description in the group, it captures exactly how I felt when the kids couldn't accomplish the simple task).
Oh, how I wish this show was still on. It's amazing. This and GUTS. Oh, and Salute Your Shorts. And Hey Dude! None of this Hannah Montana/Lizzie McGuire crap. It's seriously crap. Our shows were waaayyy better. No competition. I grew up in the 90's, and I'm damn proud of it.
*Artifact as in some made up historical prop that is speculated to exist, but you can tell that it was made out of materials you can buy from Michaels (look up: Ghengis Khan's helmet)
**Tasks could be (but not limited to) the aforementioned assembly of the silver monkey, pressing down tongues on gargoyles to see which one opened the door, spinning a sundial in the observatory, and falling into a deep dark pit and guessing which of the doors would open to get out (temple guards usually hid in here and it was hilarious!)
I'm going to try to do something different with this particular post. Rather than bitching about something that went wrong, I'm going to bitch about something that is...just plain wrong.
The cell phone. One of the most ubiquitous technologies in our society today. If someone doesn't have a cell phone or doesn't know how to use one, I usually respond with my expected Generation Y question, "Are you serious?" And then proceed to further explain how text messaging is the most wonderful thing ever created, and how I basically can't survive without my cell phone. Towards the end of our conversation, I usually feel pretty shameful that I rely on my phone so much. But at the same time, I know, if you don't have a cell phone, you're not "hip." God forbid such a travesty!
Not only must you have a cell phone among my peers, but you must have the newest phone. Take the iPhone for instance. Apple and their marketing team are geniuses for creating such an awesome device. When the first generation came out in June 2007, everyone HAD to have one. It was the "in" thing. I will admit, there was a point where I wanted one, but that keypad made me keep my distance. And since I text so much, there was no way I was going to adapt to that keyboard. It was also still operating on the EDGE network, which caused the Internet connection to be extremely slow. But Apple users didn't care, they bought the phone anyway. Then Apple introduced the iPhone 3G in July of this year, which meant faster Internet connection. But that was really it right? Oh, and it was slimmer and came in white. Not that big of a difference, but people still continued to purchase the phone. I kid you not, those links are exact versions. I didn't manipulate them or photoshop them or whatever. Look it up yourself.
But my real complaint is about another phone: the Blackberry, which is my phone of choice, and I've been an owner for about a year. I have a Blackberry Curve, and I haven't been this happy with a phone in a long time. The email is second-to-none, and the keypad is so easy to type on. I refuse to purchase a phone now without a full QWERTY keyboard. It's small and light and fits perfectly in my back pocket. It uses the "slow" EDGE network, but I'm willing to deal with it. Video playback isn't that great, and you can't record, either. I usually thought with a phone this high-tech, video should be a priority. But, after being a Nokia, Motorola, and Sidekick owner, the Blackberry is the best phone I have ever had. Why do I need another?
Why? RIM (the company that makes Blackberrys) will tell me why.
Because the Blackberry Bold and the Blackberry Storm are sooooo much better.
The Bold, in a nutshell, includes everything I mentioned the Curve does not.
The Storm is a whole other Blackberry. Think, if the iPhone and Blackberry were to combine, you'd get the Storm. It's the all-too-important iPhone killer. Why wouldn't anyone want that?
My whole issue is RIM and Apple's decision of when to release these new phones. The Curve just came out last May 2007, giving the Curve only a little over a year for life (May 2007 to November 2008). The iPhone 3G just barely missed the iPhone 1.0's birthday by about a month. So the 1st generation iPhone lasted for nearly a year and a month (June 2007 to July 2008). So, I'm going to ask a stupid rhetorical question: why do they do it so soon?
To those cell phone connoisseurs and my fellow Generation Yers, remember when Nokia only had 2 choices, and one like this, and everyone was content? Even if a new phone came out, we didn't care because that phone was the cool one to get. You could change the case and personalize it and make it your own. And as long as SNAKE was on it, you didn't care because SNAKE was only the best game ever!
The cell phone market has exploded, I understand that, and a lot has changed since those times way back when...when Nokia was the phone of choice. But I don't get why there are all these new models coming out of the same phone with minor changes. The reason we ended up switching from Nokia to something else was because there was something aesthetically and technologically different between the two. I went to a flip phone because not only was it aesthetically different, but the interface was more complex, and it was so cool. I switched to a Sidekick because the full QWERTY keyboard was awesome. I became a Blackberry user because email had become a huge part of my life, and it only seemed logical to find a phone that had a great email interface.
But Apple and RIM playing these games with their consumers by releasing "upgraded" and "better" versions of the same phone is such a scam/marketing ploy. And most people fall prey to it. Why? I'll be honest, I can't help but feel hypnotized by the way the Bold looks. I mean, it has a beautiful and improved interface, and there was a part of me that was going to shell out $300$549 (eek!) for a new phone. However, I'm taking a stand. I'm not going to give into supreme marketing skills. Those evil, evil people!
Being a part of Generation Y holds true to me, I'm realizing. Always questioning, always asking for answers and reasons for WHY someone(s) want to screw us over.
But, Christmas is around the corner, and if someone wants to give it to me as a present...well, let's just say, I would accept it gratefully.
I had this whole idea ready for this post. It was about my computer again, and how it's acting funky, and how amidst the economic recession (meltdown), I think I should be afraid of credit card fraud. But I decided against it, and instead, opted to bitch about something else: TurnItIn.com.
For students and professors, alike, this is said to be a valuable tool. It's "the Internet's most widely used and trusted resources for preventing the spread of Internet plagiarism." It's this new technology that allows students to submit their work to this "database" where it uses an algorithm to detect matches to other papers in the database and/or Internet. In theory, any correct matches would mean that particular student plagiarized. Makes sense and sounds good - in theory, that is.
Now, I'm not lazy nor would I be stupid enough to turn in a paper without citing my sources. I went to a high school where they stressed the importance of giving proper credit to the original work. They conditioned me to believe that writing is intellectual property that should be protected. I was even taught MLA format freshman year of high school, and it was reinforced every year thereafter (and then, had to miraculous switch to APA in college. Why don't they just teach both? Or, instead, just have one uniform way to cite sources so there's less confusion.)
I've never had an issue with citing my sources, but then at the same time, I've never been forced...ahem, required by my professors to use the website. Well, there's a first time for everything, and it detected 34% plagiarism in my paper.
Unheard of. I was infuriated. How is this software going to accuse me of cheating? I have not and will not ever blatantly copy someone else's work. That is their property, and I will never claim it as my own. It's unfair because I worked extremely hard on this paper, and I refuse to have some computer generated software tell me that my work is not legit.
The system is flawed because even though you cite your source, it will still claim that the information with quotations around it is plagiarism even though any 3rd grader can tell you that anything with quotes around it came directly from said source. And it tells me that I took sentences from websites that I haven't even heard of before. I know there's such a thing known as common knowledge, which means you don't have to cite it. Can I also inform you that this paper was a biography? Please, tell me how you can write a biography without using tons of facts and "common knowledge"? There's something seriously wrong here. Here's someone who understands me: BeatTurnItIn.com because sometimes I feel like no one does.
It's interesting because in the report, it shows you the exact website/paper where it found the "plagiarism." Not only does it list URLs, but it also gives you a link to other students' papers who submitted their work to this database. This means, that somewhere, someone (a TurnItIn.com employee) has access to every single student's paper who has ever been asked to submit their paper to the site. One person (or a few) is/are able to watch over every single thing in the database. This also means that since I've submitted my paper, mine is readily available for anyone who wants to read/use/steal it.
photo taken from flikr.com (note: do you like all my citing?)
This gentleman, Bob, quoted in this blog says "Why are we violating authorial integrity to teach students that violating authorial integrity is wrong?"
Ironically, enough, their software steals our work - the very thing that TurnItIn.com says it combats. It steals our (students) intellectual property and stores it into who knows where for THEIR PROFIT. I guess steal isn't the correct word considering we sort of give permission for the site to store our paper in the database in the terms of use agreement. But what about the chance that someone could misuse their administrative powers and claim my paper as their own? Don't say it's not possible. This is the exact reason why TurnItIn.com exists.
This essay illustrates exactly how I feel about the new technological tool. It basically says how students should be the only ones who determine who has access to their intellectual property, and if TurnItIn.com wants to store our papers in their database, they should be forced to purchase it from us. The author of the essay also states that professors and teachers shouldn't rely on technology to detect plagiarism, as technology is often flawed and sometimes can't perform the work to that of a human brain.
They also state that professors and teachers should just "enforce the rules we have now," which is what I think is most important. Instead of buying into the hype that this software is 100% effective as its case studies proclaim*, they should just teach their students how to properly cite their sources. Accordingly, they should reinforce the importance of giving credit where it's due and how everyone has the right to protect intellectual property and anything else that belongs to us.
*Probably not accurate and I didn't cite my source, but would I have to submit this post to TurnItIn.com to verify?
My relationship with the DVR has had its ups and downs, and for a while there, we were getting along just fine. It played all my shows without any disruption, and I was beginning to think to myself, "Oh no! I'm not going to have anything to write in my blog! Everything's perfect!" But sure enough, the SOB strikes again.
It's kind of the way I'm feeling about the Raiders right now, more specifically, that dinosaur, Al Davis. Last year, it felt like everything was going well. We were headed in the right direction with leadership under a new head coach, and I wasn't getting pissed off at the team for not trying because they were.
But then Al wants to step into the picture this year and disrupt the team with his crazy shennanigans, thereby ruining whatever chance the Raiders had of being successful this season. The Raiders' organization is a dictatorship - free speech is stifled (Al has final word), the media has limited access to the inner workings of the team, and coaches and personnel have restrictions on what they can and cannot do. I mean, does he realize it's 2008, not 1978, and the game has changed? Does he realize he's the reason his beloved baby is in shambles? Does he realize that the fans of the Nation are sick and tired of this bullshit, and we want to be a f*in winning team for once? Stop being a control freak and trying to monopolize the franchise! Ugh! GO AWAY, AL! You need to be fired. You should fire yourself...
Hey, Raider fans, join the fight against TPTB: KeepKiffin.com.
*update as of Tuesday 9/30: Al Davis is a hack. Sorry, Kiff. Good luck, though, and I wish you future success.
What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, the DVR - back to the topic at hand.
So ignore the whole comparison of Al Davis to my DVR. That's just my crazy "other" frustation that I had to let out. Plus, I don't want the DVR to go away (like Al Davis). I just want a miracle to fix it. And by miracle, I mean Comcast. And by Comcast, I mean enemy number one on the list of things I hate.
For some reason, right now, the DVR does this weird thing when I reach the end of my show. Let's say, I'm watching an hour long episode. It shows up as 1:00 (1 hour) on the DVR duration timer. As I approach the end of the show, around :55 (minutes), I fast forward, usually, to see the previews for next week. During the fast forward, the DVR pauses (not freezes) at :59. I try to rewind because it's gone a little too far (usually, you'd want to stop the fast forward at around :57, or so, for the previews). But instead of rewinding, the DVR just goes back to the beginning of the show (0:00).
Ok, that's not so bad. I figured I possibly hit the rewind button one too many times, and it accidentally went to the start of the show. Fine.
So I fast forward again to get to :57. and the stupid machine does it again. It takes me to the beginning of the show. I did it about 3 times, and every single time it did the same thing. It irritated the heck out of me. Seeing previews for the next episode always gets me excited, and I love to know what I'm looking forward to. But apparently, the DVR doesn't want me to know. What a piece of --
I'm not that mad. It's just this device is supposed to work. Mine doesn't seem to want to.
And you know who I blame it on? Comcast.
Instead of trying to get in good with Google or Yahoo or whatever search engine you're trying to create an agreement with so you can screw your Internet customers, how about you fix your DVR! There are more important things to worry about than making a buck - oh, like, making sure your customers are satisfied with your products. I know the economy is a disaster, and I know everyone is trying to find a way to survive the horrors that our country may possibly face in the next few years, but come on. Sorry, that the $700 billion dollar bailout won't help you some, but you know who it is going to affect? We, the consumers, who pay for your services and products. If we're going to pay the monthly bill, while we are already strapped for cash, for a service and a product that you provide, it should, at the very least, perform at the level you claim it to.
"Now TiVo’s legendary ease of use and unique search features make searching for, recording and watching your favorite shows and movies simple. And finding HD content is easier than ever" - taken from the Comcast website.
You mention the keywords "ease" and "simple" when in reality, nothing is simple or easy about the DVR. Your product makes it difficult to watch a television show interruption-free. There are almost always problems with the DVR, and this is a just another one to add to the long list of annoyances I have with it.
On that note, you greedy, money hungry, execs at Comcast better not be thinking of more ways to screw their customers by making it harder for us to access certain websites on the Internet. The Internet should remain neutral and not owned or controlled by any specific entity. SAVE THE INTERNET!
Kind of like the Raiders. Maybe the Raiders should not be owned or controlled by any one, specific person who has all the power to put restrictions and limitations on the team. Maybe, we, the city, the fans, should step in, and own them like they do in Green Bay. Take a stand! I'm sure we can make better decisions about the team than the old, washed-up cryptkeeper. For my sake, and the sake of the loyal fans of the team and around the league, please: SAVE THE RAIDERS!
Ah, to hell with it. Forget everything I said earlier. The only thing that needs saving is my sanity unlike Al Davis, who lost his 20 years ago.
(Actually only 2 days, but it felt like a lifetime).
I'm still at odds with the DVR. Don't think I'm gonna let it off the hook that easily. It still freezes, drops audio, cuts off, yada yada yada, and does all the things it's so adept at doing. I just have another device to bitch about:
My MacBook.
Wait? What's that? The almighty Apple creation is causing problems? The laptop that is supposedly immune to viruses, spyware, and adware? How could I possibly have an issue with it?
Well, it's me. Technology and I don't mix (well).
I've had my MacBook for a little over a year, and up until last Thursday, I've had no problems, whatsoever. I was in love with it. I had been a loyal PC user for 20 years, but had to suffer through problems and issues almost monthly. But with Apple? Nah...it was, dare I say, perfect.
The only "problem" I had with my laptop was that I didn't have a lot of music in my iTunes library. I refused to download Limewire or BitTorrent, not because I think it's wrong to share copy written files through the Internet, but because of my previous experiences with it (namely, crashing my computer due to viruses). I always wondered why artists and musicians had such an issue with their songs being leaked and downloaded on the Internet. It's more publicity for them, which means more money, right? At least, that's the way I see it. Maybe I'm just a cheap ass. Whatever the case, good music should be shared and not hidden.
Anyway, most of my songs came from either direct purchases on iTunes, which started to get expensive, CDs that I had uploaded, or blogs on the Internet that offered a free download. In total, I had a whopping 150 songs, or so, in my music library. Being the music enthusiast that I am, I needed to do something about that.
I had a video iPod, which had been giving me problems i.e. blasting the volume on its own causing my eardrums to bleed, but it had nearly 4,500 songs on it. I hated that I had to plug my iPod into my laptop just to hear all of those songs. I wished there was someway I could just put all the songs from my iPod onto my MacBook.
Alas, there is a way. It's called Senuti (iTunes backwards). It allows users to transfer songs from their mp3 player to their music library.
This was an even greater application for me because I had just purchased the new iPod Touch to replace the devil video iPod, and I didn't have songs to put into it because I didn't have any (in today's terms, the phrase "not having any songs" translates to "I have less than 1,000"). However, the iPod Touch requires one thing: download iTunes 8. (Why is this post sounding like one whole big Apple plug?)
So, there I was last Thursday - on my perfect Mac, downloading the perfect application, with an upgrade of the perfect music library...what could possibly go wrong?
Senuti downloaded just fine. I connected my iPod to start transferring all 4,500 songs. That process seemed, to me, well, like a long process. So I stepped away from the computer to do other things. I came back in about an hour, and I saw that little rainbow spinwheel (the equivalent of the hourglass on the PC, meaning it's trying to process something). I figured, "Oh, OK. It's just a lot of information. That thing should go away soon." So, I walked away again. I came back in another hour, and the spinwheel was still there. On top of that, the computer started making this clicking sound, as if it was going to explode or something. WTF? From now on, bear with me, as I get into some MacBook terminology.
I tried to close out of the application windows - nothing. I tried to Force Quit all programs - nothing. I tried control, apple, option, shift, [insert any other button] - nothing.
So, I turned off my computer. I turned it back on...and all I saw was a gray screen. I didn't see the Apple logo, nor did I see this little guy:
I repeated these steps about 20,000 times, but still nothing. It was just gray oblivion.
I couldn't believe it. After a year of bliss, the stupid computer wanted to do this to me? I logged onto our other computer (a PC! Gasp!), and I read some of the discussion forums to see if other people were having the same problems, too. And as it turned out, some of them were. And yanno what they say the problem was? iTunes 8. According to the Apple Forums, iTunes 8 apparently had been eating up people's hard drives and frying them. It did the same to mine. Stupid Apple!
I took it to the Apple store at 1:00pm Friday, and he said my hard drive was kaput. Well, no shit Sherlock, the operating system won't even run. He said it would take two days to fix. Fine. The worst part about losing my laptop for two days wasn't the fact that I would lose all my files. I had a flash drive with a lot of my documents, most of my pictures are on MySpace (ha!), and well, you know the whole music deal. The worst part was that I live in the East Bay, and I drove about 30 minutes away to San Francisco because that was the only Apple store that had an appointment for me. I figured, in two days, I'd be at work (Sunday) in San Francisco, and I'd just pick it up then. I drove home, and around 3:00pm, I got a phone call.
"Hello?" "Hi, Jenna? This is Miriam from the Apple store. Your computer is done."
Are you frickin' kidding me? The inane part was that I contemplated going back to SF the second they called me, but my rational side kicked in telling me, "Gas is 3.83, and you're broke." So, I called them and told them I'd pick it up on Sunday like I had originally planned. Ironically, they said, "No problem." Easy for them to say; I've had plenty the past day and a half.
After this crazy debacle, there's an even sadder part that causes me to question if Apple is in cahoots with some secret brainwashing organization (let's just call them their marketing team, for now). Because Apple has a genius marketing team, I'm only one paycheck away from purchasing their newest operating system, Leopard.
Doesn't it look cool? And plus there's Time Machine on it, which is basically a System Restore (for you, PC heads). I'm such a sucker.
This whole adventure happened because all I wanted to do was take the music from my iPod and put it on my computer. That's it. A lot of my songs on my iPod came from my friends' libraries and earlier downloads from Limewire (on the PC). It was shared, and it was free. I like free stuff. I got to listen to music I wouldn't have otherwise heard, due to the eclectic range of all my friends. But, of course, because I have such bad luck with technology, it prevented me from doing it. Is this the digital rights management gods trying to send me a sign? Lars Ulrich, are you monitoring my computer habits?
Well, if it (he) is, I'm ignoring it because once I got my computer back, I downloaded iTunes 8 again, as well as Senuti.
Strangely enough, after analyzing all the things that caused my laptop to crash, I've deduced that it wasn't iTunes 8 or Senuti, especially since they're running perfectly now. It was trying to transfer 4,500+ files to a computer that was already trying to handle two new humongous applications at once.
My bad.
OK, Steve Jobs and Apple, you're off my sh*t list - for now.
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