Medium-1337

Below is the text of an email I sent to some Target bigwigs (thanks to an “EECB” link to their email addresses at The Consumerist blog), after an un-satisfying shopping experience yesterday. My complaint is duly detailed in the missive, so I’ll just cut-n-paste that here-

Dear Sirs/Madams,

I just had the most surprising and unpleasant experience this morning, at your store located at 60 Yorktown Shopping Center, in Lombard, IL 60148. Having just been paid, and flush with disposable income, I ventured into the electronics department to peruse the ‘clearance’ items there. I’ve often found great bargains on video games, and to my delight there was a copy of “Ninja Blade” for the XBOX360, reduced to a mere 27$. As this game was released only a month or so ago, and I’d nearly paid full price elsewhere for it, I grabbed it. I also picked up several other sundries, and proceeded to the checkout. Read the rest of this entry →

It was never my intention to make this site about my car, but then again, I haven’t been so motivated to work on a project as much as I have been to pimp this ride. After the new air intake, the next logical step is to open up the back end and relieve some of the sluggishness Chrysler built into the vehicle to keep it attractive to it’s core demo of ‘Sunday Drivers’.

So, once more into the toolbox we delve…

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I wrote about all the things I love about HULU here, and I wrote about all the things I hate about ABC Online (and their other glaring content delivery failures) here, so imagine my chagrin when I read in the elevator at work this morning that the proverbial twain was in danger of actually meeting. According to Peter Kafka at All Things Digital the rat-bastards at Disney are trying to seduce my beloved Hulu.

For weeks now, I’ve been hearing chatter that Disney was close to doing a distribution deal with Hulu. Disney would give Hulu exclusive access to at least some of its online video in exchange for an equity stake alongside GE’s (GE) NBC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox. And accompanying said chatter was this refrain: Why?

He proceeds to speculate that Disney CEO Bob Iger’s intent is to roil the innards of other potential beaus, e.g. Google & ComCast, and personally I’d rather belive that’s the case. It leaves open the possibility that Disney won’t ravage Hulu with its hyper-suck. But I’m more inclined to believe that Disney sees in Hulu a content-delivery mechanism far more innovative, far more stream-lined, and by obvious extension immeasurably more popular than their own horrible offerings, and they won’t be able to sleep until they’ve wrecked it with the same endless loops of Disney commercials they subject us to in their two-week-late HD offerings “On Demand”.

And just to be sure my earlier impressions of ABC Online weren’t tainted by a glitch at the time I blasted them, I went back this morning and tried to watch “Lost” again, using their Streaming HD Player. Well they’ve upgraded the top level go-dot-abc-dot-com page- it now AUTO-PLAYS a fucking BofA commercial when you access it. And the stream quality of the alleged HD Player is still pathetic and awful, like a mouthful of cold stewed tomatoes from a dumpster.

Oh, and for good measure, I’d like to point out that Disney is run by right-wing corporationalists tools, so they suck for that too.

HULU, do NOT partner with Disney. Please, don’t make me hate you too.

Before I delve into the installation of the Weapon*R Secret Weapon intake, let me define myself in terms of automotive and mechanical understanding and facility. I am by no means a “gear-head”, though I do like to drive cars that perform above stock. I grasp that controlled explosions impel pistons to turn a crankshaft that eventually rotates the drive axle, and we roll away. I do not understand compression ratios and gearing and timing, and the more sublime aspects of engine and transmission operation. I can and have repaired and/or replaced brakes, starters, exhaust parts, and all of the usual “tune-up” suspects (plugs, filters, fluids, etc). In other words, the typical “weekend warrior” stuff.

Normally, it’s been in avoidance of 3rd-party labor rates when a repair was needed; not since my early twenties have I had- or cared to have- what could be considered a “project” car, that I’ve desired to work on for the sake of it. That’s recently changed, however, as I’ve aquired a 2001 Chrysler Sebring Limited convertible that’s so clean and so mechanically sound that it causes me to lose sleep thinking of all the ways I want to show her my bolt-on love. So for all intents and purposes, this is a layman’s review. There will be no useful technical evaluation, but rather I will descibe my experience installing it, and tell you if the Weapon*R seems a genuine “go-faster” or not.
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I’ve just been informed, via the latest edition of Game Informer, that Ubisoft is working on what might best be called a “Disaster Survival” game entitled “I Am Alive”. Players assume the role of a survivor of a super-massive earthquake. The catch appears to be that it’s so bad that nearly everyone is killed, and the few survivors are completely cut off from outside assistance. They turn utterly savage in a matter of days, and it devolves into a giant round of “Kill the Guy with the Water Bottle” (as seen in the teaser here). And the particular hook for me? It takes place in my hometown of Chicago, Illinois! Read the rest of this entry →

There was a time that I was skeptical of the notion of “convergence”, whereby a day will come when all of our news, entertainment and electronic recreation needs are served by a single, streamlined, globally-interconnected device, forever obliterating the necessity of tangible media. IP as content will merge forever with IP as delivery protocol, and every person on the planet will have instant access to literally everything. Never again will we be plagued by clatchedy CD cases and stacks of DVDs, as we’ll keep our personally-licensed libraries of media on terrabyte USB keys embedded wolverine-like in the back of our hands…

And while that day is still not quite nigh, I am becoming a believer. I’ve sung the praises of Hulu, a site which manages to serve up heaping piles of network television and movies in decent quality and without great gobs of annoying adverts. What’s more, their ability to post current episodes of a huge variety of series in a timely fashion has actually spurred me to following many more shows than I have in literally decades. I’ve been watching “Fringe”, “Sarah Connor Chronicles”, hell I’ve even been viewing the latest season of “24″, a show that in the past has interested me not at all. The site has succeeded in keeping me coming back, which translates into ad views for them, which leads to more Hulu for me in the future. It’s the simplest of equations.

And yet ABC, under the wing of one of the most powerful media conglomerates on the planet, can’t ape this simple formula. They want to go it alone, and have me come to their site and install their site proprietary Flash viewer, fine, I’ll do it. But don’t give me a stream of garbage like the above image, and call it HD, because that’s quite obviously a dirty lie.

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Testing out the remote linking from my Fotki site; it’s been wonky in the past, but it’s apprently gotten quite a bit more stable recently. For your viewing pleasure, I present two images of a frigid Chicago morning from this past January. It’s lovely when all the HVAC units in sight are struggling to meet master’s thermal demands, and the starkness of the morning sun off the great lake is blinding in its effulgence.

Click for biggers, and click through for a stitched panorama of chilly foreboding!

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The picture above is evidence of a few things, first and foremost being that my thesis is vindicated; with improved tools come commersurate enhancements to ability and performance. The fact that it’s a paltry 85% completion doesn’t diminish it for me in the least, as prior to the new kit I could not complete the song on medium. This is a minor triumph.

But wait, there’s more! Read the rest of this entry →

I’ve spent the greater majority of the last 9 months utterly ignoring this space.   When I have written about my gaming, I’ve scribed predominently about my drumming in Rock Band, and my efforts to improve not only my skills, but also the intrinsic experience.   This, naturally, requires better toys.   As with any activity we undertake on this good Earth, our enjoyment of it can be enhanced by graduating over time to incrementally better tools.

With the advent of Rock Band 2, and a second generation of ‘official’ controllers, it only made sense that I would desire to collaterally promote myself to some better skins. But the “premium” Ion Drum Rocker, with it’s 300$ price tag, is simply not economically justifiable for me/us during the current finance-ocolypse, so alternatives were required. Enter the Ion IED01, the “Li’l Electric Drumset That Might, For Cheap Bastard’s”.

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“Yoshi, the Fuzzy Pup”™ (as shown above, not to scale) is, inarguably, the cutest pup ever. Though “coated” or “plush” akitas are not considered “standard”, they make up for this fault by having overwhelming reserves of “cute” that allow them to get away with more blatant begging, more garbage-groveling mischief, and more jumping on the furniture violations than the average breed. This feature also makes them somewhat irresistable to most women, some sentimental chaps, and small children, due to the impression they give of being giant animated plush toys.

But don’t be fooled, friends- beneath that verneer of latent adorableness there’s a stock akita, and it’s as much a cool, calculating killing machine as the fiercest of the breed. So, like any non-human pet, they require their owners to take at least a modicum of responsibility in their maintenence. Which means- for their sake and ours- that we must control them at all times. Sadly, this fact seems lost on many of my own neighbors, as was demonstrated this very morning, in a sudden encounter that portended potential bloody disaster. Read the rest of this entry →