To top off my day today, I came home and received a summons for Jury Duty.  This is just the qualification questionnaire at this point so I’ve not actually been selected but shit, this could not be a worse time to have to do that.  I am buried up to my eyes at work right now and my team is a mess mainly because of their inability to live up to my standards.  I’m pissed off at most of them right now for various reasons and they know it which makes working with them rather tense at times.  All I want them to do is do their fucking jobs.  I want them to work the hours I schedule them, sell things to people when there are people there to sell to, and put stock away when there are no customers.  The job could not be simpler.  I can’t leave them for a single day without walking back into a disaster.  Thank GOD it’s just an internal one and they are so far not pissing off customers.  The sad thing is, most of them are so comfortable in their positions that they don’t understand they can be replaced at the drop of a hat….for that matter so can I.  300 applications a week STILL coming in from people looking for a job.  It’s unbelievable how big the prospective employee pool is at this point but yet, those who are applying?  Out of 300, maybe 5 are potential candidates AT BEST.  When you aren’t even qualified to work as a stocker in a big box store there is a problem not only with the economy but with the entire job pool.  I digress.  So lets all hope I don’t get called to sit on a jury right now.  I really just don’t have the time or the patience to put my life on hold in order to determine someone else’s fate.

I have been able to do a little photography lately.  So click on over to leelanauphotography.com and take a look at the gallery.  I’ve been adding to it recently.

You see, I’m not a fucking idiot like most people when it comes to technology.  I know what I’m paying for and I know what I should be getting.  I know, for example that my computer and my home network is FULLY able to handle the download speeds that I am paying for, in fact, it can handle download speeds 15 times faster than what is even available.  Why do I know this? BECAUSE I’M A FUCKING GEEK AND I RESEARCH THINGS AND THEN SET THEM UP CORRECTLY!!!!! I also know that my HDTV is fully capable of receiving and displaying HDTV and movies and that the issues are NOT coming from a sloppy install job on my part.  I do shit right because I get pissed when it doesn’t work AND I expect to get what I pay for.

So while I’m bitching, I’m pissed with Verison as well right now.  I’m pissed that I live in the middle of the fucking city and I have AT BEST 1 bar of service and NO 3G connection on my fucking $300 smart phone!  But yet, when I leave my house and walk 50 yards to the south, I have 2 bars, when I get in the car and drive to the gas station just 800 yards to the west, I have full connection and full 3G.  WTF Verison, I don’t know whether to be pissed at you or pissed at the idiots who make the decisions up here about where to build cell phone towers.

The biggest issue I have is that if I lived ANYWHERE else (mainly in a city just a little bigger), I would have NONE of these issues.  This area continues to refuse to invest in  technology and they refuse to invest in the infrastructure to support it and I find that irritating as hell as a person who is part of the “connected” generation.  This city will have to address these issues if they intend to stay competitive at all in the future.

OK, I’m done bitching.  Have the weekend off and of course it’s supposed to rain all weekend.  Going to try and get out with the dog to the beach and the cottage, I’ll take a few pics and post them if they turn out.  Thanks for listening!

]]> http://www.leelanauwhippersnapper.com/2009/12/13/climate-skeptic/feed/ 0 http://www.leelanauwhippersnapper.com/2009/11/10/whats-up-folks/ http://www.leelanauwhippersnapper.com/2009/11/10/whats-up-folks/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:16:39 +0000 leelanau2010 http://leelanauwhippersnapper.com/?p=679 It’s been a terribly long time since I’ve written about much on this blog.  I’ve been having a hard time motivating myself to write lately about politics and other such nonsense.  Marriage was lost in Maine by a slim margin and the “every thing but the name” (or marriage-lite) was approved in Washington.  The tea-baggers have been actively tea-bagging and the House of Representatives actually passed a healthcare reform bill by a mere 5 votes only to be told moments later that the bill would be dead on arrival in the Senate.  Obama’s in a quagmire and it appears that he can’t get anything done…or done right…and the liberals in power don’t have the balls to take a stand on anything.  Politics as usual.  On a happy note, Kalamazoo finally did the right thing and passed a non-discrimination ordinance protecting the GLBT community from employment, housing, and public accommodation discrimination.  That was won by a large margin and finally gave those tight-wad conservatives in West Michigan something to think about.  It was a small consolation prize for an otherwise grim election season…thank God it was an off year election and voter turnout was pathetic at best…well, it’s always pathetic in this country when fewer than 50% of the population even knows there are elections going on and even fewer know how to vote in the first place.  Apathy runs this country.

I decided to spend tonight cleaning out my office.  Filing, trashing, organizing….it’s a dam good thing my life is not very complicated.  I seem to be a pack rat like my folks.  I have lots of shit that just isn’t important to hang on to.  I did look over some receipts from purchases this past year.  I’ve spent a shit ton of money this year on toys.  A few thousand dollars to be exact.   New TV, an Apple TV box, a Droid phone, an X-box, a hard drive and other computer parts, Best Buy loves me so much that I’ve become a Silver Reward’s Zone member this year…and as a result I’ve received about $150 in gift cards from them for being such a loyal customer.  Fucking pathetic.  I will say that none of my purchases has been ill-thought out.  Everything I have purchased has been a deliberate decision backed by research and time.  I guess in some ways I’ve been living it up as a single guy now with a good income and a low cost of living.  Luckily for me (and my wallet) everything I’ve purchased can be considered a long term investment.  I won’t have to buy anything now for quite a long time…hopefully.  And I still have money left over.  Perhaps next year I will be able to save enough for a good down payment on a house of my own.  Who knows.

I’ll leave you tonight with a great little ditty from You Tube.

I finally have a day off today, the sun is actually out (although not for long) and I’m trying hard to come up with a plan for the day.  My house is a mess, Gavin the wonder dog is drooling to get outside and play, but my little home is in desperate need of some TLC and a deep clean.  I don’t know if it’s the change in weather or not but I’ve got a fly problem at the moment.  Something hatched somewhere and I’ve had to kill off a whole swarm of these creatures.  I need to find out where they are coming from today because they are driving me NUTS!  So, I think today I might try and go for a hike and take some pictures of the fall colors (which I’ve largely missed this year due to my work schedule) and then spend the rest of the day cleaning.

Good news is on the horizon though for me in regards to my finances.  I’ve decided to go CABLE FREE and I’m in the process of getting myself set up to return my cable box and cancel my over priced subscription services to cable TV.  I have successfully hooked up a computer to my big screen TV and I am now able to watch all of the shows that I would normally watch on TV for free via multiple web sites that stream television shows for free.  One such site is Hulu.com and it is fast becoming a worthy alternative to paid TV service.  Granted, nothing there can be seen live (all the shows I watch are available one day later than the day they air on TV networks) but I’m OK with that since 99% of the time, I am not around to watch live TV anyhow.  The only aspect of going Cable Free that I am going to miss is the High-Def aspect.  Everything on the Internet is in good quality but it’s not truly a High-Definition experience.  That’s OK though, I’ll just save that for my movies where it actually matters.  The most exciting thing about doing this is that it will save me over $100 a month which is a tremendous savings considering that at best, the value I got out of my cable subscription was worth at best about $20.

I’ve been pretty impressed with myself in regards to my finances.  I’ve been able to find ways to cut costs this year by being creative and as a result, I’ve been able to spend my extra money on things that actually have meaning to me, like electronics and other fun toys.  I’ll be the first to admit that my expenses have not gone down at all but I have managed to re-prioritize my spending habits to better suit my lifestyle.  The next goal for me is to re-evaluate my credit reports and finally start to repair the damage I did to it years ago when I was young and stupid with my money.  Fortunately, I’ve had several years now of positive impact on my credit score, nearly every dumb thing I did in my early 20′s has dropped off my report, and I’ve been able to stay on track with debts and bills for several years now.  All of this is in an effort to eventually purchase a home at a good rate.  I’m most proud of the fact that I’ve not had a credit card now in several years and I have no intentions of trying to get one in the near future.  Credit cards are simply bad for me.  They work for some people but they don’t for me and I’m OK with that.  If I don’t have cash, I don’t spend money and right now, that is an appropriate rule for me.

Hopefully I’ll write a bit more in the coming days and weeks.  Just about a month now until Black Friday and things are going to be crazy at work leading up to that.  I have 2 more vacation days that I have to take before December 5 (or I lose them) and I’m thinking I might take a couple of day trips around the area to take pictures in places I’ve not been before.  We’ll see, most of that will depend on the weather which has not been very good lately.  Well, off now to motivate myself to take a hike.

In other news, I turned 35 on Monday and have been feeling rather old lately.  I’ve been working nearly non-stop and my body has been paying the price.  Needless to say, writing in my blog here has not been a top priority.  I did manage to buy myself a birthday present though and it just proves that I’m a big geek.  About 3 years ago I purchased a rather expensive computer from Best Buy and the motherboard blew up not less than 6 months after I purchased it.  Considering the tweaking that I do to my computers, it was just cheaper and much less of a hassle for me at the time to purchase another computer rather than to fix my broken one.  I’ve been toying with the idea lately of getting rid of cable television and the way for me to do that without loosing access to the few shows that I do watch was to try and hook up a computer media center to my television.  With the purchase this past year of a big screen LCD TV, and with a new motherboard installed and actually working correctly in my old computer, my journey to being cable free is nearly complete.  I decided initially to install a different type of operating system called Linux.  For those of you not up with things in the tech world, this is the operating system that is used primarily in the geek world.  It’s open source, completely free, and I’m finding out a bit difficult to figure out how to use.  It does not communicate easily with my windows network so I’ve been learning how to speak geek again for the past few days.  Once I get it set up properly, I’ll be able to share files with my windows machine and I’ll be able to use my TV computer to watch all my favorite TV shows in Hi-Def for free over the Internet.  I’ll provide a progress report as I get things set up.  Yes, I know it’s boring but it will be interesting to look back in a few years on this and congratulate myself for being a complete geek.

So that’s all folks.  Long Live the Bunny.

I’m finally off for the weekend!  This is my first weekend off now in nearly a month and it looks like the weather might cooperate a little bit.  Sunday is the fist day of summer (and Father’s Day) and we are still only in the 70′s up here most of the time if not colder.  We’ve had no really hot days yet this summer.  I’m going to be headed out to the lake Sunday for sure but maybe Saturday too.  I’ll have to see how late I end up sleeping and what the weather looks like when I get up.

Now that the blog is finally fixed, I’ll get back into writing again here soon.  My schedule is finally calming down a little bit too so maybe I won’t be so dam tired.  I’m starting to count the days to my vacation in July.  I’ll be headed to Grand Rapids, Chicago, and Indianapolis over a period of about 6 days.  It should be fun.  I’m really looking forward to Chicago since it’s been forever and a day since I’ve been there.  I’ll be staying with some old friends who came to seem me this past summer up here.  Now I just need to watch my spending over the next month so I can have a little spending money.

Not much else to post right now.  I’ll leave you with this picture I found on one of the blogs I read.  June is Gay Pride month.  This year is also the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots which is considered to be the starting point for the gay rights movement.  Lots going on right now in politics, too bad I’m just too tired to write about it right now.  More later.

DSLReports that Cablevision will be offering subscribers 101-Mbps download service, a new US record. That’s fast enough to download an HD movie in less than 10 minutes. The package, known as “Ultra,” will launch on May 11 and will cost $99.95 a month. Upload speed is 15 Mbps and there are no monthly limits. Cablevision is also doubling the speed of its Wi-Fi service, which is available free to subscribers using hotspots across the Northeast.

OK, for those of you who think your 3-5Mbps download speed on Comcast or Charter (or any other high speed Internet provider in Michigan) is fast, you might want to think again.  The cable companies want you to think it’s fast.  The fact is, the United States lags significantly behind in broadband deployment NOT because cable companies don’t have the means to provide it, but because they refuse to make the investment and they don’t want to take away revenue they get from advertisements on cable TV.  When it comes to high speed Internet, the United States ranks at the bottom worldwide for both speed and coverage.  Even poor and developing countries offer faster service over a wider area than the US does.  Cablevision has finally seen the light and deployed a world competitive broadband package with super fast download speeds for the same price I am paying right now for what I would consider to be pretty shitty service using old and outdated cable lines on a network that caps my speed at 5Mbps download.  I could pay more for 10Mbps service but that would be another $40 a month for really not much better speeds.  Not even remotely worth considering.

Broadband as a medium that consumers actually use is headed in the direction of what Cablevision is now providing but it’s going to be a VERY long time before the rest of the cable companies follow suit.  It’s going to be up to private investors to push things along or it will be up to the government to make it happen.  I’m sort of an unwilling fan of the later option.  My own feeling is that I would rather not have the government involved in Broadband deployment because there are just too many places the government can and will stick it’s ugly-ass nose but if that is what it takes to force cable companies to get their shit together and get the ball rolling than I am willing to put up with it for a while.

Next time you are on the phone arguing with your cable company about their piss poor service and lack of options, make sure you mention Cablevision and the 101Mbps speeds they are offering…do this especially when the cable company tells you they can’t fix your piss poor connection speed because the cable lines are just too old.  FUCKING UPDATE THEM you pathetic dip shits!  It just amazes me that cable companies can steal $125 a month from me and MILLIONS of other people and at the same time just sit on their hands and completely ignore their infrastructure deficiencies.  Someone is getting VERY rich.  WORK ON IT…especially CHARTER CABLE IN TRAVERSE CITY, MI.

Conspiracy of Science – Earth is in Fact Growing – Watch today’s top amazing videos here

Oh how I wish this web site had been around when I was attempting to draft musical compositions (something I suck at).  I hated learning the proper (traditional) styles of composition.  My professors hated my handwriting, not to mention my flat out refusal to avoid perfect traveling octaves in my assignments (among other composition faux-pas).  I’ll readily admit that I’m not a composer and I do indeed get why understanding the rules are important (it’s like proper grammar).  To me, music composition was ALWAYS first about how it sounded to ME the composer.  I had enough experience in classical, choral, and to an extent Jazz music to know what sounded good and what didn’t.  If it worked for what I was composing and it happened to break a rule, big fucking deal.  My professors saw things differently.  I learned a great deal being ridiculed by my composition professors and then given handshakes from my peers after class for doing my own thing and ticking off the prof.  No really, I don’t fault them for their insistence that I learn how to do things correctly.  It was for a grade after all, once I was out of their class I could do whatever I wanted…and I did.  Anyhow, for you composers out there, check out this web site.  If you are still writing in long form (and not using a computer), this might save you a little money.  Looking back, I think if I were in school today in a composition class, professors might treat my anti-rule attitude in regards to composition a little differently considering the evolution of music.  I think my profs were a little put off by me too since they realized that I still saw myself (and was being treated by my peers) as a big fish in a little pond.  My background, stubbornness, and the talent I was willing to express forced them to constantly try to keep my ego in check and that was a lot of work for a few of them.  They knew better than I did, if only I had allowed that to sink in a little further.

So on the same technology lines, I was thinking the other day as I added more friends on Facebook from high school, that my class was the last one in 1991 (my Sophomore year) to officially learn to type using a typewriter.  The following year, Christian Hell High installed a new computer lab and from that point on, kids learned using computers.  It’s crazy to think that in under 20 years, we’ve advanced so much that nearly everything I grew up with (except for Tinker Toys) is obsolete.  It puts into perspective a little what my parents must think about some of the tech toys I show them.

Well, it’s off to bed now.  5am arrives far too early.

I made it back today after 2 days of intensive training with my company over in Wisconsin.  I’m exhausted and I have to work all weekend too.  I likely won’t write again until next week but you never know, I may be inspired by something so just stay tuned.

I found this graphic the other day and think it’s worth uploading due to the screaming the wing-nuts are up to lately.  If you have not been following, gays are now being blamed for being pissed off with the largely religious voting base that in my opinion (and many others who know a LOT more than me) has illegally stripped a suspect class of a fundamental right.  Say what you will about “constitutional” rights and activist judges HOWEVER, the CA judiciary determined that gays were a suspect class AND that marriage was a right they were entitled to (just like everyone else).  There are 3 parts to this government and in these cases the checks and balances ALL WORK exactly like they are supposed to work, it is simply that a vocal population disagrees with the judicial outcome and simply does not understand the decisions (but they sure do when judges agree with THEM now don’t they…).  A predominantly religious base did not agree with that CA decision and successfully (through ballot initiative) wrote specific discrimination into the CA constitution.  The legal arguments out there will draw this out for likely a couple of years but the outcome is pretty well decided and it is again, an outcome that God fearing bigots will not like.  In America in 2008 it is unacceptable for a majority to oppress a RECOGNIZED minority from obtaining and realizing their constitutional rights.  This is not an argument you can win with scripture and I will do my bloody best to resist being a second class citizen of this country.  Ya, OK you can have my soap box now but I intend to push you off of it again.

So anyhow, I’ve built a campfire and I’m trying not to get burned up as the wind blows directly into my face.  Gavin is asleep behind me.  We had quite a busy day today.  We hiked Pyramid Point today.  It was quite busy, lots of people around.  Gavin did well.  I have to practice waking with him on a leash lately, he’s so used to not having one and now that the Parks have started issuing tickets rather than just warnings, I have to keep him on one when we go anywhere in the park…(unless it’s completely deserted).  It was quite a nice day for a hike.  Low 70′s and a little overcast.  I got some great pictures that I will likely upload later on tonight once I go back inside for the night.  After that we went down to the beach for some stone hunting.  I found one Petoskey today.  They are getting harder and harder to find up here.  I think the tourists must have figured out what they were and they are taking them all.

After the beach we went home where I promptly fell asleep on the couch for 2 hours.  I was rudely awakened this morning by someone powerwashing my garage doors.  Apparently those are going to either be cleaned now or painted.  I don’t know which one but they could have at least waited to start that noisy shit until 8am don’t ya think?  Anyhow, that pissed off the dog and I just decided to get out of the house as soon as possiable today.  What I was getting as is that I was still quite tired.

It’s getting dark so early now.  It’s only 8PM and already it is dark…dark enough to make me look stupid sitting here outside with the laptop writting in my blog.  Oh well, at least it’s possiable to do.  Now that Dad is wireless, I can use all my toys inside and out and I can write in my blog while sitting in the boat!!…not exactly but close enough.

I’ll write more sometime tomorrow.  Look for new pictures at www.leelanauphotography.com either sometime tonight or tomorrow.

Time Warner has announced that they will now be testing “metered bandwidth” pricing schemes in a few markets.  They will put a cap on the bandwidth you can consume per month and you’ll be charged if you go over that amount.  Bandwidth for those of you reading who don’t know is the amount of data transfered upstream and downstream (uploads and downloads) between your computer and your internet service provider.  If you don’t use your internet connection for anything but email and basic web page browsing, these new caps won’t mean anything to you and they really wont’ affect you.  HOWEVER, if you are geek like me and you get all your music, video, and on occasion your movies via the internet this is cause for significant concern.  I installed a bandwidth meter on my computer about 3 months ago when I caught wind of the potential for providers to move in this direction.  I wanted to know what my average consumption was per month so when monthly plans are eventually introduced, I could select the one that best suits my needs and so I could start to gauge how much internet access would cost me in the future.  Keep in mind that becuase I’m an early adopter, I’ve paid up to $130 a month for broadband access in the past, and I would think that in some markets today, people are still paying that much a month.  I do not however think that broadband should be costing ANYONE anywhere more than $50 a month.  I consume about 30GB of bandwidth a month, more downloads than uploads but still, that is considerably higher than most people I know might use.  That bandwidth consists of web browsing, email, streaming music, streaming TV and video, and a movie or two via my access to OneBox at Amazon.com using my TiVO set top box.  According to this article, it is only 10GB short of the cap on their best plan of 40GB per month and that plan is more than I’m paying now.

There is somewhat of a war going on right now in the tech world.  On the one side you have the big monopolies (Time Warner, Comcast, Charter, RIAA), on the other side you have the open access activists (of which I am one).  I strongly believe that access to the internet should be treated as a utility with the same quality, speed, and unrestricted access offered to EVERYONE regardless of location (like electricity).  I am a very strong opponent of censorship campaigns pertaining to content on the internet, and I have real problems with forced advertising although I support some advertising methods as legitimate ways to reduce the end cost to consumers.  I DO in fact understand that it costs money to provide internet access.  I’m not an idiot.  In most cases however I’ll pay more for something to get rid of advertising.  On the flip side are these big companies who want to control how we access information on the internet and how we acquire digital media.  They loose money when I watch TV online becuase I am subjected to different advertisers who may or may not be subsidizing my viewing to my particular service provider.  It’s ALL about the money (Again, I’m in sales so I know what that means however, there are other models out there for making money).

So, to conclude this chapter, it’s generally in your best interest to use service providers that do not put restrictions on bandwidth and if it’s introduced if you have the option, you should switch providers.  Increasingly your media will come from the internet in various forms and that media will consume bandwidth at higher and higher levels as everything moves into the HD world.  Cable companies want you to watch movies on THEIR cable services, they don’t want you to download them becuase when you do that they miss out on a critical revenue stream.  Too bad.  I don’t like monopolies and while I generally don’t like government intervention either, this is one area where our government must act to retain low cost access to information and media via the internet.

That said, I am a tech geek in many ways. I always have to have the latest toys. Jirar told me the other day that he was planning on taking back his iPod. I have grown pretty fond of the little mp3 player since my entire music collection is now in digital form. I don’t have much use for a CD player any more. Well, it is his iPod and it would have been hard for me to just say no so I went out and decided to just buy my own. I looked at a few options and it was a toss up between the 80gig iPod classic which would have been large enough to hold my 20gig music collection as well as video and podcasts -OR- the 8gb iPod Touch which is the latest and greatest thing from Apple with an awesome touch screen, WiFi enabled so I can get on the internet anywhere there is an access point (important now that I’ll be moving into town) and LOTS of other toys that are just fun. The biggest drawback however was that it is 10 times smaller in capacity. There was really no significant price difference between the 2, only a HUGE size difference. The iPod Classic would hold 10 times the number of mp3′s that the iPod Touch would.

Well, I decided to go with the iPod Touch. At best, and at any given time, I only listen to around 2-3gb worth of my mp3 files (about 150 songs). My taste in music fluctuates and these things are accommodating enough that I can just rotate my music collection as my taste evolves and changes. And now I can sit in my living room and watch YouTube videos on my iPod.

This thing also comes as a phone but you have to have AT&T as your provider right now and I can not justify switching cell phone providers, especially after I just got a new cell phone too!

Anyhow, I think my recent spending spree is pretty much over now. The last thing I need to do is get Gavin updated on his shots at the vet but selling off my firewood to Uncle Lou will pay for that. The only other thing I have to invest in now is half the fee of a storage unit that Jirar and I will be sharing starting in July. Beyond that, I’m pretty well up to date for the year.

Writing should be picking up a little although I am going into a stretch now of 3 weeks in a row without a weekend off. My assistant is having surgery so in order to keep things going I’ve had to pick up some slack. Lucky for me, she will be paying me back later this summer by working several days for me so I can have a break (even though she doesn’t know it now). Cheers for now!