Rants

social networking is doing it wrong

Friday, 12 February 2010 18:12 Matt O

Gaaaah!

Thanks, Google, for providing a new and convenient way to keep people from visiting my website. I really appreciate it. I do.

I understand that ad money is why everyone wants their servers to be the only ones I visit, but fuck off - I visit because you do one thing well. You don't do everything well, or even passably. Stop being a shitty piece of Windows software from the last decade that with every release did more and more things and became my default program for everything from opening .zip files to watching porn. No. Gmail is a handy and well-coded email app. It's passable as webmail gets, and a great secondary email option. Thanks. But no, I don't want to chat on your servers. And I certainly don't want to Facebook on your servers - I barely want to Facebook on Facebook's servers. And while we're at it, I don't want to email on Facebook's servers, especially not with the shitty, slow and buggy app that they have running. I don't want to chat on *your* servers, either. Thanks. I've been IMing since before you were born, and the other guys do it better. So stop.

Anyway, I'm not going to become some annoying ad guy being all "Check out my new post!" and then posting a link on facebook, twitter, Gmail picasa, flickr and friendster about it. I'm just going to write and assume that if you want to read it, you'll come read it. Of course, maybe that's why my readership is so low. Fuck advertising.

I'm not in a bad mood - honestly. I'm in fucking Hawaii - it's impossible to be in a bad mood here. Of course, I'm also working, so maybe I *am* in a bad mood. I dunno. At least it's Friday. Not that Friday means anything in the world of rock touring, but still, it's Friday. So enjoy it.

The Hoover Dam is closed

Thursday, 28 January 2010 18:16 Matt O

new Hoover Bridge It's true. Closed. But only to pedestrians. And only at some unspecified time that includes the awesome pre-dawn light.
Maybe it's not always closed.

I went over there the other day, determined to use my camera to capture something other than simple snapshots. I drove across the causeway in a caravan of pickup trucks whose owners were going to work. I parked my car in one of the empty lots and walked back down to the walkway that goes across the dam.

More of this story after the jump.

What is happening to Sprint?

Friday, 08 January 2010 06:47 Matt O

I've been a more-or-less loyal Sprint customer for a long time now. Back in 1998, my only connection to the outside world was a Sprint phone - one that didn't work in my hotel or in a lot of other places, but that worked well enough to make calls to people I loved and missed (the list was long). I don't remember my plan, exactly, but I'm pretty sure it was 500 minutes with free nights and weekends starting at 9 and ending at 7am for $50 a month. The phone didn't text (none did), and there was nothing like data or music playing or anything else. The screen barely showed the phone number and the name of the caller, but I did take a call from my dad on a beach in Rio while riding my bike up 6th avenue in rush hour traffic. That's maybe my favorite phone call of all time, or at least it's right up there, so that phone held a special place in my heart.

UPDATE: the last 9/10ths of this rant have been moved below the break because I hated how it made the page look. Bye.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 28 January 2010 12:16 ) Read more...

SNEEZE!

Wednesday, 06 January 2010 07:01 Matt O

Warning - allergy rant grossness ahead. Skip this one, I promise you.

Fucking Car Towed!

Wednesday, 30 September 2009 10:50 Matt O

Came out from dinner last night to find my car gone. Turns out that I'd parked it in a space that wasn't allowed after 6pm. Fuck.

Anyway, that was $280 that I didn't have. Also, now I have to pay the parking ticket, too.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 30 September 2009 10:56 )