Apple nano Money

Finding checks in the mail is always fun, but if I knew it would take this long to get my Apple iPod nano scratch settlement money, I would have asked for $40.00 off the purchase of a new Apple iPad.

Don't Pepper Spray me Brotender!

This is what happened last night. My friend David and I went to Trinity nightclub in downtown Seattle at around 9:45pm (Wednesday night is free cover and $3 beers). We go in and the bartender immediately checks our IDs. The bartender notices I have a half empty plastic bottle of Cha Dao Black Tea and Coffee Yin Yang (awesome drink by the way), and asks me to hand it over. I don't really understand why, but I reluctantly do so. Then I jokingly say to David, "I guess they have a no tolerance policy here". The bartender overhears this and gets really angry. He basically says if we don't like it we can leave. I feel the bartender is being a dick, so I ask to see his manager. This seems to piss him off even more. He says that it's not possible and then tells us to get out.

At this point, I feel the bartender is being a total douchebag. I go with David past the bar area and walk to the dance floor area looking for someone less dickish that I can talk to. To my utter surprise, the bartender has followed me and he's carrying a bottle of pepper spray and is threatening to use it on me. I really don't want to get pepper sprayed so David and I quickly leave.

I realize that you're only getting my side of the story here, but I just want to highlight two things that can be confirmed by the other patrons and David:

1. The bartender chased after me with a bottle of pepper spray in his hand and threatened to use it on me.
2. I never made any threats, or even hinted at violence or getting physical. I made it clear to the bartender that violence was the last thing I wanted.
   

tl;dr - Bartender at Trinity goes on a power trip and threatens to pepper spray me. I never once indicated a desire for violence or physical confrontation.

On a lighter note, I find it funny that I seem to be prone to bad luck whenever I go out on my birthday.

4 Things the Post Office Can't Do

The post office recently failed to deliver a package to me. In trying to understand why, I've discovered 4 things that the post office simply cannot do.

1. Deliver my package.

This is the online tracking page for the package in question. Notice how it made it all the way to Bothell, WA (where I live), but it was never actually delivered to me. Instead it was marked "Return to Sender" without my knowledge.


2. Explain why they can't deliver my package.

So I called my local post office looking for an explanation. After getting tossed around their phone tree a few times, the response I got was: generally, a package getting marked "return to sender" means there's something wrong with the address.

3. Help me figure out what went wrong.

That's alright I think, mistakes happen. However, when I then ask what the incorrect address was that caused the package to be marked "return to sender", nobody can answer me. I'm beginning to smell some BS. I also checked with the seller later, and they confirmed that they shipped it with the correct address.

4. Fix the mistake.

I don't really care whose fault it is, I just want my package delivered. So I ask them to correct the address and deliver it to me. The package is literally in the same town as me, so I figure this can't be that hard of a request. It turns out this is impossible. After getting escalated three times, the response I got was along the lines of: our system is not capable of doing such a thing.

Well, thanks post office, I hope you're happy. The sender is now sending me the package again, this time via Fedex.

Things That Don't Exist in Reality, Suck

I've been searching for a certain poster from the movie "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs". It's the one with Nikola Tesla being a badass rockstar. The artist, Pete Oswald, has kindly provided a digital version on his blog.



But I really want to buy a real-life version to put on my wall. So far, the closest thing I could find is in the top-right corner on the back of the Cloudy Artbook.



Update: I'm not the only one that wants it apparently.

Depressing Chart

Source: [OkCupid Blog]

Closed

Wow, homedepot.com and lowes.com are both down right now. Does nobody want my money?

Light Bulbs of the Future

These are the light bulbs of the future

• 90% less energy than incandescents
• 50% less energy than CFLs
• Cool to the touch
  
• Lasers (actually no, it's just LEDs)

Update: Okay, it's been less than a week and this lightbulb is already dead. I switched on the light, it flashed for a second, then went out, never to come on again. So much for energy efficiency.

Christian Bale goes American Psycho (in Real Life)

The Dark Knight is one of my favorite movies. And Christian Bale makes for a pretty good Batman. But after seeing Christian Bale in American Psycho (a movie that I definitely do not recommend to anyone), I've never been able to think of him in the same way. I mean, that movie was just grusomely violent in a Hostel or Texas Chainsaw Massacre kind of way. Is it possible portray a character disturbed enough to stick a kitten in an ATM without having a few issues yourself? Well, the answer is apparently "no" as demonstrated in this audio clip of Christian Bale losing it on the set of his latest movie.

I guess he wasn't acting in American Psycho after all...

Newspaper Falls for Chain Email?

I found this image with statistics about the 2008 presidential election in my local newspaper. The data implies that Obama stole the election. It didn't seem right to me, and a simple Google search found that it was indeed a hoax that originated as a chain email. Professor Joseph Olson, who was quoted in the article, even has a disclaimer on his website that says,

"There is a series of e-mails floating around the internet dealing with the 2008 Obama/McCain election and the 2000 Bush/Gore election, remarks of a Scottish philosopher named Alexander Tyler, suicide rates, or ANYTHING ELSE. Part of it is attributed to me. It is entirely BOGUS as to my authorship."

So it's pretty apparent that the whole thing is false - something that took me about five minutes to discover. The real question is whether the Mill Creek View has a right wing bias, or if they're just stupid enough to reprint anything they get in an email without any fact checking at all.

Why I Hate Benjamin Button

Disclaimer: This is all my opinion. People are allowed to have different opinions, so don't get upset.

The only thing curious about "Benjamin Button" is how so many people consider it to be a great movie. For me, it was slow, uninteresting, and lacking depth. Most disappointing is that this should have been a great movie. When I heard that the main character is a guy who ages in reverse, I thought of "Memento". When I heard that the director is David Fincher, I thought of "Fight Club" and "Se7en". When I heard that the writer is Eric Roth, I thought of "Forrest Gump". When someone who saw the movie told me that she cried her heart out, I thought of movies that have made me cry (I won't list them here). The point is, all of these are great movies because they are wonderfully deep and thought provoking at a philosophical level. The problem is, when you see "Benjamin Button" with these gems in mind, you're going to realize you're not watching another gem, instead you're looking at an ordinary lump of coal.

Note: Mild spoilers after this point.

My main problem with "Benjamin Button" is that you don't feel anything towards any of the characters. I was really hoping to gain some insight into how aging in reverse affects someone. After watching the movie, all I've learned is that they would be a pretty normal, albeit a bit boring, guy. Where's the drama, the excitement, and the conflict in this movie? When someone told me that you can kind of see there's going to be problems from the premise of the movie, I thought she meant a large, complicated, and involved problem. I didn't realise the "problem" she was talking about was the totally obvious one that Benjamin gets younger and eventually dies. That's really what the main conflict in this movie was about! And honestly, how is it any different from him growing older and eventually dying? It's so obvious that a blind man could have seen it coming!

The whole movie is like a collection of loosely related events. It watches more like a dry documentary than a Hollywood blockbuster. You'd think, with how slow the movie is, there would be amble time for character development. But the events do little to explain the characters motivations or thought processes.

I'm not a particularly insightful guy, but this movie failed to surprise me in the good way. And honestly, was anyone really surprised by the "surprises" in this movie? Was it not obvious from the moment you heard his name, that Mr. Button was Benjamin Button's biological father? And was it not obvious that the woman reading the diary was going to be his daughter? What did surprise me however, was all the plot holes. I'm not even talking about the impossibility of the whole premise. But didn't it seem odd that throughout Benjamin's whole life, no one was really curious about his condition? No reporters or doctors inquired about him at all? And why did he never talk to his sister. Did he really hate her that much? I don't know because of the complete lack of character development!

With all that said, I actually had a wonderful time watching "Benjamin Button", but for reasons entirely tangential to the movie itself.

Cold and Waterless

Sometimes you don't really appreciate something until it's gone. Running water is definitely one of those things. I got up this morning to discover that all the faucets in my house were kaput. I suspected frozen pipes, and I went to work hoping they would thaw on their own. No such luck (see picture of still frozen gutter drain).

At least I have plenty of bottled water...

The Truth About the 3G iPhone "Price Drop"

To no one's surprise, Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone at WWDC yesterday. 3G, and GPS are the two big features.

There was also mention of a $200 price drop, from $399 to $199. But unlike the first price drop from $599 to $399, this one is all spin and BS. This price drop is due to the phone being subsidized by AT&T, and you're actually going to be paying more in the long term. What Jobs didn't mention at the keynote is the 3G data plan is $30 a month, which is $10 more per month than the Edge data plan. Over the lifetime of the two year contract, that adds up to an additional $240. Hmm, that price drop now looks like a net $40 price increase.

If you're thinking about just buying the iPhone, and unlockling it to go with another carrier like T-Mobile, you can forget about it. Apple has changed their activation policy. You now have to active the iPhone at the store. No more at home iTunes activation, no more online ordering. Looks like AT&T has gotten smart to all the unlocking that's been going on.

How Good is a $70 Bike?

As a test run, I rode my bike to QFC and back, about 4 miles round trip. I tried to stay off the main roads as much as possible, as I'm still scared of cars. Overall it went pretty well, with some exceptions.

1. The seat was really uncomfortable. It felt like I was sitting on a bumpy, sharp rock. Not fun.
2. The brakes wore down to the point that they were unusable. I almost hit a fence going down a hill because fully squeezing both brake levers did hardly anything.
3. Finally, my 18-speed bike is more like a 6-speed bike. Let me explain. I have a left shifter labeled 1, 2, 3 and a right shifter labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 for a theoretical combination of 18 speeds. In practice, I'm not supposed to use the extreme gear combinations where the chain is not in a straight line. This eliminates 8 combinations: 1-4, 1-5, 1-6, 2-1, 2-6, 3-1, 3-2, 3-3. Then, to make matters worse, I've never been able to successfully shift the left to 3 or the right to 1, eliminating another 4 combinations: 1-1, 3-4, 3-5, 3-6. This leave just 6 combinations that I can use: 1-2, 1-3, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5.
   

Buying a Bike at Walmart

I finally got a bike! I considered getting a cheap one off craigslist, but most of them were surprisingly expensive. So I got this 26" 18-speed mountain bike for about $70 from Walmart.

Shopping there was painful, as usual. The bike I wanted was on the top, and it was apparent no associate was going to offer to help me get it down. The woman I finally drafted to help me did not look happy about the job at all. She got a ladder, realized it was too short, then disappeared for 15 minutes to get a bigger ladder. Once she returned, I offered to just use the ladder and get it down myself, saving her the trouble, but she said it was against store policy. While she was trying to get it down, I seriously worried for her safety and wondered why a more in-shape associate wasn't doing this.

All together, it took 30 minutes to actually get the bike down. Then while I was riding the bike to the cash registers, another associate told me it was against store policy to do so. How else was I supposed to test it? Finally, as I'm walking my bike out of store, another associate tells me to stop. At this point, I just want to leave the store as quickly as possible, so I ignored her, knowing that I have no legal obligation to stay in the store. She actually ran outside after me and grabed the bike to stop me. I considered arguing with her, but instead just showed her the damn receipt.

Did I mention how much I hate Walmart?

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

I'm not a big baseball fan, but with a little arm twisting, I was dragged convinced to attend my first baseball game last Tuesday. The Mariners beat the Kansas City Royals 11 to 6. Apparently, they also set a record for most suicide flys in a game or something. I'm not sure because it was difficult to follow what was happening due to the fact that I was freezing to death the whole time.

How Not to Buy Dance Pads

I wanted to play StepMania the free, open-source, awesome dancing rhythm game for the PC. In order to do so properly, I needed a dance pad (playing with a keyboard doesn't count). Here's where things start to get complicated.

Instant Gratification

When I get an idea into my head, I like to act on it right at that moment. That's why the first thing I did was drive to some brick-and-mortar stores. I went to Fry's, Best Buy, and Walmart, hoping they would have dance pads - and I was right - just none that were compatible with the PC. So I go home and order from Amazon. I order a cheap Red Octane PlayStation 2 dance pad, and I also order a PlayStation 2 to USB converter.

The Worst Present Ever

You know that feeling you got when you were a kid right before Christmas? Anticipation mixed with anger over why you can't have your present now. That's how I feel whenever I'm waiting for a delivery. Of course, none of it matters when the day finally comes and you're holding the package in your hands, ready to rip it open. That moment, is the best moment of all - except of course, when you get clothes instead of an xbox360, or in my case, the thing doesn't work.

I plug the dance pad into the PS2 to USB adapter and plug that into my PC. I configure the inputs in StepMania and then use the pad to navigate to and start a song. So far so good. When I'm trying to play the song though, I find I'm missing all the left-right and up-down jump steps. Thinking it's a problem with my dance pad, I try to smooth it out, but no luck, it's still broken (or so I thought - more on this later).

Two for the Price of Two

After waiting for a week for my dance pad, only to find that it doesn't work, I get a little angry. I'm not the best decision maker when I'm angry, so in hindsight, driving back to BestBuy and buying another dance pad may not have been the best decision. But anyway, that's what I did.

Faulty Diagnostics

So I'm back home with my new dance pad ready to play some StepMania and what happens? The dance pad I just bought doesn't work either. It has the same exact problem. Since I had bought a different brand and the bug was too similar to be a coincidence, it can only mean one thing. It wasn't the dance pads that were faulty, it was the converter!

After the euphoria of my great revelation wears off, I'm even more upset. This means I bought an extra dance pad that I don't need, and the worst part is I have to order another adapter (since no conventional stores seem to have it), which means another week of agonizing waiting! By this point, I'm ready to give up, I don't even want to play StepMania anymore.

Google is Your Friend

Just for kicks, I do some searching, not really expecting a solution to my problems. How wrong I was to underestimate the power of the internet. StepMania has a wiki, that wiki has a page devoted to all the different USB converters, the one I purchased is on there with a comment talking about my exact problem and a very simple fix.

The fix?

Press the Up, Start, and Select buttons for 3 seconds to put it in multistep mode. -o-

Verizon Sucks

Okay, all the things I said earlier about Verizon having good customer service are hugely offset by this. I just looked at my credit card statement and discovered that they charged me $158.88 for the FIOS in the month of November. It should be $49.99 like all the previous months. I have no idea why I was charged an extra $108.89. This has been irritating me all morning and I haven't gotten any answers.

My FIOS information doesn't show up when I log into my account at verizon.com, probably because they did something screwy when I canceled my landline with them a few months ago. I've been on hold with their customer service number for a good half hour. I guess they don't have anyone to work on the weekends.

No More Long Office Episodes

After 4 consecutive hour-long episodes, I thought that my favorite TV show, The Office, had made a permanent switch to this wonderfully longer format. Unfortunately, I was misled, for the 5th episode of the season is back to the regular 30 minutes.

You know how your brain adapts to drugs like caffeine and morphine, so that you need higher and higher dosages to cause the same effect, and if you decrease or stop you dose, bad things happen? Yeah, that's what I'm feeling right now.

Missing Candy

I went to the store to do some grocery shopping. There was a bag that caught my eye advertising 155 pieces of assorted candy goodness. That's a lot of candy - so I bought the bag.

When I got home, the first thing I did was sort and count my loot. Here's my candy distribution:

Hershey's Milk Chocolate        20
Jolly Rancher Hard Candy Stix   27
Jolly Rancher Double Blasts     46
KitKat Crisp Wafers             20
Twizzlers Mini-Bars             20

Notice anything strange here? The total is only 133 pieces! That's 22 pieces or almost 15% less than the advertised 155 pieces! Now why would the Hershey's Company advertise such a specific number, but deliver 15% less than promised? Is this an innocent packaging mistake or are they purposely cheating all of their customers thinking no one is going to bother counting their candy?

Hey Valve, Where's Team Fortress 2?

It's 10:56PM on the west coast right now - and still no Team Fortress 2. Valve has about an hour left to keep their promise of a September 17 beta release.

Update: It's now 12:00AM on the 18th. Valve has officially missed their deadline. I gave them my money for nothing!