Friday, October 28, 2005
Unentertaining and unimpressive
In vivid contrast to the NBA, is there anything less exciting in the world of sports (okay - calling car racing a "sport" is a stretch) than NASCAR? I can understand F1, where the tracks make a difference, and cars have their individual strengths. But NASCAR? Racing in ovals? Zzzzzz...
Hoops Returns
The MLB World Series was interesting, but the personalities involved weren't all that compelling to me. Sure, it would have been nice to see Clemens get a hometown title, and the Killer B's finally win a title, but the White Sox? Bo-ring. It didn't help that we all knew the Astros were offensively inept. I called the White Sox in 5.
I enjoy watching the NFL games, but this is the time when the injuries build up (and there have been a LOT of them this year). There are no compelling NFL stories to date other than my forlorn Cincy Bungles growing up and becoming a decent team with young Carson Palmer at the helm. They won't win the Super Bowl, but it looks like they'll finally make the playoffs
I was pretty happy when pro hockey came back, depite never having laced on a pair of skates in my life, much less swung a hockey stick at someone's head. My fantasy hockey team is doing quite well, Keith Tkachunky's dead weight riding my bench notwithstanding.
But now the real entertainment is on hand.
The NBA starts up next week. My fantasy hoops draft with my buddies is tonight. Everything is right in the world.
Who goes first? Garnett, reduced to being the best player on a pretty crappy team? The boy wonder LBJ, with his newly-beefed up Cavaliers? The Dirk, he of German engineering?
Outside of fantasy, the league itself has a lot of intriguing subplots. Will the Spurs kill everyone en route to a third title? Will The Phil be able to take his pretty crappy LAL team to the playoffs? Will Yao finally become the best center in the NBA, never mind the best player on his own team? Will Shaq finally get that ring to validate his contention that Buss was stupid to trade him and not Bryant? Will Baron stay healthy enough to get the Warriors back to the playoffs? Will LBJ really make us forget about Jordan?
I like all four major leagues, but basketball is my first love, and will always being the most fun.
I enjoy watching the NFL games, but this is the time when the injuries build up (and there have been a LOT of them this year). There are no compelling NFL stories to date other than my forlorn Cincy Bungles growing up and becoming a decent team with young Carson Palmer at the helm. They won't win the Super Bowl, but it looks like they'll finally make the playoffs
I was pretty happy when pro hockey came back, depite never having laced on a pair of skates in my life, much less swung a hockey stick at someone's head. My fantasy hockey team is doing quite well, Keith Tkachunky's dead weight riding my bench notwithstanding.
But now the real entertainment is on hand.
The NBA starts up next week. My fantasy hoops draft with my buddies is tonight. Everything is right in the world.
Who goes first? Garnett, reduced to being the best player on a pretty crappy team? The boy wonder LBJ, with his newly-beefed up Cavaliers? The Dirk, he of German engineering?
Outside of fantasy, the league itself has a lot of intriguing subplots. Will the Spurs kill everyone en route to a third title? Will The Phil be able to take his pretty crappy LAL team to the playoffs? Will Yao finally become the best center in the NBA, never mind the best player on his own team? Will Shaq finally get that ring to validate his contention that Buss was stupid to trade him and not Bryant? Will Baron stay healthy enough to get the Warriors back to the playoffs? Will LBJ really make us forget about Jordan?
I like all four major leagues, but basketball is my first love, and will always being the most fun.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
F**k You Canon. (Warning: Foul Language)
Before I buy stuff, I usually do research online. This applies to books, boardgames and especially pricey stuff like home appliances, electronics, and cars.
I remember spending a couple of weeks researching digital cameras before settling on the Canon A70. It had excellent reviews, great usability for a point-and-shoot, a fine lens, and used conventional AA batteries. So I plunked down my $300 and was happy.
A week ago, I turned it on and was greeted by a blank screen. No matter how I fiddled with the thing, the screen stayed blank and anything it shot was a black screen. Of course, that pointed to a CCD problem. Sheesh. I was hoping that it might be something else so I hit the web.
Lo and behold: it's a manufacturing defect.
Manufacturer's defect on the CCD for a whole range of Canon's products over the past two years. Holy shit. They're offering free repairs, so I call the local office. The lady says you have to bring the camera in for diagnostics, during working hours on a weekday. So that means I have to take a vacation day, which costs more than a new 3.2 megapixel camera at today's prices. Not only that, but it will take a minimum of two weeks to fix the camera, assuming they have the part in stock.
Knowing the range of products affected, and how many of these fucking things Canon has sold, the camera could fucking take months to repair. In the meantime, I'm fucking stuck without a camera, which is fucking annoying. Fuck you Canon. Fuck you and your crappy quality control, and your fucking customer service. Fuck you for making me look fucking stupid. I fucking research for two fucking weeks and get your fucking piece of shit camera and it turns out the fucking most important part of the fucking steaming pile of shit is fucked. Fuck you.
Of course I'll end up taking the camera in anyway, just because I want to be able to harangue them about it until they fucking get it fixed. But I also know that I'm never going to buy another fucking Canon product ever again.
There's a 3.2MP Kodak digital-for-dummies camera on sale. I just might go get one of those. But I have to do research first.
Fuck you Canon.
I remember spending a couple of weeks researching digital cameras before settling on the Canon A70. It had excellent reviews, great usability for a point-and-shoot, a fine lens, and used conventional AA batteries. So I plunked down my $300 and was happy.
A week ago, I turned it on and was greeted by a blank screen. No matter how I fiddled with the thing, the screen stayed blank and anything it shot was a black screen. Of course, that pointed to a CCD problem. Sheesh. I was hoping that it might be something else so I hit the web.
Lo and behold: it's a manufacturing defect.
Manufacturer's defect on the CCD for a whole range of Canon's products over the past two years. Holy shit. They're offering free repairs, so I call the local office. The lady says you have to bring the camera in for diagnostics, during working hours on a weekday. So that means I have to take a vacation day, which costs more than a new 3.2 megapixel camera at today's prices. Not only that, but it will take a minimum of two weeks to fix the camera, assuming they have the part in stock.
Knowing the range of products affected, and how many of these fucking things Canon has sold, the camera could fucking take months to repair. In the meantime, I'm fucking stuck without a camera, which is fucking annoying. Fuck you Canon. Fuck you and your crappy quality control, and your fucking customer service. Fuck you for making me look fucking stupid. I fucking research for two fucking weeks and get your fucking piece of shit camera and it turns out the fucking most important part of the fucking steaming pile of shit is fucked. Fuck you.
Of course I'll end up taking the camera in anyway, just because I want to be able to harangue them about it until they fucking get it fixed. But I also know that I'm never going to buy another fucking Canon product ever again.
There's a 3.2MP Kodak digital-for-dummies camera on sale. I just might go get one of those. But I have to do research first.
Fuck you Canon.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
100 Good Books
A couple of critics from Time pick their 100 best English-language novels since 1923. There's a lot of good stuff on there, but the two big surprises for me were William Gibson's Neuromancer, and the Moore-penned graphic novel Watchmen. These two are mixed in with many of the usual suspects.
Neuromancer was influential and created a sub-genre of sci-fi, which many of us now call "cyberpunk." However, I would never hold it up as a bastion of well-constructed prose. I don't mind it being up there, but it's not really in the league of The Lord of the Rings, A Clockwork Orange and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Watchmen is the critics' validation of "the funnies" becoming serious literature, which many of my generation already acknowledge but the old stuffies try to ignore. Gaiman's Sandman probably trumps Watchmen in the quality of writing department, but I'm happy to accept the Moore opus as the representative of the genre.
Overall, if you only read 100 books in your lifetime and they were the ones on that list, I'd say that you did pretty well for yourself. I've read maybe a quarter of them, and these days I'm more interested in writing fiction rather than reading it, but it would be nice to get to every one of them before I depart this mortal coil.
Neuromancer was influential and created a sub-genre of sci-fi, which many of us now call "cyberpunk." However, I would never hold it up as a bastion of well-constructed prose. I don't mind it being up there, but it's not really in the league of The Lord of the Rings, A Clockwork Orange and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Watchmen is the critics' validation of "the funnies" becoming serious literature, which many of my generation already acknowledge but the old stuffies try to ignore. Gaiman's Sandman probably trumps Watchmen in the quality of writing department, but I'm happy to accept the Moore opus as the representative of the genre.
Overall, if you only read 100 books in your lifetime and they were the ones on that list, I'd say that you did pretty well for yourself. I've read maybe a quarter of them, and these days I'm more interested in writing fiction rather than reading it, but it would be nice to get to every one of them before I depart this mortal coil.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Death by Technology
John August, screenwriter (Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), is also a geek. As a geek, he embraces the cutting edge of tech. He also shares on eof my sentiments - as tech makes it easier for those of us with the necessary knowledge and skills to get more things done, there are inevitably more things we discover that we want to do. Hence, we get overloaded with the plethora of choices in which we can invest our time.
I've been discovering that recently in my forced choices in consuming media. Podcasts have replaced music in my car during my daily commute. I now miss listening to my favorite CDs, and wish that I could pop Andrea or Vladimir back into the CD player. But that would entail falling behind one or more podcasts, and that would be very difficult. So I do without the music. I know that won't last.
I've also fallen far behind on my reading. It's amazing that I've had Anansi Boys at my disposal for over a week now, and I haven't read a single word. I'm stuck in the first third of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" which is a book I beleived I could not put down. A combination of the web, playing boardgames and dealing with my fantasy sports teams have sucked all that time up. Even on the plane, I'm forced to choose between catching up with the Wall Street Journal (I'm only five weeks behind) and seeing films that I missed at the theater, even if it means watching them on a 6"x4" screen. (I chose to see The Fantastic Four and Batman Begins.)
It's not humanly possible to consume all that media, work, sleep, spend time with your loved ones and do it all competently.
Thanks for the capability, tech, but we're all still human, and the day still has no more than 24 hours.
I've been discovering that recently in my forced choices in consuming media. Podcasts have replaced music in my car during my daily commute. I now miss listening to my favorite CDs, and wish that I could pop Andrea or Vladimir back into the CD player. But that would entail falling behind one or more podcasts, and that would be very difficult. So I do without the music. I know that won't last.
I've also fallen far behind on my reading. It's amazing that I've had Anansi Boys at my disposal for over a week now, and I haven't read a single word. I'm stuck in the first third of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" which is a book I beleived I could not put down. A combination of the web, playing boardgames and dealing with my fantasy sports teams have sucked all that time up. Even on the plane, I'm forced to choose between catching up with the Wall Street Journal (I'm only five weeks behind) and seeing films that I missed at the theater, even if it means watching them on a 6"x4" screen. (I chose to see The Fantastic Four and Batman Begins.)
It's not humanly possible to consume all that media, work, sleep, spend time with your loved ones and do it all competently.
Thanks for the capability, tech, but we're all still human, and the day still has no more than 24 hours.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
I Should Be Writing
Mur Lafferty does sound like one of those self-help motivational speakers. However, her message isn't that much different from the main book that I've been using over the year to spark the stories in my head: Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" and its sequels.
It's simple - write. That's why I titled this weblog as "Everyday Insight" - these were to be my morning pages. The mind dump at the top of the day, if you will. No matter what, a half hour at the beginning of the day just to get the words flowing.
Of course, as Mur says, it's easy to slack off. Very easy, especially with a regular (ok, not so regular) job and other distractions. Just don't blame anyone else, because writing is something that's all on you.
I still have my notebooks from that wondrous streak of flowing words I had a couple of years ago. Woke up bright and early at five in the morning. Wrote for half an hour, longhand. My longhand is absolutely awful but I did it because it's what Julia recommended - an organic connection to your words in an age of electrons. I think I've decided that organic isn't me. This is easier. Anyway, after than, an hour in the gym, then breakfast, then a shower, then off to work. It was a good rhythm - I was writing, doing well at work AND I was fit for the first time in a long damned time.
It all came crashing down about my ears when I was laid off and repatriated. So I'm back to square one.
Temporary setback. So I have three weblogs that I write in semi-regularly. I'll begin the long journey back to getting on the wagon completely right here. If it doesn't work, I'll only have myself to blame, eh?
It's simple - write. That's why I titled this weblog as "Everyday Insight" - these were to be my morning pages. The mind dump at the top of the day, if you will. No matter what, a half hour at the beginning of the day just to get the words flowing.
Of course, as Mur says, it's easy to slack off. Very easy, especially with a regular (ok, not so regular) job and other distractions. Just don't blame anyone else, because writing is something that's all on you.
I still have my notebooks from that wondrous streak of flowing words I had a couple of years ago. Woke up bright and early at five in the morning. Wrote for half an hour, longhand. My longhand is absolutely awful but I did it because it's what Julia recommended - an organic connection to your words in an age of electrons. I think I've decided that organic isn't me. This is easier. Anyway, after than, an hour in the gym, then breakfast, then a shower, then off to work. It was a good rhythm - I was writing, doing well at work AND I was fit for the first time in a long damned time.
It all came crashing down about my ears when I was laid off and repatriated. So I'm back to square one.
Temporary setback. So I have three weblogs that I write in semi-regularly. I'll begin the long journey back to getting on the wagon completely right here. If it doesn't work, I'll only have myself to blame, eh?
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