Smokers are assholes
Loud pipes make your neighbors think you are an asshole and hope that that stupid half-helmet doesn’t save you when the inevitable happens.
When I read the comments on /. or Verge or Giz or some other site [1], there’s always someone piping up about how real techies use Android or Linux and only fanboys, poseurs, and weak-minded sheeple confused by marketing would buy an Apple. Only marketing sells Apple, not technical proficiency or good value [2]. SJ wasn’t a techie, he was a marketing genius, and TC’s skills lie not in making technically superior devices, but in making them fashion accessories.
Then I look around the room at the place where I work, which seems to have the best record in this solar system for sending things to other planets and making them work. Pretty much everyone has an Apple marketing device, I mean iPhone, and as of a few years ago, 50% MBPs. Higher now. Lots of the hardcore Linus fanbois have switched over [3].
No one would accuse anyone here of being a fashion victim [4].
[1] Never read the comments.
[2] Never mind that one of our missions still keeps some Mac IIci’s around to compile the hand-written compiler, or that my neighbor still runs stacks of Titanium PBG4s, or that I have an iPhone 6 (2014 – still gets updates), the original Retina iPad (2012 – stuck on iOS 9 I think), Mini (2008 – 10.6), Ti G4 (2002 – 10.4?), all of which still work, though the last needs a new battery and backlight.
[3] Lots of SEs still go Win because lots of the SE tools are Win only, and it’s a PITA on a Mac. I got around this by going headless into one of my RDC windows test machines with the sadly demised iTap Mobile, but it’s still a PITA esp. if you are VPNing from offshore. Almost enough to make you carry an Air around with your Lenovo.
[4] I mean, we are in LA, so we’re not talking skinny black ties and short-sleeved white button-downs. More flip-flops and Prana.
Tagged apple, workI travel frequently. I go to some effort to make it look like someone is home – not that I have anything worth stealing unless you like expensive photography books. My TV is still 1080p fer chrissakes. My stereo is from 1982, and it’s not one of the vintage ones that’s worth a lot of money on eBay (MacIntosh was expensive even back then). Still, it’d make my life difficult to replace them and they work well enough. A PITA.
So I have the lights and sprinklers on timers. I stop the mail. I hold the packages.
Nonetheless, I’m gone for a week and I come home to this:
plus a bunch of those goddamn unstoppable LA Times Spanish language HOY! fliers. That’s seven (7) that you can see there, and a bunch more behind the gate and in the mailbox.
Thanks, assholes, for unstoppably advertising that there’s no one home. I can guarandamtee you that 2 Guys From Italy are never getting any orders from me, nor are the house-cleaning services and the tree-trimmers.
It’s for reals this time:
Since about half of the RSS feeds I used to look at are also dead, this is pretty much it for the old non-commercial internet.
When they first came out, I thought daytime running lights were stupid. Either turn them on or turn them off. People should be capable of judgement.
But they aren’t. Americans anyways [1]. Dawn, cloudy, marine layer, drizzle, and every damn car on the road these days is gray, white, or black [2], and they all either 1) don’t turn their lights on so their gray car is invisible in the pre-dawn gray light, or 2) have their brights on and try to blind you so you can’t see the gray car with their lights off right behind them.
[1] Don’t get me started on how Americans just can’t park, even with every new car coming with sensors and cameras. It ought to be easy to park so as to not take up two spaces, but Americans are fundamentally just assholes (see “rolling coal“). “Eh, I’ll just park 9 feet back from the end of the curb, and 8 feet in front of the car behind me. Who cares that that’s an extra spot that no one else can use.” Fuck them. But that’s just an inconvenience – driving invisible is fucking dangerous.
[2] And why can’t I get a damn red car or truck anymore? I can’t even get green. Every time I configure the car I want, it’s gray. Or orange. And I’m not a douche-bro, so orange is right out.
Now he’s snapchatting all his dog buddies. Not sure if my mobile bill will survive.
I just watched a BMW 5 series cutoff a Range Rover and an AMG and I don’t know how to feel.
No turn signals of course.
Pasadena still hates bikes. They make bike lanes to nowhere (Sierra Madre Villa – best bike lane in Pas, goes nowhere, gets driven in by cars, no enforcement. Also see Marengo for about a mile), refuse to pave bike lanes that are guaranteed pinch flats at any speed (Raymond), get buffaloed when they try to make real bike lanes (Orange Grove), and stripe the road to make drivers think there is a bike lane when there is no such thing.
Now they’re posting up signs that actively encourage cyclists to either get doored, or dodge into traffic at dusk:
What other options does that fellow have if someone opens their door? It’s hit the door, hit the deck, or swerve out into those lights behind him. Adios, bicycle dude. I guess it’s his fault for not driving!
Not to mention that the vehicle code specifically allows cyclists to ride as far left as is safe, including taking the whole lane. “Ride Right” is bullshit. Take the lane, dude, but don’t ride next to car doors.
Tagged bicycle, bike, bike lanes, PasadenaIt’s been a long time since I’ve been woken up at 4 AM by a crappy car with a loud exhaust stopping at every house [0].
Or any house.
Small blessing.
Now if I could just get the LA Times to stop littering my driveway with that goddam Hoy! trash… how is that legal even after I emailed and called to get them to stop. But they kept delivering their rag (and kept billing me for it! [1]) to my house in SoPas for two years after I moved to Seattle, so I’m not holding my breath [2].
[0] The last one was a second-hand rice burner with a rattly fartcan exhaust. Thank god that’s gone.
[1] When I called to try to make them stop, their tactic was to ask me if I didn’t want to keep paying for it for the people who now lived at my old residence, or if I wanted to have it delivered to Seattle. No… just no.
[2] Or if I could get the postman to stop delivering the goddam Red Plum etc. even though I did finally get off their mail lists. But it’s not like he checks. He just dumps them until he runs out. And I’m not at the end of the line, so someone else gets the benefit of me going to the trouble of unsubscribing from that junk. That’s got to be against some kind of federal statute, giving someone else’s mail to me.
Tagged newspaper
Fanboi
Lest you think I am a total fanboi, here’s some things that bug the shit outta me:
Seriously, it’s like no one at Apple actually uses their damn devices or they’d fix this shit.
Tagged appleRant Comments Off on Fanboi Permalink