Out with the old...

In case you were wondering, it's dead, officially. What am I refering too?, well, the VHS format, of course! This week VHS is officially no longer to be produced. For most of you, this will come as an "eh, ok" moment. As it should. Because I pity any of you who do not have a DVD player at this point. I mean, come on! You can pick them up for like $40.00 bucks now!

So, as a side note, anyone remember Beta? Yeah.. my dad bought a Beta back in the day. Love ya dad, but damn, a Beta? Well, I suppose who knew back then. Sony Beta sounded like the way to go I am sure. But Sony got greedy and kept the format to themselves while VHS players were able to be made by, well, everyone else! Ah, I digress though.

Oh, and do not forget for you folks stuck back in the stoneage. February 17th, 2009 will be the end of your rabbit ears TVs when they stop broadcasting over the air signals. Though, please tell me no one is still using rabbit ears on their main TV set... Barbarians..

Goodies and time to use them, finally

Alrighty! So, Christmas was solid this year. Great food, as always. Plus, the woman hooked me up with a new Logitech G5 Laser gaming mouse and Logitech Z-4 Speakers. I have been complaining about the speaker thing, since the ones I bought for her recently ended up sounding a hell of a lot better than my current speakers.

So, speaking of gaming... Yet another World of Warcraft milestone. With the recent expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, Warcraft's subscriber base has gone up yet again. World of Warcraft now boasts 11.5 million players. Yes, holy crap, 11.5 MILLION!! An unstoppable force to be sure.

Oh, that reminds me actually. Since I had a half day today, after working my bazillion hours during the holiday.. Think I will go play some WoW. Seeya!

Merry Fricken Christmas

Finally, it is over!! God some of you people are SO fracking annoying! If you happened to be an extra special case of jerkass while you were shopping, please remember I either told you that we were out of stock of what you were looking for when we were not, or, I sold you stuff that made me tons of cash. Never be a jerk to your salesperson.. Merry Christmas!

The Laws of Life

I ran across this the other day, it was a very interesting read. It is a post of the "The twelve laws of life". I link them HERE for your perusal. I think the guy is on to something. Some of these, I have sorta of always lived by. Some others, are a bit insightful. Bottom line: people and life suck, do not rely on them for your personal happiness. Be a master of your own life.

Some high points:

#6: "Obligations" are a fraud

#7: Expect less from others, and more from yourself

#9: There is no happily ever after in the real world.

Go check it out.. it's an interesting read.

Preach not, brother.

So, the other night the woman talked me into going to see a "Star of Wonder" - a "Celebration of Christmas" held at a local church here in Phoenix. It was suppose to be really cool and a super big thing. Apparently they run this over quite a few days. They even have a video trailer for this thing on the website!

OK, so, we roll out to this thing tonight. First off, this place is a pretty huge auditorium. TONS of friggin people. First thing I catch right off is people stench! Tons of people at this thing, jam packed wall to wall. It sorta reaked in there.. not so cool.

We finally find our seats amongst the trongs of people. The thing starts.. and its.. fracking.. crazy! For a church, this place was set up wicked like. They had three huge big screen monitors above the stage, laser lighting, and camera rigs. Friggin sheep, a tiger, a camel, and an elephant! Yes, an elephant! Singing, dancing, and friggin flying angels! Yes, this joint even had a wire set up in the cieling. Not just one mind you, but like 6! Six people flying around on wires over the crowd!

Overall, pretty cool.. but the thing that killed it all.. the Pastor of the joint came out and preached. *sigh* He came out and he preached. Asked us to pray, asked us to give money, asked us to pray some more.

Fucking killed it. Dude, I already paid money for the seats, you can hold off on asking for more, not to mention trying to convert me to your faith. It ended up being super uncomfortable. Listen, if you need more money for this thing, just charge more for tickets, ok? As for the praying thing.. save it for the people that come to your sermons on Sunday, not people that come to see a Christmas show.

Nice Advertising

I just ran across this on Gizmodo. It is an advertisement for one of Nikon's new digital cameras. The advertising here focuses (get it, focus...) on the autofocus face detection that will search out and focus on peoples faces. A really cool feature that actually works.

Anyways, I am not sure where the advertisement came from. I am having a hard time believing it is a USA advert, since we tend to have a far to prudish society for this. My best guess is Europe.

However, I think it's an awesome ad. Eye catching, funny, and it certainly gets you to look.

You can see it is not only showing that it is detecting the faces of the main subjects, but also all the people who seem interested in watching in the background... (click image to embiggen!)

In case you can not read the tag line:

Nikon S60: Detects up to 12 faces.

You are here, or maybe not

And the Christmas season marches on...

So, today my Garmin GPS yelled at me. It told me that updates were available! Goody! I love updates. So, I went to check out what the deal was. I headed on over to the Garmin website, plugged in my serial number, and it showed me that I could get a new map update...

For $69.99 !!!

Seriously? Really now? $70 bucks for a map update? I mean, cmon now, Garmin. Get real.

I love GPS's, I think they are hugely helpful.. but that is just stupid for a map update. I mean, I can let the map slide for like 3-5 years (how often do maps change, overall?) and then just end up buying a new Garmin with a new map for under $150.00. Just seems like a horrible price for an update.

Dismal Retail

As of today, I officially declare this Christmas selling season a BUST! What? too early to declare that? No way, man. It's already quite visible as being a total fucking disaster! People are not buying worth a shit. The idiots that do buy, end up returning the damn things a few days later, like it just came as a shock to them that they may not be able to afford that item that they wasted an hour of my time talking about.

This is easily the worst Christmas selling season I have ever seen in 20 years. When I lose money in November and December, there is a huge problem there. This is when I am suppose to MAKE more money, not lose it. Completely and utterly dismal situation.

Survival is not assured

Well, I indeed survived the Black Friday weekend. Which is better than we can say for this guy who ended up getting trampled to death by the savages as he opened the door Friday morning at Walmart. What a way to go man, fucking killed by rabid shoppers. You people are fracking crazy!

Taking today off, which hopefully will be half decent. I am hoping for a relaxing day, since for the rest of the month my days off will be few and far between. I really need to get a new job after the holidays, I so need out of retail and out of the public! LOL wish me luck in this job market. Guess I should be happy I still have a job!

On a webpage note, after quite some time I have decided to change my links of interest off to the right side there. When I first started, I had some links up to favorite vendors of mine that I either worked for or liked their products. Well, I probably should have changed them long ago. I have decided to ad links to pages that I use regularly and that I think other surfers, if they do not already know of them, should definitely take a look to enhance your web surfing experience!

Gizmodo - This is a great site to see what is new and upcoming in the world of electronics. From ground breaking to simply bizarre. From consumer to military.

Firefox - Ok, not a website, but a great browser to help you surf the web! Fast, secure, full featured. I would recommend the Adblock Plus add on. Never see a pop up or advertisement ever again! Surfing is SO much better without all that garbage.

Hulu - A site I have mentioned a few times on this site. Great for FREE (and legal!) TV episodes and full movies. These guys rock. Finally someone who gets it.

Wikipedia - Wish I had this thing when I was a kid. The world at your fingertips. A free, in depth encyclopedia that is up to date to the day! Throw in any topic or person or place, whatever, and read to your hearts content.