This morning I was watching a few parodies on the cult of mac. Most of them were done by amateurs who in my opinion did a good job making the movies but… The movies were just stupid for the most part. Really the only one I found to be funny was one that used true Get A Mac footage and created a Brokeback Mountain parody. The best Get A Mac commercial spoofs I have found were the ones on the TruTV website. They were humerous and very good quality.
There is a defenite battle going on between Mac and PC and well.. Get over it Mac is just dominant Well now I cannot say that because I do wish my G5 was a Mac Pro so that I could play games.
Apple has released 3 new ad’s under the Get A Mac campaign. In my opinion they are not the best of the bunch, however they are still ok. The first one is a gift exchange where Mac gives PC a picture book created in iPhoto and PC really wanted a C++ GUI book. PC in turn gives mac the C++ GUI book.
The second of the 3 ad’s is probably the best in my opinion. They open with the Hi i’m a Mac, however the pc says hi buy a pc rather than i’m a pc. Trying to push the fact that PC needs people to buy more of them as the sales are dropping. It’s kind of funny in a geekish way.
The third ad is where PC comes out looking like he just took on the kid in the movie Home Alone. His hair is a wreck, he is worn out, all because he had to deal with 10 year old kid’s who do not have checkbooks to balance.
I was going through my E-Mail today and I read the following joke.
I have never understood why the sexual urge of men and women differ so much… FOR EXAMPLE: One evening last week, my wife and I were getting into bed. The passion starts to heat up, when she eventually said “I don’t feel like it, I just want you to hold me.” I said “WHAT ? What was that?!” So she says the words that every husband on the planet dreads to hear… “You’re just not in touch with my emotional needs as a woman enough for me to satisfy your physical needs as a man.” She then responded to my puzzled look by saying, “Can’t you just love me for who I am and not for what I do in the bedroom?”
Realizing that nothing was going to happen that night, I went to sleep… The very next day I opted to take the day off of work to spend time with her. We went out to a good lunch and then went shopping at a very big department store. I walked around with her while she tried on several different very expensive outfits. She couldn’t decide which one to take so I told her we’d just buy them all. She wanted new shoes to complement her new clothes, so I said “Let’s get a pair for each outfit”. We went onto the jewelry department where she picked out a pair of diamond earrings. Let me tell you…she was so excited. She must have thought I was one wave short of a shipwreck. I started to think she was testing me because she then asked for a tennis bracelet when she doesn’t even know how to play tennis.
I think I threw her when I said, “That’s fine, honey.” She was almost nearing sexual satisfaction from all of the excitement. Smiling with excited anticipation she finally said, “I think this is all dear, let’s go to the cashier.” I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out, “No honey, I don’t feel like it.” Her face just went completely blank as her jaw dropped with a baffled “WHAT?” I then said “Honey! I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while. You’re just not in touch with my financial needs as a man enough for me to satisfy your shopping needs as a woman. ” And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me, I added, “Why can’t you just love me for who I am and not for the things I buy you?” Apparently I’m not having sex tonight either.
This is just too much, I was laughing so hard I almost woke up my girlfriend.
I am not sure what is worse calling into a support line and getting someone who can speak english and is utterly stupid or getting someone from India which you cannot understand. Today I called into Comcast to get assistance with my iSight (it previously worked before the migration from Adelphia to Comcast). It is leading me to believe that Comcast is blocking a port required by the iSight or iChat. While on the phone with the guy who was utterly stupid I told him what was happening, here were his responses.
Oh you are on a mac, open system preferences. Do you see the iSight listed there under Hardware?
Are you trying to use the iSight with Comcast Services?
Oh you need to contact your 3rd party video service provider as we do not block any ports, the company is like Vonage!
I am not sure how much more laughter I could possibly get from a companies support staff. The second response is just too much. No I am using Time Warner, I just thought I would call and harass you for a while to waste time before I called them. The last response in the above messages came from a senior agent. HOW DID HE GET THAT JOB? This is just too funny. Once I told him it was video over AOL IM (what I am using through iChat) he insisted that it was not them and that it was something else. How can 2 computers whos configurations have not changed all of the sudden stop working when the only thing that changed was the cable provider.
I instantly requested to speak to a manager I cannot take these stupid answers from people who just want to hit the end call button but have to keep professionalism. Before asking to speak to a manager I asked the support agent how the Senior Technician got his job because his answer to the problem was the most idiotic answer I have ever heard. He basically said I cannot say much sir. HAHA.
I am currently on hold. do de do de doo, bada bap bap bah.
They answered and this guy seems to be a bit more knowledgable but wants me to reboot my computer. Oh wait I would have never guessed they are trying to blame my router as the issue. I have to remove the router from the setup and try that. Whew I wish I would have thought of that. I told them I have already tried that and it did not work… Well try again was the response.
I am sorry but I have never had support techs ever be this incompetent.
I apologize to everyone. Lunarpages (my web host) told me that they had to move me to a different server to increase the site performance. I notified them that there had to be no downtime however they obviously did not check thier work. Yesterday I noticed that the site was down, it was an issue with the WP-Cache installation. I think i have fixed that but I am still having a few other problems that I need to iron out.
I am not sure why Lunarpages did not check thier work. I specifically told them that there were 2 domains on the account and they needed to be moved without interruption. They said they understood. Go figure. Maybe it’s time to start looking for a new web host.
Well boys and girls there is a new search engine in town. Snap.com is the latest Web 2.0 search engine that really has a nice “cool factor”. I have yet to decide if the “cool factor” will retain my attention for long, it will also depend on the quality of the search results.
When you first load up Snap you will find a 2 toned web page with nothing more than a search box and a small advertisement for a service they offer website owners and bloggers. However the real magic begins when you start to type in a search term. It suggests search terms as you type. Now that is nothing new Google has been doing that for a while now. What I did find cool was that if you typed something like Joseph Crawford it would give you the option of searching the news for the keyword.
When you submit the search you are presented with something that looks more like an application rather than a website (I know things are going this route with Web 2.0). At the top of the page you will find the search box with a link to the 3-minute demo that will show you all the site has to offer. Also at the top on the right hand side they have a pull down menu where you can alter the site settings for things such as keyword suggestions, adult filter, and probably the coolest Click on Title. The click on title setting allows you to change how the site reacts when you click on a search result’s title. You can either have it replace Snap, open in a new window or open within snap. The first 2 are pretty self-explanatory. The 3rd however allows you to view the sites right inside the Snap site. If you set this and click on a result you will see it load in the Right pane.
So as you may have read previously I was going to check out a few different methods of advertising on the site. Determine which method would give the best return and also not be intrusive to the viewers. I tried Google AdSense and found that to be too intrusive. The good thing about AdSense is that it is integrated with Google Analytics which is a very nice statistics tool. In the future I may give AdSense a try again if I can figure out how to make it look less intrusive with my layout.
After I gave up on AdSense I tried Kontera which is an in-text method. You place a small bit of javascript before your <body> tag and it will link certain terms in your text. It would also show more information when the visotor hovers over the links. The only issue i have found with this is that it does not have a very good return. I think visitors may find it a bit intrusive when they move the mouse around the screen to have all of these info boxes popping up.
I also found that when using IE 6 the links are messed up, they appear out of place. I am going to leave Kontera in place for now but once the site gets listed in Google I think I will give Text Link Ad’s a try. TLA is not intrusive to the user at all and from what i can see will increase page rank and visitors very well. I have started the testing for TLA by buying 6 ad’s for my site. So far though I have not seen many visitors come to the site from any of the TLA’s that I purchased which makes me a bit weary about the idea.
I was finally able to get my comments to accept the paging capability of a plugin that I found. I put the gravatar.com code back in place after limiting the comments to 10 per page. It seems Gravatar is still having some issues. The pages would load slow and that is not something I want to have happen on my site. I have once again disabled the gravatar code until they fix the issues they are having. I am looking forward to Gravatar 2.0 and hope they get the issues fixed soon.
So you may have noticed that my posting on here has slowed down quite a bit. The reason is because we recently relocated. We moved our entire house in 1 day starting at 6:30am and ending at 1:30am. The house is scattered with boxes and we are busy unpacking and organizing everything. I will try to post on here as much as I can however I hope to be back on schedule within a few weeks. Moving an entire house in 1 day was not fun and drained everyone of all the energy they had. I came down with a cold, started to lose my voice. I am also working everyday so I cannot dedicate all of my time to getting this house back in order.
The last apartment we were at we had to get out of. Not only was rent outrageous for this area ($1200 for 2 bedroom though it included everything) but the landlord was losing grip of everything. I will not go into details but will say that it was tough to get him to fix anything that needed to be fixed. The first 2 years were fine but then things started going down hill. We needed to get a skylight fixed in our daughters room because it was the only means of ventilation in that room. I had to hold back rent to get him to fix it. Even with holding the rent it still took him about 20 days to fix the issue. At the same time I was holding rent, my daughters scooter (gas powered retailed at $400) was in storage downstairs. It became locked behind a chicken wire storage area. I told the landlord he had no right and that I wanted it unlocked. Long story short the scooter came up missing before I ever saw it unlocked.
I will not deal with a landlord that will steal from a 9 year old or not do anything about his employees stealing from his tenants. I confronted him and he said it was not his problem if one of his guys stole the scooter.
Now I just find this funny. Microsoft has 2 products that they have really pushed in the last 5 years and they are the Zune and Windows Vista. Vista is not officially released yet but should be soon. What I find to be funny is the fact that the Zune is not compatable with the Vista operating system. Apple get’s flamed all the time for making sure things are backward compatable with their operating system, but who on earth would not support FORWARD compatability?
Zune software is compatible with the following operating systems:
Windows XP Service Pack 2
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2
Windows Vista Windows Vista is not supported at this time. Check back soon for updates.
I am sure that when the final version of Vista is released they will hack it in to work somehow. What gets me is the fact that Microsoft themselves are blatantly stating that the two are incompatable. You can see for yourself at the Zune website.
I also stumbled upon this article which states that Microsoft has said that the Zune will work with Windows Vista once it is officially released. Everyone would be laughing at Microsoft if it would not work once Vista is officially released.
Now here’s the part that really makes me laugh. I am not sure how much worse they could screw this up. I think they were trying to go for the cute romantic kid approach that Apple did with the iPod. Boy did they screw up on this one! If you take a look at the Apple Insider article about this you will see the error window that is shown on Vista when you try to install the Zune. Now the picture they used looks like the girl is in pain as if she was getting run over by a car or something.
Well now I cannot say that because I do wish my G5 was a Mac Pro so that I could play games.
