Where There’s A Will
Stop, gather round and listen!
I find myself thinking about recent comments by George F. Will regarding the topic of rape. Don’t worry. I have a barf bag handy. Thank you for your concern.
First, I have to ponder: How much consideration are you supposed to give comments from a grown man in a bow tie?
In case you missed it, much of the social media world has been in an uproar because Will wrote a piece that implied being the victim of rape and/or sexual assault is now a “coveted status.” (If you’re curious to know more you can google it up. You’ll likely find more information than was lost in the Library of Alexandria.)
For his part, the very next day Will was quippishly waxing poetic that “intellectual whiplash” from “crimson liberals” is an “occupational hazard.” Oh, boo hoo! Yes, he’s saying he’s the pundit equivalent of Emperor Palpatine. “Everything is proceeding exactly as I have foreseen.” And no, these aren’t Will-ish air quotes, these are damn real quotes.
Ah, to be insulted by such a wordsmith. I was going to be offended but then I noticed the elegant use of language. You! Now I’m just happy about it. What an exhibition of rapier-like wit. Why, what a privilege and honor to be skewered by the likes of you!
Continue reading →
Embedded: Twitter puts outage
Hide and seek. Did I scare you?
Earlier this week, Twitter went down. It went down hard. It was scary. I know because I was there. I now officially have the PTSD. At last, I’m finally somebody.
The duration of the outage was about 45 minutes. That’s approximately twice the amount of time Apollo 13 spent out of radio contact when it was behind the moon. I just got a double dose of what it must have felt like to be in Mission Control. And I’m a non-smoker!
It was the longest outage since Twitter’s IPO and the second crash in the last nine days.
The outage was described in the strongest possible terms as the “longest outage since the IPO.” What those two things have to do with each other I have absolutely no idea.
Some in the media took the opportunity to write quippish jokes about the mayhem. (Hint: It was too soon.) Jokes, I must say, that practically wrote themselves.
- “Twitter Suffers Outage During Biz Stone’s Panel at SXSW” – I don’t know what a “Biz Stone” is but I bet it was pissed. Source: WSJ.
- “Twitter Outage Takes Site Down for 45 Minutes, Users Stranded” – I bet a lot of them were forced to hitchhike. Source: Newsmax.com.
- “Twitter goes down, chaos and productivity ensue” – What the fuck are you implying? Source: Washington Post.
- “‘We Experienced Unexpected Complications’: The Language Of Twitter Outages” – Hey, that’s the hip new lingo. Source: Lifehacker Australia.
- “Twitter Goes Down: Something is Technically Wrong” – You have a firm grasp of the obvious. Souce: The Next Web.
- “Twitter Briefly Goes Down, Silencing Millions Of Horrible, Unnecessary Twitter Jokes” – That hurts, that really hurts. Source: Huffington Post.
Again, as your intrepid embedded reporter, I was there on the front lines. What follows are my eyewitness firsthand accounts of the action as it unfolded.
Continue reading →
That’s Rich!
Last week my wife and I were watching CBS Sunday Morning. Mo Rocca (resplendent with fedora) was interviewing immensely rich lady, Eileen Rockefeller.
“How much money do you have?” Rocca interviewed fiercely. He wasn’t about to give in and hobnob. He was there to ask the tough questions.
“I have no idea,” Rockefeller answered. “I don’t even count.”
#Orly!!!
That’s supposed to indicate to us underlings how little she actually cares about wealth? Naturally, by this point, I was rolling around my chair expleting shoutatives. I was attempting to injure myself. Because I can afford that.
Saying you have so much money you don’t even bother to count it is supposed to somehow demonstrate how little you actually care about money?
I’ve never had so much money that I had the luxury of not counting it.
Stand back. I think I’m about to blow!
Continue reading →
Blame It on Roku
Well, well, well. Netflix has had a busy week. First they announced they are raising their rates by 60%. In my humble opinion, in a single stroke, they went well out of their way to create ill will where previously there had been none.
Smooth move, Ex-lax. You just pissed off a lot of people and made them start thinking about taking their business elsewhere.
I don’t want to bury the lead (like I usually do) so I’ll interject this right now: Netflix has been down all day.
Worse, they advise you to visit a page on their website. When you do, they claim that their systems are completely operational and then tell me to call the company that make my Roku device.
“Don’t call us! Call that other company. You know, the company that makes it possible for us to run our business and deliver our primary product. Yeah, fuck them. We’re clever that way. Our Netflix scientists have discovered that pushing our problems onto innocent third parties seriously saves us a lot of money.”
Come to think of it, the Netflix service on the Roku has been sucking some majorly serious ass for a couple of months now. I’m talking about lots and lots of errors. Lots of little images that don’t load. Entire categories that remain blank and won’t let you select anything. And even when the system is working, the service is sluggish as hell, like when adding or removing a series from our instant queue. The refresh time is unbelievable.
Another problem: The streaming service almost never has the movies that we want.
The most recent example of this was yesterday we saw Jennifer Aniston on the Actor’s Studio. They mentioned a movie called The Good Girl. I’d never seen it. So we flipped on the Netflix, did a search and got nada. Another buttfucking courtesy of the Netflix. I think that is like ten searches in a row where search for streaming content has failed.
So what are the primary problems with Netflix right now:
- Useless “service status” accountability
- Buggy app on the Roku device
- Sluggish performance on the Roku device
- Streaming content library is underwhelming
- Downtime is becoming unacceptable (and they don’t compensate for this AFAIK)
And this is when they choose to raise prices? Wow.
I’ll say this. Until now I’ve been a loyal fan. I would have absorbed a $1/month rate increase without complaint. That would have been a 10 percent jump which is still pretty amazing in this economy and with an unemployment rate of 9.2%. I may not have graduated with a degree in business from Harvard, but something tells me the current economic climate may not be the best when it comes to jacking the rates on an entertainment product that competes for increasingly scarce disposable dollars in a budget that is shrinking or under threat in most households.
So today I explored the other channels on my Roku device. Unlike Netflix they all worked just fine. And I got to watch something extremely interesting and unusual.
By the way, if you want to find the status of the Netflix service, there is a way to do it even though Netflix provides none. Go to a website called “Down Right Now” which uses “crowd-powered service monitoring.” Sadly this a website like this fills an important niche as service providers fall woefully short.
http://downrightnow.com/netflix
I’m not quite ready to give Netflix my lowest possible rating but they had better watch it, because they are getting very close.
Twitter 101: Reply vs Mention
Is that a reply or a mention? Either way, I hope I don't step in it!
I really enjoy the Twitter. It’s the special place reserved for most of my … ahem … wit. (If I do say so myself.) If you don’t follow me on Twitter I dare say you are missing a lot of what I have to offer.
I think it’s an art form. The 140-character limit is perfect for bite-sized chunks of humor that wouldn’t justify a full blog post. I think the micro-blogging idea was rather brilliant.
True, there is a lot of bullshit on Twitter. Like location tweets. “I’m at Starbucks.” Well now, goodie for you. I guess we know you are a venti-sized ass. “I’m at the stadium watching XYZ sporting event.” And you’re tweeting about it while you’re still there? I call that a lose-lose. “I’m at Ye Olde Fancy Restaurant.” What? You didn’t include what you’re eating? Loser. “I’m at Walgreens.” Holy shit! Must be time for suppositories?
Twitter. The new way for those who think they are the super-trendy to be seen. At least virtually. Continue reading →
Updates about: Alert status and Facebook Safety
In my last post I had elevated Abyss Negativity Alert Status to “Game Over.” That is no joke. We are currently operating at 103% of maximum negativity capacity here in the Abyss. I shit you not.
Maximum negativity status is always a special time. It is an exciting time. I can often be heard to exclaim during times like this, “Vive la festival!”
Back in July of this year, I had also posted about how to be careful on the internet and with your Facebook. I recommend you check it out if you haven’t already. The post is entitled I’m sick of worrying about the bad people.
Apparently there are still some people out there who haven’t read my blog. (I know!) These unwitting fools fell victims to crooks who used Facebook to identify when their homes would be vacant so they could be burgled. I call the awesome power of technology helping people. Just like the way the Terminator does, too.
DO NOT USE FACEBOOK, TWITTER, YOUR BLOG OR ANYTHING ELSE ON THE INTERNET TO LET PEOPLE KNOW WHEN YOU ARE GOING ON VACATION AND/OR WILL BE OUT OF TOWN.
It’s that simple. If you want to blow off your narcissistic energies and yell, “Hey, internets! Look at me,” do it the smart way. Write about it after you get back! People will be just as happy to be bored by after the fact as they would before. (Trust me on this.)
Today’s heartwarming tale of goodness is inspired by something along these lines.
Police recently caught some burglars in New Hampshire who used Facebook status updates to find out when people would be gone and then burgle their houses. I bet these victims will think twice the next time they get the urge to shout to the internet ahead of time about their upcoming trip. (At least I hope they will.)
My wife and I recently took a three-day weekend for our anniversary and you can bet your ass Facebook and the blog knew absolutely nothing about it. Period. Bar none. I waited until we were back home before I wrote it. I’ll bet you all can still remember where you were and what you were doing when I finally broke silence about it.
So these burglars reportedly hit a whopping 18 homes (or more) and were caught by police with stolen property estimated to be worth $100,000 to $200,000 in value. Wow.
Here’s the obligatory “stupid dumb criminals” part of the story:
According to local police, investigators tracked down the burglars by listening for the sound of a specific kind of fireworks stolen from a home. When they heard it, they apprehended the suspects and their loot. (Source.)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! That is the best belly laugh I’ve had all day! Ha ha ha ha ha!
Edgar Allen Poe would probably call this something like “the dumb robbing the dumb.”
The moral of this story: Listen to Tom you should. Hmm! About your safety Tom cares. Hmmm! Negative he may be but cares he does. Hmmph! For you he writes his blog. Read more you will. Yes? Hmmm!!!*
*Celebrity voice impersonated.
Shouts from the Abyss 
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