So me and my family went to Walt Disney World the week before Thanksgiving. First time doing it and being responsible for myself. We were quite lucky in that we didn’t have to worry about money. As long as we were wise, we didn’t have a “scrimp everything you can” scenario. But we did a lot of pre-planning, evaluation, organization, scheduling, and general duck rowifying beforehand. It’s been a long time since I’d last been to Florida. A lot has changed since I was a young teenager. And now being the person who pays for this stuff, I thought I’d talk about what I saw. GOOD: Main Street U.S.A. I…
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My Writing Tools
Hey, why not a writing post? Every artist needs a medium to present their art. And they need tools and resources to make that art. In my first post, I’ll talk about what tools I use. In the second, I’ll talk about my writing process. In the third, I’ll talk about my useful writing bookmarks. The Computer I use a Lenovo ThinkPad with an AMD Athlon II. It has a 6-cell battery (lasts about 2-2.5 hours), 15.6″ widescreen, 4GB of RAM, and Windows 7. It’s nowhere near a top-of-the-line laptop, but I don’t need one. In fact, I shouldn’t have one. The last thing I need is the ability to…
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Second Old Man Rant in a Row
I hate to make two crochety old man rants in a row, but half an hour of my life was taken away yesterday by an incompetent “customer service representative” who sounded all of a disaffected female teenager. Listen up all you big companies: we can tell when you’re not being sincere. All this, “I definitely understand your problem.” “I can totally sympathize with your problem.” “I understand your frustration.” We know you don’t give a rip about us. We’re just another customer to you. We know that because WE have jobs too and WE deal with faceless customer units all the time too. Customer aren’t people, they’re customers. They have…
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Blu-Ray Players: Not Necessarily the New
I got the chance to check out a Blu-Ray player a while back while I was on vacation at my in-laws ski condo. This would be the first time I’d seen a Blu-Ray player in a real environment, not a kiosk engineered to try and sell you on how high-detail and high-sound it is by showing Spider-Man versus Dr. Octopus over and over. I saw First Blood and Independence Day, and here’s the verdict. I don’t think getting a Blu-Ray player is necessary at this point. Here’s why: the start-up takes a long time – 45 seconds – and that’s not even loading the disc. Personally, that’s not a big…
