Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

Rock of Ages

Random Thoughts

So last night I headed down to the HiFi Buys Amphitheater (which everyone around here still calls Lakewood, because that was a much better name) and caught the Rock of Ages show: Foreigner, Styx and Def Leppard.

It rocked.

The traffic was horrible, so we missed about 15 to 20 minutes of Foreigner, but we did get there during “Jukebox Hero” and listened to them run through a few more hits. They did not play “I Want To Know What Love Is”, but then, they were the opening act, meant to warm up the audience, so they stuck to the upbeat rock stuff and that was just fine with me. I got to hear “Hot Blooded” and that’s about all I needed.

Then Styx took the stage. Tommy Shaw and James Young are the only two original members still in the band. Chuck Panozzo comes out and plays with them now and then, but that’s it. Still, they played “The Grand Illusion”, “Come Sail Away”, “Too Much Time on My Hands”, “Renegade” and a few others… they did not play “Mr. Roboto”. I was disappointed. Not with the band, they rocked, but I really wanted that song.

During the break the wife went for a T-shirt and I went for drinks. This turned out to be a huge mistake. The line was slow, because like many venues they get volunteers to run their concessions for a share of the take. Some volunteer groups are good at it, some aren’t. The problem with volunteer groups is that they usually don’t have anyone with them who knows how to fix a beer tap. So, while changing the kegs, someone screwed up and all the Coors Light taps were messed up (1/3 beer, 2/3 foam). No one could fix it. Personally, I could not care less, Coors Light tastes like piss, I just wanted a Coke, a water and one of those frozen daiquiri drinks for the wife. But I was in line behind a bunch of people who wanted Coors Light, people who were already drunk. Now, to save time the volunteers could have quickly put up a sign that said “No Coors Light” and been done with it, but instead they waited until people got to the head of the line. One guy pitched a fit and demanded Coors, so the volunteers sent a guy to another concession stand to get some, this was a bad precedent to set, because now everyone wanted Coors from the other booth without having to go to the other booth. Finally, I got to the window, got my drinks and fled. Def Leppard was already on stage…

Def Leppard is on the road partly in support of the 20th Anniversary of the Hysteria album, and they played a little over half the album. Their set list was exactly as listed here (the other bands varied a bit from the this). Its kind of amazing that these guys still rock so well after 30 years of playing and 20 years since they really hit huge. I’d gush more over them, but really this is just another example, like Poison who I have written about before (and may be going to see again next week), of a band that has managed to last based on the strength of both their songs and their stage show. Joe and the guys really know how to pull the audience in, and with the strength of their hit songs the audience that comes to the show really wants to be pulled in. Did I mention this is probably the most crowded I’ve seen Lakewood since 1991’s Van Halen “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” Tour? It was. Like a tightly packed sea of people all raising their hands, clapping to the beat and signing along.

A great show. I’m glad I went.

Part of the Problem

Random Thoughts

The other day I happened to notice that the main probablynot.com page had gotten a couple of new incoming links. Its odd because, honestly, no one really reads that site, they come here to the blog. But I suppose if you were Googling, since the most recent posts are RSS fed to the probablynot.com root site a person might get directed there.

As always, I like to know why people are linking to me, and what they have to say.

The first link was actually from back in July, so I’m not sure why it took so long to show itself, or perhaps I haven’t looked at my own root site since July 23rd. The site appears to be a collection of book reviews. I’ve seen these kinds of aggregation sites before, and I actually think its kind of neat to be scraped for it. Cool.

The second link looked funny. While the first site was a blog called “Crime Always Pays” and the post with my link was “The Monday Review”, the second site was called “Crime Review: The Monday Critical review”. It had nearly the same information. I say “nearly” because it was the same info, but it had been passed through two filters: the first changed some words to synonyms, and the second inserted some ad keywords. In fact, the entire site is just rife with Google Ads, and looking at the profile of the blogger, he has a bunch of similar sites all designed to draw traffic, collect clicks, and (he hopes) generate money.

Looking deeper, the second site copies nearly every post from the first site, up until August 1st at least… which lead me to examining the first site a little closer and noticing the review of mine wasn’t the only review of that same book to be tapped. In fact, page by page digging through the archives shows that it really is just repeating the same books over and over, slightly randomized. The site is chaotic enough to suggest it is hand made, but repetitious enough to belie that and show its true colors of most likely being a bot generated site.

I hate these kinds of sites. An aggregation post or site doesn’t bother me too much, but these automated Google Ad factories piss me off. And now I’m on one. Worse, in their quotes of me, they quoted my link to the book I reviewed with my Amazon Associates ID, so I may actually make money from this abomination.

The thing that irks me most however is that their link uses one quoted line of my book review and the link back to me does not go to the full review, but to the root site. Even now, that post has already scrolled off the RSS and doesn’t show there. Searching the root site you’ll never find that review, its on the weblog subdomain. My ill gotten traffic is being directed to the wrong place.

*sigh*

Oh well… its the Internet. There isn’t much I can do about it.

Product Placement

Random Thoughts

I was watching Flash Gordon the other night. No, not the movie (which is awesome), but the new Sci-Fi Channel TV show (which made dozens of needless changes to the Flash Gordon mythos but has potential if they can avoid more silly crap like the “IMEX”). In one scene, Flash goes to Google some information… no, wait, he doesn’t Google it, he “Snifferbot.com”s it, or something like that.

Seriously, does Google (or Yahoo or MSN or whoever) really charge a ton to be able to use their site in a TV show? This kind of little junk is usually what ruins TV shows for me. How can I ever suspend disbelief when they completely detach from reality like that? I thought companies paid money to get product placement… why are no TV producers taking advantage of having their actors actually drink Coke on screen instead of “Cola”?

Wake up guys. People are not watching commercials anymore. Except maybe during the Superbowl. If you want people to see your products, you need to get people in these fantasy worlds to be using your products.

On the flip side, last week when the esurance animated superspy chick showed up on Who Wants to be a Superhero? I threw up in my mouth a little bit. It was like someone hit the show with an esurance bomb and it got esurance goo on everything. There is a line… please don’t cross it.

Cinematic Cuisine

Random Thoughts

The other night I had lightning strike my brain. No, not literally. I mean that I had an idea, and its a whopper.

I love going to see movies at the theater. There is just something about the big screen and even the crowd (when they aren’t doing annoying things like talking loudly or text messaging) that I enjoy. And while I think ticket prices are outrageous, I’ve learned to modify my habits to get a better deal. AMC does $5 tickets for shows before noon on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. One thing I don’t like about going to the theater is the food.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I love having a bucket of popcorn, candy and a soda at the movies. But the prices are so insane that I will only buy something when I’ve got coupons that reduce the cost down to a more manageable level, or I just have the wife bring candy and sodas in her purse.

I’ve learned over the years that mostly this is because theaters make diddly squat from their box office and rely heavily on their concessions for revenue. This is where my big idea comes in…

Rather than have a couple of overpriced counters of undersized candy and a sprawling game room filled with games nobody plays, why not lease out space to food and candy shops?

The most obvious benefit is that the theaters could set lease agreements to make the space profitable, modify rent as needed. Next, they’d be able to cut their own overhead by reducing staff. A little healthy competition between 3 or 4 food/candy vendors would probably do the customers some good. Lower prices would mean more people willing to pay for snacks, and probably more revenue (trying to explain the “lower prices = more money” concept to some business people is infuriating though) for the stores. Better and more affordable food selection might even increase ticket sales since it might make a night out at the movies a little more enjoyable.

Really, I just don’t see why this couldn’t work out well for the theaters. Someone, please explain it to me if I’m completely bonkers…

Feeling a little beta

Random Thoughts

Two weeks and all I’ve written is a tiny review of a book.

That is not entirely true. I have written quite a bit, however, none of it is publishable. Either because it needs more thought and editing, or because it is about a beta.

A while back I lamented about how I stopped getting beta invites. My PC had fallen behind the curve and slowly had settled at the bottom tail end, dragging behind the curve like a tin can on the car of a couple newly weds. Then we bought new PCs. Then I had to kick myself because I had forgotten to go update the dxdiag on all my beta applications. Properly updated, the beta invites started coming in again.

So, World of Warcraft has been canceled, City of Heroes is on hold, and Lord of the Rings only remains because I jump in now and then (and their content patches look interesting, plus if I cancel I lose the founder pricing, makes me wish I’d just jumped the shark and bought the lifetime, I think they should always allow that to be an option for founders, at the founder price). These days I’m spending all my time on the XBox and playing games that are not yet ready for release.

I look forward to being able to tell you about them. In the meantime, I’m going to finish polishing up some other posts and see what I can do to end the drought.

A Case of the Mondays

Random Thoughts

To be honest, I do not have a problem with Mondays. I do, however, have a problem with all the people who insist on misusing a Monday.

The weekend, Saturday and Sunday, are time off for most people. They relax, they get away from the office and work. For other people, the weekend is time to get work done that can’t be done while everyone else is working. Programming is like this, especially when you are bug fixing a production level program. You can’t make changes to the underlying database in the middle of the day on a work day. You have to wait for late at night, or the weekend.

In one case you are returning to work and are in need of getting back into a work frame of mind. In the other case, you’ve spent the weekend doing one kind of work and are in need of getting back into the normal work mode.

Mondays, used properly, are great for this. On a Monday I like to wake up late, not too much, but about a half hour or hour late. Then I have a good breakfast, something I often skip later in the week. Next I’ll spend some time going through emails and sending out replies. I’ll pull out last week’s paperwork and merge it with the weekend notes, and make myself an organized task list of all the stuff that is still open and is still my responsibility. Just before lunch, I’ll gather up all the easy tasks and polish them. Most of them are so simple that I find myself actually thinking, “Why didn’t I do this earlier?” With the bulk of quick work done, I go to lunch. If I’m at home, I eat and watch some TV; if I’m at work, I eat and chat with coworkers. But in both places, in the back of my mind, I’m sifting and shuffling, organizing and prioritizing. After lunch, I settle in for the long afternoon. Tackle as much as I can in preparation for the rest of the week which is bound to throw me a curve ball or two. This is when I remember why I didn’t do that easy stuff sooner. By the end of a good Monday, the To Do list is half or more done and the coming week has a nice outline of work to be done.

That is how a Monday should be.

It is a shame that so many people insist on trying to cram status meetings and project planning on to Mondays. No one is ever mentally prepared. They are either still too relaxed, or they are just in the wrong frame of mind. All the meetings really do is to force people to rush into action, instead of easing into the week at a brisk walk or comfortable jog, Monday meetings make people hit the ground running… and its why by Wednesday they are begging for the weekend again. And because of the befuddlement and confusion of a rushed Monday, all those meetings will need to be repeated later in the week in some form or another. A giant waste of everyone’s time.

If you are a manager or project lead or anything of the sort, I beg of you to take this to heart. Hold off on those Monday meetings and rush whenever possible. Let your people, in fact encourage your people to, use Monday as a day of preparation. They’ll be much more productive later in the week, I promise.

Useless Technical Websites

Random Thoughts

Most of today I have spent my work time searching the Internet for a solution to a problem that I have. One of the things I have been looking for is information on how to best use HTTP Modules in .NET. Allow me to provide you with an depiction of 99% of the websites I found:

HTTP Modules are great and can do much if you use them well.

When using HTTP Modules, you need to consider exactly what you are trying to accomplish, and then take the steps needed to accomplish it.

In conclusion, HTTP Modules are awesome!

Now take that, make it five hundred or more words and you have a good idea of what I’m getting at. It is an article, written with wonderful verbiage and great care… to make sure they do not actually explain anything. No examples, nothing. Just “This is neat! Its neat because it does stuff! Isn’t that neat?!?” with no bother to actually go into any detail at all about what is does or how to actually use any of it.

And of course, every page is simply overflowing with ads.

Hey you… yeah you, the one who writes pages exactly like the one I described… you are ruining the Internet!

There is just so much noise, I can’t even tell if there is a signal at all anymore…

QuickTime and iTunes

Random Thoughts

I love QuickTime. I hate iTunes. Every PC I get I install QuickTime and all the browser plugins I need in order to watch videos both offline and online. I’ve got some really cool videos I enjoy watching once in a while, so I have to do it.

However, my most recent installation, on my Windows Vista PC, is annoying the crap out of me. I want it to automatically check for updates, but basically every couple days a window pops up and tells me there is a new version out… but it is NOT a new version of QuickTime. It is the exact same version of QuickTime that I have installed, but it is popping up a window to kindly let me know that I can download QuickTime+iTunes.

I don’t want f***ing iTunes. Go away.

Anyway… if anyone knows how I can keep automatic updates on but have it ignore the QuickTime+iTunes, please let me know.