Happy Holidays

Humbug!

To every fucking spineless weasel appeasing retailer who has made it policy that employees are to issue a "Happy Holidays" in stead of a Merry Christmas, humbug, and fuck you. You're all too happy to profit from the season - oh, I see the displays of candies and trees and lights. I see the shelves, stuffed to busting with trinkets and baubles to buy and give. I see the fucking Santa, on whose lap you want the children to sit, whose picture you want I should buy, cheerfully beneath a sign that says... what, HAPPY FUCKING HOLIDAYS??!? Mealy-mouthed equivocating tools, all of you.

So, too, to all of you who indignantly turn up your nose and insist "Oh, I celebrate Kwanzaa or Chanukah or boxing day or Chinese New Year or Festivus, not Christmas". Humbug. Humbug, humbug, humbug! It is possible, polite even, to recognize an event even if you are not personally celebrating. A "Happy Birthday" even if you're not going to the party. A "Happy Anniversary" even if you weren't in the wedding. It's common fucking courtesy, and that is part of being in the community.

Say whatever you want, I promise I don't care. Wish me a Happy Whatever-Day, and I promise I'll accept it cheerfully, all I ask is the same in return. But when you start getting indignant and telling me what I should be saying instead, I get damned indignant and pretty pissed off.

Closed

Inventory Liquidation - Everything Must Go! We here as Furback Industries are moving to a new location! We don't want to move our inventory, so we're almost GIVING IT AWAY!

In all seriousness, though, TDS is moving to a new server, come on down and join the new digs.

The Dosquatch Says...

Hope to see y'all there :-)

What a Tool

According to the Google Webmaster Tools (beer), the top 20 keywords relevant to my (beer) site are:

1. dosquatch
2. post
3. atom
4. says
5. furback
6. posts
7. skip
8. subscribe
9. october
10. novel
11. it's
12. fire
13. geek
14. head
15. photo
16. beer
17. new
18. blogger
19. april
20. acts

I am so ashamed (beer)! Beer is only 16th? Behind "it's" and two different versions of "post"?!? What the flaming (beer) Hell?

I love Beer (beer)! Beer is ambrosia, that sweet (beer) nectar of life and sanity! How in the Beer does this Beering thing Beering figure that Beering Beer OCTOBER of all Beering months ranks 7 Beers higher ... than.... oh, right. Beer me. Octoberfest. Beering A, man.

Beer. Beer beer beer.

Miller Pabst Icehouse Samuel Adams Guinness Michelob Coors beer beer beer beer beer beer dosquatch says geek fire head novel blogger BEER

But I doubt that'll jostle the order too much.

Beer.

(ps - spellcheck hates me. beer.)

POP Goes the World

Funneling the whole of the WAN & phone switch interconnects back through one point is a Good Thing, because it is a single point of administration.

Funneling the whole of the WAN & phone switch interconnects back through one point is a Bad Thing because it is a single point of failure.

Guess which one of these statements came into play today.

I Say Hello, and You Say Goodbye

For the past couple of days I've had a small increase in traffic - folks who show up, spend about 30 seconds, and bounce off somewhere else. The source shows as 'blogger.com'. I'm not a featured blog (nor should I be...), so as best I can figure I must be in the current random cycle for the "Next Blog>>>" button.

And if it's random you want, random I got. So, Howdy folks! Enjoy your st..... where'd you go?

Stupid Phone Tricks

Just because I can.

http://droid.dosquatch.com/

Feel free to openly mock me now.

Fort Hood

I've not said anything on this topic, because I'm not at all certain I have anything relevant to offer.

About a week ago, Major Nidal Hasan went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood, killing 13 and wounding 29. Hasan worked as a psychiatrist there. It appears that he had been communicating with an Islamic cleric in Yemen named Awlaki in the months leading up to the event. The reports indicate nothing in those communications that appears to be related to the shootings.

There don't appear to be any co-conspirators. There don't appear to be any indications that this was coming, no messages, no odd behaviors, no concerned reports from his supervisors. To all external appearances, this seems to have come out of the blue.

Which, of course, it didn't. Probably. Short of a psychotic break - of which there are no indications, shooting spree aside - a person typically builds up to something like this, so for him, it's been coming for a while. If it is a group action, chatter might give you a chance to stop it before it happens, but if he acts alone...

I guess that's what I want to say. Short of reading minds, there's just no defense against crazy.

These things, though, don't make us ask how so much as why. Tragedy is easier to swallow if there's a reason. Sometimes there isn't one.

SNL As Prophecy

I take in only enough (mercifully little) Beck-Limbaugh, et. al., to keep myself aware of the timbre and tone of such pundits, and of the depth and fervency of their following.

The more I see, though, the more I come to believe that the entirety of the right wing has turned into the Church Lady, staring down their nose at all before them as they smugly question, "Mmmmmcoulditbe..... Hitler?"

Such is not conducive to productive discourse.

I suppose that's the point.

I am concerned.

Droid Does

Droid, Misc:

* uses the Safari browser

* slide-out keyboard much easier to use when the BodyGlove top plastic is on the right way - no thanks to VerizonGuy

* tiny keyboards still aren't fat-finger friendly

* unified contacts! all contacts from all email accounts in one place.

* support for multiple Gmail accounts, including Gmail for Domains

* it looks like there might be support for multiple exchange accounts, but I only have the one exchange account to test against...

* calling micro-SD "removable media" is very nearly tongue-in-cheek in this case. the card is buried behind the battery, inside the battery hatch, inside the BodyGlove armor... but it's a 16GB card, upgradable to 32, so I don't think I'm gonna have much need for frequent swaps.

* it's a heavy lil' thing

* the answer to Apple's App Store is the Google Market, and it's full of stuff (of all quality levels), both paid and free. Wanna scan a barcode for immediate comparison shopping? There's an app. Need a compass? There's dozens of apps. A bejewelled clone or 10? Streaming radio? Sports tickers? Financial advice? To stalk your friends with Latitude? To track the stars and planets with Google Skymap? Comic strip feeds? Scientific calculators? Here's an app, there's an app, everywhere's an app app.

Addendum: What criticism there is about this seems to be largely directed at aesthetics. It is big, square, black, it has an odd jutting-jaw design at the bottom, whatever whatever. Nope, it is not as "sleek and sexy" as an iPhone.

This, as with the PS3 before it, seems to have been inspired by the Tycho Monolith. So to this I also say, It is big. It is black. It is shiny, and it is mine.

Oh, My God, It's full of AWESOME.
("pardon me, your fanboy is showing..."
"Oh, my, sorry about that.")

The End of Waiting

Call me weak.

I made it a whole weekend before I broke down and made the purchase.

The Moto Droid came out this past Friday. My VZW renew-every-two is up come February. I intended to wait, really I did, but the sales critter said I could cash in early for half credit, and IZ NEW TOY WANT WANT WANT! IZ MINE IZ MINE GIT UR OWNZ!

Sorry - had a moment there. It's like this, I've carried some form of Palm Treo for the better part of a decade now. I know them, I like them, but the design is really, really showing its age. It's time for an upgrade.

I've played with both a Palm Pre and an Apple iPhone. Both have good and bad points. The Pre has some personality quirks (par for Palm) and battery fit problems. The Apple has no changeable battery, no removable media, and totalitarian platform control. And both have exclusive deals with $other_provider.

The Droid is here, now, on my provider, and it is BEAST. Fast, responsive, fully integrated with the whole buffet of Google tools (including Google for Domains), GPS, WiFi, full complement of motion & direction sensors (most immediately demonstrable by the self-leveling nautical compass app available from the Google Market), WeatherBug, Pandora Radio, a real web browser, voice search, and on and on.

And, by happenstance, it shares the same charging architecture as my Kindle. WOO!

The only (minor) complaint I have so far is that the keyboard is a bit cumbersome for larger fingers, but I'm finding it easier to work with it as I go along.

I'd write a better review, but I'm busy playing with the phone instead. More later, y'all!

Banana Phone

I've got this feeling, It's so appealing...

I currently carry with me a Palm Treo 700p. I am a long-time Palm user. I am familiar with Palm, I like Palm... but the OS is seriously showing its age. My plan's renewal benefit towards a phone upgrade kicks in February. I know that's still out there a bit, but I'm already contemplating what my next phone will be.

The world is iPhone crazy, but I'm on Verizon, and it is not worth a provider change just for a phone. Exclusive deals are bad practice and anti-consumer. Fuck Apple and AT&T, they can keep their phone.

I'm also kind of interested in the Palm Pre, but again - exclusive deal, other provider. How the devil is it that Verizon is the biggest honking network but all the crappy bit players get the exclusive digs on the new product?

There have been rumors that either or both might come to Verizon in January... but today Moto has put out the new droid at VZW. I stopped and played. This thing rocks. Big, bright screen, fast and responsive live scrolling in Google Maps, good sound quality, good signal strength, real web browsing, speech-to-text voice searching in Google...

Holy Crap. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a new front runner for Next Phone.