Debt

I just read this story on CNN's website and i can not help but scratch my head. Isn't our current crisis rooted in the inability of people to pay their financial obligations? In other words...living beyond their means?

So how exactly is making loans easier to get going to solve this problem? Loans need to be harder to get. That is how it used to be.

Comcast and ABC

So i sit down to watch the biggest rivalry game in NCAA Football, Michigan and Ohio State, and it is not on. What is on? A fucking high school football game. No, i am not kidding....a HIGH SCHOOL football game. HIGH SCHOOL.

The brain power at work here at Comcast and ABC is mind boggling. What kind of dipshit would make such a decision? Someone needs to be fired for this. Enjoy the ad revenue....i am sure all those 100 viewers of the High School football game will serve your advertisers well.

Nintendo Wii Online

Let's face it....Nintendo has a free pass this generation on online play. The Wii has primitive online capabilities compared to Microsoft and Sony. And this has not hurt them as of yet. Sure all the trade rags and fansites bash them over it, but the masses speak and online play is not a big thing to them.

However, i can not help but wonder what Nintendo is waiting for. Online multiplayer games are only going to get bigger and more prevalent. Nintendo is raking in the cash today. Today, with a dominant position, they could (a big step there) be extending their presence online and tying all those players into their online services.

The video game industry rarely rewards complacency. Look what happened when Nintendo insisted no one wanted CD's and cartridges were they way...Sony cleaned their clock. The N64 never contended for that generation #1 position. And it pushed Nintendo into the underdog position with the Game Cube from which it stayed in last place.

IMO, the next generation is not going to be so kind to Nintendo with its lack of online play. I hope they have something coming soon, otherwise their fall from #1 to the bottom will be just as hard as it was when the N64 came out against the PlayStation.

Bush : The Worst President Ever

Here is a really good article on exactly how bad Bush has been to the United States of America.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/137146?from=rss

Grand Theft Auto PS3

Just bought a PS3 with Grand Theft Auto 4 last night. Finally had a chance to play it today and....it keeps locking up! WTF is up with that?

I have been reading on various sites there are problems with both the PS3 and M$ 360 versions. I guess they forgot to test it before it came out?

***UPDATE: Read in a few places that disabling the Internet solves the problem. I tried it last night and was driving around fine for a good hour or so. I will have more time today to play and will have to see if it truly works.

***UPDATE #2: I have been playing for a while now with no lock-ups. I am hoping this is the short term fix. I would guess Rockstar will have a fix out shortly.

Personal Finance Software

I have been looking into ways to get off my desktop bound personal finance management software for the past few weeks. Ideally, i want to access my information from any computer or any OS i am on.

Of course, i value the privacy of my information and when I start talking about money, even more so. If a "bad" person got a hold of my financial accounts things would be bad to say the least....a hassle i would prefer to avoid.

I found a couple of online sites: http://www.mint.com/ and http://www.buxfer.com/ that on the surface look really cool. However, both have left me wanting. Perhaps i am just stuck in the old way of doing things.

To me, i want to take a receipt from a credit card purchase enter it into a form and then balance it when i get my monthly statement. This allows me to see exactly what I am being charged and by whom. If something is on my statement but i did not enter it, i can deal with it.

Mint basically tells you when a charge has been made on your account. Basically the reverse of how I do things today. At first I did not like the idea at all, but as I have thought more about it, I am rethinking it. Still not too sure.

Buxfer is confusing to me. It aspires to function how M$ Money or Quicken work, however the interface is not intuitive at all. How do i enter a loan? Just put a negative number? How does it deal with interest payments? how do i know how much principal i have paid? The only conclusion i have come up with is it is in need of a lot of work.

So....i have been thinking of rolling my own Personal Financial software, open source of course. If i did that, i could do exactly what i want. However, that means i would have to host it somewhere and figure out how to calculate loan interest, etc... I think i know how i could host it for free, however how private would my data really be?

I need to think this through...

Versus HD on Comcast

Was really looking forward to watching Philadelphia play Montreal tonight on Versus HD, but it is unwatchable. For starters, the picture quality is horrible. The picture has a yellowish tint which no other channel has. It also is slightly pixelated...guess they are doing the extra compression to squeeze more down their limited infrastructure. But the biggie is the picture keeps stuttering. THis is going to give me a headache.

As far as sound quality...this sounds like it is being transmitted over a AM radio. WTF is going on?

It really should tell you something when I am seriously thinking of switching to FiOS as soon as they run the line from the street to my house even though i work for Comcast and get their service for free.

Verizon FiOS

Verizon ran FiOS down the street this week! They only ran the lines on the telephone poles and not to houses yet. I would assume they will be hitting the houses in the next week or two. That 20/20 package sounds very good.

Attached Storage

I have been hunting around for some sort of attached storage device. Sure I can backup my music, movies, and photos on DVDs, but that is a pain. It would be great to have something i can access from all of my computers. And we run Ubuntu, Windows XP and OSX. Oh...and i want RAID support so i do not have to worry about losing everything.

I refuse to give M$ any more money so that rules out M$ Home Server, which does not support OSX or Ubuntu anyways.

I looked at http://www.drobo.com. That is a pretty cool device, however, look at the price.... $499 for the base unit, and $199 for the Ethernet add-on! BTW- that is without any hard drives! So $700 just to get started. Plus it does not really support Linux anyhow. Perhaps if the $499 included the Ethernet add-on i would just get it and hack the Linux support via the info on their forums.

I also saw http://www.freenas.org/ which looks like it may be the thing. However, a bit intimidating at first glance.

I guess i am really looking for a simple appliance i can just plug into my network and go. And i do not want to have to spend $1000 for it either. Perhaps i should just wait a bit and hopefully with more competition prices will drop.

Comcast Outage

Nothing like waking up in the morning, making coffee, sitting down infront of the computer and not being able to access half the internet. I can get to a couple of sites, but the one i want to hit the most: http://www.mythos.com, i can not.

I have been on hold with Comcast for over 35 minutes now...

Bush Administration suppresses study

Just read a story on how the Bush Administration has suppressed a study on the correlation of Great Lakes pollution and the health of local populations. It is really alarming at how corrupt the government is. These polluters should be subject to lawsuits for ruining the environment.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/GreatLakes/index.htm

Open Office

Something just caught the corner of my eye while reading my Gmail. I saw an ad for http://www-openoffice.com which offers up a USD $47 Open Office suite. The site compares "its" office suite against Micro$oft Office and says how it is much cheaper than said product and is fully compatible with Micro$oft Office files.

The funny thing about this, is that site is selling the **free** Office suite from http://www.openoffice.org. I guess a sucker is born every minute. Why pay USD $47 for something you can download for FREE?

DON'T BE FOOLED!

Ubuntu

Why pay for the same OS over and over again? Seriously, what does the newest version of Windows do for you? Does it give you a prettier UI? Why are you paying $129 USD for the same old OS?

Ubuntu(Linux) is the answer...http://www.ubuntu.com

Tribal Wars

My nephew introduced me to a really great little game last weekend. Tribal Wars (http://www.tribalwars.net) is a browser based strategy game with game play very similar to Age Of Empires and Warcraft.

There is nothing to install, no Java Applets, no Flash, just a pure web application. The best part about it is....it is free!

2009 Hyundai Sonata

You want to talk about a company which has come a long way? Take a look at Hyundai. Sure, GM is going through a massive turnaround in product, but Hyundai has gone from a junk dealer to a maker of desirable cars. Yes, desirable. Heck, they got me to bite on a 2007 Santa Fe, a car Car and Driver rated higher than the Lexus 330 sport-ute!

It is all about the product. Hyundai obviously knows this, as all non-US makers do. GM is heading in the right direction. Ford and Chrysler, well, they have a lot of work to do and cars like the Sonata (http://www.thetorquereport.com/2008/02/restyled_2009_hyundai_sonata_s.html#more
) are not going to make their job any easier.

.2d + .1d != .3d

.2 + .1 = .3, right? Wrong! Not in the computer world. If you are looking for a way to represent a quantity like Money, follow this Martin Fowler design:

http://martinfowler.com/ap2/quantity.html