Writing Stuff

About three weeks ago I ordered an Amazon Kindle . Since then, I've purchased and read more books than I have for the entire last year and I've loved every second of it. Just like ordering Amazon Prime did for online shopping for me, the Kindle has made it super convenient and cheap to buy books that I want to read. It's really great to be able to get a book when a topic is fresh in my interests (they tend to change daily) and start reading it within seconds... and no, I'm not getting paid to say this. I was immediately surprised by the screen when I opened the box and saw an instructional image displayed, asking me to slider the power slider at the top to turn it on. I quickly looked for a plastic tab to use to remove this sticker that covers most LCD screens on electronics, but couldn't find one. I figured I'd have to dig my nails into the corner of the screen to try and pry it loose. Then I realized I was looking at a naked screen... there was no sticker o...

I love my Amazon Prime account . I pay $79 per year and get free 2-day shipping on everything I buy on Amazon . Sure, not everything is covered by Amazon Prime, but if it's not I won't buy it from Amazon. I save myself numerous trips to the store per year and lots on shipping costs by not having any minimum purchase amounts for the free shipping. I've literally used it on a $5 item before. It's very convenient. I recently discovered a way to receive free overnight shipping and it's totally legal and doesn't break any rules. Basically it's taking advantage of Amazon's 2-day guarantee and the extremely high cost of getting things delivered on the weekend. Turns out weekend delivery is so expensive, Amazon will overnight a package to you instead of having to meet their 2-day delivery date by having it delivered on Saturday. See what I'm getting at here? If you want overnight delivery for something that you'd like to have before the weekend but f...

I've just started a new blog with the completely unoriginal title of Time Warner Cable Sucks . I've grown tired of the continued issues that I've experienced with Time Warner Cable's internet service (RoadRunner) over the past year and have decided to document them on a blog. I'll be posting regular daily and nightly speed test results to show how things change depending on the time of day. If I call support to request assistance, I'm going to document what the representatives say and suggest as a possible fix for the issue, if any is provided. I'm hoping to garner the attention of someone at Timer Warner Cable that cares. All I was is to receive at least close to what I'm paying for. Having regular slowness that delivers 1/6th-1/10th of the advertised speed is completely unacceptable and should be exempt from the "up to" claim that goes along with their advertising of speeds. I don't need, and am not asking for, the absolute fastest spee...

I'm not a huge fan of insurance policies for products or anything that has a monthly fee, but I think I've finally found something that's a pretty good deal. I've been on a Banfield Optimum Wellness Plan  for my dog Charlie  for a bit over a year now and just recently upgraded him to the next step up which includes the cost of a teeth cleaning once a year. It's $40 a month, which sounds like a lot but is actually kind of a good deal. The plan we were on previously included free doctor visits and the standard yearly check-ups as well as all of his shots whenever they were due. We really needed to get his teeth cleaned, however, and when I called to schedule the appointment I was told that it would be $200, or I could upgrade to the next plan which included it for free. The difference in cost between the plan that I had and the new $40/month plan was $180 a year, so it's actually a $20 savings to upgrade. Sweet! Many people feel that pet wellness plans (not in...

My car got hit by a driver that ran a red light a couple of weeks back. The damage was fairly minimal and everyone was okay, so that's good. Thankfully the other driver admitted fault right off the bat and then again to the police officer when he showed up. This made my life extremely easy in a situation that could've turned quite annoying had he tried to take advantage of the fact that I'm much younger than him. I hear horror stories of people getting screwed over by other drivers that were at fault by getting you to say things you shouldn't or pressuring them to settle instead of going through insurance. Thankfully I didn't have to deal with any of that. The other guy's insurance company was pretty cool and handled things very professionally. They immediately got me set up with a free rental car for the duration of the case and promptly sent out a check written out in my name that I received just a couple of days after they sent it. I had the rental car for ...

Twitter is a great tool for keeping in touch with friends. I find that it's much more useful than Facebook for staying updated with what everyone is up to. Not all of my friends use Twitter yet, but I feel like I'm better versed in what my friends are doing when they're using Twitter at least semi-frequently. I believe that part of the reason for this is that Twitter makes it incredibly quick and easy to spew your thoughts to the collective. Not only is Twitter easy, but it forces you to be concise which then spurs more frequent updates. I definitely find that I'm more likely to Tweet a bunch of things throughout the day than I am to spend to time to write out a blog post like this one. This means that I'm putting more thoughts out there and talking about more things that I'm doing, thus keeping my followers tighter in the loop. Not only has Twitter been great for keeping up with my friends, but I've had great luck with giving and receiving customer servic...

I really hate Time Warner Cable but more specifically their internet division, RoadRunner. There's not a whole lot of things that I hate in life, but Time Warner Cable is definitely one of them. Every since they bought out Adelphia in my area, all of my services from them have been absolutely terrible. The quality of service dropped overnight, as if they said "let's find a way to gouge our customers even more... I know, let's just make the service shit and charge them more every year!" For the first week after the acquisition my television signal was a mess. I'd get constant picture drop-outs and audio would cut out for 30 seconds at a time. This went on for at least a few months. During that time my internet service became completely unreliable, dropping out completely a few days a week. Calls to customer service always returned the "Everything looks fine on our end." deal which has started to make me throw up a bit in my mouth every time I hear it....

I love procrastinating for some reason. There's just something about waiting until the last minute to do something that finally gets me motivated to do it. Take this morning as an example. I've known that I'll be leaving to go over to my mother's house around 9:30AM so that we can get on our way down to San Diego for the annual Miramar Air Show for months now. I haven't packed yet. Sure, it's just an overnight stay but there's clothes, food, and alcohol to bring and I've gotten none of it ready. Even as I write this I'm procrastinating even more, trying to write more than there is to write about this to further delay having to actually put stuff in a backpack. In fact, the only thing productive I've done all morning is gotten dressed and taken the dog out to piss in the chilly (finally) air. The clothes I chose to get dressed in aren't the ones I'll even be wearing today and I haven't showered so really the only thing useful I've...

I went shooting for the first time this weekend. Despite my love for firearms and shooting people (in video games, duh!) I had never actually made it out to a shooting range to rip holes in paper with flying chunks of lead. On Saturday morning I met with my Grandpa, Aunt, and Uncle at our local indoor shooting range to take a gun safety class. The class itself was really interesting and fun and lasted about an hour. I wasn't sure if we were going to actually shoot or if it was just a "classroom" class or whatever, but we wound up spending about 45 minutes shooting different guns after the class. It was a total blast. No pun intended. My first set was fantastic. I had awesome grouping all incredibly close to the bullseye, which was totally surprising. The range officers didn't believe that it was my first time, but I chocked it up to all of the video games that I play. Apparently it's given me better hand-eye coordination than I thought. I was fairly consistent wit...

Charlie (my dog) was freaking out the other day. He freaks out fairly often but a couple flicks on his butt usually snaps him out of it. This time was different, though, and he just kept lunging into the window barking like crazy. When I took a look outside I was surprised to see one, and then two coyotes roaming around my apartment complex. The first coyote seemed more interested in laying down and relaxing in the shade (it was really hot that date) and the second looked pretty scrawny and interested in moving on. I'm betting that they're having a hard time finding food and have resorted to hanging out during the day in hopes of snatching up someone's dog or cat that found its way outside or got out of reach of its owner. I felt bad for the coyotes, but took a few pictures. You can check them out on my Flickr set .

It's been absolutely forever since I've last blogged, but it hasn't been so long since I've thought about doing it. Once again, Twitter has consumed my blogging needs and even though I've been tweeting less, it still seems to fill my blogging needs... unfortunately. I love blogging. I love writing. Why wouldn't I do it more, then? I really don't know. I'd love to pursue a career in writing at some point in life but I haven't decided whether or not I want to be a "writer" or teach an English class in high school. The latter is definitely more appealing but I finally need to prioritize college if that's something I really want to do. Maybe I just need to open up more. I think too much about whether or not anyone would read or appreciate what I write. Chances are good that nobody does either, so what's the harm in doing it anyway? I guess I need to start writing for me and not everyone else.

I recently purchased a new litter box system called the Tidy Cats Breeze and after having used it for about a week now, I'm happy to say that it's awesome. I was a bit hesitant at first, since changing something so vital to the cleanliness and smell-good-i-ness of the apartment is always dangerous. Cats generally hate change, and I had horrible images of my cats hating it and peeing and pooping all around the apartment in protest. Thankfully, this didn't happen. I followed the assimilation guide initially, placing the new Breeze system right next to the old one and stopped cleaning the old one. Interestingly our male cat ( Pippin ) went into the Breeze mere minutes after I set it up and pooped right in it. Awesome! I left the old litter box next to the new one for a couple of days but found that our other girl cat ( Josie ) was still using the old one. I figured that since Pippin was so great with the Breeze that she would be, too, once she started using it. I just tossed ...

I received an outrageous bill from Edison just the other day. Apparently my usage had octupled over the past month. I know we’ve been running the air conditioning liberally, but eight times what we normally pay? Seriously? Our usage is generally very low except for the summer months, and a bill for $241.46 stood out just a tad: We’ve never even paid a third of that even in the heat of summer. I called up Edison to find out what the deal was, and to my surprise the lady on the phone said that it was the charge for my “second location.” What?! Okay, so I am planning on moving into a new apartment in less than a month and I did set up a request to switch my service over to that new unit but how did I get charged so much already, before I even moved in? Apparently my service request to switch service locations was to start new service on July 15th, the day after I scheduled the request that was supposed to take place on August 13th. Whoops! Strangely, there was apparently nothing in Ediso...

After living in our current apartment for nearly 3 years, my wife and I are moving. It's not far, and is actually still within the same apartment complex. We've rented a 2 bedroom 2 bath, 1,000 square foot place with a balcony which is a huge upgrade for us. We move in on August 14th. While there are no current plans to expand the family, we've kind of outgrown our 1 bedroom 1 bath, 695 square foot apartment that we've been living it. It's a great place, but a second bedroom/office is something that I've wanted for a long time. We'll finally be able to move our desks and computers out of the living room area and into their own place. To take advantage of the new space we'll be receiving, we're purchasing a new sectional couch and dining room table. This couch is friggin' awesome and I can't wait to get it. It's comfy as hell and big, too. Our current apartment doesn't allow us to really have a functional dining room table, so that wi...

Holy crap. It's been forever since I've actually gotten around to writing anything here. I think Twitter is occupying my writing mind and my frequent, random, and sometimes senseless updates there are causing me to strain to find anything that is worth writing about here. I think Twitter has totally changed the blogging game, making it seems fairly redundant if you're a frequent Twitter updater (Twitterer?). I love Twitter. I've been using it since April 25th, 2007 and have been mostly loving it. For me, it started out as a way to share the excitement of BlizzCon 2007 with my friends and the world, and I got some great responses from it! I was contacted by some press to publish photos I took, and received emails and replies on Twitter thanking me for my coverage. It was tons of fun. I did the same thing at BlizzCon 2008, but am sad to say that I was unable to get tickets to BlizzCon 2009 to do the same. I don't really know if anyone read mine from last year, but I...

While my experience with being a Mac user nearing the two month mark, I've found a couple of things that have proven to be slightly annoying with Apple's design philosophy. Don't get me wrong, I love my Macs and will probably never go back to using Windows. I also absolutely love the design of both my MacBook Pro and Mac Mini at work. They're definitely the sexiest computers I've ever used. Apparently with good looks, comes restrictions. My Mac Mini at work was feeling a little sluggish with the default 1GB of RAM that it shipped with. My work is very browser-heavy, leaving me with an average of 10 tabs open in Firefox at any given time, Thunderbird open and receiving emails frequently, Adium up and receiving messages, multiple Terminal tabs open, and usually iTunes going for some audio entertainment. While OS X handles 1GB infinitely better than any Windows OS and is fully capable of doing these tasks with just 1GB RAM and a little bit to spare, things did start to...

I've been using Macs exclusively for a little over a month now, and am very happy to say that I have no plans to ever go back to using Windows. I will happily pay the "Apple Tax" in order to receive what's proven to be superior hardware, software, and support. These are things that you just can't find with PC makers, no matter what you're willing to spend. My initial introduction to my new Mac was with a MacBook. I picked it up at the local Apple store and opened it up immediately after getting home. I was pleasantly surprised to be up and running and ready to go in under 30 minutes. That's with Firefox downloaded, addons installed, email accounts configured... everything. Wow. I'm continually impressed by the boot time, shut down time, and 0verall performance of my Mac on the OS level. It's reliable as hell, too. I've managed to get World of Warcraft and Firefox to crash, but can easily recover by using a force quit, instead of holding down th...

I have been experiencing ongoing issues with my internet service from Time Warner Cable recently, and until last night I was unable to get a straight answer about what's going on and what is being done (and isn't) to fix it. I spoke with a great level 3 representative named Jose that was able to give me some insight regarding the issues in Southern California that everyone knew about, but most representatives denied until now. Apparently there is a large regional issue that is affecting Time Warner Cable's RoadRunner users in Los Angeles county, San Diego county, Orange County, and Hawaii. These are all part of the same network and have been experiencing intermittent issues that cause incredibly slow download and upload speeds. According to Jose, Time Warner Cable's NetOps knows about the issue and is still in the "researching phase," meaning that they are still trying to gather information to troubleshoot the issue on their end. He told me that there is no ET...

Time Warner Cable announced today that, due to unprecedented customer outrage, they are discontinuing their plans to limit bandwidth usage in all of their markets. This is a major victory for their customers and the internet as a whole, because it shows that users are willing to speak up and take action to prevent unfair changes to their internet service and a severe crippling of competition. The wording of their official statement leaves open the possibility of restarting plans to limit bandwidth in the future, after better educating the customers about their bandwidth usage. Apparently Time Warner Cable still plans to roll out the bandwidth meters so that customers can view their usage, presumably so that Time Warner Cable can show users that they really don't need all of the bandwidth that they want and that limit bandwidth isn't so bad after all. It's the principle of the matter and the terrible precedent that capping bandwidth usage will set that's the main issue,...

I've been a PC user all of my life. I've dabbled with a Mac before and tried using Linux as my primary operating system, but I've always wound up going back to Windows. I was first introduced to Windows back when I was in 6th grade (1996) and have been using it ever since. My first introduction to Windows was version 3.1, then on to 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, and a little bit of Windows 7. The time has finally come to start moving away from Windows completely. As luck would have it, my work computer started having some (likely) hardware issues that cause it to completely lock up at least once a day. At a job where I work primarily in a browser with many tabs open, working on many things at once this proves to be extremely unproductive. I decided to go with a Mac as a replacement. I'm also going to be receiving a fairly large check in the mail within the next 30 days (thankfully not from Nigeria) and will be using a portion of that to replace my Sony VAIO at home with a new ...

With the release of Kindle for iPhone yesterday Amazon just gave me an awesome economic stimulus by saving me $360 in all of about two seconds. Now instead of techno-lusting over the new Kindle 2 , I've got my own awesome eBook reader - the iPhone. Sure, it doesn't have a huge screen or awesome e-ink, but it'll do. The font size is changeable and swiping the screen to flip pages is neat. There's other eBook readers for the iPhone, but they're nothing compared to the Kindle application for the iPhone, and Amazon's Kindle books are way cheaper than any other eBooks I've found. I don't read enough books in a few years to justify the cost of a Kindle 2, but now Amazon has found a way to still make money off of light readers like me. Maybe I'll finally get around to finishing the 9/11 Commission Report (it's only $0.99!) and reading The Audacity of Hope .

I really love Gmail's relatively new Tasks feature. It's an incredibly easy way for me to set up reminders for things that I need to do, stuff that I need to buy, questions I need to ask, and everything else. The native iPhone interface is to die for. It is extremely fast and easy to create new tasks, modify existing ones, or mark one as completed. As efficient and accomplished as this makes me feel, it's kind of sad to realize that the sometimes-important tasks that I create would likely not have ever been completed if I didn't have a nice little tasks pop-in window in Gmail. At least I'm actually getting things done, right? Seeing an unchecked tasks that's been there for more than a day really pushes me to get it done so that I can check it off and take it off my mind. Thanks, Google, for making me more productive. I'm sure my wife and boss appreciate it, too.

As much as I despise Gamestop and their full retail prices, lack of sales on new games and accessories, and depressingly low trade-in values for current games and video game systems, I've gotta say that they sure are convenient. The other day I was interested in picking up some new games for one of my systems without spending any money. I have an Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii and a crapload of games for all of them that I never play or have already beaten. I decided to stack them up, take them in to Gamestop, and see what I could get for them. Turns out it wasn't so bad, actually. For the mix of 10 or so current and older games that I brought in, I walked out with about $165 in store credit. Sure, I could've sold the games for a lot more through eBay or something like that but those are hardly convenient and my decision to sell the games was made in all of about 5 seconds. Driving to Gamestop took another 15 seconds, and so less than 5 minutes later I was able to walk out of the ...

Even though BlizzCon 2009 was just announced , I'm already excited for it. Last year's ticket debacle made me lose nearly a whole day of productivity and the convention itself was fairly packed, but I still had a ton of fun and so did the wife. We're both fairly casual World of Warcraft players but it's still nice to be able to get our nerd on with fellow gamers for a couple of days out of the year. While BlizzCon is still a little over 6 months away, I've already made preparations. I've requested the time off work and booked our two night stay at the Marriott that is literally right up against the convention center. We always get a hotel room for BlizzCon, even though we live maybe 10 minutes away. It's nice to be able to just walk to the room after the convention. This year we're staying about a mile closer and we're checking in the night before the event itself. Ticket pickup the day before is an annoying and tiring event (especially since the ...

Okay, so the iPhone isn't so bad anymore. I got mine replaced for the third time a week or so ago and it's been pretty much smooth sailing since then. Battery life is fantastic, and I'm easily pulling 4+ hours of usage and over 48 hours of standby. That's not bad and all and I'm actually really happy with it. Google just launched Google Sync , which provides an awesome and awesomely free way to sync your Google Contacts and Google Calendar (you do use those, right?) with your iPhone over the air (OTA). It uses Microsoft Exchange to push out change to your contact list and calendar immediately, and it works great. I've been waiting for something like this for a while as it's nearly a complete replacement of MobileMe . As of right now, it doesn't support push email but I do hope that it's coming soon. I'd like to apologize to Apple. I was just really pissed off when my iPhone started giving me crap for the 4th time. I've had nothing but bad lu...

Of course. When I'm hating the iPhone the most and fed up with how terrible of a device it really is, there's nothing that I can do about it. I tried to get away from it. I just got back from the local T-Mobile store with a brand new G1 , but of course that can't work out. Unfortunately T-Mobile's 3g cover age in my apartment is abysmal. Their website said that I would get 3 bars of coverage, but I'm lucky to hang on to 2 and usually see just 1. Fantastic. I guess I'm just destined to live with a subpar device that's proven to be unreliable, over-hyped, and flat out boring. I haven't even used the thing in about 3 days. It's been sitting in my pant's pocket wherever I go and I can't be bothered to take it out. The most usage it's seen is when I took it out to show my background to my boss (it's a picture of my dog) when he asked about the physical picture of my dog on my desk at work. I'm too frustrated with it to care enough to c...

I'm done. I'm tired of dealing with issues arising from my iPhone and I'm just fed up with not having a phone that "just works." I used to believe that Apple cared about making quality hardware, but my experiences with the iPhone 3G have led me to believe otherwise. I have never used a more buggy, crashy, and wholly unreliable electronic device than an iPhone 3G and I'm just fed up. Since the new iPhone came out, there's been nothing but trouble with it. The activation process was down for hours and I was left with a $200 iBrick for most of the day. Didn't activation problems plague the original iPhone and wouldn't you have expected Apple to do something to prevent it with the launch of their new device? I guess that didn't cross their mind. Once activated, I found that the battery life was significantly less than the previous generation and it crashed and rebooted a lot more, too. A great introduction. Within a few months things seemed to impr...