SleepingPoliceman

I have come up with a new invention. The invention is this: a targeted, directed car horn. It will allow you to hone in on the person or persons who need to hear your beeps of annoyance and aggravation. This will make them understand that they have done something wrong and have broken the written and/or unwritten rules of the road. They will reflect upon their actions. They will feel shame. Then, with the help of a support network of family, friends, and fellow drivers, they will fix their wayward lives.

The impetus for this invention came tonight, when I was the third car at a red light that turned green. Instead of going at the green, the first car stayed still. Why was that? Because some jagmo in a Windstar had busted the red light in the other direction despite the fact that his line of traffic on the other side of the intersection was at full capacity. Indeed, the box was well and truly blocked.

So to my horn my hand glided, and aloud it rang out across the land. (Where “the land” = “the Alewife/Fresh Pond clustercrunk.”) And I thought, “Ha! I sure showed that guy my discontent at his selfish and inconsiderate actions.” Or girl…could have been a girl. I don’t know, it was dark out.

But then I thought, “Wait…what if the guy at the front of the line thought I was honking at him/her? Then he/she would look in their rearview mirror with exasperated disgust and think something like, ‘hey, jerkface, there’s nowhere for me to go – this minivan is blocking the intersection, jerkface!’” (Apparently, the driver of the first car likes the word “jerkface.”) That would be bad. I don’t want to be thought-of in such negative and redundant terms.

Hence my new invention. That way, not only will the guilty know that I know they’re guilty, so too will the innocent know that they are innocent (or at least not-yet-proven-guilty). This will stop many unnecessary disagreements and inadvertent misunderstandings on the road. A new era in horn-based communication will be heralded in. I will appear on Oprah, the Today Show, and my own infomercial. I will have a conflict and won’t be able to make an appearance on The View. An international prize committee might be knocking at my door within 12 months. I will act humble and surprised by the honor.

Now…I just need someone to find a way to create the practical method for how this directed horn will work. I don’t deal with nuts and bolts…I’m more of an idea man. I’ll keep thinking…someone else just needs to start doing.

Thought leader, indeed.

I’ll have to take care of the Apple posts for now.

boston.com: Apple cuts price on top iPhone, angering some early buyers

And by “some early buyers,” they mean jz. What have we learned, kids? It never pays to be an early adopter. You just get screwed when things quickly become cheaper and better made.

What no one’s talking about is the dramatic price drop in the 80 GB iPods. Just $249, when it used to be $349. Actually, I think it was $499 at one point. Whatever. I got a 60 GB used (sorry, “refreshed”) for like $180 and thought I got a deal. Still a deal, but not as much as before.

And of course there’s an iPod that is the same design as the iPhone. 8 GB iPod Touch: $299. So for the extra fifty bucks, you get a touch screen, wireless access at Starbucks, and a tenth of the memory. Whatever, man…maybe I’m a throwback, but I just want an iPod that allows me to carry a shedload of music with me. Give me the iPod Classic anyday.

(Seriously, though…give one to me. Any and all gifts are always welcome.)

The management would like to apologize for once again having sporadic posting here on Sleeping Policeman…some of us are in the middle of changing careers, and the rest of us are stuck being busy in our current ones. I’m hoping to get a few posts up today…but every time I say something like that, it doesn’t end up happening, and I get labeled a blogtease. It’s a cruel, cruel world.

To begin with, I wanted to comment on something that I’ve been meaning to comment on for a while: comments. Specifically, the spam comments that get left here on the site. Ever since JZ elevated me to the illustrious status of moderator, I’ve been able to go through and zap the spam that gets auto-posted here on the site. (You don’t see it because first-time posts get filtered…we’re good like that.)

Now, I know these comments are randomly generated, and they’re the same everywhere…but there’s been a disturbing trend here. We started off all nice and innocent, with online poker sites and places with free Viagra/Cialis. And there’s always comments that link to some random site, but they try to be sly by making flattering statements like, “Oh, what a great point,” and “I like your posts – keep ‘em coming!” (I want to keep those sometimes, because they help my ego.)

Then over time came an increase in other drugs, like Ambien, Xanax and Vicodin. OK, whatever…to be expected. And there was always occasionally “nude girls” or “dirty teens,” which, you know, makes sense as this is the internet and all. But recently there’s been an explosion in really weird sex sites, advertising stuff that isn’t cool at all on any level, like date rape fantasies and forced feminization. Culminating in today, when we got about 15 comments in a row that said this:

Hi there.
Are you there?
All the darkness in the world cannot put out the smallest candle. The darker it is, more brightly shines the candle. instead of complaining about the dark search for your candle. Believe me; It exists…

I’m sort of freaked out by the spam. What does this stuff say about what spammers think of our readers? What does it say about us?

The motherboard on my laptop died the other night. I distinctly remember deciding not to get the extended warranty when I bought it. That decision has, unsurprisingly, come back to totally screw me. Thanks, Dell, for making a product with a shorter lifespan than an iPod battery.

I will now be computer-less for at least a few months while I save up the money for a new motherboard. And by that I mean for a new laptop.

Unless someone out there has a line on a cheap Inspiron 600m motherboard. I’m all ears if you do.

ptm’s Dell Inspiron 600m
June 2005 – March 2007
We hardly knew ye…

Despite my need to save money and unsaddle some debt, I splurged a little yesterday and purchased a new iPod. Well, not a new-new iPod…but one of the “refurbished” older model. Finally, a sweet, sweet 60GB music player. And to think, three years ago I was still using a cassette Walkman.

The reason I splurged was because the refurbished model was pretty cheap ($230 instead of the original $449, or the $349 it is for the current-gen 80GB model). It was extra cheap because I decided to finally cash in a Simon debit Visa gift card that I got for Christmas ‘05. I had held onto the gift card for so long, Simon was starting to charge a penalty every month which was being deducted from the account. (Which is totally bullshit, by the way.) Anyway, now was the time to act, and act I did. I split the order between the debit card and my regular credit card, and ended up paying just a little more than a hundred dollars for the new iPod. Good times.

Except today I get an email saying that they can’t process my order because my payments aren’t authorized. Awesome. I had gone through all the steps of tying the debit gift card to my name and address (so I could use it for an online order), so that should be fine. I went and checked…and what Apple does is charge a damn extra dollar before they run an order. Because of that dollar, the amount on the debit card went under the amount I put in to use the card for (since I wanted to wipe off the entire remaining balance), so it was rejected. Every time they tried (three times), they took another dollar. So I went from having $123 on the card to $120. I called them and spoke to a very nice and helpful support guy named Johnny, who switched around the order so it took $119 from the debit card. And it went through fine.

But…fuck them for charging everyone a hidden dollar. The support guy spoke in vague terms about how that’s how they see if the card is legit or something…which is fine if they plan on taking that dollar off the regular order, or refunding that dollar. But I’m sure they don’t. It’s not that big a deal, because it’s just a dollar (or, in this case, four dollars…jerks). But still, it’s a dick move.

Now…send me my iPod, Apple. Please don’t be mad at me. P.T. still loves you, Apple.

If you have an account with the old internet dinosaur Friendster, and you log in, you are greeted with with a little box to the side of the screen that says, “Check It Out.” This ostensibly is to highlight the new and exciting features of the site. The top link in this box is from July 17, 2006, and is entitled “Please ignore this hoax.” It says:

If you have been forwarded a hoax chain letter from a non-existent Allen Smith in regard to Friendster becoming too crowded and deleting accounts, ignore it. This is a hoax that has been around for nearly two years. Please tell your friends to stop forwarding this hoax announcement. Friendster is not closing. Friendster will make any announcements to members in the alert section of your home page.

The sad thing is, I don’t know anyone who would believe this hoax nowadays. Friendster is too crowded? Really? Are you saying their servers can only handle five people being online at once?

Two years ago, maybe it was plausible. Three and a half years ago, when I signed up and the site was the new hotness, I might have even seriously questioned the veracity of such a forward. Nowadays, however, with the rise of the Facebooks and MySpaces of the world (which I guess are just Facebook and MySpace), Friendster is sort of a creaky old relic, almost frozen in time with a stack of profiles that mostly haven’t been updated since everyone switched to hipper sites sometime in 2005.

But when it was king, Friendster ruled all. For people within two or three year radius of me, it hit at just the right time…people who had graduated college in the late 90s/early 00s and had enough time go by as “adults” that they started thinking of reconnecting with the people they fell out of touch with. Maybe you hadn’t seen that guy from down the hall your freshman year since sophomore year – well, throw in his name and see what comes up. Or there’s that dude who was friends with that girl you used to hang with in high school…it’s nice to know you could contact him if you ever wanted to.

Or maybe there’s a girl from way back in the day that you always wished you had stayed in touch with, and you randomly think about her one day and say, “Hey, maybe she’s around on here.” And maybe she is. And maybe…well, who knows what can happen?

Thank you, dear Friendster, for providing the means for today to be celebrated. A Friendsterversary, if you will. Other friend-gathering and social networking sites may grow bigger and last longer, but none will ever hold quite the same place in my heart that you do.

The Rails core team recently checked in code that kicks and screams all the way home if you’re using deprecated methods or instance variables. Here’s a list of things I still see over and over in Rails code that you really shouldn’t be doing anymore. Really. Trust me on this.

Sorry to bump your great post off the top P.T., but I don’t want to lose this link.
/jz

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If you’re tired of opening up the iTunes window every time you want to pause, start, or fast forward iTunes check out this nifty built in feature very few people know about.

For Windows users – I never knew this. Very cool.

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The Daily Show revisits the issue of network neutrality. Featuring John “Im a PC” Hodgman, who explains the issue for us.

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The Beatles have lost their court battle with Apple Computer over its iTunes download service.

I’m actually surprised by the outcome, but I’m glad it’s finally over. The best news to come out of the trial was testimony by the Beatles former road manager that the albums are being digitally remastered and will be eventually available online. I’d bet that Steve Jobs would do everything in his power to get their catalog exclusively on the iTunes Music Store (Jobs is a big fan of The Beatles, and named his computer company after Apple Corps waaay back in 1976). So let’s get on it!

Update: The gauntlet has been thrown down. C’mon Paul! C’mon Ringo! We all know you need more money!

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