Weekly Gripe #2: Idiots behind the wheel.

Do you own a car? Do you drive it? Then you are probably a moron.

While it may be possible that you, the Reader, are not a moron, the numbers favor that you are and that you have done something really stupid in your car recently.

Which one of the following have you done at least once this week...?

1. Pulled into the middle of a backed up intersection hoping that traffic would pull forward before the light turned red, intead of waiting, ultimately blocking cross traffic and the pedestrian walkway. All that so YOU could gain a carlength of progress, ending up right behind the same car if you had waited and not inconvenienced a dozen other people.

2. Nearly hitting a pedestrian or car pulling out because you had your cell in one hand and coffee/newspaper/wallet/hamburger in the other hand.

3. Nearly causing a 5 car pile-up because you should have been paying attention and are now trying to cross 2+ lanes to make a turn instead of going around the block or taking the next exit, because it's "inconvenient".

4. Stopping at a red light, blocking the pedestrian crossing...and STILL inching forward because those few extra inches will get you where you are going sooooo much quicker.

5. Blocking the sidewalk or lane of traffic while you wait for someone to relinquish their precious parking space.

6. Double parking on a narrow, busy street to run an errand because the rules don't apply to YOU.

7. Honked violently at non moving traffic like the person responsible can even hear you. Yeah, go ahead and just annoy the hell out of everyone in earshot.

8. Repeatedly honk outside the building where you are picking somebody up, waking up everyone in the building, ruining television dialog, whatever...YOU don't live there.

Ohh...I could go on.

Let's try to get the moron count down before I start carrying a steel club, ok?

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Neglect

I've been letting this blog go a bit. Part of it is because I think of something to write and then forget...or I just use Twitter, treating it as my microblog.

If fact, I think services such as Twitter, Brightkite, Pownce, and so on, have made the personal "blurb" blog nearly obsolete. Why post something to a website and manage it when you can throw out a tweet and all your followers get it delivered to THEM. Unless you have a lengthy diatribe or blog professionally, it hardly seems worth it.

However, possibly a more impressive reason for this blog's neglect is that my blogging energy has been directed to my stint as software reviewer at 148apps.com. It is much more rewarding and likely to further my blog publishing career. Hey, it already got me a Press pass for Macworld (please note the professional use of the lower case "w").

I'm using a new iPhone app, iBlogger, which works with Blogger.com, so maybe I'll go ahead and "blurb" a little more frequently...just to round out my blogging resume.

Http://www.148apps.com

Check it out!

Mobile Blogging from here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Light as [an] Air

Ok, so now I'm getting serious about this blogging thing. Well, serious enough to buy a laptop with money I don't have, dedicated strictly to blogging.

To be honest, I've been drooling over Apple's MacBook Air since it came out, but couldn't justify the purchase for my measly, mobile computing needs. So this blogging thing has been on my back like an orangutan on combat maneuvers. Not only is motivation an issue..."Let's see, I just spent 9 hours in front of a computer at work...", but I am easily distracted by less serious matters at home (have you tried Force Unleashed for the Wii?), and my aging PowerBook G4 feels like it weighs slightly less than a Yugo. Of course, my PowerBook isn't the only thing aging ungracefully, I am chagrined to admit.

So, along comes Craigslist and it's tantalizing pages of underpriced goodies...and I was stupid enough to ask the question, "What is a used MacBook Air going for these days?". Well, if you subtract all the goodies that came with it, I got my 4 month old beauty for around $800, which was a hard number to pass up, even though that number was suspiciously larger that the number that appears at the bottom of my bank statement. The only downside is that the poor thing took at least one nasty spill while in the care(less) of it's previous owner. Once I was someone who would be horrified at the prospect of owning a Mac in less than perfect condition, but these days it seems the bottom line ($$) takes precedence. And most people probably wouldn't notice the dented corner anyway.

Now that I have a laptop that I can practically carry with 2 fingers, and presently says I still have 4.5 hours of battery, and the fact I spent the money, I have no excuse for not dashing about from coffee shop to coffee shop, blogging to my hearts content, and hoping some cute geek-lovin' women come over to ask about my shiny MacBook Air.

Well, if it gets me to work, a little fantasy can't hurt right?

Blogging is hard!

Man, I don't know how those guys/gals do it. Writing something pithy and relavant...something people want to read or follow is not easy. Heck, I can't even get my friends to read this blog.

Andy Ihnatko calls his blog "...[verb of the month] Waste of Bandwidth, which seems odd since he has dozens...ok, maybe thousands of followers. A TRUE waste of bandwidth is my sending 1s and 0s across the interweb to record my thoughts that nobody gives a flip about. Now THAT is a waste.

I think he should hand over the domain right now...Andy, how about it...you're pretty much switched to www.andyihnatko.com anyway right?!

Who am I kidding? Even Andy wouldn't waste his time reading this blog.

Weekly Gripe #1

This week's gripe...people who start blogs and then don't write anything!

Oh wait...

The truckload of Windex for my glass house just arrived.

New feature: Weekly Gripe!

So, I'm starting some new post features to help me get more frequent
posts out the door. I've decided that it's better (and easier) to have
one or 2 line blogs unless something really warrants a long diatribe.

Look for it coming soon!

To Hell in a Handbasket

Alternate titles:

How to destroy your planet in just a few generations.
Lazy people burying the World in Trash.
WTF people!
Tourists need a good swift kick in the ass!

And I could go on for a while dictating thoughts that have been spinning in my head during my recent daily commutes. They all seem interconnected, so I thought I'd just spin them all together.

Nothing irritates me quicker than people on public transport dropping trash in the bus, or trying to slyly drop it behind them as they disembark. HELLO! In 9 out of 10 locations, they do this within 5 FEET of a city garbage receptical. Come on, are people REALLY that lazy?!! That is a rhetorical question of course, yes they are. Our society is built around laziness and convenience. Would it kill people to pocket a candy wrapper until they walked by a garbage can?! This is rhetorical too, and the answer is apparently "yes". It is this laziness and, of course, greed and a lack of forethought that will doom our planet to an early demise.

Ug, and tourists are the WORST! Hey, just because it's not your city or country doesn't give you the right to be idiots...or messy!

Oh, and am I going to pick up that wrapper the guy ahead of me dropped?! Hell no. I'm lazy too.

Getting Things Done...eventually.

Anybody out there use that Getting Things Done method to be more productive? I've been trying to use it and any variation I can wrap my head around for about a year, and I think I have spent more time trying to figure out the system rather than Getting Things Done.



It's frustrating I tells ya. (in my best Rodney Dangerfield)



I'm test driving my 6th GTD software package and it still winds up being just an endless list of tasks for me. Maybe I'm just not wired correctly to do anything but create lists on index cards, which would be odd since I am a tech guy who uses computers for everything else. What is it about tasks, and lists, and chores, and responsibilities that gets us so wound up we need "systems" and "methods" and software to be productive??!!



Maybe we just have too much to do, or are just trying to do too much. I expect many of us and our descendants will burn ourselves out completely driving toward that promised Utopian society where all of our time is open for self-education, the betterment of society, and the advancement of theories, science and philosophies.



Personally I'm betting most of it will be spent watching TV.

Figures...

Don't you just hate writer's block?!! I'm basically posting this so I don't get out of the habit of blogging. I figure that writing "nothing" is better than not writing at all. Motivation is hard. Hey, maybe that will be the title of the next posting!!



Um...don't you just hate that it's almost impossible to get in to see The Dark Knight on IMAX?!



Ok, I give up for now.

My First Fashion Rant

So when did it become fashionable for guys to start wearing those big, clunky Dolce & Gabanna type sunglasses that women have been making trendy for the last couple of years?! Does anyone else think it just makes them look like they were too lazy to find their own, and just stole one of their girlfriend's?

Women, if you are wondering where your fave pair of $150 DC or DKNY sunglasses went, check your man's car or duffel bag. WTF GUYS??!!

Personally, I believe the trend in huge sunglasses is just another
conspiracy to get people to provide companies with free advertising. The bigger the product, the bigger the logo. When they start paying me for this privilege, I'll reconsider wearing them.

Trends are stupid.

Sent from my iPhone.

Uncut and Uncensored!

I felt that before I begin regular posts that I should "warn" anyone reading the blog that it is my intention to publish my raw thoughts, opinions, and observations. I think most of us tone down what we think about subjects when discussing them with different groups. Some groups are formal, some get the brunt of our full-on personalities. I'm generally pretty cautious about my expressions, but HERE I'm throwing that out the window! Well, probably not completely, but the bottom line is that you may read things that will surprise you...maybe not. Perhaps I have no idea what people think of me. So, just keep in mind that the posts will be relatively unfiltered and may not reflect my ongoing evolution of thoughts, unless I choose to go back and amend the posting.

I also will try to be relatively eloquent, but I may also drop the occasional f-bomb or expletive if I'm in the mood.

You have thusly been warned and I will assume EVERYONE has read these posts in order, and so absolve myself of any responsibility should anyone become injured as a result of my unexposed honesty....or unfettered laziness.

PS: feel free to comment with your own blunt honesty within this venue, but don't expose it to me in public. That's just rude.

In the beginning...

So, I guess I'm a writer because whenever I start one of these things,
it has to have a formal introduction. Some innate desire to set it all
up. This was supposed to be a tech blog where I could rant, but
decided to open it up to where I could belch out my opinions on
anything that came to mind. Maybe if this writing thing catches on,
I'll split it off into separate blogs.

Ok, that should be good enough to start. Now let's see if anyone
bothers to read it!