I get this way every February, this year it’s taking more time to go away than normal thanks to the lingering effects of winter. I suffer from the whole “seasonal affective disorder” nonsense, which is really a PC way of saying I become a crabby little jerk when winter overstays its welcome. Even though I can have my share of good times in the snow, if I don’t see some sunlight consistently for a few weeks, I get irritable. I’m irritable right now, so let me vent with a few of my pet peeves.
Adobe. I don’t want to update your stupid software. Don’t ask me every time I start one of your programs. I might consider it if it didn’t just take me 11 minutes to update Acrobat Reader, during which if I even thought about opening any of your other programs, they threw a conniption.
Apple, no thank you, I don’t want to update iTunes. If you were offering me some functionality or heck even a new icon or something, I might consider it, but just updating because you have a new point release? Bugger off.
Microsoft, stop rebooting my damn computer after your updates. You could at the VERY least tell me that you are going to reboot my computer and have the common courtesy to make sure that all of my programs are closed. If they’re not, how about stopping your reboot process? Maybe I’ve got something open that I forgot to save?
Wireless network, stop being broken all of the time.
HD TV, if you’re going to be all hyped and “the next big thing”, how about offering more than, oh I don’t know, 2 frigging HD programs per night? Once the regular shows come back on I know that there will be more programming, but I have a dozen HD channels which I pay an extra fifteen bucks a month for, and right now two of them are showing news in HD, and that’s IT!
Side-Rant here, I watched Casino Royale last night on regular DVD up-converted via my HD DVD player, and I have to say, having watched Bourne Identity in HD DVD the other night, there is very minimal difference between the two formats. A good print, properly upconverted is nearly as good as a high definition movie. Maybe once movies are all shot in High Def digitally, there will be significant differences (300 looks incredible in HD DVD, and is much crisper than the comparable DVD), but that leaves a massive back-catalogue that will still look “okay” in High Def DVD.
Folks who buy the old Stanley Kubrik movies like The Shining on High Def formats are just being silly.
Hey Brian!
I feel and share your crabbiness – we’ve moved in yet still have far to many boxes around. And I’m trying to figure out a configuration for a new computer that I might be putting together after we get our tax returns. We’ve also been looking at HD TV’s – may I ask what you’ve got, and are you happy with it? Any suggestions/advise/input would be appreciated. At least I don’t have to try to figure out what format to go with!
And we’ll have to have you guys over sometime – I’d say soon, but we’re still having work done on the house and I don’t know exactly when it will be presentable!
Dave
Hey Dave;
Glad to see a fellow Londoner, hope you’re enjoying our fine city so far!
We’ve got a 37″ Viewsonic LCD that we picked up from Costco for under $800.00, they’ve got bigger units too. I highly recommend the Viewsonics, they’re fantastic values, and really good TV’s to boot.
I seriously looked at the Samsung and Sharp Aquos 37″ units as well, but the $600.00 price difference for the same unit wasn’t worth it.
The really nice part about the Viewsonic is the number of hook-ups it has. 3 HDMI ports, a VGA (computer) port composite, SVHS, and component ports.
It’s a great little TV for the price.
Who the hell is Dave? If he’s new to the city, I don’t remember receiving his petition for residence. Meh.
Brian — do you realize you picked up your 37″ LCD for the same price that Kari and I bought our 27″ Tube TV six years ago? CRAPola for us. And now that we’re poor, there’s no LCD in our future for quite a while.
As for your pet peeves — I KNOW. Nothing more irritating then Itunes (and they’re always 37Meg downloads) and Window Updates. Seriously. Don’t they know that I don’t have ‘real’ software? Just leave me alone.
Crap, Ryan, I forgot to tell Dave about the whole “petition” portion, his wife is a former Londononian (Diana), so I think he gets in via the whole “spouse grandfather clause”, I might be wrong though.