Unhappy

Bright Starts is evil

Behold the toy. When you pull its tail the cheeks light up and it makes silly sounds. Veronica loved playing with it until the batteries ran out. “No prob,” I thought. “Let me just pop this guy open and I’ll replace the batteries.”

Then I discovered that Bright Starts, Inc. is pure evil: they used a proprietary triangle bit to lock the battery compartment (coincidentally, the same proprietary bit that Roombas and Happy Meal toys battery compartments are secured with). Turns out I can buy a bit kit for $10-15 that would let me peel it apart, but the toy itself cost less than that.

I repeat: this is a child’s toy that is intentionally designed so when the batteries inevitably run out, the parent cannot replace them. What type of sick jerk thought this was a good idea? Making it even worse, this was packaged so parents could try it out in the store before purchasing it. So I as a consumer aren’t even guaranteed to have a full battery charge at time of purchase!

Evil. Pure evil.

Meh. It could have been worse, I guess?

I officially rejoined the work-force today. It was pretty hard making it through two meetings and all my regular work on just 3ish hours of sleep. But I survived worse for four years of college so I figure I can handle this for awhile.

Taking sleep deprivation out of the equation it was good to be back at work. After a couple of weeks off I’d begun to miss it (and was getting irritated trying to keep abreast of projects via periodic email checks).

Once the lady returns to work in a couple months I’ll take a couple more weeks off to help with that transition and can experience for myself what she’s going through right now. Thankfully Vicki’s around and my mom is going to be joining us soon to help out. And the 46 inch flat panel LCD TV arriving next week is giving me something to look forward to!

So I’ve been performing experiments on my coworkers. The only reading material in our break room is tabloid trash. I’ve started to retaliate by bringing in US News & World Report, Wired and Cat Fancier. In the name of science I’ve been monitoring what gets read and what gets ignored. After several weeks, the evidence is clear: given a choice, nobody actually reads meaningful articles. All that gets read is celebrity gossip.

Humanity as a species is doomed.

Milestone: bought gas today and it cost over $50. The world is ending!

So the first trial of a “detainee” at Guantanamo Bay has begun. Read more here to be either stunned at how low our country has fallen (or if you roll that way, see justice in action, your pick).

The prosecution called this “the most just war crimes trial that anybody has ever seen,” but I’m skeptical. Confessions given while being tortured are being accepted as evidence and even if acquitted, the Bush administration still reserves the right to just make him disappear for the rest of his life.

From the article:

Mr. Wizner [from the ACLU] said there was a more fundamental contradiction underlying the trial. The Bush administration insists that even if a detainee is acquitted, officials could hold him indefinitely.

“Where else in the world,” Mr. Wizner said after court one day, “is someone being prosecuted for a crime who is already serving a life sentence and will continue to serve one if he?s acquitted”

Hopefully Barack Obama will stand by his pledge to close Guantanamo.

Barack Obama was among the 69 senators voting to broaden government spy powers and give immunity to phone companies that aided in secret wiretapping.

(I know, I’ve just broken the three cardinal rules of blogging*. So sue me)

So Barack Obama previously said he would take a stand against providing retroactive immunity for companies that knowingly broke the law. But fast-forward to today and he’s voted for it. If Obama believes in any of the rhetoric he spouts, he needs to take a stand instead of voting for a “compromise” that boils down to “give Bush everything he wants.”

I’m not upset at Pelosi, Lieberman, and the rest of the wimps who haven’t stood up to Bush since taking over. I know where they stand: kissing Bush’s tail. There’s a reason their approval rating is lower than Bush’s: they’ve completely failed at the mandate they were voted into office to attain.

I am, however, upset at Obama. If you claim to want change for America, don’t vote to put into law one of the previous administration’s worst abuses of power. Here’s a candidate who wants me to entrust him with the most important position in the world, but has flip-flopped on an important issue because he’s afraid of George Bush and his cronies calling him soft on terror. Seriously, have you seen the relative approval ratings between these two? Call him out, Obama. Tell him that the American people are tired of being fed sound-bites and false dichotomies and take a stand. Don’t let your supporters down at the first sign of resistance. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see you’re being rolled: even HILLARY CLINTON saw the light on this issue and voted no!

So bloggers are unhappy about stuff all the time with little consequence in the real world. So what does my being angry at Obama mean? It means I will not be giving him dollars. In this election I have two votes: my pocketbook and my ballot. And at least one of them is NOT going to him. And in this election, Obama’s seriously banking on the small donors (read: me). I am your base. If you want to win this election don’t tick me off.

Now McCain, I know where he stands on the issues: diametrically opposed to me. But at least he’s consistent in being a Bush-wannabe instead of flip-flopping on previous statements about the importance of this issue.

* The cardinal rules of blogging:
1. Don’t blog when angry or tired.
2. Don’t blog about things you’re likely to have used against you in the court of law (or popular opinion) later
3. Don’t blog about politics. Period.

So periodically I highlight products that I think the Internet-at-large would be interested in. Usually this is because I think the product is awesome. Today, I’m going to highlight what may be the single worst purchase I’ve recommended in the past five years: Philips SHE 9500 headphones.

The lady was looking to pick up a pair of earbuds to replace her iPod earbuds. Apple ships some pretty bad headphones so I figured the Philips SHE 9500s were a good risk. After about a week of use, she refused to ever use them again. Not wanting to waste the $20 we’d spent, I put them to use when my KOSS sport headphones died. She was right: they are awful. And not just “they’re not too great, but I can live with them,” we’re into “I want to find the designer and beat him/her to death with them.”

Where to start? Well, the first issue is that the cables are too long, and at the same time are also too short. Instead of one normal cable the designers opted to split the cable into two pieces. The top piece is too short to use on its own, so you’re forced to use the extension which makes the total length way too long. And the connector holding the pieces together adds weight so the cable is weighted to constantly be pulling the cables out of your ears. Which brings me to my next complaint: the ear buds don’t fit your ears. This is especially ironic given that Philips supplies three sets of ear buds to match your ears; unfortunately the three sizes ears they fit are first grader, NFL player, and king kong. I opted for first grader and the headphones are constantly loose in my ears, causing them to be even more likely to fall out.

All of these would be tolerable if it weren’t for the next “feature”: from where cable splits into Y going to ears, left ear cord shorter than right–by design! Wearing headphones in the suggested configuration with cords going around back of head makes earbuds even more likely to fall out of ears! That’s three features in a row contributing to the headphones not actually staying in your ears.

Okay, so after you’ve taken the headphones off (because they’re obviously not staying in your ears), you toss them into your backpack. The next time you pick them up they will be more tangled than any other pair of headphones I’ve ever used. The “anti-tangle” coating on the headphones goes beyond mere failure to complete the assigned task into being worse than if they’d just left well enough alone.

And to add insult to injury, the sound quality is comparable with Apple’s ear buds: completely uninspiring.

I want our $20 back!

A few weeks back I inherited a dinosaur PC, a relic from the lands before time existed. It was old and slow, but it still runs Ubuntu Linux pretty well so I figured I would put it back into use. But there was a snag: the massive PC case didn’t fit under my desk and was hideously ugly. What do do?

The obvious answer of course is build a new case out of LEGOs! If Google did it all those years ago, so could I. So with a vague idea of what I wanted I set out. A week later, several late nights, and four complete restarts later, it is finished. See below for snapshots taken as the project progressed.

The original hulking monstrosity

As you can see, I started with a case that was 95% empty. It was very space inefficient and extremely ugly.

Bits and pieces everywhere

I’ve torn out all of the important bits and are starting to explore the various possibilities. I got lucky and the motherboard fit perfectly on a standard sized base plate, so that made the foundation simple.

Walls around the motherboard

Here you can see the walls beginning to take shape. My first attempt was to put the motherboard in one castle and power supply in another. This turned out to be a mistake and eventually I settled on a completely different design.

Iteration 2 starting to take shape

Our first attempt was a bust so we scratched it all and started over. The lowest level contains the power supply and hard drive and the motherboard forms the base of level 2. Originally I wasn’t sure I’d have enough pieces to make this work, but AntiMatt lent some engineering expertise and this design choice paid off big-time.

Second level taking shape

Higher and higher we built. I was pretty nervous about the whole thing not being structurally sound, so we spent quite a bit of time making sure everything interlocked well and had good reinforcement at each layer.

Port covers and cables

Here’s a shot of the port covers. I’d seen a number of LEGO cases online that essentially looked like big boxes built out of whatever random bricks happened to be available. For this design, I wanted something aesthetically pleasing and that fit within a theme. The castle theme was the obvious choice: I had a lot of castle pieces, the castle walls allowed us to build lots of well-ventilated walls quickly, and I hadn’t seen any other castle LEGO PC cases.

Second level completed

One of AntiMatt’s key contributions was the massive front doors. Along with providing a means for LEGO minifigs to enter the castle, it also gives me a way to access the lower level bits and improves airflow.

Structure just about done

Things are really taking shape now. We’ve just about wrapped up the second level and are starting to integrate “flare” into our design.

The third level

The third level is purely ornamental. I’m really happy with how it turned out: notice the use of staircases, parapets, cool drawbridges and a castle watch tower.

Another shot looking down at the third level.

At this level we integrated some “grillwork” pieces to ensure sufficient vertical airflow to the processor.

The finished product!

A ninja sneaking across the drawbridge.

Crossbow sniping from the fortress keep.

An Amazon prepares for battle.

This armory is loaded for bear.

No castle is complete without an axe-wielding berserker!

I dropped into Quake Wars last night to take a break from tax paperwork. After some great close matches I ended up on the top of the leaderboard. About this time, the server’s “clan” rep singled me out for a personal invitation to join their clan. I was flattered and so tonight I went to their regularly scheduled team practice. I’ve screwed around on public players with folks I know in meat-space, but I’d never played at this level of competition before.

After meeting the guys I was drafted into their upcoming tournament and played in a practice scrimmage. It was a lot of fun, I didn’t embarass myself and everyone was very friendly. It was a good time, but in the end I decided to withdraw my membership since I really can’t swing the scheduled weekly time commitment. I’d been nervous about the time issue all along, but after tonight I knew it just wouldn’t work.