superwick.com

Yesterday, after realizing I was running out of drive space on my trusty MacBook Pro, and knowing that I’d need a Windows machine for certain upcoming school requirements, I decided to wipe my Windows XP Boot Camp partition from my MBP, and went out and bought an Acer Aspire X1200 desktop PC. I was attracted by its quietness, small form factor, decent specs, and great price.

Now, this computer looks fine on paper. Maybe everyone was right, I overpaid for both Macs that I’ve bought in the past 4 years. Looking at the specs, it’s hard to argue that for $450, this looks like a fantastic deal, and sure beats paying $600 for a new Mac Mini, right?

Wrong.

My short amount of time with this PC has done nothing but remind me why I will pay just a little extra (and sometimes a little less, depending on your research) for a Mac, rather than suffer through a PC hell again.

First off, setup of this little bugger took about 30 minutes. That includes unboxing, plugging everything in, and first boot-up, where Windows Vista ran some sort of “speed test” on the machine to check its performance, and install its bloated mess onto the machine. 30 minutes. I could have been actually USING my computer in 1/6 of the time had I bought an Apple computer. I know from experience.

And that doesn’t include the time I took uninstalling all the crap software that Acer decided to include with the machine.

Oh yeah, this computer didn’t even come with a recovery/restore disc. I had to burn my own.

My old Mac Mini (which I no longer have) took 5 minutes for me to set it up and be up and running. And that was in 2005. I paid about $600 for it.

“Cheap” does not equal “Value”.

Fitting that the embedded ethernet adapter died after only one day. From looking at the customer reviews on BestBuy.com, I’m not the only one that’s had that problem. I’m returning this machine tomorrow for a refund, rather than try to deal with Acer Tech support, who would only tell me to do everything I’ve already tried to troubleshoot the problem.

So, the next time someone tries to say things like “Macs are so expensive, why pay that much for a computer when you can pay so much less for a PC?”, I say again, “Cheap” does not equal “Value”.

I hope everyone in the U.S. who reads this has a great, fun, and safe holiday weekend. Please keep in mind that although the original purpose of celebrating Independence Day is great and noble and all that, we are not actually “independent” - but rather, VERY DEPENDENT - and it sucks. I’m surely guilty as any for our continuous oil dependency. I have been thinking alot about it lately though, and have taken some little steps in helping my personal oil dependency. Every little bit helps. I should do more though. Something to think about. Maybe I’ll finally buy that vintage Lambretta I’ve been wanting for about 7-8 years now….

Lately - as in, over the past 6 months or so - I’ve been feeling rather odd. I’ve become this guy who is happy on the outside (when around friends and loved ones, times that are too few and far between recently - I’ll get into that in a moment), yet on the inside I’m generally angry. I don’t know why I’m angry, I just know it’s “general”, in the sense that it’s not anger directed at any one thing or group of things. It could be the state of our planet. It could be caused by stress. It could be that I’ve been mostly single recently (mostly on purpose). It could also be that I’ve been locking myself in my cave for almost a year now, only venturing out when absolutely necessary. Something tells me that last possible reason is the biggie.

It’s weird - I used to go out and have fun with friends quite a bit. I was generally a happy guy, inside and out. The unfortunate drawback of that is most of the time, that “fun” usually involved copious amounts of alcohol and the dangerous behavior that accompanies it. After I broke my leg (which was directly due to my own SUPER-DRUNKEN stupidity), I came to terms with the fact that I needed to cool it down a bit. I needed to lessen my “partying” and become a little more responsible. This is not to say I became a teetotaler, as I still enjoy beer often. I just needed to remove myself from the temptation of going out and drinking too much, and then driving home. So, I moved out of the big city, thinking that this would keep me from drunk-driving at least. And for the most part, it has. I consume a TON less alcohol than I used to.

Sadly, a side-effect of that action was me not doing ANYTHING other than work, work, work, school, school, school, and only the occasional non-work/school activity, such as my weekly band practice, or the occasional holiday thing, or attending a couple parties. I’ve become even more of a homebody. I’m lazier now than I ever have been. I sit for hours a day watching movies, playing XBOX, or surfing the web. Sometimes I take walks, but I’ve even stopped doing that so much. I very rarely visit my friends or even my own parents. This has slowly made me angry at myself.

I’ve been very depressed before - about a dozen years ago when I lived alone in Nashville, TN. I was all alone, had 0 friends, and I never went out of the apartment except to work or buy life’s necessities. I was extremely sad back then. Not many people knew that though, because I never really talked about it. When I moved back to Indiana, I was instantly happier, and loved being with my friends.

I’m not really all that depressed now, but I can see that I could easily become depressed again, if I continue down this path of self-wrought loneliness. I talk to myself a lot (who doesn’t?), and I find that when I do talk to myself, my “tone” is angry and bitter. I silently judge complete strangers every day, out of anger. It’s ridiculous. I need to change.

So, I will.

From http://komodomedia.com/blog/index.php/2007/11/05/css-png-image-fix-for-ie/

IE6 is a bag of smashed buttholes.

word to that.

There are many things in society today that I deem ridiculous, over-used, stupid, and/or lame, and they need to be gone. Here are three:

Over-sized sunglasses

Seriously, people, you look like an idiot in them. What is this, the freaking 70’s? While I’m at it:

Dance-pop
I’ve had it. Ever since Franz Ferdinand got big with “Take Me Out”, the music industry has gone to great lengths to push copycats, like they always do. Stop it - right now.

“owned”/”pwned”
Ugh.

Microsoft continues to do potentially shady/questionable things, and the world continues to allow it.

From windowssecrets.com:

Microsoft has begun patching files on Windows XP and Vista without users’ knowledge, even when the users have turned off auto-updates.

ugh.

and,

This is kinda cool. I just wrapped up development on a site we’ve been working on called getidsmart.com. The site contains lots useful free info on identity theft prevention. Anyway, The site launched last Wednesday, and it already has been featured in the Indianapolis Star, as well as WRTV 6 (local ABC affiliate). This is the first time any site I’ve been involved with creating has been on TV. I think it’s pretty cool.

Anyway, be sure to visit getidsmart.com. Some good info there.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/24/184250/101

Just read it. As the author of that post says, “Well, what are the odds of all this happening by accident?”

Indeed. How do they get away with all the blatant partisanship? The world may never know.

Produced by Matt Sommers

The sad tale of a recently dumped male. Drinking with friends. And more drinking. The oscar goes to Jeff for drinking over 30 shots of ginger ale and not exploding.

Shot at The Melody Inn, The Monkey’s Tale and the Upper Room (Indianapolis) by M. Sommers & Lisa Ruth.

From an upcoming untitled album.

More info:
http://sceneseed.com/bands/2-lines_of_nazca
http://linesofnazca.com