Offerings

During my stay in California, which by the way has been pretty cool seeing Sequoias and going to Yosemite, having my butt handed to me on a trail by mother earth, it was great. However once the day was over in the parks, the hotels weren't always completely truthful in their offerings.

Basically all of the places I stayed at offered "Free High Speed Wireless Internet", as is somewhat common now-a-days in destinations around the US of A. However, each one wouldn't really connect to the internet, or maybe it would but then be horribly slow and the connection would drop. I tested the connection on 2 iPods, my Netbook, and my Zune, all having poor results. It isn't until I get to a "classy" hotel like the Sheraton Gateway or Four Points by Sheraton Gateway that I have working internet.

Here is my gripe: If you offer something, please deliver it. If they had said they didn't have Wifi right off of the bat then I wouldn't have been as upset as I was, not that I was terribly upset but I like to wind down on the internet.

By the way, if anyone is good at giving a massage, I would greatly appreciate one.

It Is b0rked

Yesterday I am called over to a friend's house as she is having a difficult time connecting to the internet on her new laptop. I figure this will be a simple job and then we could just hang out. Boy, was I wrong.

I get to the laptop and as soon as it starts up both cores at the same time skyrocket to 100% in use. Naturally I go look at the processes thinking there is something here doing it, sure enough there wasn't anything. After messing with it some more I decide that it has to be some sort of defect.

They had a "Geek Squad" card, so for poops and giggles I figured I'd call just to see what they would say. Not long after I mentioned the problem he said to take it back to the store to trade in, just as I thought.

We arrive at the store and go to trade it in, then behind the counter there are about 10 other laptops that have been traded in of the exact same model. By the way, this is the ASUS K50.

I couldn't believe it, but more what I couldn't believe was that they tried to sell us another one. I wouldn't keep that model on the floor if there were that many issues. You only end up with pissed off customers and lose business. According to my friends the guy who sold them the laptop had sold 5 others the same day they bought theirs. Horrible.

The ASUS K50 has a Pentium Dual Core processor. I highly suggest to my friends to get an i3, so it was only a matter of time to decide which i3 and they bought it and are happy.

But the main thing here is, they have an obviously broken product and yet still sell it. Guess you can add Best Buy to the list of "Shady" stores. I'm sure generally things are okay, but cheating people out of a good experience and money? Not cool.

The Spring of Form

It isn't so much that I dislike the site itself, I find it a cool concept but haven't we had this already somewhat on websites where someone could say "Ask me any question here" ? Yet, every person out there signs up in hopes someone will ask them a meaningless question. I just don't need that EXTRA distraction.

Formspring is largely useless, and except for maybe that small business that is local only, you can't even set up a page for a major company due to the fact you would have so many questions coming in and it would just end up a mess to regulate. Plus, you don't even have to register or anything, or even give an email. I'll just wait for the bots that come and spam everyone, that wouldn't be too hard to write now would it? Oh yeah, and that would then suck for formspring since they would have to use CAPTCHA or something to regulate who can ask a question, slowing down the process entirely.

Again, on someone's local website if formspring for example just had code inserts for your page then I would say it is a neat little widget to put on there. However, they made an entire site out of anonymous questioning, which if not bots leads to "friends" leaving stupid questions and/or just spamming you. Yeah, that sounds like fun.

I keep getting the feeling that it wants to be the Twitter of something, but see, Twitter provides a great service and allows quick instant mass communication to be given to you, in limited space so you don't get overwhelmed, and just in my opinion actually has some sort of place.

How The Internet Forms Us

I made a fun little basic Flash app that counts down from 3 and then takes your picture via webcam. If you don't have a webcam, then you might get errors as I don't check for that but should.

Anyways, so I stuck it in my forum signature on Neowin, just for fun to see how many pictures I would get. I ended up getting a shirtless guy just messing around. I thought it was pretty funny, but then it also occurred to me what the internet makes us do.

Many web comics I have seen hit on this subject, and basically all say being anonymous and having an audience ends up for some pretty stupid or pretty funny results.

This all goes back to our need to have people think of us in a certain way. In real life you have a set of standards that everyone has to conform to to be "socially acceptable" and usually to maintain friends who don't mind being seen with you. Sure there are exceptions, like being friends with that one guy who would go streak through the halls and then you just stand back and laugh. However, actually hanging out with this guy you might be a little worried he would do something that could be potentially trouble causing.

This is where the internet comes in. Basically, there are no real "rules" and you can be whomever you wish. Anyone at all, have fun, do anything. Everyone is a bit different online, and some are much different there than in real life, so you get completely different sides of people. When all of these changes from people are added up, you usually get a more idiotic, but potentially very funny atmosphere.

However there is a downside to all of this. With the internet becoming more and more important, people also look at what you do online when applying for a job, so if you have something seriously bad up there and it is related to you, guess who isn't getting the job.

Oh people, what are you going to do?