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There are some times when you feel like you’re getting some sort of run around from people… like when you try to do anything with the government. The DMV for example, it just feels like those people love to fuck with you because they can. What do they care? They’re just slaves for the day anyway.

Then there are times when you’re just not sure if someone is fucking with you because it wouldn’t make any sense. Like trying to buy a car for example? Why would they want to dick with you? They’d potentially lose a sale. Sure, they can be less than cooperative to try to sell you something else on the lot, but that only works with some people.

I’ve gotten such varied and wild responses from Subaru dealers recently that I’m actually starting to question if I made the right decision…

First dealer that I’m still talking to won’t take my money or request a car for me because they don’t have the accessory pricing yet. Why this prevents them from sending in an order for the car I want, I don’t know. Just get it on its way so that it gets here faster AFTER we do the pricing stuff. WTF?

A closer dealer (with a shitty reputation) is another option. I sent an online request through their website to find out if they’re ordering 2011s yet and how much one would be with the options that I want. I got two canned responses and no actual information – more than a week ago. Again… WTF?

I even went a little farther out of the area – about an hour and a half away, the supposed #2 Subaru dealer in the country would seem like a great place to start. I sent another online request through their website and actually got a real response back – but it was a bit …. confusing, to say the least. To their knowledge, Subaru isn’t even starting 2011 production until November – expecting mid-late December delivery. Um… WHAT THE FUCK? I know for a fact that people are receiving their 2011 WRXs already. Like, keys in hand, car in driveway. There is no possible way that information is remotely accurate. Fail.

There is ONE dealer that’s more than happy to take my money… and it is SEVEN hours away in New Hampshire. It’s great the they’d love to help me out, but that just seems like an absolute logistical nightmare. And then when I asked how it would work (that I’m so far away) I basically got no actual information on what would happen… “Oh, we do it all the time, it’s no big deal.” Um, I’m sorry, but it is for me – and without telling me how it actually works and what to expect, you pretty much just lost my interest. I’m not going into something like that totally blind after I asked for specific info.

There is still ONE more option I haven’t tried yet… but I’m afraid to ask them as I might get an even more different story. I have not yet talked to the dealer in Williamsport that I went to for my test drive. Maybe they’ll be cool and take my money… I don’t know. Like I said, I’m scared to ask.

You’re killing me here, Subaru. I want to give your dealers money for a car – but no one wants to take it. That makes me sad.

Is yours?

I don’t remember having this much trouble last year when I bought my 3GS but this was certainly what I would label an “ordeal” … if there ever were such a thing.

It’s just a preorder, right? How bad could it be? That bad.

It seems the iPhone 4 went live in the Apple.com store around 4am ET this morning and apparently from then on, Apple’s and AT&T’s servers both just bent over and gave up. Both sites were up and down most of the morning. So much so that when I woke up at 7am and tried to order (unaware they were already up 3 hours earlier), I got the usual “Apple store is down” post-it note. I assumed they just hadn’t gone live yet (most people were expecting 8am ET).

A little bit after I got to work I had been periodically checking apple.com and the store finally opened again around 8:30am. Now was my chance.

Go all the way through with the order to the Add to Cart button… fail. “Oops, there was an error.” WTF do you mean “oops” … I’m trying to buy your shit, let me have it. No “oops” necessary.

This happened a couple times actually – never actually going through. Eventually it just got worse. I was lucky if I was able to enter my AT&T account info on the Apple.com store. Usually got some sort of session error after that.

I had read that a lot of people had better luck ordering through AT&T… thought maybe I’d give it a try – if even hesitantly. My biggest reason to order directly through Apple is that I know you can “pre-sign” for their FedEx deliveries so you don’t have to be home to sign for it. A risk, I know… but I am NEVER home during the day when these things deliver – so that is a nice option for people like me.

Anyway, logged into my AT&T page and was able to get to the upgrade page. Selected the 32GB model for preorder and was even able to get to a checkout page. Then it just hung there. I think it was the absolute last page that I had to click on and it did nothing. I don’t mean for 20-30 seconds… I’m talking 10-15 minutes. I eventually gave up and closed it – having not seen a confirmation number or confirmation email or anything from them. Safely assuming (so far) that my order did not complete.

I continued to try through the morning always with the same shitty results (both at&t and apple.com). I even went through our Employee Purchase Program link and it failed there too – though I did end up ordering the dock and an orange “bumper” for it without any issue (though they are not set to deliver until after 7/3 – which will probably be when I’m in Salt Lake City).

Eventually I logged into my account on apple.com to check my order history and cart. Maybe I was missing something… and bam! Two iPhones in my cart waiting to check out. While my first thought was definitely “WTF?!” … my next one was “CHECK OUT!”

Of course I had to remove one of them from my cart (1 phone limit per available line) but was then able to complete checkout and have my 32GB iPhone 4 preordered. Again… what an ordeal.

Now I just have to wait another week + to get it. Then I can even sell my 16GB 3GS. Hopefully still being able to get $200+ for it.

If there’s one thing the internet car world has been patiently waiting for in the past few years, it is the the Toyota FT-86. The design was practically an instant classic. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone that really didn’t like it (though they are out there).

The promise of a fairly affordable, fun, good-looking, rear wheel drive coupe was salivating… it would just take time. I honestly can’t remember how far back the rumors go. Probably at least 2 or 3 years at this point. The concept debuted some time last year and we were ready.

By “we” I mean the rest of the world that wanted to get their hands on this car. Production version to debut in 2010 was the rumor. On sale at some point in 2011 as a 2012 model was the rumor. Fine. I can accept that. At that time it was still a long ways off so they seemingly had plenty of time to get it rolling and kick things off.

Then there was the recent rumor that they’re likely to target a little higher age group and a little higher budget (around $23-$25k). This is fine. I don’t give a shit what age group they’re targeting and that budget is still on track with what I initially anticipated – if anyone really thought this was going to be just a $20k car, they were mislead from the start or seriously kidding themselves.

Word comes today that there now may be an even longer delay (of up to 2 years!) before this car is ready as they may again be looking at changing the design or considering a hybrid (um… have you not seen the fail that is the CR-Z?). As much of a fail as a design change would probably be, what the fuck is with the delay? What is the big problem with this car? What is holding them up? Sure, this is all rumor… but what the fuck?

It would be much easier if we could just get a straight answer from these people. Are they going to build it? Or are they just fucking around? Two years ago, I wanted this car yesterday. If it were to come out tomorrow, I’d be at the dealer to put a deposit down first thing in the morning.

But now? Fuck that. I’m not waiting another 3 or 4 years to hear that it is going to be delayed again. Fuck you Toyota. You can keep your likely-to-be-watered-down-sissy wagon. Either you release that shit ASAP or I’m out.

The new tC still seems to be fail enough… why fuck this up too?

(not my image)

I don’t care what friends of my friends think.

I clicked “like” on something one of my friends posted yesterday. Throughout the day I continued to be notified of new “notifications” that someone had commented or liked the thing that I liked. These were people I do not know, have no reason to know, and do not care what they are doing.

I don’t want to know if 500 other people “like” what I just liked. And even if  I did, I don’t want a stupid notification about it from the Facebook app on my phone every time.

I DON’T CARE.

I even turned my iPhone notifications to only show Badges for Facebook. Even that is annoying if I have to put up with this crap all of the time.

I don’t know about your office… but the bathrooms here are thankfully pretty clean. For the most part anyway. But every now and then I’m witness to disgusting acts by otherwise pretty normal people. I thought I’d just post up a quick note about how we can all make our bathroom experiences better…

3. Don’t be gross.

If you like to pee in the stall, lift the seat. If I have to go in there and drop a log later in the day, I don’t want to have to clean up your piss from the seat before I sit down. Not even the paper ass-gasket can save me from that mess. The courtesy flush… use it.

2. Flush the fucking toilet.

This goes for urinals AND stalls. I don’t want to pee into your pee. It’s gross. You’re gross. I hate you. Flush the fucking toilet. If you’re afraid of the handle, use your elbow (or your foot if in a stall). It’s not hard.

1. Wash your fucking hands.

I can’t believe this still needs to be brought up time and time again. What is wrong with people? How hard is it to take 20-30 seconds to wash your hands? Are you in that much of a hurry that you must run out of there as soon as you zip up your fly? GROSS. I feel so bad for anyone that has to shake hands with you later in the day – and for myself to now have to use a paper towel to open the door and leave the bathroom. Thank you again you sick fuck.

These things should really not have to be repeated considering that we’re all (mostly) adults… but you know as well as I do, some people still don’t get it.

I just submitted a review for the Mophie Juice Pack Air on Amazon… since it is not visible yet (waiting for approval), I thought I’d copy/paste it here for people to read.

Suffice it to say that I’m REALLY disappointed in this thing… especially for its price. Here’s my review…

I’m going to be going on a long flight soon and wanted a little bit of extra life to my 3GS. Figured why not get that in a full case that I can turn on and off as needed? Great in theory…

One MAJOR flaw though. You lose all kinds of service with this thing on (not even turned on, just physically attached to your phone). I had read a few reviews stating that it can affect your service – but really just assumed that it was a bar or two. That would be doable if I was still able to get signal… but worthless when it kills it completely.

I’m sitting at my desk now and with the Mophie detached and the phone sitting on my desk, I get 4 full bars of 3G service. When I attach the Mophie and put the phone back down on the desk, in the same exact place, I instantly get No Service. How is that possible? Like I said, I could understand losing a bar or two… but EVERYTHING? No way… not cool.

If that weren’t bad enough… I’m actually not even happy with the rest of the case design. If you flip the silent mode switch, you can barely reach it to turn it off. I ended up using a tiny screwdriver. It also bothers me that there’s so much open space at the bottom of the case to allow dirt/dust to get in between your phone and the case and scratch things up. Why can’t it just fit well if it’s not going to work?

The only saving grace for this (and why it gets 2 stars instead of 1) is that in my specific situation, I will still get some use out of it on the plane. Once I turn turn my phone on to Airplane Mode, I can attach the Mophie and not care about the signal while on the plane… but other than that it is totally useless. Do not waste your money.

There you have it… this is a definite skip. Do not buy. Bad product. I’m NOT happy. I may even write to Mophie customer service about this (politely). If it weren’t for still being able to use it while on the plane, I’d be REALLY pissed.

Why do I need to watch the same exact commercials at every commercial break?

If I’m watching a show – be it a half hour or many hours long – there is no need to show me the same damn commercials at every break. If I didn’t buy the shit you’re advertising during the first break, I’m sure as hell not going to buy it in the second commercial break.

I understand brand identity and that sort of thing and trying to get your name known, but it is ANNOYING.

Would it really be that hard to just alternate commercials during a show? So if you have an hour show, there are usually 4-5 commercial breaks in that time frame… so have two sets of commercials and alternate them. At the very least mix them up or something so I don’t see the same things in the same order each time.

Seeing the same commercials at each break doesn’t really leave the best flavor in my mouth when it comes to those products. If I remember what your product is at another time, my very next thought is “OMG, I fucking hate those commercials.” And then I don’t buy your shit.

I’m sure someone is buying all of this crap though – so sadly my ranting will have zero effect on anything at all. But there you have it. Let’s aim for some commercial variety in 2010!

A while back I got a weird email that appeared to be from Google’s Picasa service. It honestly looked like spam. The account name was some random website and I didn’t even bother to read the rest. I actually assumed that it was some phishing attempt and marked it as spam in Gmail.

Then I got another one.

And another one today.

It’s not phishing… but appears to be random spam via Picasa. Somehow these accounts can show up in your Picasa Favorites as if you were following them – even if you have never added them as favorites. I had 3 or 4 in my favorites.

Interesting part of this is that I do not use Picasa. At all. I do have a couple albums there from when I was trying it out forever ago – but I can’t even remember the last time I had logged in. So today I decided to check these out. Found out that if I go to their page on Picasa – they only had one image – which was spam-ish and the account, again, was some random spammy website.

So after using the Report Abuse link to report their shenanigans I added each as a favorite and then went back to my Favorites and was able to turn off the Notify part and remove them (you may have to click the List link to see the options though).

Pretty messed up really… that you can just randomly start receiving notifications from some random spam account when you don’t even use the service. Come on Google… get your shit together.

What is going on with Netflix? Do they just hate me? Do they not want to send me the movies I want? Am I watching movies too fast?

The top 4 movies in my queue are either Long Wait or Very Long Wait (3 of them are the latter). Yes, they’re recent movies… but come on. You can’t tell me THAT many people still are watching Funny People. It came out like 3 weeks ago! What is going on?

This reminds me of many of the rumors in the past that Netflix would start staggering your movies if you watch too many – likely on the assumption that you’re just ripping/copying them (which I am not… this time). I just want to see the movies I want to see.

I have actually purchased two new movies in the last month because I didn’t want to wait 6 months for Netflix to get around to sending them to me. I bought Star Trek a little while ago (which is awesome) and just this past weekend bought Terminator: Salvation (also awesome).

So as soon as Netflix gets to sending me Funny People, Public Enemies, The Hangover and Inglourious Basterds… I’ll be waiting… if I don’t go buy them all first. In the meantime, I’ll be trying to enjoy the second rate movies I have backed up in the rest of my queue. I hope someone is really enjoying these new releases… cause I’m not.

Thanks Netflix. Thanks for nothing.

I suppose this is a follow up to my Windows 7 install and initial thoughts… I have been having a problem. I initially mentioned it here.

Situation is this: After the system has been idle for a period of time (I don’t know, 20-30 min?) and I move the mouse, I’m unable to click or do anything. The mouse moves but that’s it. CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn’t work. CTRL+SHIFT+ESC doesn’t work. I can see a consistent and repetitive blink from the hard drive activity light but it doesn’t seem to be actually doing anything. If I leave the system alone for a few minutes, it returns to normal.

At first I had just forced it off (held power button). It booted fine and everything was OK. I checked the power settings and set EVERYTHING to Never or Off. I do not use a screensaver – I have the monitor set to turn off after 30 minutes but that seems to be irrelevant since it will also do it with the monitor still on.
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