Admittedly I never actually had a C64 myself, though I did wet my computing chops on one of its successors, the Amiga 1000 … nonetheless, I’m also a fan of GTA and the 8-bit style quite a bit, so I thought that this was a lot of fun!
This Whole Chick-Fil-A Thing / Anti-Gay Thing…
I suppose I haven’t really talked about this yet … I was honestly kinda hoping to avoid it because I feel like I’ve been doing an awful lot of ranting and less fun/funny stuff lately, but I just keep reading more and more comments on Facebook about people brushing the whole thing off as “free speech – not a big deal” that I just can’t help myself anymore.
Let’s make one thing clear – freedom of speech does not exempt your words from being considered hateful.
The quintessential example in society right now is probably the Westboro Baptist Church – this small group of extremist nutjobs says some of the most vile, hateful things about pretty much everybody in the name of their religious beliefs, and yet legally they’re perfectly within their rights under the First Amendment. But that doesn’t make what they’re saying right.
The same applies to Dan Cathy of Chick-Fil-A when he says in an interview that he supports “traditional marriage” as opposed to gay marriage – sure, he’s allowed to say that just like how back in the early 1900’s some stood tall to proclaim that they didn’t believe women should have the right to vote, or even further back in the 1800’s when many still considered slavery to be ok … but don’t throw up your arms and scream that it’s not hate speech, it’s just your beliefs.
If your beliefs are that a certain segment of the population doesn’t deserve the same rights that you do, that’s just about as hateful as it gets.
A lot of people try to hide behind the bible when it comes to gay rights with this argument because God says that being gay is immoral, and I guess if that’s the case, then your God sounds like a pretty hateful guy, too, and it’s a good thing that we run our country based on the Constitution rather than his words because that sure wouldn’t be fair to a good segment of our society. You have every right to stand on the corner or do a magazine interview stating that you don’t support gay marriage, and you’re still welcome to rally behind those businesses who follow your own bizarre interpretation of “morals,” but don’t act all outraged when the rest of us call you on your inane bigotry guised under religious doctrine if you want to defend beliefs that discriminate against your fellow man.
Isn’t there something about that in the bible, too?
…
To be honest, this whole thing conflicts me because on one hand, everything that I just wrote above, and yet at the same time, Chick-Fil-A still makes some of the best chicken I’ve ever tasted! It sucks that they have to bring politics into the mix instead of just focusing on making delicious chicken because now I actually have to think about whether I want to support not only their CEO and his beliefs, but also discount my disapproval for everyone else who’s supporting the company specifically because they also believe in all of this anti-gay rhetoric themselves.
I heard a great quote a while back of how Colonel Sanders of KFC fame used to respond when asked of his opinion about hot political issues – “I make chicken.” – meaning, it didn’t matter what his political opinions were because first and foremost, he wanted his brand to be known for their chicken and not anything else.
It’s times like this when I kinda wish that Chick-Fil-A just made excellent chicken, too…
Dream Journal : I was an Airship Captain
A dragoon airship captain, apparently!
For whatever reason, I had returned back to the warehouse where I used to work growing up, though it was considerably bigger and more industrial than it ever was in real life. Everything seemed normal as I greeted and shook hands with the various folks that I used to work with, but eventually as we started walking around, I got the feeling that something suspicious was going on.
Leaving the warehouse itself, we walked into what looked more like a construction site just before the mob boss shows up to cap somebody – people were running around working frantically, forklifts zipping back and forth, and I saw that they were all carrying large boxes of invoices that were labeled for my previous employer. I asked my former boss/colleague what was going on here, and he nervously told me, “You don’t want to know…” before a forklift conveniently dropped a box, which spilled open and revealed (not sure how I knew this, but) a bunch of dirty invoices that the company was trying to cover up.
They were loading them into a huge safe, which would then be buried underground … but we never got to that part because that’s when things got a little weird!
The sky suddenly got dark and one of the workers randomly shouted out, “It’s too late – he’s here!” and in true video game fashion, the clouds swirled and this sinister-looking dude in a dark cape appeared in the courtyard. He was very tall and it was quite clear that everyone feared him. The couple of old colleagues that I was with stood paralyzed with fear, and yet oddly enough I alone was unaffected … because I recognized him, too.
He didn’t really have a name that I recall, but he was your typical RPG big, bad boss guy.
I turned to my former boss, who now was pale white as everyone watched this dark lord guy ravishing the place, setting things on fire, and causing general destruction, and simply told him, “Whatever you do, don’t move from this very spot. I’ll be right back…”
With that, I leaped into the air, and I mean leaped – probably a couple of hundred feet until I was clear out of view. I’m sure that it looked weird to everyone else, except that they were a bit preoccupied by the death and destruction surrounding them.
A few moments later, I kind of saw both perspectives at once – the chaos stopped in its tracks on the ground as a loud rumble filled the air, and even the big baddie turned and cursed as he saw a giant ship approaching fast from the distance; perspective #2 was in first person, as I stood at the helm of this incredible airship, commanding full steam ahead, I’m sure with some sort of bad ass sword or spear in my hand!
Coming ever closer to the fray, I ordered the crew to get in, get everyone on the ship as quickly as possible, and then get back in the air, and as the clouds swirled while the shrouded man rose up into the sky to meet me with a demonic laugh, I took a dive off the ship directly at him.
That’s when the battle music began and quite unfortunately, I also happened to wake up… 😛
Keys, Please?!?!?!
You know how when you buy something, it’s nice to eventually get to use that thing?
So we signed our closing documents Monday night, and we knew that it would take 24-48 hours to verify everything afterwards … plus possibly another day for shipping because we did the signing so late at night … but we were still hoping for Wednesday/maybe Thursday at the latest.
Needless to say, we’ve been a little bit anxious to get the keys to our new house as soon as possible, but we’ve also been trying to be understanding that other things outside of our control need to happen.
Unfortunately, apparently one of those things ended up being the selling agent actually giving a shit, which even now I’m not entirely sure that that ever really took place…
You see, we were told by the closing agent that it was the selling agent’s job to notify everyone (including THE BUYERS) when the sale was closed, and so that’s when we’d also get our keys.
I finally found out after asking this afternoon that the sale had actually closed yesterday, so there’s really no reason why we couldn’t have gotten our keys yesterday.
Just wait – it gets better!
So our own agent finally gets in touch with us and tells us that we can just take the keys out of the lockbox on the door, and the other agent will come by later to take the boxes themselves. Except when we try to do that, the code we were given no longer unlocks the box. Our agent even shows up to unlock the second, electronic-only box himself, except that the keys inside that box don’t actually fit the door anymore, and all the while the selling agent can’t be bothered to pick up her phone to properly transition the house that we just spent a lot of money buying from her.
Finally our agent was able to get ahold of her secretary, who confirms that – oh yeah – they re-keyed all of the locks on all of their houses recently … even this particular one, which we just bought from them not two days ago!
Thankfully at that point, she was able to give us the correct, new code for the first box and at that point, we were able to get in the front door of the new house that we just bought. It still irritates me a little to think that she couldn’t even be bothered to answer the phone, much less send somebody out to the house yesterday to take care of everything when it technically wasn’t even their house anymore.
Just for the record, in this whole mind-boggling ordeal, our mortgage agents and our buyer’s agent have been really great, but if there’s any room for improvement, the seller’s agent and the closing agents … most definitely not as great…
But enough of that for now – I’ve got a new house to move into!!!
Aaron’s Last Wish
This is really neat – the guy’s brother passed away recently, just weeks after his 30th birthday. In his will, one of his dying wishes was that the family go out and “leave an awesome tip for a waiter or waitress.”
He didn’t leave much money, so the family put up a request for donations online to raise $500 … they ended up collecting over $50,000, so they’ve committed to giving it away in $500 increments on a weekly basis like this…
It’s a snow leopard-eat-squirrel world…
In happier news, though, here are some fun videos of things eating other things!
(still kinda like lawyers, though, if you stop and think about it…)
This last one is a little different, but I challenge you not to LOL as you watch its intricate story unfold before your very eyes… 😯
– King of Maturity, Signing Out! 😉
I don’t want to sue Netflix … I actually really like them!
I technically already blogged about something along these lines last summer so I won’t ramble on about it for too long, but after reading today about this new class action lawsuit against Netflix, I guess either I just really don’t understand how class action lawsuits work in America or conversely, I really disagree with how they work…
My problem with this particular case is that although I kinda see their point – it’s a privacy concern for some if Netflix were to maintain your rental history after you cease being a subscriber to their service, but in the same right, I actually fall into this category, too, and I want them to maintain my rental history because even though I may not be a paying member right now, I’d love for all of my own history to still be associated with my account if I decide to come back some day.
So where does that leave me???
Well in this case, it sounds like only the main plaintiffs are getting any sort of settlement out of the suit and the rest is going to charity on behalf of the other affected members (like me), but in a way, does that mean that I sued Netflix even though I didn’t want to? I think this is why these class action suits can end up being so dangerous because in the end, only the lawyers end up making any real money and you can bet as a result, Netflix’s service will suffer a bit because the $9 million that this suit cost them could’ve instead paid for more servers or streaming rights or new business innovations.
I’m not saying that the initial claim wasn’t necessarily valid, but this could’ve been handled on a much smaller scale than they did. Of course, would it have gotten the media attention and driven up the lawyers’ fees if it wasn’t on behalf of XX million current and former Netflix subscribers? Probably not.
Then again, I guess in hindsight a simple Data Retention Opt-In flag when canceling one’s account could’ve gone a long way, too… 🙁
Ask Leo Anything!
I’m really starting to enjoy the Ask Me Anything series on Reddit – last week we saw one from Bill Nye the Science Guy, and now tonight there’s a new one with Leo Laporte answering questions about his former days at TechTV and everything he’s done since to build the incredible TWiT Network! I first found Leo when we finally got digital cable and cable internet installed by Charter in my hometown back in 1999/2000-ish – I think The Screen Savers was on for what, an hour and a half a night?, and I would watch that show religiously while I designed some of my first websites.
Of course, he’s got far too many shows these days for me to even try to watch them all, but I do enjoy listening in on This Week in Tech either when I like the panel or there have been enough intriguing happenings in the news.
So far the reddit thread has been really great – I love hearing his commentary about how he’s built TWiT because it’s so clear that he’s an entrepreneur who absolutely loves what he gets to do for a living, and the nostalgia factor with the TechTV stuff is pretty fun, too! 😉
Now that’s some mighty fine rendering you’ve got there…
I honestly have no desire to even play this game, but I’ll be damned if I’m not eating up every promo video that comes out for the new Sim City!!!
Absolutely gorgeous.
So I just bought a house!!!!!
And you have no idea how tough it’s been to remain quiet about it all this time! 😯
I’ve actually been blogging about the whole crazy process the entire time, so no worries – I definitely plan on sharing plenty of my fun escapades along the way in due time. I guess you could just say that there were certain extenuating circumstances which prevented me from being more public than I would normally like…
…but more about that whole can of worms later…
🙄
In the meantime, it’s probably safe to say that you can expect a healthy dose of new house and moving-related going forward for a while … that is, assuming that I can find any time to write in between all of the packing and hauling and cleaning that’s about to become my life throughout the month of August! Right now we’re kind of in waiting mode – we just signed all of the closing paperwork tonight and now have a couple of days to wait for verification of funds/signatures, so the countdown to chaos has now begun!
…actually, chaos has been a regular part of my life for most of the summer now, but for the time being, let’s try to focus on the important stuff – I just bought a house!!!
