They will get a 100 years - but they will spend their time on the Moon.

I know it is wrong - but to anyone who watches the show Aqua Teen Hunger Force - this was actually kind of funny. Even funnier was listening to Shepard Smith talking about the characters on the show, and trying to convey the seriousness of the hoax. Which of course was very serious. Especially in our jumpy world. But it was just sort of like listening to Jack Webb from the old Dragnet TV-Series talking about marijuana.

I can't wait to see the kids who did this paraded across TV - because you know these guys aren't going to be able to resist bragging to their tard friends. Still, as far as hoaxes go... this one at least was entertaining and no people were hurt.

Strange world.

Just trying to become familiar with my new toy which I am pretty tardly with right now. The pump was painted this color. I have not adjusted the photo.

Protest sighting.

How to make your happy customers into pissed off ones - in two easy steps.

Well - the nice thing about being in a funk is that I question how reasonable I am being when it comes to being pissed off at companies. So...they get a little extra slack. But I'm feeling better now, and I'm sick of paying for shit I can't use.

The thing is.. I can be so easily placated. Conversely I can also be so easily pissed off. Way back here I was gushing about our new laser keyboard. Here - I'll even show you a picture of it again - because it was pretty cool. Emphasis - was.



After we played with it for a few days the battery started running dead. Normal.. so we plugged it into the charger. The keyboard failed to charge. The thing is.. the charger came with a US adapter dongle, and we noticed with had a very sloppy connection. We couldn't get a connection no matter what we did - so I mailed the company telling them the power adapter was failing to charge the keyboard. This is the reply I got:

"Thank you for your purchase.

Sometimes the US adapter supplied with the charger is a bit loose, and there is a need to “wiggle” a bit with the charger for a perfect fit. Please try that, and if it still doesn’t work, I can offer you one of the following options:

We can send you another adapter (but it can take some time to arrive)
You can try to purchase one at an electric shop near you and if this option solves the problem we will refund your credit card for the amount (shouldn’t cost more than $4).

Please update me on how you wish to proceed. "

I wasn't crazy about the response.. but at this point I figure it is more of a hassle to deal with "waiting some time" for a replacement. And chances are I'd be less pissed off if we just picked one up the next time we were electronics shopping. See - I try to be a reasonable person.

Well, last week I remembered that I had also purchased a blue-tooth dongle that was not shipped when the keyboard arrived. At the time - they said to expedite the order on the keyboard they would have to ship the dongle later. I was fine with that. It was the holidays after all.

After realizing I placed the order for the keyboard on the 4th of Dec I became irritated. What is that? 6 weeks? So - I felt obligated to send them this email:

"I once was a happy customer. I bought one of your keyboards over Christmas. The power adapter was DOA. That still did not make me unhappy even though it seemed to me that the US would be a major market for your product and it should have been simple enough to mail your customers a US power supply - since you have an office in Sunnyvale Ca. At least, that is what your rep at CES said. Most especially since your company feels it should only cost 4 dollars to supply it. But now after waiting over a month for the blue-tooth dongle I ordered and paid for combined with the power supply issue- I am not as happy of a customer. Please let me know the status of the dongle - and if you do send one - include a new power supply.

Thank You. "

I really do wish I didn't have to bitch about companies.. but I guess that is just not a reality.

A swift kick in the Ass.

This is my new plan for the winter.

1. Scratch winter off the to-do list.

Not gonna happen.

2. Start buying water stocks.

I figure that will offset the bummed out feeling I get when I watch the weather. It will also make me cry less when we get those bills from the water utilities.

3. Feel happy that we finished our sprinkler project this last weekend.

Yard projects are nice. Much less unexpected roadblocks.
Plus it gives us a chance to interact with our neighbors. They are pretty interesting. For some reason they all talk to us, but not each other. So it always makes for "what did you think about that" types of conversations.

For instance the neighbor we thought had died when we first moved in came over to talk to us. He cut off his mullet - pulled his crazy blue contacts, and told us he had just gone in for a triple A (angiogram - I think), but was out doing yard work anyway.

4. Begin thinking of ways of not wanting to kill squirrels who are most assuredly going to chop down the corn I'm going to grow this year.

Most years it didn't matter because corn was dirt cheap. Growing corn was more of a hobby. Thanks to ethanol... growing our own might be the only way we can actually get corn this year. Last year I thought it was just a bad crop problem.. but then realized it was shortage due to ethanol production.

That is all I have - but I'm open to suggestions.

Sunbathing with a friend.

I don't really have anything today.. because basically I am in just a giant funk.

When I was a kid I remember a period in California where a high pressure ridge just sat on top of the state for what seemed like an eternity. They eventually turned off all the fountains. You could only water your lawn on designated days. I remember being very affected by it even as a child.

Today, I think I am downright depressed about it. It sounds like such a rediculous thing. But I had planned to spend this winter doing nothing after working for 15 months on nonstop projects. This was suppose to be the winter of naps. I mean.. I still can, but you just can't feel good about it with the sun shining every single f-ing day. It was downright exasting getting our old house from this:




To this:



This:



To this:



And a ton of stuff in between. That bamboo floor was a bitch, and we had to lay it twice because we had a water damage incident from a top floor window that decided to leak.

I just feel like I can't re-charge my batteries before project season comes around in about two months - so today I just fell into a big funk. Everything is dead due to the unusual deep freeze period we had, and since we had that intense heat wave this summer everything feels like it is going to spontaneously combust. I think we've had 2 weeks of rain in 10 months, and it is really taking a toll on me. My brain really needs a change of season.

I'm Titled Out.

Blogger tag.

I know most people are hesitant to play blogger tag. I am no exception. We all love our little anonymous world don't we? Plus - I don't really find anything about myself especially interesting. Since Evil HR Lady tagged me - and my blog is a little eclectic - I thought I would screw you guys up a bit more by revealing 5 things you didn't know about me. All the people I read have already been tagged - so I'm not passing it on.

1. When I was 7 and other kids were wanting to be firemen and ballerina's - I wanted to be a drug dealer when I grew up. Yep... thats right. By the time I was mid-adolescent it was a veterinarian until working for one, and then realized with my short attention span that computers were going to be the only thing that would keep me entertained enough to spend a lifetime at it. Just goes to show you never know how life is going to turn out.

2. I have crazy food crushes. I will be into something - and that is all I will want to eat, then I'm over it, and wont want it again for years. For example on my honeymoon I was in a crab crush. So - the whole week I had crab. Then I wouldn't touch it again for three years. Right now I am into Pho. Thankfully I have a husband who is insanely understanding.

3. I still have a baby tooth and I fully expect compounded interest from the tooth fairy when/if I loose it.

4. I used to be a chronic lottery player until my husband made a joke that I would have better odds in the stock market. He was right. We started out putting the same amount of money I would play on the lotto into the stock market.

This is why sometimes I will make friendly bets with other bloggers. I hope you all don't think I am going to forget about them.

My husband and I constantly bet for real money. No I don't think I have a problem - though occasionally I question it when I try to make random bets with strangers. And no - when I was in Vegas I didn't gamble once.

5. I never quite understand why people like me. I know it sounds weird and lame. I think it is because I think most people have friends with a common theme. All of my friends are like polar opposites. So I have a hard time trying to figure out what it is that people see. And yes... everything needs figuring out.

I'm not an auto blog.

Okay - for like 2 seconds after CES I thought I was a closet gear-head. Well, the feminine version. I feel a little sheepish to say it - but I almost had more fun in the car area than in the tech area. But you have to understand I see technology all the time. This is why I found myself at a car show today. And it turns out that I am not a gear-head. I was only attracted to the cars at CES because they were full of technology. Whew! Thats a relief. I was starting to fear for my chromosomes. So you probably won't see any more posts about cars. Unless some show with concept cars filled with monitors comes around.

And it turns out that what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas because I was a walking typhoid carrier today. I'm living on cough strips.

They did have one interesting concept car. This was the front:



This was the back. Yeah.. I know.. you can't tell if its coming or going. That's what everyone said.



This car was kinda interesting too.





Then it was mostly just ordinary cars and a couple of these. Pretty boring really. You see at least a few of these a month around here.

Todays Hall of Shame.

Did I miss some memo? Because last I knew the fast lane wasn't for camping out - it was for going faster than the rest of traffic, and passing people who were not.







Yeah - this guy wasn't annoying me. But who has a purple on purple porsche?

More about CES.

I don't know why - but every time I fly I get a cold. I'm pretty sure when the airlines hand you a ticket, it includes a virus. So I am pretty slow in posting my stuff from CES. Plus - it's a little challenging to post anything that a few hundred thousand people haven't already covered.

One of the things I thought was interesting was XM had a HUGE booth. I would say they probably had a hundred people working it. I found one banner that had a Serius logo and one small display.



Everywhere you turned XM had some kind of display or was handing out these bags.



And if you felt you needed a monitor in the wheel-well of your big ass truck you were pretty much covered there too.

Oh - and the smokers in Vegas were out of this world. It wasn't an accident I got a shot of a guy smoking. Even though I grew up with smokers and dated some of them, I found it pretty over-whelming.



This was one of the more usless items I saw - because everything now has to have a monitor in it. Just in-case granny doesn't have a flat panel monitor in her sewing room.



Samsung bum-rushed me for trying to take pictures of their blu-ray display, and threaten to take away my "film". Clearly security was being farmed out to people from the last century. Still freaked me out.



No one was as agressive as Samsung about it.. but there were a few booths that didn't want any pictures taken. I still don't f-ing get it because if I wanted to be a bitch - I could have just tele-photo'ed in from one or two isles over. I sort of thought companies went to these things for exposure... but what do I know.

This company gave a gender based sales pitch. My husband and I didn't realize it until we talked about it later. My husband got the "it's for lonely men in Japan" sales pitch. I got the same one as Gizmodo.

But they did have this interesting 3D .... well... I'm not sure what you would call it. But it was interesting. The planes were flying around the city.

If your neighbors don't piss you off now....

The first thing I have to say is that the people who work in Vegas rock. Oddly it was a little like living in Pleasant-ville. The barista's at CES who had to endure a crushing endless line at Starbucks. The many cab drivers, and servers. Even the traffic police wished people a pleasant day. At all the venues - everyone was just really pleasant despite the several hundred thousand visitors. And most importantly the really impressive way that the airport got people in and out.

Now lets see some stuff.

I am going to start out with the easy stuff because well... its easy. I never in a million years thought I would be posting the following images. I can appreciate a nice looking car - but I was really surprised by my reaction to this area. One car after another that was just so pimped out. All I could do was laugh and say "holly shit - thats crazy".

It started out with the audio set-up in this hummer that litterally vibrated the walls.



I kept trying to get to the Sony booth and every time I would turn a corner there would be these crazy pimped up cars.

This blog closed until CES.

Try as a might I just can't seem to spit out any entries.

I have a lot to say - but between the excitement of going to CES, and having to talk to all my women friends - my brain is just grid-locked.

Don't get me wrong....my female friends rock - but the holidays make it so you have to talk to all of them in a very condensed time frame. After a few 3 hour conversations - I start to understand why men just want us to shut the hell up. I'm not 15 anymore.. and I have shit to do.

So unless anything super interesting or short comes up I won't be making entries... just come back next week.

Playing Laser Tag with the Moon.