What is Up with Laptops?

Maybe I am just too old, or maybe nobody makes a decent laptop computer anymore. I have an Apple MacBook Pro, arguably the finest notebook computer ever made. It runs Windows Vista and Mac OS X, has 4GB of RAM, and rips through most tasks very quickly.

It will also burn the shit out of you. You cannot use it on your lap, your legs will get too hot. Sometimes it is so hot it actually hurts to touch the bottom. You cannot put a pillow or anything between it and your legs or the computer will overheat. I just had the logic board (as Apple calls it, the rest of the world calls it a motherboard) replaced, probably due to heat. Had my company not purchased AppleCare, this would have cost me over $1300! A $3,500 1-year old notebook dead from heat exhaustion.

So my question is this. If you cannot use a laptop on your lap, should they have ever made it in the first place? The old laptops didn’t run that hot. They didn’t run that fast either, but they were LAPTOPS!

Sometimes high technology is just plain stupid.

Another Funny Headline

“Bush lands in Texas; Residents urged to leave” – Can we all go? Why just Texans? 🙂

Even though I am a big fan of Barack Obama, I have also always liked John McCain. He seems like a good and decent man, is not afraid to go against his party on major issues, is a true war hero in every sense of the word, and an all around good American. I was never planning to vote for him, but have always felt that no matter the outcome of this election, our country will be in good and capable hands.

Then McCain did something I cannot explain, he picked Sarah Palin for Vice-President? What? Who? She is a hard-core, extreme right-wing, bible thumping Jesus freak with about as much experience in politics as me. She’s an extreme conservative, you know the moral majority (which is neither by the way) family values type woman, that just happens to have a pregnant 17 year old daughter. Her total experience in politics has been as mayor of a small town in Alaska, and now as the governor of Alaska. That’s it, nothing else.

She is Pro-Life to the point that the only time she feels abortion should be legal is when the mother WILL die giving birth, not in cases of incest or rape, or apparently when the hockey stars condom breaks while banging your 17 year old daughter.

She even voted to make women who are raped in her town pay for their own rape kits so that police can investigate the crime. Those are between $300-$1200 each, and even if they were $.50, seriously, charging a rape victim for the kit so police can investigate a felony? WTF. No, I’m not even going to abbreviate that. WHAT THE FUCK!

Women across this country should be appalled at her, and at John McCain for picking her. Men too. I am looking forward to the Vice-Presidential debate when Joe Biden (who I also don’t like much) will pick her apart. Maybe by then she will actually know what the Bush Doctrine is? Seriously, she did not know.

Now, she does have some good points in my book. Being a hunter and lifelong member of the NRA is a good thing, as is being from a small, almost insignificant little town and not having spent a lifetime in DC. She’s kind of pretty, in a Tina Fey sort of way. Not like Cindy McCain (who’s freakin’ hot), but she is easy on the eyes. Yep, I think that sums up her good points. Anyone else think her husband looks like Tim McGraw?

I am a good American, and totally support her rights to have her views, as whacked and crazy as I think they are. But she is NOT the type of person that should be leading this country. John McCain would do just fine, but he is an old man. Is Sarah Palin really ready for that job? HELL NO!

I usually support John McCain’s decisions, but the choice to pick Palin as his running mate was one of the dumbest things I have ever seen in politics. McCain is a middle-of-the-road republican, not an extreme conservative. So why did he pick her? To appease the far right? As if they were going to vote for Obama? Give me a break. That showed that maybe McCain is not capable of making good decisions, and is a major blow to his campaign in my mind.

Out of all the perfectly good VP candidates to choose from: Rudy Guiliani, Mit Romney, Charlie Crist, he chose Palin? John, John, John… You almost had me rethinking my Obama vote, instead you just sealed it.

A Week’s Gone By

I am starting to get lousy at updating this blog, I must improve. This last week has been insane. There was a block of over 80 hours that I slept less than 20 minutes, working constantly in the middle. A short break, and then another 20+ hours in a row. Then came a blessing in disguise. Seems construction crews in Cleveland cut my company’s fiber optic lines, giving us developers a much needed afternoon off yesterday.

Even though I was tired, I decided to install the laminate floor in the cat room and hall. Most of it is quite easy, though tight spaces are very hard. You do have to get creative sometimes, and I have a couple of small repairs to make, but I like the look of it very much. Our custom built hall was square within 1/8″, which was sort of surprising to me 🙂

I almost finished the hall last night before bed, leaving just a couple more boards to install. The office will be next. Missy and I did manage to get everything painted in between, so just the floor and trim remains. One more solid day, looks like Saturday might work.

So anyway… Green Bay won their first real game of the season, beating the Vikings. I must admit, Aaron Rodgers looked pretty good. Brett Favre and the Jets (aka Bretts) also won their first game and Favre looked good.

The last time we went to Menards they were closing out their patio furniture, so we bought a nice two seat slider chair with a small table in the middle and a matching glider bench seat. Hard to believe but those actually took about 6 hours to assemble, but they look nice. Much better than having a bar stool and office chair on the back porch. That was so ghetto.

So that’s about it for the last week, I’ll try to post here more often.

Enough is Enough

Let me preface this blog by saying that I am not a racist, not at all. I don’t care what color you are, what your ethnic background is, your religious beliefs (as long as you keep them to yourself), etc. Now, with that little disclaimer out of the way…

What the hell is up will all the Indian call centers? I had to call Capital One to update my address. Indian call center. Then I called HSBC to do the same. Indian call center. Then it was CitiFinancial’s turn, since they financed my truck. Indian call center.

Now I wouldn’t have a major issue with this, if these people could freakin’ speak English. Maybe it’s me, but I cannot understand hardly anything they say, and have to ask them to repeat things over and over again. If you are going to be working in a call center answering calls from American’s, you need to speak fluent and clear English, or Spanish. But what they hell do they speak? And why do all of these companies think it’s such a great idea to have their call centers there? Yeah, I know the answer, it’s cheap.

So that is what Capital Once, HSBC, CitiFinancial, Dell, Microsoft and all the others think we as customers deserve. Before I open my next credit card or take out a loan, I am going to call the potential creditor’s customer support number. If I cannot understand them saying hello, I will look elsewhere.

And that is not something wrong with India, that is something wrong with America.