U2 is coming to Tampa and playing a show on my birthday this year. That's really awesome, and I like U2 and all. They're a phenomenal band, don't get me wrong. Just, you know, I'm not a big huge mega-fan. Not like "oh my God they're in concert on my birthday what an awesome gift that would be!!!" In fact, tickets to that show would be kind of a crappy gift for me. The outrageous amount of money spent on those tickets would be much better off going towards a dozen different things I could name, in terms of Stuff Marcos Wants for His Birthday.
Plus, I hate crowds of people. They're one of my biggest pet peeves. I can't stand the thought of wading through the unwashed masses just to pay too much money for a Pepsi. Or a T-shirt. I am not a "people person." I put up -- just barely -- with crowds at comic book conventions, on the rare occasion that I can afford to attend one, and there are two reasons. The first is that the benefit I gain from seeing all the talented writers and artists and getting to chat with them in person, and picking up cool swag and maybe even a few sketches, greatly outweighs the annoyance of having to crowd-surf. The second is the fact that the crowd itself is at least partly made up of reclusive, skittish comic book geeks (I hate the stereotype because I don't exactly fit it, but I have to admit there is a small grain of truth to it), rather than the drunken obnoxious frat boys or aging hipsters I might find at a concert. Prototypical Comic Book Guy might smell, but he won't get up in your face and be all "WOOOOO! I LOVE THIS SONG!!!" If he does invade your space, a quick jab in the man-boob will send him shuffling on his way.
(Not everyone at comic conventions is a pudgy wimp, and I accept no responsibility for you getting your can handed to you by the guy who's giving the Judo demonstration in Meeting Room B-14 at 3:00. You provoked him, not me.)
Anyway, back to my point. I wish a band I liked a lot more was playing on my birthday. Like, I don't know, Boy Hits Car, or the Black Keys, or Bloc Party. Or, I could just be a bigger U2 fan, but that doesn't do anything for the cost of tickets. I mean, why do I even know about a concert that's taking place in October already? Because the mass media is pimping it out because they know it'll completely sell out, and that means that prices pretty much start at "My Left Arm." And that's for lousy seats where you can't tell if that's Bono or just a cookie crumb stuck to your eyelash.
Hey, maybe there's a cool movie being released on my birthday... Let's see... The Informant, and Zombieland. Hmm, and Couple's Retreat, but from the looks of it, just mentioning it is more thought than I really want to be giving it. I think I read somewhere that Sherlock Holmes has been pushed back to my birthday...ish. Oooh, and Where the Wild Things Are is slated to come out the week after my birthday. Sweet!
There's no real reason for me to commit any of this to my blog. In fact, I am typing it from my mother-in-law's ailing laptop while the virus scan runs in the background, so I'm probably just re-infecting the interwebs. It's not Conficker, though, so enjoy.
Showing posts with label random stupid observations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random stupid observations. Show all posts
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Over-Thinking Children's Television, vol. 2
Anyone who has watched even a single episode of Dora the Explorer can agree that Swiper the fox is a total douche. It isn't enough that he's always stealing things; he has to just casually throw them away, rather than scurrying off with his ill-gotten goods or maybe doing something useful with them. But then he's got this, I don't know, pervasive developmental disorder or something, where if you tell him three times not to rob you, he won't. Maybe it's like a mild avoidant personality disorder. I don't know... what do I look like, Frasier?
There's one episode of Dora that displays a moral ambiguity that I'm not comfortable with. Dora and Boots have a hankerin' for some blueberries, and rather than simply going back to Dora's house, or say, a grocery store, and getting some more blueberries, they decide to go to Blueberry Hill and pick some. Aside from the obvious insecticide-related concerns related to the consumption of unwashed fruit picked from random shrubbery, their scheme has a slight kink: Swiper lives on Blueberry Hill.
Of course, Dora and Boots are all worried that Swiper may come out and swipe "their" blueberries. The whole time, they're all "keep an eye out for that sneaky fox" and "he's always trying to swipe our stuff." I have some news for you two: You're tresspassing. You got the munchies, and suddenly it's okay to go stamping around Swiper's house and steal the berries he has lovingly cultivated all season? Selling those blueberries is the only way Swiper's able to pay his rent. Are you gonna let that klepto crash on your couch after he's been evicted? No, I didn't think so.
Oh, you're the star of the show, Dora, so you get to act on whatever selfish whim you happen to have. Nice. What's next? You and your boanthropic pal Benny gonna go down to the river and set fire to the Grumpy Old Troll's bridge so you can toast marshmallows? He lives under that bridge. Jerks.
There's one episode of Dora that displays a moral ambiguity that I'm not comfortable with. Dora and Boots have a hankerin' for some blueberries, and rather than simply going back to Dora's house, or say, a grocery store, and getting some more blueberries, they decide to go to Blueberry Hill and pick some. Aside from the obvious insecticide-related concerns related to the consumption of unwashed fruit picked from random shrubbery, their scheme has a slight kink: Swiper lives on Blueberry Hill.
Of course, Dora and Boots are all worried that Swiper may come out and swipe "their" blueberries. The whole time, they're all "keep an eye out for that sneaky fox" and "he's always trying to swipe our stuff." I have some news for you two: You're tresspassing. You got the munchies, and suddenly it's okay to go stamping around Swiper's house and steal the berries he has lovingly cultivated all season? Selling those blueberries is the only way Swiper's able to pay his rent. Are you gonna let that klepto crash on your couch after he's been evicted? No, I didn't think so.
Oh, you're the star of the show, Dora, so you get to act on whatever selfish whim you happen to have. Nice. What's next? You and your boanthropic pal Benny gonna go down to the river and set fire to the Grumpy Old Troll's bridge so you can toast marshmallows? He lives under that bridge. Jerks.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Over-Thinking Children's Television, vol. 1
Franklin is a Canadian cartoon aimed at preschoolers, based on a series of children's books. It's about a little anthropomorphic turtle named Franklin who is, as near as I can tell, mentally retarded, and manages to wiggle his way into any stupid, easily-avoided predicament that may present itself at any given time.
The show also endorses genocide.
That's a shocking claim, but stay with me here. Almost none of the other characters in the cartoon aside from Franklin's stupid turtle family have names (and even then it's only him and his little sister). They are all just called by whatever animal they happen to be. Franklin's best friend is a bear named Bear. Other idiots he hangs out with are named Rabbit, Snail, Beaver, and Fox. The soccer coach is Mrs. Porcupine, and the teacher is named Mister Owl.
The very few characters who do have proper names are younger siblings (a couple of Franklin's friends have these, I think), fictional characters like Franklin's favorite superhero, and the occasional professional athlete or something.
What this leads me to believe is that in the twisted Franklin universe, the turtles reign supreme and have virtually wiped out all other species. Only a single breeding pair of each other type of animal has been allowed to survive, hence there being a Mr. Bear and a Mrs. Bear, for instance. With no diversity, what need is there for names other than a generic species identifier? If they were enslaving the populace they might at least have ID numbers and barcodes tattooed on them, but nope. The skunk is Skunk, the raccoon is Raccoon, all parents and authority figures are Mr. and/or Mrs., and that's all there is to it.
The fact that other characters with real names only appear in one or two episodes is further proof of the atrocities that have taken place off-camera. They're probably all being shipped off to concentration camps after their token appearances. Or maybe slaughtered for food.
I don't know why nobody has spoken up about this before. These hard-shelled dictators must be stopped at all cost.
The show also endorses genocide.
That's a shocking claim, but stay with me here. Almost none of the other characters in the cartoon aside from Franklin's stupid turtle family have names (and even then it's only him and his little sister). They are all just called by whatever animal they happen to be. Franklin's best friend is a bear named Bear. Other idiots he hangs out with are named Rabbit, Snail, Beaver, and Fox. The soccer coach is Mrs. Porcupine, and the teacher is named Mister Owl.
The very few characters who do have proper names are younger siblings (a couple of Franklin's friends have these, I think), fictional characters like Franklin's favorite superhero, and the occasional professional athlete or something.
What this leads me to believe is that in the twisted Franklin universe, the turtles reign supreme and have virtually wiped out all other species. Only a single breeding pair of each other type of animal has been allowed to survive, hence there being a Mr. Bear and a Mrs. Bear, for instance. With no diversity, what need is there for names other than a generic species identifier? If they were enslaving the populace they might at least have ID numbers and barcodes tattooed on them, but nope. The skunk is Skunk, the raccoon is Raccoon, all parents and authority figures are Mr. and/or Mrs., and that's all there is to it.
The fact that other characters with real names only appear in one or two episodes is further proof of the atrocities that have taken place off-camera. They're probably all being shipped off to concentration camps after their token appearances. Or maybe slaughtered for food.
I don't know why nobody has spoken up about this before. These hard-shelled dictators must be stopped at all cost.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Big Lots! has the best toys this side of the flea market...
On my way home from my dentist appointment today, I decided to stop at Big Lots! (you have to leave in the exclamation point or it's no fun) and shop around. I hadn't been in this particular Big Lots! before and sometimes there's some good finds to be... uh... found.
Quick tangent - I had just gotten my teeth all professionally cleaned and polished like ten minutes prior, and the first thing I wanted to do was hit the candy and snacks aisles of Big Lots!. How stupid am I, really?
Anyway, I wandered into the toy aisle and found some toys that only the kids on those Sally Struthers commercials would be happy to receive on Christmas morning. I wish I had a working data cable for my phone, so I could upload the pictures I took.
There was an inflatible Spider-Man mallet. I've read a lot of Spier-Man comic books and boy, let me tell you, without his trusty Spider-Mallet, mister Parker would have been in quite a pickle. A giant, city-crushing pickle. I'm glad somebody has finally immortalized the most trusty tool in Spidey's arsenal in the form of a cheap plastic blow-up plaything.
Also present were three packs of Noah figures that looked like they were supposed to be accessories to a Fisher-Price My First Ark playset or something. With no articulation they could hardly be called action figures, but Noah wouldn't need any kung-fu grip here, because all told I only saw three animals. Not three pairs, mind you. Three animals. One pack of toys was Noah and his wife, one was Noah with a giraffe and some kind of leopard (I think), and another was Noah's son (I guess), with a lion and what looked like two small yellow barrels. Or maybe they were giant yellow beer steins. I assume they were to be filled with Lion Chow or Honey Nut Cheerios or whatever. You need lots of Cheerios on an ark. It's a fact. Saw it on the History Channel and everything.
Great big Chinese-knock-off Voltron-Mechagodzilla-Power-Ranger-looking things! Saw some of those too. Seriously, they were taller than my daughter. Scary toys.
And what kid wouldn't be thrilled with Professional Bull Riders, Inc. toys? Not many, because they only had two left at Big Lots!. I kid you not, two different little plastic bulls, all posed like they had just flung off a rodeo clown and were getting ready to gore him.
Speaking of which, I also saw a four-or-five-pack of rodeo figures, including at least two clowns and, you guessed it, a pissed-off bull. I was too amazed by this next item to take an accurate count...
Rescue Heroes! Probably the most legitimate toys in the bunch, I think I've seen commercials for these things, but, much like with glamorous movie stars, seeing them in real life is another deal altogether. The first one to catch my eye was what at first appeared to be a Native American (I now realize he is supposed to look Asian) in a red sleeveless karate gi, like Ryu had gotten his dry cleaning switched up on him. He was partnered with a big black panther carrying something that resembled a black-and-red beer cooler with, I don't know...legs. This gentleman's name? Marshall Artz. It's a pun, see? Like, martial arts? Except he's a Marshall, that's his title. Like Wildlife Marshall. Or Grand Marshall at the parade. Guess which parade. And as luck would have it, his last name is Artz.
Anyway, the second Rescue Hero was cleverly named Hal E. Copter. And oddly enough, his accessory was an inflatible life raft that doubled as a waterproof MP3 player. You'd think with a name like that, he'd be some kind of helicopter pilot... Ha! Just kidding, he came with some kind of helicopter-backpack thing. Don't wave hello to the nice lady down the block who always wears a low-cut tank top when she's pruning the bushes outside her house as you fly by, Hal. You may accidentally lop off your fapping hand.
Oh, look, I found pictures on Amazon:
I don't know why these things strike me as funny.
Quick tangent - I had just gotten my teeth all professionally cleaned and polished like ten minutes prior, and the first thing I wanted to do was hit the candy and snacks aisles of Big Lots!. How stupid am I, really?
Anyway, I wandered into the toy aisle and found some toys that only the kids on those Sally Struthers commercials would be happy to receive on Christmas morning. I wish I had a working data cable for my phone, so I could upload the pictures I took.
There was an inflatible Spider-Man mallet. I've read a lot of Spier-Man comic books and boy, let me tell you, without his trusty Spider-Mallet, mister Parker would have been in quite a pickle. A giant, city-crushing pickle. I'm glad somebody has finally immortalized the most trusty tool in Spidey's arsenal in the form of a cheap plastic blow-up plaything.
Also present were three packs of Noah figures that looked like they were supposed to be accessories to a Fisher-Price My First Ark playset or something. With no articulation they could hardly be called action figures, but Noah wouldn't need any kung-fu grip here, because all told I only saw three animals. Not three pairs, mind you. Three animals. One pack of toys was Noah and his wife, one was Noah with a giraffe and some kind of leopard (I think), and another was Noah's son (I guess), with a lion and what looked like two small yellow barrels. Or maybe they were giant yellow beer steins. I assume they were to be filled with Lion Chow or Honey Nut Cheerios or whatever. You need lots of Cheerios on an ark. It's a fact. Saw it on the History Channel and everything.
Great big Chinese-knock-off Voltron-Mechagodzilla-Power-Ranger-looking things! Saw some of those too. Seriously, they were taller than my daughter. Scary toys.
And what kid wouldn't be thrilled with Professional Bull Riders, Inc. toys? Not many, because they only had two left at Big Lots!. I kid you not, two different little plastic bulls, all posed like they had just flung off a rodeo clown and were getting ready to gore him.
Speaking of which, I also saw a four-or-five-pack of rodeo figures, including at least two clowns and, you guessed it, a pissed-off bull. I was too amazed by this next item to take an accurate count...
Rescue Heroes! Probably the most legitimate toys in the bunch, I think I've seen commercials for these things, but, much like with glamorous movie stars, seeing them in real life is another deal altogether. The first one to catch my eye was what at first appeared to be a Native American (I now realize he is supposed to look Asian) in a red sleeveless karate gi, like Ryu had gotten his dry cleaning switched up on him. He was partnered with a big black panther carrying something that resembled a black-and-red beer cooler with, I don't know...legs. This gentleman's name? Marshall Artz. It's a pun, see? Like, martial arts? Except he's a Marshall, that's his title. Like Wildlife Marshall. Or Grand Marshall at the parade. Guess which parade. And as luck would have it, his last name is Artz.
Anyway, the second Rescue Hero was cleverly named Hal E. Copter. And oddly enough, his accessory was an inflatible life raft that doubled as a waterproof MP3 player. You'd think with a name like that, he'd be some kind of helicopter pilot... Ha! Just kidding, he came with some kind of helicopter-backpack thing. Don't wave hello to the nice lady down the block who always wears a low-cut tank top when she's pruning the bushes outside her house as you fly by, Hal. You may accidentally lop off your fapping hand.
Oh, look, I found pictures on Amazon:
I don't know why these things strike me as funny.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
AT&T Disturbs Me.
I can't be the only one who's noticed how dark the AT&T Wireless commercials have gotten. I'm not talking about the mom with the stupid kids who don't want to use "old minutes," those are kind of clever. What I'm talking about are the "sorry I missed your call, I don't have any bars out here" ads. They started out pretty mundane but they took a very sudden, sinister turn. Here, I'll review:
I realize this blog is about three months too late to be considered even remotely current or relevant, but I don't especially care. Yes, there are already a bunch of parody ads on YouTube, but I don't have a video camera so I have to resort to this.
Given that it's been a while since I've seen one of these creepshows masquerading as advertisement, I can only assume that AT&T has run out of grisly ideas with which to terrorize their potential customer base. As a loyal AT&T subscriber, I am rushing to the rescue with two new fully-formed scripts, free of charge:
- Dad looking for his daughter at local "make-out point." -- Okay, no big deal, kinda funny, whatever.
- Dude missing the Motörhead concert. -- Haha, stupid, Motörhead sucks anyway.
- College guy getting stuck in a hostel with creepy Euro-techno-trash. -- Wow, I would hate if that were me, but still nothing catastrophic.
- Hapless employee brings up the big corporate merger that was supposed to remain hush-hush, in a business meeting. -- That's probably going to affect a few 401(k)s.
- Children's birthday party terrorized by man in tyrannosaurus costume. -- Well, I tend to find crying children funny, but I know most people don't. This is a ruined family moment.
- Children traumatized by family's accidental trip to a nude beach. -- A more disturbing notion to some people than others, to be sure. But anyone would be traumatized at the sight of the senior citizens that insist on hitting the ol' clothing-optional beaches.
- Guy falsely arrested for trespassing, and thrown in jail. -- Wait, what? That is harsh. And they even made a thinly-veiled reference to forced prison sodomy.
- Man blows up his own house because he didn't know to thaw a frozen turkey before deep-frying. -- Hey, not funny... that was that guy's home. And he's all singed.
- An entire news crew gets BLOWN UP. -- Holy sh*t. This is how we're selling phone service?
- Special holiday-themed commercial features a snowman slowly melting away. -- Because nothing says "Season's Greetings" like a none-too-subtle reminder of the inevitability of death.
I realize this blog is about three months too late to be considered even remotely current or relevant, but I don't especially care. Yes, there are already a bunch of parody ads on YouTube, but I don't have a video camera so I have to resort to this.
Given that it's been a while since I've seen one of these creepshows masquerading as advertisement, I can only assume that AT&T has run out of grisly ideas with which to terrorize their potential customer base. As a loyal AT&T subscriber, I am rushing to the rescue with two new fully-formed scripts, free of charge:
- *beep!* "Hey, it's Staci's phone. Yeah, sorry we didn't get your call warning us that the guy Staci just met on the Internet and agreed to have dinner with, has a mile-long rap sheet full of sexual assault charges, but we don't get any bars out here in the dimly-lit roadside diner on the edge of town where Staci drove to meet this guy. So Staci's about to get violently raped and in all likelihood will be dumped in the woods ten miles from here, with even less chance of getting a decent signal. I guess when Mister Right's grimy, calloused hands are clamped around her neck and her dignity and self-respect are being pounded right out of her, Staci will wish she'd gone with AT&T instead. The thought that an AT&T phone could've prevented the soul-shattering humiliation, bruises, and internal bleeding will surely keep her warm on the long walk to the nearest free clinic to get a morning-after pill. Whoops, gotta go, the roofie's starting to kick in!"
- *beep!* "Yeah, Chad's phone here, sorry Chad missed your call, but there's no signal out here on the remote island paradise where Chad decided to bring his girlfriend so he could propose to her. So your frantic calls and text messages about the sudden military uprising currently erupting in this little impoverished Caribbean nation, the coup that will certainly lead to months if not years of ferocious civil war? Nope, we didn't get 'em. When Chad and Misty are caught in the crossfire of a conflict they have nothing to do with, I hope you'll send their family sympathy cards instead of calling them, because they don't have AT&T either. True, Chad survived the attack, but the last thing he saw before blacking out in that jungle was a group of guerrillas dragging his beloved away, laughing about the fun they'd have with her, and how much cocaine they could buy with that big, shiny engagement ring. Nobody's seen Misty since. Oh, and try not to stare at the stumps where both of Chad's legs, and his right arm, used to be, when you visit him in the hospital. He's a little touchy about how the doctors had to remove them because of the infection that broke out at the bullet entry points. Maybe while you're trying to console the hollow shell of the man that used to be your buddy Chad, you can mention the sweet rollover minutes he can get if he switches to AT&T."
Thursday, February 5, 2009
The Magnolia Situation
Gonna take a detour from the blog I intended to write today to talk about the whole cluster-eff that has happened with ma.gnolia (hereby to be referred to as simply Magnolia, because I hate superfluous punctuation).
It is now day seven of Magnolia's outage, with no end in sight, and hope seems to be fading. Now, this isn't a national catastrophe or anything, but I had some really interesting bookmarks there and now I'm bummed that I may not get access to them again. I can't exactly stumble around the web looking for them all again, because I don't even remember what all was there.
I have been able to uncover a bunch of my bookmarks using the magic of Google cache, although I haven't started the process of transferring them to Delicious yet. So I'm happy about that. There are also a number of other recovery options being discussed on a thread that's been opened over at Get Satisfaction. I'm pissed at myself, though, for not being a little more forward thinking and having some sort of backup to my Magnolia stash. I never bothered setting up an RSS feed to dump into anything, and never once exported my bookmarks to a plain HTML file, because I'm lazy. I just figured, hey, it's an online resource, they've got to have their own backups if something goes wrong, right? Plus, at the end of the day it's only bookmarks. It's not like it's my bank account being compromised, and the content of those bookmarks is still floating around out there in the 'tubes.
I've learned my lesson, though: I pointed my Delicious RSS feed toward Google Reader, and I'll probably set up a reader on my own PC when I get home, to have a local backup. Kind of defeats the purpose of an online store of bookmarks, but I don't want to get burned again. I might check out other social bookmarking sites - Diigo was suggested by Magnolia founder Larry Halff, but it seems iffy to me. Lacks the simplicity I loved about Magnolia.
Anyway, the point of this post is to highlight a different posting, on the Get Satisfaction thread. Most of the conversation focuses on various methods of data retrieval, all from external sources like Google cache and FriendFeed, so people can get their bookmarks back. One guy, however, chose to go on a rant, quoting one of the first messages on the Magnolia homepage that discussed the severity of the outage. I'll just paste the whole thing here:
Harsh. I won't say this guy (girl?) doesn't make good points, because they are very good points. I had the same questions myself, once I realized that this wasn't a case of someone saying "this issue may take several days to correct" just to prepare people for the worst, only to have the site back up by noon the next day.
But let's have some perspective. You're talking about using a free online service (those who did pay for Magnolia's "premium" services will receive a refund, according to Larry) to keep track of information that you found useful on the Web. When you use something that's given away for free, your complaint leverage is greatly diminished. Especially when the tools were always available for you to backup your thousands of bookmarks.
I had a little over 300 bookmarks on Magnolia, well short of Mister Angry's thousands, and while I am miffed about potentially losing those, I'm more upset that I didn't give myself a fallback option. No contingency. My fault. If I had thousands of bookmarks, and if they were all that important to me, I would have made sure to have a backup. It would never occur to me to go on this kind of rant against a guy who's watching years of his hard work circle the drain and is already fully aware that the situation has upset a lot of people. I mean, I can get on a pretty hellacious rant, don't get me wrong, but over this?
Yet within hours this rant was upvoted as one of the "best points" on the discussion thread (albeit by a whopping 6 people as of this writing), above and beyond the actual constructive suggestions, and is featured at the top of the thread. It's a fine illustration of the testicular-inflation effect of the Internet.
It is now day seven of Magnolia's outage, with no end in sight, and hope seems to be fading. Now, this isn't a national catastrophe or anything, but I had some really interesting bookmarks there and now I'm bummed that I may not get access to them again. I can't exactly stumble around the web looking for them all again, because I don't even remember what all was there.
I have been able to uncover a bunch of my bookmarks using the magic of Google cache, although I haven't started the process of transferring them to Delicious yet. So I'm happy about that. There are also a number of other recovery options being discussed on a thread that's been opened over at Get Satisfaction. I'm pissed at myself, though, for not being a little more forward thinking and having some sort of backup to my Magnolia stash. I never bothered setting up an RSS feed to dump into anything, and never once exported my bookmarks to a plain HTML file, because I'm lazy. I just figured, hey, it's an online resource, they've got to have their own backups if something goes wrong, right? Plus, at the end of the day it's only bookmarks. It's not like it's my bank account being compromised, and the content of those bookmarks is still floating around out there in the 'tubes.
I've learned my lesson, though: I pointed my Delicious RSS feed toward Google Reader, and I'll probably set up a reader on my own PC when I get home, to have a local backup. Kind of defeats the purpose of an online store of bookmarks, but I don't want to get burned again. I might check out other social bookmarking sites - Diigo was suggested by Magnolia founder Larry Halff, but it seems iffy to me. Lacks the simplicity I loved about Magnolia.
Anyway, the point of this post is to highlight a different posting, on the Get Satisfaction thread. Most of the conversation focuses on various methods of data retrieval, all from external sources like Google cache and FriendFeed, so people can get their bookmarks back. One guy, however, chose to go on a rant, quoting one of the first messages on the Magnolia homepage that discussed the severity of the outage. I'll just paste the whole thing here:
onionsformagnolia replied 9 hours ago
Larry, on your home page, you wrote:
"So far, my efforts to recover Ma.gnolia's data store have been unsuccessful. While I'm continuing to work at it, both from the data store..."
How is that possible? What is this "data store" you're talking about? Was there no back up?
"In this past year, many of us have seen much loss around us."
What does this have to do with the current problem, other than a lame attempt at deflection?
"While bookmarks seem small on the national or global scale, I know that many of you had built intellectual and social capital through the bookmarks, groups, and connections you made here."
A blinding flash of the obvious. So far, you've said many words without saying anything.
"Ma.gnolia was approaching the third anniversary of its public launch; for me, it was the project and people to which I'd devoted most of my time, energy, and love for nearly four years. It's still a little too soon to give word about the return of Ma.gnolia the service and the future of the M2 project, but I will keep this site and our Twitter account updated as those decisions are made."
You have nerve to even talk about the return of Magnolia and M2, whatever that is/was. Forget it. This "business", if it ever was viable, is now dead all but in name. I wouldn't entrust anything to you any more because of the way you've bungled this. You've been quite evasive in answering direct questions posed to you about what happened. If you owe at least one thing to Magnolia users, it's an honest explanation.
At the moment, it looks like I've lost thousands of bookmarks that I've added over the last couple of years and I did not have them anywhere else because I was foolish enough to assume that Magnolia was being run by competent people! To say that I'm pissed off is an understatement. The irony is that I had evaluated and rejected Delicious and SimpPy for reasons that I don't even recall any more. I've lost something of tremendous value and by the looks of it, I will not be able to recover anything since none of the "solutions" that you have posted so far work for me. I'm working on the assumption that any competent system administrator would have been able to get a server running by now and restored from a backup, even if *some* data was lost.
What happened? Your server got seized by creditors? You had a nervous breakdown? Ex-wife got the server? Your dog ate the server? Your server got abducted by aliens? You had a disk crash and hadn't done a back up since, well, ever?
It's hard to imagine how you could look any worse so I suggest you just come clean. If it's a matter of money, I'd contribute toward a solution but not without knowing the whole, unvarnished truth. So, how about it? Are you going to explain exactly what happened or are you going to continue your "keep 'em in the dark and feed them horse shit" communications strategy?
Harsh. I won't say this guy (girl?) doesn't make good points, because they are very good points. I had the same questions myself, once I realized that this wasn't a case of someone saying "this issue may take several days to correct" just to prepare people for the worst, only to have the site back up by noon the next day.
But let's have some perspective. You're talking about using a free online service (those who did pay for Magnolia's "premium" services will receive a refund, according to Larry) to keep track of information that you found useful on the Web. When you use something that's given away for free, your complaint leverage is greatly diminished. Especially when the tools were always available for you to backup your thousands of bookmarks.
I had a little over 300 bookmarks on Magnolia, well short of Mister Angry's thousands, and while I am miffed about potentially losing those, I'm more upset that I didn't give myself a fallback option. No contingency. My fault. If I had thousands of bookmarks, and if they were all that important to me, I would have made sure to have a backup. It would never occur to me to go on this kind of rant against a guy who's watching years of his hard work circle the drain and is already fully aware that the situation has upset a lot of people. I mean, I can get on a pretty hellacious rant, don't get me wrong, but over this?
Yet within hours this rant was upvoted as one of the "best points" on the discussion thread (albeit by a whopping 6 people as of this writing), above and beyond the actual constructive suggestions, and is featured at the top of the thread. It's a fine illustration of the testicular-inflation effect of the Internet.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
This doesn't bode well.
Okay, so I was writing my last post and wanted to find a good synonym for "dislike." You know, one that wasn't quite as full of vitriol as "hate" or "loathe." So I typed "dislike" into the embedded search bar in my Firefox window, and before I could change the search engine from Google to Meriam-Webster, Google (which as we all know can have a very toddler-like exuberance towards being helpful and friendly) gave me the top ten most popular search terms that begin with "dislike."
Lookie:
I'm not sure what to make of that first (and by definition, most popular) one. Or the fact that Sarah Palin still registers on someone's radar enough for that person to Google her at all anymore, even if it is in the context of not liking her.
Draw your own conclusions.
Lookie:
I'm not sure what to make of that first (and by definition, most popular) one. Or the fact that Sarah Palin still registers on someone's radar enough for that person to Google her at all anymore, even if it is in the context of not liking her.Draw your own conclusions.
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