3 posts tagged “annoying”

So you bought an 8 GB iPhone at $599 when it first came out and are whining your spoiled and stupid head off when it dropped by $200 just over two months later.  Now you're saying that Steve Jobs raped your virgin orifice when a few weeks ago you wanted to carry his babies.  What's wrong with this picture?

Then you were obligating yourself to a 2 year lock-in with AT&T/Cingular as your only possible mobile carrier.  I get the fact that the iPhone was shiny, hyped, and the nerd-herd status symbol of the week.  It is nice to look at and use, but what about that price point and all those restrictions?

You didn't understand the fact that a $600 phone with a very restrictive carrier options (one) and two year lock in with an expensive plan wasn't going to be hitting a mass market price range for the most of the market?  You thought everyone else in the world was hanging on Steve Jobs' every word like you were? You didn't realize that price cuts were inevitably coming very soon to try to create some sales volume?

So what happens when the price cuts come?

• Whine that Steve Jobs did something illegal by pricing it so high when it really should've cost $399 from the start.  Sorry, I have news for you about supply and demand.  Good ol' Steve-o could've priced them at $10,000 or $1 billion dollars if he wanted to, just you probably wouldn't have bought one at that price and he wouldn't have made money off the pathetically desperate for nerdly status who couldn't afford them at that price.  It is only illegal to price things high if there is some secret deal in the market for EVERYONE to price their phones this high so there is no competition and people have no choice but to pay high prices because of price collusion.
  
  
• Get insulted that (*gasp*) the unwashed masses might be able to afford an iPhone and it won't be so exclusive to your club anymore.  And you were so enjoying your conspicuous consumption and invidious consumption. But you bought it for the features, right?  Um, wait, those are still the same, so what has changed?  Oh, those people paying $399 weren't desperate enough to prove their coolness and were willing to wait for the price to drop. Unlike you, they didn't buy one for $599+fees, wait in line all night like goons for the privilege, and then rub it against their crotches and then shove it in people's faces for superiority points like you did.
  
  
• "But I didn't know it was overpriced."  So you're saying you're stupid and/or were so desperate to prove your worth that no price was too great to make yourself look cool, is that it?  Early adopters always pay a premium and early adopters of heavily hyped gear pay even more of a premium (such as for the original RAZR).
  
  
• "But I got ripped off."  No one had a gun to your head making you buy it.  You made your decision to buy it at a high price point.  I assume you can take any responsibility for your actions?  That was your decision not Apple's.  Evidently, Apple figured out the same thing that many people knew from the beginning: that the price point was too high for the long term sales volume they wanted to have.  You were just part of their little money-making experiment.  This isn't different than usual, it was just a little more obvious.  The problem wasn't that they priced high, it was that they went just far enough that you noticed instead of keeping you in blissful ignorance of how markets work.
  
  
• "Apple is a magical land of gumdrops and lolly-pops like Santa's workshop.  They shouldn't be shamelessly making money."  Puleeze. They charge whatever the market will bear and try to maximize their profits.  You paid.  Now shut your trap and quit trying to blame your own actions on someone else because you feel stupid now.  If it is overpriced and they don't get as many buyers as they want then they'll figure out ways to make more money--like lowering the price or getting it made for cheaper (or both).  They're not doing this for charity.  They're just as much of an evil corporation as anyone else--just one whose products are probably a little nicer to use.
  

. . . and honestly I hate washing dishes, but that is what I was thinking tonight when I was washing my dishes.

See I forget how painful it is to do anything at all in Linux, specifically Ubuntu.  It looks glossy and pretty.  I end up installing a new version or trying to do anything with it every few months, but that is when I remember why I should never, ever use it.  I should know better by now.

Years ago it was configuring MythTV for weeks to months to get it working, but only to find out that it only recorded erratically before crashing.  I even used it for 6 months but I never knew what kind of "legendary" stability it would have.  ivyTV driver writers better not quit their day jobs anytime soon.

Then there was the fun of trying to get a Radeon dual head card working a while back.  I can't even tell you how long that one little tweak took.  5 seconds in Windows for that, 5 days in Ubuntu.  Productivity enhanced.  Configuration uber alles.  Configuration is king, forget about sensible defaults, lets have some nonsensical ones to make sure nothing works without knowing the guts of whatever program you wish to install.

So I had conveniently forgotten all my other past never-ending nightmares with Linux.  I'm writing it down now so I won't forget even in a few months.  Then I can spend that night doing something more productive like washing dishes, picking my nose, or fantasizing about what robots would look like wearing wigs.  Seriously, anything is more productive than trying to configure anything in Linux.

Let me recount my wasted 5 or 6 hours.  You machochistic, idealistic, free love, free software, sadistic open source weenies owe me 5 hours of my life that will never come back.  I'd rather have my teeth drilled without anesthetic than even consider doing that again.

Let me recount the endless pain:

1) dig out wire since wireless doesn't work

2) download RT73 wireless driver

3) extract, 4) try to make driver, make not installed

 5) download g++ and make

6) attempt again will not make

7) download kernel header and source

8) attempt make again

9) read endless readme's, web pages and configuration files in an attempt to figure out what the hell is going on

10) attempt variations on making driver but still erroring out

11) decide I'll just have to trip over network cable like a techno-dickwad for a while

12) go to get ruby

13) all versions are extremely old so must compile from source

14) download

15) extract

16) various make steps

17) install

18) download rubygems

19) try set up but with zlib error messages

20) screw around with various package managers to try and fulfill dependancies

21) think about just installing this stuff from a package manager, but everything is like 30 years old

22) read 300 web pages about people having problems and at least 300 different solutions

23) try a promising solution involving at least 8 to 10 discrete steps

24) feel screwed over when it doesn't work at all like it it supposed to

25) repeat steps 23 and 24 again

26) repeat steps 23 and 24 again

27) repeat steps 23 and 24 again

28) repeat steps 23 and 24 another huge number of times

29) read about ideological wars between debian and rubygems and how both pathetic tribal societies are trying to show they have bigger dicks by enforcing their own package manager directory structure

30) somewhere in there do updates and allow package manager to see other repositories

31) install, uninstall various packages, copy zlib files, compile zlib files from source, etc

32) run rubygems a few hundred more times (after each thing I try)

33) get extremely fed up and start banging my head against the wall

34) figure it will never work

35) restart the computer for windows while I go to the bathroom

36) come back after using bathroom to discover that my computer is obsessively doing some weird memtest WTF?

37) realize that GRUB loaded something weird

38) reboot and notice that Ubuntu installed yet another kernel version with the updates and pushed all the items in the boot menu down so that memtest became the default OS (f'ing brilliant)

39) boot back into Ubuntu to try and reset the idiocy

40) see a few more threads about rubygems being a mess and try a few more "solutions"

41) try to look around to remember where grub.lst went so I can fix my screwed up system

42) do a search since I can't find it right away and stick something in the microwave for an extremely late night dinner

43) wash dishes and contemplate how much more enjoyable washing dishes is than wasting 5 hours or more trying to get impossible things to work since washing dishes at least shows progress

44) finally find the correct folder in the mess of 3-letter folder names that Linux loves (what the hell is sqp, usr or ekj, or kgt?)

45) change the default OS back from being hijacked by grub and memtest

46) mourn the loss of my entire night when I could have been doing anything else and had a more enjoyable and productive time

46) vow never, ever, ever to boot into Linux ever again and waste 5 hours to get nothing, absolutely nothing done while having a torturous time.

(And I'm sure I forgot some things in here, this is seriously the abridged version.)

Is it my imagination or has the US Postal Service gotten exponentially more horrible over the past few years.  Or maybe it's just that USPS is just much worse in California because they can't pay people living wages.  No wonder the USPS makes people go postal, but customers in this case. If I had a choice to deliver mail by any other service, even at double the price, I'd take that choice.

The world's slowest delivery speed.

My brother mailed (at a post office) a first class letter to me on Monday September 25th.  He called me the day he sent it.  It has been two weeks (October 7th) and it still has not arrived.  Given, it was sent from one coast to another, but 12 delivery days later or 10 weekdays later it still hasn't arrived?  WTF?  They could have put it on a boat on the East Coast and sailed the boat around South America and delivered it in California by now.  And it was going from one major city to another, not like either of us live in the middle of nowhere. The pony express was superior to this.

Sometime over the summer I ordered a small, inexpensive item over the internet and had it sent by USPS with some tracking option.  It said it was one city away from my location (seriously 3-5 miles) for two weeks or more.  I got irate, sent nasty emails by the customer feedback form.  My postal carrier called me, etc. None of it does any good and it just makes more work for the poor postal carrier who can't do anything since he's just a cog in the huge broken postal system.  It eventually came (maybe 2.5 weeks after it was sent) but WTF?

I understand they've been squeezed by much better services such as UPS, FedEx and email, but if they want to retain any business at all it would be wise to a least try pretending to compete.  Has first class mail been made slower so that people are now forced to use priority mail in order to have delivery in less than two weeks?  This kind of service is unacceptable.

Insane Delivery Hours

I had never experienced the insanely-bad delivery hours problem until my current apartment.  This is more of a nuisance, but again, WTF?  I get home around 6 pm.  I usually expect mail and figure it will be delivered during business hours since everywhere else I lived it has been.  In my case it's a gamble to expect delivery before 6 pm.  About 1/2 to 1/3 of the time it hasn't come yet by 6 pm.  In many cases it actually gets delivered after 7 pm and I've heard the carrier stuffing it in our boxes as late as 7:15 or 7:30.  I just don't know what to think of this since it's so unusual.

That's my little USPS rant.  I'm certainly NEVER going to send non-letter-packages by USPS ever again, but what other choices are available for snail mail?  I believe there is even a law that says that other companies can only ship packages and not regular letter-sized envelopes.  Way to go US government, be sure to enable the mediocrity of the USPS.  But it hasn't gotten quite bad enough for me to start shipping a letter in a big FedEx box or tube for $10 or more.  Maybe soon, though.