Sunday, June 28, 2009

I am an Autobot

I don't know what the whole bad press thing is about. I frankly thought it was better than the first movie.

That said...

What's with the swearing? This is based on a kid's show. Obviously I'm not against swearing in movies, but it just doesn't seem to fit this one. Was odd.

Other than that, I was pretty happy with it. I've already surrendered to the fact that Michael Bay is ruining my childhood memories. So having accepted it, I'm rolling with it and trying to make the best of it. I still hate the design of the robots. But, nothing I can do about that. They got Peter Cullen. They brought in Soundwave, which was my favorite Transformer anyway.

Overall, I was pretty happy with it. Still miss Jazz though. Spoiler alert, they don't bring him back. :(

Typical Michael Bay film. Lots of stuff blowing up. Megan Fox is... well a fox, and he does not sacrifice camera angles in order to show her off. Wow. She is tasty.

I do wish the franchise wasn't just all about General Motors vehicles though. Totally lame. Suppose it covers the spectrum okay though, just... I miss Bumblee being... A BUG! I miss Optimus being that other kind of Semi, the boxie kind...

But whatever. At least I didn't really watch G.I. Joe as a kid, so the movie looks pretty cool to me. It's way lame and far fetched, which is just fine by me. I never got the draw growing up. I mean, I understood it was all about being The Real American Hero... but basically it was playing Army. Plenty of Army movies out there, so the concept seems a bit boring. The new take looks more interesting to me, and that is my own brand of hypocrisy with all my complaints about Transformers and He-Man movies.

Back to Transformers 2. I wouldn't own either movies, but I definitely think they are worth seeing in the theaters. It was a good time, and I never get tired of hearing Optimus Prime. I want an "Optimus Prime for President" bumper sticker.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Face + Brick Wall = Car Sales

That about sums up my day. I'm not sure I've ever been more agitated in general.

Car sales seems to be perfect for single people, workaholics, or alcoholics, or any combination of those three. It's no wonder so many people have some kind of substance abuse in the car industry. A lot of the managers don't drink, but they smoke like crazy. In fact, most of the people at the dealership smoke.

Oh, and they're mostly conservatives too. Why is it I always find work, working for conservatives? I'll give them one thing, at least they have a job somehow.

I really miss the consultative outside sales life, working from home, and then going out and helping solve people's problems. There are a so many things I could be doing that fit that... why can't I think of one that pays anything?

Plus, it seems like when I'm the busiest at work, that's when everyone outside of my job needs something from me.

I'm spent. I'm frustrated. I'm aggravated. I'm not sleeping well. I don't get much of a day off.

I got no problem working hard for my money. I do have a problem missing out on life as a trade off for it.

Bleh, I need a purge.

UPDATE: Case in point... it's 3:30am. I can't fall back asleep because I'm thinking about that one of my customers that I have been working with through the internet, and then finally came in to get her car appraised (again I might add), MIGHT have bought a car from another salesman at the dealership, behind my back... That part is not bugging me. What bugs me is that 2 out of 3 of my managers knew I was working on it, and no one told me she came in. If I don't get half the deal, I'm going to be very upset. But I'm already disappointed that the managers didn't tell me. This is not how I want to live my life...

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Update on E71


This phone is awesome. I haven't even BEGUN to do all the cool stuff it can do, but what I have used it for works really well. It's incredibly thin too. But I wanted to give an update on how my VOIP is going.

I decided on VoipVoip. It's $6.99 per month to have a phone number people can call you on. All incoming calls are free, and all outgoing calls are 1.9 cents a minute. The bummer thing is that you have to reformat your phone numbers in your address book to: 12225557777, and then if you want to get really spiffy and allow Skype to call out for you (using a different application), you have to put a + in front of the number. Doesn't seem to work if the phone number is formatted (222)555-7777. But that's a minor inconvenience.

It is VERY dependent on a 3G or WiFi connection. Edge will not work. And 3G is not everywhere, despite what the coverage tells you. Often, there is also about a 2 second connection delay when the phone call initializes.

So far, if switching between WiFi and 3G and vice versa, I have to go in and manually change some settings to make it work. But, overall, VoipVoip is very clear, works most of the time, and is a great deal.

It also picks up your ring tones just fine, and makes and receives calls through the normal phone function. Even call waiting works just fine. When you have the voicemail turned on, it actually emails you your voicemail, which is pretty cool.

I dumped Fring in favor of Nimbuzz. I just like the interface better. It seems to be a little slicker with Skype, and it's a great chat program. I can make and receive Skype calls just fine. Most of the time though there is a slight lag when using Skype. A small inconvenience that I'm willing to go through for reducing my phone bill. You can also make Yahoo! calls and GTalk calls.

So far there seems to be NO software solution to make video calls. The phone has the functionality, but you can't freaking use it. It'd be awesome to interface with GTalk Video, Skype, Yahoo, MSN, etc, using a WiFi or 3G connection, but nothing seems to be out there.

Also, I seem to fill up the RAM pretty quickly and end up having to reboot the phone. Not sure what that's all about yet.

Overall, I'm definitely saving some dough. People who use both a data connection and minutes can cut their bill in half doing what I'm doing.

There's my update!