You Know What I Feel Like After Offering To Wait For Cash Money In The iPhone Line?

This — embedded Flash video

Safe for Work, Christians and Other Children. But I am not responsible if you get a hernia from laughing harder than you ever have in your entire life. (No matter how many times I watch that, I’m rolling on the floor…)

I guess now I’ll have to go with Plan 9. A simple sign:

Will Stab For iPhone.

(Now watch the emails flood in!)

Previously in this blog:
Hmmm… iPhone Line Waiters Wanted? I’m Up!

YouTube: Le Jazz Hot, Baby!

Le Jazz Hot (Victor/Victoria) – Julie Andrews

A perfect song from a perfect movie!

That iPhone Demo Movie’s Sleight Of Facts

(And yes, that’s a play on “sleight of hand,” not a typo!)

Gak! It’s monstrous! ~318MBs unZipped for the large version, downloaded.

The first “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~5 minutes in. They skip over actually entering the information for a Contact from a received/missed call.

The second “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~5:30 minutes in. What if it’s a real-life voicemail message — you know, one of those eejits who drone on and on and on. What’s it gonna be like to finger that slider to listen again to a specific bit?

The third “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~6:15 minutes in. OK, so how do you UNmerge merged calls? How can I hang up on just one person?

The fourth “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~9 minutes in. The stereo headset. No mention of controlling volume! So I couldn’t keep the iPhone in a pocket and increase/decrease volume on the fly. I’d have to remove it. Yeesh.

The fifth “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~11 minutes in. A spinning wheel! A wait! A pause! Argh. (Just kidding.) I would have liked to have seen that Move and Scale feature.

The sixth “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~12:29 minutes in. He taps in “nike running.” I notice that the word “running” is completed near the search field at the top. Yet he doesn’t tap on it to use it. Hmmm…

The seventh “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~12:42 minutes in. OK, you can rotate a web page to see it in landscape mode. But can you get rid of the freakin top and bottom Safari elements to just view the entire web page?

The eighth “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~13:45 minutes in. “This is my Inbox.” Is it a consolidated Inbox, aggregating, say, Yahoo and GMail together? What’s that Mailboxes button at the top left corner? Do you have to switch between mail services? For that matter, how are webmail folders handled? YahooMail puts 99% of my spam in a separate folder. Will all that show up in the one Inbox? (Which, given my spam, would soon be the Pen1sbox!)

The ninth “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~14 minutes in. Can more than one email at a time be deleted?

The tenth and eleventh “Uh, don’t look!” are at ~14:23 and ~14:33 minutes in. OK, I can zoom into PDFs and MSWord attachments. Can I rotate to see them in landscape? Can a PDF encoded as an 8.5×11-inch page be read on that screen zoomed out to full page width (no “scrolling”), in landscape? Let me tell you, I had trouble reading those fekkin things on a Nokia 770 — and it had a larger and a higher-resolution screen!

The twelfth “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~14:41 minutes in. Oh, look! Outgoing email will state Sent from my iPhone. Does it have to?

The thirteenth “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~14:46 minutes in. What if I select a Contact to send an email to but they wind up not having an email address (for whatever reason; I forgot to save one for them). Do only Contacts with email addresses pop up, or all Contacts?

The fourteenth “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~17:13 minutes in. Weather. Is that all? Can I tap on a specific day to get a detailed forecast? What about live radar? I’d like to have the radar capability that Weather Underground offers. This is vital for when I get caught in the rain. The radar will show if it’s a passing shower or if I have no other choice but to get drenched!

The eighteenth “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~17:19 minutes in. No predictive text when typing in a city — even one as common as London?

The nineteenth “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~18:08 minutes in. The stock screen starts out with six companies listed. Another one is then added. The new screen still shows just six stocks! Where’d the other one go? How do you get to it? Can you flick up and down through the list, like everything else? Is there deletion consistency with the email app? — that is, swipe to the right to delete a stock?

The twentieth “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~19:09 minutes in. To zoom out, double-tap with two fingers? Where’d that move come from? Why not pinch inward (two fingers move inward diagonally)? This seems inconsistent to me. Why is it that way?

The twenty-first “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~21:45 minutes in. Sending a YouTube video. I just noticed here there is no BCC field in the email. I use BCC a lot! Is it available? And what about any List I have set up in YahooMail (as a list in YahooMail, not Yahoo Groups)?

The twenty-second “Uh, don’t look!” is at ~23:41 minutes in. Wait a minute! He just tapped on Set Wallpaper for a photo and there was no spinning wheel! How real is this frikkin demo?

I’m sure many of these questions will be answered within the first few hours of iDay (for all you madmen and madwomen staying at home or at work who will keep hitting Refresh at multiple sites!), but I couldn’t help wondering about them right now.

YouTube: Some 1960s TV Greatness

Honey West (1965) opening titles

Before anyone outside of England had ever heard of Emma Peel, there was America’s own Honey West, who also vanquished criminals with swift kicks of her shapely legs — but rather than an amateur working for the State was the owner of her own successful detective business. Somebody please put this whole series out on DVD.

Honey West KO

Both of those have been encoded incorrectly as widescreen. Vertical squishing…

He & She opening credits (1967)

Opening credit sequence for comedy series He & She starring Paula Prentiss, Richard Benjamin, and Jack Cassidy. The missing link in TV evolution between “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “Mary Tyler Moore.”

Encoded incorrectly as widescreen, the images are squished. Still good to see again. Another series not on DVD, dammit! One of The Greatest TV Series Ever.

wpix-chiller theater promos

Chiller Theatre

Of course now I can laugh at that last one, Chiller Theatre. But as a wee kid, those images and that music would scare the shit out of me and have me running in panic to hide under the bed!

Hey, I wasn’t even in grade school. Slack, you pig. Slack!

YouTube: Brats Of The Lost Nebula WB Promo

Kids WB late 90s “Heavy Duty Dubbas” promo

It’s damned brief, at the end.

Previously in this blog:
Brats Of The Lost Nebula Clips On YouTube!

We Should Have Been Dropping Fiber Into American Homes Instead Of Dropping Bombs In Iraq

U.S. Net access not all that speedy

The USA trails other industrialized nations in high-speed Internet access and may never catch up unless quick action is taken by public-policymakers, a report commissioned by the Communications Workers of America warns.

The median U.S. download speed now is 1.97 megabits per second — a fraction of the 61 megabits per second enjoyed by consumers in Japan, says the report released Monday. Other speedy countries include South Korea (median 45 megabits), France (17 megabits) and Canada (7 megabits).

Emphasis added by me.

For the record, I just found out today that what I thought was still six megabit Roadrunner was upgraded without notice (for the same price) to ten megabits.

And yet look at this and look at this.

Remember that article when you hear those Suits in MammothMedia crying about how we’re all media thieves here in America.

The Secret: I Can’t Finish Reading It!

It’s just Too Fucking Stupid!!

What are you people, brain-dead? Have you no reading comprehension skills? Are you all closet Attention-Deficit Disorder cases? Can you not recall what you read from one page to the next?

Well I damn well can.

On page 22:

It really does take many negative thoughts and persistent negative thinking to bring something negative into your life.

Then on page 34:

We all have experienced those days or times when one thing after another goes wrong. The chain reaction began with one thought, whether you were aware of it or not. The one bad thought attracted more bad thoughts, the frequency locked in, and eventually something went wrong. Then as you reacted to that one thing going wrong, you attracted more things going wrong.

Which is it? “Many negative thoughts and persistent negative thinking” or “one thought”?

I got up to page 56, and that’s where I will stop. I like my brain too much to self-inflict this kind of damage upon it.

Don’t any of you see the con game that’s being perpetrated here? It starts in the friggin Introduction!

A year ago, my life had collapsed around me. I’d worked myself into exhaustion, my father died suddenly, and my relationships with my work colleagues and loved ones were in turmoil. Little did I know it at the time, out of my greatest despair was to come the greatest gift.

I’d been given a glimpse of a Great Secret — The Secret to life. The glimpse came in a hundred-year-old book, given to me by my daughter Hayley.

Have any of you stopped to ask: Wait a minute, what was the book she was given? And if that book helped her so dramatically, why am I being given this other book to read?

Because, stupid, if they had just re-issued The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles — the book Byrne had been gifted with — how would they have made any money off it? It’s in the public domain, it’s free to read all over the Internet, and it would have made Byrne and her compatriots look like they were starting a Wattles Cult instead of a Byrne Cult.

I see in the back of this abomination of a book that they do list Wattles. Also Charles Haanel. What I don’t quite understand is why Napoleon Hill and Norman Vincent Peale are never mentioned. Could it be those who handle their estates wanted no connection to this scam? It can’t be that Byrne, in her alleged “tracing The Secret back through history,” never stumbled across even the names of these two pioneers. I think Byrne’s group approached those two estates and were told to get lost.

And that’s what I’m telling this moron-bait book too: Get lost!

Previously in this blog:
The Secret: OMG! NYPL Has It For Me!
The Secret: Another Bit Of The Real Secret
Quote Of The Day
Another Note About The Secret: Victor Hugo
The Secret: Don’t Be A Sucker
This Is One Part Of The Secret — The Real Secret
Last Night I Saw The Secret On DVD
The Secret Is That They Count On You To Be Stupid
The Secret: Suckers!
The Secret: Law Of (Mal-)Attraction
More On The Secret

Warren Ellis Is Shocked, Shocked!

#450

Someone might actually fucking buy this book.

What he doesn’t yet know:

1) It will sell like hell

2) For some people it will be the only book they have ever read in their lives

3) For some people it will be the only time they’ve stolen a book

4) The NYPL will have its copies stolen

5) Ellis will be condemned as if not a sign of, then the very manifestation of, The AntiChrist in the southern parts of the U.S. — and that loony place called Kansas

6) Let me do it: “Ellis has created a new genre — bodypunk.”

7) His right-now very nice and respectful publisher is gonna turn into the kind of shit it really is when suddenly it starts hammering his ass with that goddammed word: Sequel

8) Oprah will not be knocking on his door

9) Jerry Springer probably will be (“Let’s turn to bodypunk expert Warren Ellis for his opinion of Missy’s 375 piercings!”)

10) There is only one guy to do the movie: David Lynch

11) There will mysteriously be a bunch of books released within weeks of its debut, all revolving around the same topic, trying to cash in while creating a full-fledged genre

12) There is only one person to do the graphic novel adaptation: Warren Ellis.

Previously in this blog:
Sample Warren Ellis’s Upcoming Novel For Free
Ah, Now I’ll Never Have To Try Red Bullshit!
Bless The Maker And His Water. Bless His Coming And Going.
Now I Know Why Warren Ellis Is Mesmerized By Twittervision
Victor Gischler Has A New Internet Berth
Damn You, Warren Ellis!!!
Things I Never Heard Of Before And Wish I’d Never Heard Of Now
Warren Ellis Speaks Truth!
A Part Of The Web Is Being Killed
Blogroll Additions: Warren Ellis & Sinfest
Go See This Fantastic Animation Video!
Supergirl Express
Warren Ellis Has Too Much Fun
Warren Ellis Has A Crooked Little Brain. And I Thank God For It, Too!
Warren Ellis Chimes In On The Blog Nazis Too
Photo Album: Leatherman
Warren Ellis Would Like This
Warren Ellis Puts His Fingers Into My Head And Plays With My Brain, Again!
Harlan Ellison: Hyperactive Squared!
Quote
Note To Myself: Get This Movie!
The Future Officially Began On February 16, 1978
Warren Ellis’s Worst(?) Nightmare
And Then Google’s Stock Finally Thank You Jesus Crashes And Takes The Entire Global Economy Down The Toilet, Thank You Science!
Aum Shinrikyo Redux
TV: From Infinity to Affinity
Vidmeter
Congratulations to Warren Ellis
Even More Delays…

Everyone Involved In Tech Will Hang One Day

First-level support says the problem is in the Roadrunner wiring.

They bump me to Level 3.

Level 3 says, No, honest guv, it’s the Big Bad Nasty Internet With All Its Icky Bits That Makes Your Service Seem Like Shit Stuck In A Constipated Bowel.

And then once I’m off the phone with all of them, the bandwidth dramatically increases.

Like fucking magic.

You tech bastards will swing one day.

Now pass me my mud slate and abacus so I can get some real work done.

Our Government Regulators Are Fucking Sell-Out Corporate Tools

This is a fucking disgrace!

How many others are Time Warner cheating with their shitty Roadrunner non-service? Meanwhile they pocket the full amount of each monthly fee yet deliver only a fraction of what’s promised.

You bastards are going to hang!

I hope I live to see that glorious day.