bobafred

There were some real heavy thinkers at the Thai restaurant tonight. I was trying to enjoy my Pad Thai and do some reading. They were changing lives:

“Believing that God doesn’t exist because his followers do bad things is like…” [pause while dude realizes he has to actually come up with something] “…believing skateboards don’t exist because there are bikes.”

Well, count me as a believer. In skateboards. But not bikes.

Tags: bike, food, God, pad thai, restaurant, skateboard, thai

Fire Julie.
Keep Gwen.

Regards,
bobafred.

I’ve been using DVD Aficionado (DVDAF from hereon) since 2002. For the longest time, it did exactly what I wanted it to do: catalog my DVD collection while offering zero headaches. Recently that has changed.

They’ve been working on DVDAF 2.0 for a long time and recently launched it. The new version SUCKS hard. There’s a crappy JavaScript menu thing on the left that follows you as you scroll up and down. It’s horrible AND annoying. Also, there used to be a way to view all of my DVDs, up to 200, on a single page. This no longer exists. And, honestly, it just got ugly with shitty buttons and things all over the place.

But, here’s the best part. They switched to the new version and stopped accepting requests to the old links. So, pre-2.0 links were dead. There’s a simple migration process, but they never emailed their users to alert them to the change. At least, they never emailed me. I’ve since migrated my collection, but I just don’t like what they have to offer me anymore.

So, today I decided that I was tired of crap and I took my (free) business elsewhere to DVDSpot. To kick the tires a bit, I thought I’d search for what I felt were my most least known DVDs. Surprisingly they already had 3 of the 4 in their db. For the one disc they did not have, I was able to add it to a queue to be looked over by a moderator and then added. It should be noted that DVDAF offers this as well, at least they did at one point.

I spent some time entering my 160 or so DVDs today. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that there’s no export function on DVDAF. I made sure this feature existed on DVDSpot before I did anything. Thankfully, it does to a CSV file. DVDSpot also has a pretty cool statistics page that shows my top actors, directors, genres, etc. Another feature I’ll probably use is Movie Night, where you can pick a title from your collection and create an invite to a group of email addresses with time, date, movie name, etc. Tonight we’ll be watching Cabin Boy at my place. Stop by if you’re free! (Note: We’re not actually watching that. But, I do own it).

Is DVDSpot perfect? No. Is it better than DVDAF? Shit yes, most definitely. So, from now on, DVDSpot is the way to go. Unless I find something better.

I can’t stand automated phone support machines where I have to speak to answer questions. I hate how they have them setup so it’s like they’re actually talking to me. ‘Ok, I can help you with that’. Annoying. Yes, this is how I spent my Sunday morning.

First, my Tivo has been complaining about not having up-to-date program information, even though its been successfully connecting everyday. Normally I use the network connection, but I figured I’d try the phone line to see if that would magically work better. This is when I discovered that I have no dial tone (but the dsl still works, thankfully).

Here’s where I called BellSouth (the shiny new AT&T) and discovered that they don’t have Sunday live customer support hours. That’s awesome. Because shit doesn’t break on Sundays. So, I went through the automated thing answering all the questions, getting forwarded to other support places and their automated systems where I *might* have to re-enter my 10 digit phone number, just to find that there is something wrong with my line. Thanks. Estimated fix, tomorrow. I can live with that since I never use the land line anyway.

Next, I called Tivo to find out what was going on with my program info. They actually have live support on Sundays and it took almost no time to get through to an actual person. Tivo +1. The support lady had me go through and reset my cable lineup. This is the part of the original Tivo setup where you put in your zip code, cable provider, and they ask what you see on channel X and what you see on channel Y, etc. Apparently, if the cable company changes channel lineups it can mess up how Tivo gets program info. This makes sense because Comcast made changes to the channel lineup on March 01. So far, it seems to have worked because now my program lineup extends past 8:00 pm tonight. Tivo +2.

Conclusion: BellSouth, via the new AT&T, sucks. Tivo is awesome. Also, I don’t really like Comcast.

You’re a bunch of pansies.

Regards,
bobafred

I haven’t posted in a few days, so I thought I would rant a bit.

1. The office hours at my apartment complex are shit. They open at 8:30a and close at 5:30p. When I was without job, this wasn’t really a problem, but now it sort of is. I mean, even my crap ass former apartment office had hours to 7:00p two days a week, and they were crap ass. I want to not live in an apartment anymore.
2. The flickr badge is really making my site load slow. I’m not happy about this. I might just remove it if it continues to piss me off.
3. My throat feels a little scratchy. I’m hoping it’s just allergies, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see. The worst part is that today I declared myself “practically immune to germs” while talking to Robert. Damn you germs!

Done.