Wednesday, November 7, 2007

i renounced the iFlock last night...

Hmm... That title sounds like a euphemism of some kind. Or maybe my brain is wired to hear euphemisms where there are none.
Some nameless stand-up comic back in the day had a bit that sort of talked about this tendency. He said that men could make anything sound sexual, even if it made no sense.
One guy says to the other, "Hey. I had to change a tire last night." The other guys says, "Oh! Lookit her! I'd like to change HER tire! Oh yeah!" Or something like that. I'd love to give the guy credit, but I don't know who he is. You'd think, with writing like that, he'd be a household name.
In any case. I brought the iPod touch back to Best Buy last night. I had had enough. It is pretty and shiny and nifty and neat-o, but ultimately disappointing. WiFi was touch and go under the best circumstances. The best circumstances being standing in front of an unlocked wireless router with two other wireless computers showing solid signal. It kind of ebbed and flowed. Like the internal radio was responding to the random flapping of a butterfly's wing somewhere in Nebraska.
I had jailbreak-ed it, because I wanted to be able to play cool games on it. Even jailbrake-ed, there are no nifty games. There are a lot of applications out there, but what I saw was sub-craptastic.
Finally, and I've discovered this is an issue with iPods, at least in my experience, the headphone jack output to headphone jack input on my car stereo presented inconsistant sound quality. Listening to it with headphones was fine, listening to it in the above config was not. Sound was all over the place. Even with the volume leveling feature engaged, I was constantly adjusting the volume on either the stereo or the iPod, frequently both.
So while it was pretty and shiny and nifty and neat-o, it was not 400 dollars worth of any of those adjectives.
I guess there is a pretty rampant market for them though, because when I brought it back, one of the customer service girls said, "Really!? You want to return it!? Is it broken? Should I run and get you another one right away so you're not without it for too long?"
I said, "No. It's not broken. It works fine. I just don't like it."
She said, "Really!?!"
I have to say, even though Best Buy can annoy me like a shark tooth in my sneaker, they were very cool about it.
While the return was in process, one of the other girls behind the counter was playing with it. She looked at it for a little while because she said she hadn't seen one or played with one before. Er... Euphemism sense tingling... Sorry. After she had fondled it (heh) for a little while, she said, "Wow. It's pretty and neat, but it looks like it would kind of be a pain in the ass."
I was amazed at how true the sentiment was, but couldn't help wondering how much longer she would be employed by the Best Buy.
One thing I learned from my brief jaunt into the iWorld is that I really like album art. More that anything, I dug seeing the album displayed on that big screen in nice lovely color. That is very cool and I will miss it. My next MP3 player, when I actually HAVE to buy one, will have the ability to display album art nicely.
I say nicely, because my Creative Zen Vision:M displays album art.
However, at the size of a postage stamp. A smallish postage stamp. It's not the same.

In other news, Dog the Bounty Hunter is insane. On Sean Hannity last night, he stated that until a couple of days ago, he didn't know the N-Word offended anyone and that he equated himself with a black woman.
Tyra Banks he is not.
A&E Television is probably going to take his show off the air. I think Dog has a workman's comp suit he can bring against them, though. I think the black vapor that Dog appears in at the beginning of every show is toxic and is deteriorating his brains.
I always said I wished I could appear in a black cloud of smoke like Dog does, but not at the expense of all common sense and intelligence and ability to say anything anyone is ever going to believe EVER.

4 comments:

leej said...

Now I am not sure what to do. When you got yours I was like "well if Eric sees that investment opportunity what am I waiting for?". I was convinced that it was the coolest thing in the world. I guess I may wait until my Nano dies, although a solid state memory device should last decades.

Oh Well.

mister swarvey said...

The iPhone with it's ability to use the safari browser over both EDGE and WiFi would at lease be something worthwhile if you wanted a new phone. If you could get work email to in and sync with Outlook, which seems to be a sticking point.

leej said...

That is the sticking point, that and the fact that AT&T is not my carrier either.

I think I would rather the iTouch than the iPhone just for the work reasons you spoke about. Are you sure there isn't something hokie with your wifi, this is now two devices you have had wifi issues with. I am willing to help you troubleshoot if needed. You know I am a geek that way.

Stove said...

You didn't even touch on the sucky part of the Dog story, which is that he will be fired for what he said on an illegally taped private conversation with his son who was bitter about something or the other and wanted cash from the tabloids.

Think about that.

Now obiously the Dog deserves a ton of blame - after all, this is his child, he has to have had some influence on his child's rearing, etc.

But that still really sucks.

Now, what I enjoy of the whole bit is that said son probably made a nice short term gain by selling out his dad, but now dad has about 1/100th the earning potential that he did beforehand, which means the estate that he eventually passes to said son will probably, even in adjusted dollars, be worth less by an amount greater than what he received for said selling out of dad.

Alanis Morisette fans would love it. Alanis herself, not knowing the meaning of the word "Ironic," would be confused.