Here We Go Again

The very first smartphone I ever bought was an early iPhone, because at the time, they were the only company making good smartphones. It worked well, then reached the point where the storage wasn't enough, and there was no way to increase it.

The second smartphone I bought was a Samsung S3, because Android had caught up by then, and Apple are evil and a nightmare with their proprietary formats for music and well, everything, and they charge way too much. That phone was awesome. I dropped it many times and it didn't care. It was bombproof. I could expand the memory just by switching out the SD card. I loved it.

In 2018 I was forced to replace it, because half the apps I used refused to work unless I updated them, and then when I tried to update them, they said my phone was too old and was no longer supported. I cursed blue bloody murder, because I that phone was fantastic and it still functioned 100% perfectly. I'd had to replace the battery once because it started to swell - I ordered a new one online, switched them in 30 seconds, and that was the only trouble it ever caused me.

So five years ago, I bought a Samsung Galaxy A6. I cursed again at how much it cost (though still a LOT less than I would have paid for anything by Apple). I liked the way it worked (Samsung do good interfaces), but it had that shiny screen and case instead of the matt ones of my old S3. I dropped it once, if you can call it dropping - it slipped out of my fingers while I was sitting in the parked car (because everything's shiny and slippery), it slid down the side of the seat - and that was enough to crack the screen. Since then it's been held together by ever-increasing amounts of sellotape.

Recently the battery started to swell - that wasn't an issue in my old S3, but newer ones are harder to get into. A little online research told me that it's possible to order a new battery and change it with some effort - but if the screen's cracked, taking it apart becomes a nightmare.

I said screw this shit. I ordered a refurbished A6 online that cost me a hundred dollars. At that price, I don't care if it falls apart in a few years, or needs replacing because the battery swells or the apps throw a hissy fit - at twenty or thirty bucks a year, so what?

My response to companies making tech that needs to be replaced every few years is to say fuck you. I'll just stop buying new phones. The only people making a profit from me will be the companies selling them second-hand.

Same with printers. The first printer I ever bought was fantastic. Used it for years, simple, easy, hassle free. I only replaced it because I moved to the US with different plugs and voltages. The one I bought in the US worked well for quite a few years, until I replaced my PC and there weren't any drivers available for the new version of Windows. So I was forced to buy another - which has been finicky from the start, constantly needs head cleanings and other faffy things, then eventually reached the point where it was dropping lines and no amount of head cleaning worked.

So I said fuck it. I won't buy another printer, and now I just print everything out at the local library instead. I don't even have to pay unless I go over 10 pages a week. I have the hassle of having to go there, but I combine it with visits to other local shops so I'm not driving there for printing alone.

It's really annoying when we know how to make things well, but capitalism and corporate profiteering make things stop working so we have to keep buying. Some people can't afford to keep buying. I can, but I damn well refuse. And when I refuse, it helps keep the other resources in place so they're there for the people who can't. The whole damn world should go on anti-shitty-tech strike.

Our elderly tumble dryer died yesterday. The motor makes a horrible noise and the drum doesn't turn. We don't know exactly how old it is because it came with the house, but that makes it at least nine years old, and one look at it says rather older. So I begin to google tumble dryers.

OMG people, why the hell would I want my tumble dryer to be 'smart' and programmable by phone? Unless it's smart enough to empty the washer, sort the laundry into tumble dry and dry flat and then load itself up, I'm going to be standing right next to it. Why then would I want to program it via my phone instead of using buttons and dials on the dryer?

I know that some people now come surgically attached to their phones and find it impossible to put the damn things away for even the length of a meal or a movie. But how is this anything other than a stupid gimmick to get people to pay more for a dryer?

Slasher friends have been trying to convince me for a long time to watch Supernatural. I had seen a couple of episodes of Supernatural, and left with the impression that it was a boring monster of the week show, and no thank you.

More recently, some of the SO's geek friends began telling him he should watch Supernatural. I said no, it's crap. The SO's friends insisted that it gets good. So we equipped ourselves with the first season of Supernatural, and a carefully hand-picked-by-the-geeks list of the episodes that were worth watching, because they were good, or related to the arc plot. Over the last couple of weeks, we watched 11 episodes of Supernatural's first season.

Conclusions: A 'good' episode of Supernatural is like a mediocre episode of the X-Files. After one particular episode, I remarked to the SO that it was like watching the Persuaders, only in the Persuaders the fact that they're incompetent is a joke, and in Supernatural we're supposed to take these morons seriously. The plots are utterly predictable, and vary from dull to annoying. The dialogue is trite.

The SO and I are unanimous: we're not prepared to sit through any more of this drivel just because the arc plot might get interesting round about season four. We were willing to stare through a few bad episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand with the assurance that it got interesting at ep 4 or 5, and were very glad we did. But writers - if it takes three series for your show to become bearable, sorry, we're long gone.


In stark contrast, last night we caught up with episode 3.10 of Breaking Bad (while watching Supernatural, we got a couple of weeks behind). It's a bottle story, in which two people talk about the long term plot and try to kill a fly. And it's mesmerising. It's awe-inspiring, how tense and involving that incredibly simple piece of television is. This was a series that grabbed me by the soul in episode one, just like The Wire or Pushing Daisies did, and they don't let go. Forget Supernatural, we're about to give Treme a whirl, with high hopes. And people - if you know any other series, new or old, as good as Breaking Bad or Pushing Daisies, you'll be telling me, right?

Allow me to introduce to you the basic concept of Science, and the minor matter of facts that I was taught in school at the age of 15. If Sarah Connor is blood group O negative, then her son cannot possibly be blood group AB. Using this combination as a plot point is therefore something of an error.

If I came across this kind of mistake that can be disproved by spending five minutes with google in a fanfic, it would bug me. Finding it in a professional TV series goes beyond words.

I appreciate it isn't your fault that you can't read, poor dears. It's all the fault of the terrible schooling system, even though you managed to read just enough to be able to pass the theory section of your driving test many years ago. But, really, some combinations of letters are actually very simple to understand.

Take, for instance, the letters, C O M P A C and T. When you see them written them down in that sequence, it means 'small'. As in 'not large'. See? Not hard at all.

Now repeat after me:
Your Jeep Grand Cherokee 4x4 is not a compact car.
Your Ford F-250 pick-up is not a compact car.
Your Dodge Grand Caravan is not a compact car. The hint here's in the 'van' rather than the 'mini' part of the term 'minivan'.

Got it? Maybe?
No, I thought not....


On a marginally more edifying note, I did manage to find a pair of boots in the tenth shop I visited that
a) Didn't have 3 inch heels.
b) Didn't look like dockworker's steel-caps and
c) Didn't cost upwards of $100

They're longer than the ankle boots I wanted, but I'll take what I can get. There'll be a decade or more of inflation yet before I find myself willing to drop $275 on something to put on my feet and walk through the dirt in.

There I was driving back from the post office this morning, when I stopped at a crossing for a lady with a dog. And the 17-year-old girl in daddy's car behind me didn't. That's twice in nine months, same scenario, might as well have been the same teenaged bint. It happened to me once in Britain in 15 years.

I swear, a donkey could pass the US driving past, and many of them clearly do.

In other news, the wind's been gusting up to 50mph all day and the house is being shelled with bits of tree. I have quite a collection of firewood accumulating on my lawn and balcony.

I thought the word had at least got around this far. I thought I might have actually seen the last of dry anal sex and no prep with virgins. But no, it's back again in yaoi_challenge.

Oh, the pain. In every meaning of the word....

I hate shopping. I hate it on general principle. But I hate it even more when we're not shopping for anything we want, but stuff we're obligated to buy because of other people. Like how we had to go out today and buy a whole bunch of new special bedding, because the SO's mother doesn't want to sleep on the cheap stuff we use.

Now, admittedly this didn't cost us anything, because a year ago she gave us money to buy new bedding. But since we were perfectly happy sleeping on the cheap stuff, and frankly had better things to spend hundreds of dollars on, we didn't bother. Sadly, her arrival is imminent, and we had to spend our entire afternoon searching for things that might meet with her approval.

And it was bloody annoying. And my time is worth more than this.

I think you must have to be Japanese to get the chibi ears and tail thing. I've seen it before, many times, but this is looking to be the the worst case of ears and tails around. There's something particularly awful in the details, like the way Vash's tail is all fluffed up with excitement in the last picture there....

Why? Why do people do this? It makes ebay a very scary place *whimper*