Posts Tagged ‘culture’

More Than Meets The Ear, and Other Randomness

By Chief Oddball on January 15th, 2008 at 12:22 am

Filed under Journal, Rants ··· 5 Comments

It was an interesting weekend.

I worked half a day on Saturday, doing “post-launch” tasks in the wake of getting the new websites online. On Saturday night, Apple and I watched a bunch of HDTV, including movies like Panic Room and Men In Black, just because. It was fun being lazy.

On Sunday we were going to go out to see a movie (in the theater this time) and grab some dinner, but my right ear had other plans. A “debilitating buildup of earwax” sounds like one of those embarrassing problems you only hear mentioned in equally embarrassing TV commercials for prescription drugs. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what I was suffering from, to the point where I could barely hear out of my right ear.

That’s no condition to watch a movie in, so I broke out the Q-tips. In retrospect, this was a bad idea. Folks, let the record show that if you have an earwax problem, a Q-tip is not going to solve it. Nay, it will merely make it worse — mostly by relegating whatever wax is in there to the even deeper, darker reaches of your ear canal. By the time I was done, I had completely lost all hearing in my right ear, which was also swelling up pretty severely and giving me a hell of a headache.

Over-the-counter “earwax removal systems” (no, I’m not kidding) did not help, so I had to visit the local walk-in clinic today to have my crazy delinquent ear looked at. Apple was kind enough to drive me there, since I didn’t think piloting a car with half of my aural instrumentation offline was a terribly bright idea. It took a pressurized water irrigation to actually restore my hearing 100% — which hurt like a bitch, I don’t mind telling you, probably thanks to the inner ear infection the doctor discovered I had. Got some antibiotic pills and some drops and went home.

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Tactless

By Chief Oddball on December 10th, 2007 at 3:17 pm

Filed under Rants ··· 3 Comments

The Internet is enabling the proliferation of a culture entirely bereft of tact.

Think of it. Online, you can be completely anonymous and almost entirely unaccountable for your actions. This kind of anonymity can be a great thing. It can encourage debate and discussion where censorship (or even persecution) would otherwise result. But it also removes the perceived necessity to act with candor when dealing with other people. In and of itself, this results in little more than a couple of anonymous Internet-goers getting each others’ panties in a bunch. But I think it’s trickling down into actual human civilization now, particularly here in the United States.

I’ve been “online” since the early 1990s. Back then, it was a different experience. Most people who had Internet access were either computer science students or professionals, which naturally contributed a sort of intellectual quality and ethical standard to a majority of dealings online. Nowadays, I rarely post on message boards or other open forums of discussion, because so many people get so easily rubbed the wrong way, and have such a hard time being civil about their disagreements. Usually I read forums, absorb information, and contribute only when I have something meaningful to say. On one board where I’ve been a member for six years, my post count is just under 2,300. It takes others just weeks to accumulate the same number, although most of what they have to say is dreck.

People start flamewars over the most ludicrous shit. In addition to the age-old PC vs. Mac wars that are still going on, you’ll have people insulting each others’ integrity over something as inane as which is the best online DVD rental service, or whether American cars are engineered by a bunch of peanut-eating chimpanzees. And then there are the people who believe their opinion is so important it deserves to be injected, in the most hostile manner possible, into every conversation imaginable. For example, the poster on our local newspaper website, who felt it necessary to refer to U.S. soldiers as “war criminals” and compare the U.S. military to the Wehrmacht — on a story about the tragic death of a U.S. soldier in a car accident on our local roads.

I can’t help but draw a parallel between the increasingly boorish online behavior of most Americans, and their increasingly boorish behavior in real-life social situations. Obviously, the existence of the Internet is not at fault, but it provides a handy medium for those who desire to shed their ethical restraints to do just that, after which they become accustomed to the practice.

Sir Isaac Newton purportedly said, “Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.” It is an art that is sadly lost on most of modern American society.

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Observations on American Life

By Chief Oddball on October 1st, 2007 at 11:31 pm

Filed under Commentary, Journal ··· 1 Comment

I figure, at some point, life in America is going to reach critical mass.

What I mean is, eventually we’re all going to simply stop actually accomplishing anything, because all of our time will be spent chasing around and catching up. As technologies emerge that allow us to contact people instantly from anywhere, keep tabs on each other with tracking devices and have all of our work with us anywhere we go, the irony is that — as I see it — we’re going to actually get less done. After all, how much have you been known to accomplish when your phone was constantly ringing? When your email box was constantly full? When there was always something else someone needed from you that they couldn’t wait to tell you about?

Over the last month or so, as I’ve (unfortunately) elected to do more work than I should have, I’ve artificially moved myself much closer to that precipice of which I speak. With four different email accounts being checked automatically every ten minutes, two phones and and instant messaging service that are always on, I’ve literally been under a blanket of constant communication. There have been a number of days, in fact, where I spent literally the first three hours of my day just responding to email. By the time I’d finish one litany of written word, another message would arrive, demanding similar attention. And so I’d attack it with the same voracity, writing and re-writing, analyzing and refining my words as I always do, in an endless cycle of perfectionistic emendation.

And at the end of the day, when I finally put away my work at ten or eleven o’clock, I felt frustrated and had trouble sleeping — because I felt like I hadn’t gotten anything done. Despite how many precious minutes this communication soaks up, it feels like it’s all gone to waste, because you have no tangible result to show for your time spent. Indeed; when writing emails, I’m usually responding to a horde of questions clients are asking me. The vaugeness of some of these questions, coupled with my need to be as efficient and precise as possible, leads me to answers that sometimes generate still more questions — at least in my own mind. For example:

Okay, I know they want me to make this certain feature work. But I’m not exactly sure how to do that. So before I agree, I’d better research what it will take. Oh man, it looks complicated. I might have to utilize this third-party component here, but that breaks this other feature that we’re currently relying on. Which feature is more important? Furthermore, is there another way to accomplish this? How many hours would it take? How much time will I need to invest before I know whether it will work or not?

I drive myself crazy with these thoughts most nights, lying in bed for as much as two hours every night before I finally, somehow, get my brain to wind itself down enough to fall asleep. And in the morning it starts all over again. One day, perhaps, you could separate the American workforce into two types of people: Those who do nothing but communicate eight different ways 24/7, and those who sit in a sensory deprivation tank, immune to outside contact, and just get things done. (When that happens, allow me to be the first to say, “Tank me.”)

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Saying And Doing Are Two Different Things

By Chief Oddball on July 18th, 2007 at 7:23 pm

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Some 40 percent of Americans would curb their driving habits if retail gasoline prices shot up to $3.50 a gallon, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Reuters

Did Reuters go back in time to 1997 so they could write this story? In case you’ve forgotten, America, gas already costs that much in some states — and has for a while. Across the board, almost every region of the country is within 50 cents of that mark right now. I’ve been paying near that price for premium unleaded for as long as I can remember. And even at $3.50, gasoline is still a bigger bargain for us than it is anywhere else in the world.

But more than anything else, you know those 40 percent of Americans are also full of bullcrap — because saying “Yeah, I’d do that” takes far, far less effort than actually doing it. When gas hits $3.50, they’ll still be driving. When it hits $4.00, they’ll still be driving. And when it hits $5.00 — yep, you guessed it, they’ll still be driving (although they might be driving compacts instead of SUVs, by that point). And why? Here’s why:

  • As a nation, we love freedom. Driving = freedom.
  • Unless you live in a major city center, the United States has practically zero public transportation. What are you going to do — stop going to work?
  • Where public transportation exists, its efficiency cannot be relied upon for the schedules by which business people need to run. Unlike in Japan, where if the train’s 10 minutes late, everyone on it gets a written excuse to give to their boss.
  • Most Americans will start to cut many, many other conveniences out of their lives before they stop exercising their freedom to move about their own country.

My point: Collecting and reporting statistics like this helps no one. Decide for yourself how to live your own life, and stop telling me what everybody else is doing in your worthless attempts to scare and worry me. I quit caring a long time ago.

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Most Studies Are Wastes of Money, Study Finds

By Chief Oddball on May 25th, 2007 at 9:06 am

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Okay, so I manufactured the so-called “study” sent up by the title of this post. But it’s the natural conclusion for one to draw after reading this article on my most-loathed cable news website, MSNBC.com.

The headline reads “TV can be bad for diabetic children.” The tagline? “Snacking, less exercise linked to increases in blood sugar levels, study finds.” Basically, what we have here is another example of how special interest groups, supposedly objective agencies with big industry funding, and the media in general control and manipulate the way in which information is presented in order to “prove” their beliefs to be true, rather than just reporting facts.

TV, in and of itself, is not going to make your diabetes worse. That’s total horse shit. But through some clever extensions of logic, by virtue of the fact that you are watching too much TV, we find that you may not be getting enough exercise. Likewise, we find that many people who sit on their butts and watch TV all day tend to snack while they’re watching. And of course, many of those snacking people are eating unhealthy snacks. So we conclude, naturally, that TV is killing you.

Ohhhhh-kay.

Seriously, do me a favor, fair reader. The next time you witness a news headline about a new “study,” be it on the Web, on TV or on the radio, please change the channel, click away or just plain do something else. The reality is that most “studies” are funded by politically-motivated organizations that already have a particular result in mind before the study is even carried out. Their financial contribution, which enables the study in the first place, may be given only under the condition that their “approved” result be reached. And so there you have it — cooked books, being regurgitated and spat out to you, the mindless American consumer, as fact.

“Turn on, tune in, drop out” never sounded so good.

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One Of Those Days

By Chief Oddball on May 4th, 2007 at 9:53 pm

Filed under Journal, Rants ··· 2 Comments

Today was one of those days — where if somebody were to show up with a sunny smile on their face and say, “Hello!” the first thing I’d be inclined to do is tell them to stow that happy somewhere physiologically unpleasant. Maddeningly, I can’t even give you a good reason why I’m in this craptacular mood. It’s not like I just suffered some permanently debilitating injury, or had my life turned upside-down in some other particularly poignant way. I can take a few stabs at it, though — I’m sure I can come up with a few reasons. Just not good ones, mind.

It isn’t helping that I encountered yet another Flash issue (YAFI) today while working on my yet another Flash project (YAFP) du jour. To oversimplify it, I have to create some banner ads in Flash that employ an interesting interactive twist. Much to my relief, at the beginning of the week, I ran some tests and discovered that the interactive idea for this project was actually going to be easy to implement. With that behind me, I figured it’d just be a simple matter of creating a Flash project that preloads an image, displays some nifty little animations and takes you to our website when you click on it.

Well, I should have known better than to use the word “simple” when discussing a Flash project. The preloader doesn’t work, an impediment for which there is no excuse, considering it’s the exact same preloader I wrote for my last Flash project (wherein it worked fine). The image, also, isn’t loading now, even though it loaded perfectly during my brief test earlier in the week. Oh, and the button you click on to go to our website? It won’t go there. Despite my following every tutorial on the web, which all told me to do the same thing, which never worked no matter how many times I tried it.

I’m quickly starting to consider Flash to be the DotNetNuke of the design world. DotNetNuke is a content management system that we use at my work, and while it’s great if you’re web-stupid and just want to quickly and easily throw up a decent website, the instant you want to go “above and beyond” in any way, you become mired in a stinking, fetid pool of euthanasia-inspiring development hell. Similarly, Flash provides an avenue by which you can create some truly inspiring things, then murders your will to do anything at all with its myriad of bugs, idiosyncrasies and other infuriating issues that all conspire to hamper, maddeningly, the most inane of its functions. Which is why I believe sincerely that regardless of how good I might become at developing in Flash, I’m never going to like it.

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Thank God I’m Not In High School Anymore

By Pooch on May 2nd, 2007 at 3:28 pm

Filed under Commentary ··· 4 Comments

Read this, then come back. I’ll be waiting.

School Board Ponders Student’s Counter-Strike Map of His School

Finished? Okay.

I remember back in the day, both Chief Oddball and Reaper made maps of our high school in Duke Nukem 3D’s Build level editor. Back then, we thought it was cool to be able to play a game we all enjoyed in a familiar setting – it was a bit more immediate than shooting aliens on a replica of the starship Enterprise.

Now? Those two would be expelled (or maybe not, since Duke was never as big a target as Doom for self-righteous anti-game blowhards for some reason). Just like the student mentioned in the above story, even though local police investigated and found nothing criminal at all in the student’s behavior. Yet, he was still expelled. How in the world is that fair?

The timing of this story couldn’t be better – after just going through the tragedy at Virginia Tech, here’s another meaty story for the media to grab hold of in their ever-present “video games are bad and everyone who plays them is going to kill someone” mindset. In fact, that would not appear to be the situation at all, at least in this case. The student, aside from making a Counter-Strike map, has apparently not done anything else to warrant suspicion. To my knowledge, he hasn’t threatened anyone, shot anyone, or done anything illegal. Yet this situation is somehow compared to the tragedy at Columbine by District spokesperson Mary Ann Simpson:

This goes back to Columbine. Ever since that horrid incident took place schools today have to take every incident that is reported very seriously. And they have to impress upon students how serious this type of thing is. We can’t joke about things or take things lightly anymore.
Mary Ann Simpson, Fort Bend Independent School District Spokesperson

Am I missing something here? Was the police investigating the matter (and again, deciding it was not a criminal matter) not taking the incident seriously enough? Did I miss someone making jokes about this situation or any situation where people have lost their lives? Or is this an over-sensitive knee-jerk reaction on the part of the school? You already know the answer to that last question, at least.

Before I go, though, I must offer gratitude to both school board member Stan Magee and trustee Ken Bryant, who are both quoted in the story above as thinking this was a giant over-reaction on the part of the school. At least somebody’s thinking clearly here.

(Note: I do not mean to trivialize what happened at either Columbine or Virginia Tech. I just think that – in this one situation – the punishment seems to be motivated more by hysteria than any wrongdoing on the student’s part, who has apparently otherwise shown no signs of becoming aggressive or violent. If he had been making threats and acting strangely toward students or his school, then that would be a different story.)

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