• not easily destroyed
• durable: very long lasting

Our dog Molly has numerous toys that claim they are indestructible however fail to meet either of the definitions above.  She has managed to pull appendages off stuffed ducks, squirrels, and most recently the nose off a hedgehog she has had for no more than two weeks.

Her ability to destroy the indestructible is not limited to those toys that represent animals.  Kate and I purchased her a set of toys for indoor/outdoor use.  Waterproof, floating, and indestructible.  After about three days she had pulled the rope on a tugging toy completely apart and I was forced to cut the rope off as it became a choking hazard.  She has since, in the past week, removed the entire assembly where the rope connects as well as a corner of the toy.

My dog is a gentle player, not a biter and probably one of the worst dog wrestlers I have ever seen.  She’s managed to lose a wrestling match to a friends dog who is blind!  So I am not convinced the destruction of these toys is because of my dogs unique behavior and more the poor use of the word indestructible by the toy manufacturers.

I am putting forth the following change to the definition for these reasons.  Indestructible will now be defined as,

May or may not easily be destroyed

If any dog-toy manufacturer reads this and has some serious desire to “quality” test their products, Molly would be a great beta tester!

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Kate purchased an expensive gift for a family member from Buy.com.  The item was received with some flaws.  She tried to find a number to call them and discuss this and learned that they do not provide you a number; but instead a call back service.

We were ready for bed but wanted this taken care of so she selected for them to call her at that moment; which was actually an option.  Nearly 20 minutes later and after we’d turned the light off for bed thinking they were’t going to call they did!  20 minutes of argument and the requirement for a supervisor and they agreed to allow us to ship the product back, when they had confirmation of shipping they’d overnight a new one.

Needless to say that is not what they ended up doing.  Another “please call me” request was put in.  This time they said they couldn’t do what they promised before, they wouldn’t get us a new product in time and even tried to lie to Kate and tell her no manager works there and there is nobody else we can speak to.

We demanded cancellation of the order and I still wait to see that it was fully cancelled and I don’t receive more billings from them.

However, I will say that Amazon.com saved the day with the product and a competitive price and overnight shipping for a product ordered on the weekend.  Product was delivered and all seems good!

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Optimizing our time is important and ever since we purchased our first DVR in 2003 we’ve enjoyed being able to save time by fast forwarding commercials.  However now that we’ve gone to HD television we’ve run into a problem.  The DVR provided by Comcast just doesn’t have enough space!  We’re constantly at over 90% filled and cheer when we make it into the low 70s.  However it will never stay in that range long.

We’ve lost numerous episodes of television shows because the DVR fills and has to either delete something or not record something.  It’s really getting tiresome and I’ve started to seek alternatives to recording everything on my DVR.

First I decided to try the 100% legitimate way of watching TV and I decided to make use of the Hulu (http://www.hulu.com) website.  Hulu offers a wonderful service offering television shows by participating networks in your web browser.  It offers a SD resolution of 360p and some programs you can rock out on HD at 480p.  The 480p seems pretty good to me within the window however I notice that in a full screen display they’ll tend to be sluggish.  This could be a result of my over three year old laptop but I have no other way to test it as Kate and I have exactly matching laptops.

Thanks to Hulu I no longer need to record my animated shows like “Family Guy” and “King of the Hill” and the crappy TV series I enjoy because I truly am my sons father such as “Knight Rider”.  However when I went to add other shows to my subscription list I ran into an issue.  Shows such as “Scrubs” and “How I Met Your Mother” are not directly hosted on the Hulu site and instead it links you back to the networks own site with their own modified flash video player.  The problem with that being for some reason I am not getting the content.  Nor am I sure that my Hulu subscription will properly notify me when these sites update their content.

As of this moment no matter what I try I can not get the episodes directly linked form the Hulu site to play on my machine.  Yes, I know that most people are too nearsighted to realize that not everybody runs Windows and Internet Explorer so us poor Mac users suffer.  I just don’t think that should be a valid excuse for not being able to play video from a NATIONAL network broadcasting service.  Poor showing.

Hopefully I can figure this out and Hulu can work for my needs letting me only record the things we both watch on the DVR which currently has four things scheduled for the next two days with 14% free.  Those four items are NOT going to fit thus forcing us to loose episodes we can’t possibly watch as Kate wont even be home until tomorrow evening.

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Yet there is no denying it, the WWW has grown well passed it’s pure text roots.  It is, in my opinion, the most rapidly increasing and advancing internet technology.  Much of our online time is now spent on social networking sites, online games, watching videos and corresponding in email.  But what connects us to all of these multitudes of sites?  Our web browsers.

While the web browsing software we use to interact with the web has surely advanced over time to support the new features of the WWW, grow with the operating systems they run on and even to add more robust features they all have some tragic flaws which I have discovered and grown to despise.  The issues I am sharing are my own, and I know my computer usage differs from that of other peoples.  The issues I have may not be shared by many, or for that matter, any of you.  

First and foremost I am a Macintosh user who is forced to use Windows during the day.  I do not believe Internet Explorer should even be discussed as a web browser as it is notoriously the least safe, most trouble prone and least compatible of all the browsers.  Furthermore as my work computer is locked down tighter than a bank vault and I am unable to browse personal web sites with it nor can I upgrade to the latest version I’ll skip it all together.  

When it comes to browsers on the Macintosh you’re left with two major competitors and a few minors.  Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox.  For the past few years I have been a Firefox user however that has changed, at least for the moment, as of today.  I’ve had numerous frustrations with Firefox and have wanted to explore other browsers but have been tied in to Firefox as there have always been plugins which allowed me to synchronize my bookmarks with multiple personal computers and even a Firefox install on my work computer.  Today however Foxmarks, the plugin I’ve been using for the past year or so has released a version that is compatible with Apple’s Safari and I now have the freedom to break away from Firefox on the Mac.

I have numerous gripes with Firefox, but two that are the most prevalent and disturbing to me.  Firefox has what I can only describe as rendering issues if you modify the font sizes in its preferences.  This is something I do for any program loaded on my computer.  I increase the font size to be larger, in some cases like web browsers dramatically so.  Going from a default font face of 9 or 10 to 15 or 16 and setting the minimum allowed font for 14 or 15, depending on the font families used.  As I’ve pointed out in other posts, Firefox just doesn’t display a lot of sites right.  ESPN, New York Times and multiple others are nearly unusable with my choice of configuration.  Even Facebook has features I couldn’t use such as IM due to the text overlapping other text on the screen.  

Add to this Firefox’s insane memory and CPU usage and it was always an ugly picture.  I’ve spotted Firefox taking up more memory than even iPhoto which was importing photos from my camera at the time.  It often would freeze almost entirely or randomly crash for what seemed like no reason.  I’ve grown tired of being in the middle of a few articles, email drafts and the like and poof my web browser vanishes.  Even with session recovery some things just don’t come back.

Enter Foxmarks for Safari and my first day using Safari.  While I vastly enjoy it’s ability to handle my large fonts much better than Firefox, albeit not perfectly, I am left with an empty feeling in my computer heart for the numerous plugins and assistance tools I have left behind.  There seems to be very few add-ons for Safari and of them most seem useless or have so many horrible reviews I don’t even want to mess with them.  

I’ve left behind my plugins to control my tabs to my liking (making sure gmail is never closed etc), my excellent ad blocking and my tie ins to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.  I’ve also lost “control” as I feel Safari’s lack of settings in the preferences is a bit shocking coming from Firefox which seems to have much more user control.

Safari still sucks up way more RAM than I think it should but at least my computer seems to run faster.  The browser renders web sites a lot slower than Firefox but they all seem to look cleaner and function a bit better.  The OS X styled buttons and widgets of course help.  But I am still left with the one simple question?

Why are programs that are so often used, and used by so damned many, still full of such obvious flaws as memory consumption issues and usability issues?

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I popped my ear-buds in, selected a nice playlist on my iPhone and prepared myself to body-check anybody who got in my way.  Thankfully I made it through the mall without harming anybody, made my purchases, and escaped unscathed both physically and emotionally; or so I thought.

The moment I had the car in gear my brain began to race.  What if she doesn’t like this gift?  The gift is multiple pieces that all go together, if she doesn’t like the general concept she wont like any of the gifts.  I’m still not 100% certain about my selections but I know it is the thought that counts and I put a lot of thought into this.  The part that is screwing with my head is in recent conversations she has mentioned how she wants something in this general theme; but what she asked for differs from what I selected.  We’ll see when Kate and I exchange gifts.

On the reverse side, it has been brought to my attention that I am a horrible person to shop for.  Due to my meticulous product research habits I make it very hard for people to buy things for me.  When there is something I want, I research the hell out of it and know exactly what make and model I want.  As a geek I am especially picky about my electronics.  I feel horrible about this because it makes it so hard for people like my wife and inlaws to buy gifts for me.  I am used to my family where the gift is usually a check or a gift card which puts the task of picking out a product on myself.

When we discussed this last night Kate brought to light two specific examples.  First was a case for the iPhone.  She said that she wanted to get me one, and saw one she liked, but she knew that I would only want the case I picked out and that I’d not use a case I don’t love 100%.  She’s right, I am difficult about things like this.  I know what I like and I don’t properly appreciate what I should.  She further made this clear to me by explaining that she had purchased a rechargeable battery set for me that included a car charger as she knows I often forget to charge the batteries for my camera.  This was a great idea, and I should have been thrilled.  But when she brought up rechargeable batteries in casual conversation I said how I need specific ones for my camera due to it’s awful power consumption problems.  While my reasoning is right and sound, I feel horrible that I can’t just be happy about random gifts people buy me.

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Furthermore, why can they only diagnose a problem based on the computer.  The problem happens when the car warms up (after driving for about 20 minutes), only happens at highway speeds and goes away when the car is below highway speeds … How many things can be causing this issue?  Twenty years ago a mechanic would have been insulted if he was told to hook the car up to a machine to tell him what is wrong with the car.  Granted cars have become more complicated; however the education of those who repair them should have evolved with the vehicles.  It’s ridiculous that I have to pay hundreds of dollars for people to hook a car up to a computer that doesn’t show them anything.

Another issue I have with this entire car computer nightmare comes from my background as a geek.  Logs people.  They record everything; why the hell doesn’t the car have a memory that is recording the “errors”.  When I was on the highway the light flashed on, so something should have been recorded and logged.  The light shouldn’t have to be on for them to see, it should record everything and they should be able to see the last 25 codes at the very least.

Stop giving me stupid and useless features like automatic headlights if you can’t give me a way to get the cars problems diagnosed without a headache!

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I think the album has maybe 5 good songs with no great songs and not a single song that is “radio” playable.  Granted not everybody creates an album for the radio but when you get to be Guns N Roses caliber of performer you must “sell out” a bit as you’ve a huge international fan base that is expecting something they’ll hear on their favorite radio station prior to rushing out and buying this, dare I say it, disaster?

I lack the musical knowledge to articulately express this, so I will try to in layman’s terms.  I found there were no songs that caused a rise in emotion or energy.  Not once, after three listens, did I find myself singing along with the tracks.

Now I admit, I am no music critic and I surely lack the skill to compose anything half way as good, let alone better.  But I know what I like, what I don’t like and what I feel let down about.  Guns N Roses has let me down with this one.

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I gave up print media, specifically newspapers, many years ago for their online versions.  I found the on-screen text to be much larger than the print edition and that the black on white text was a much better fit for me than black on grey with smudges.  I would frequent five or ten news oriented websites a day to take in my news on subjects from politics to technology and from sports to business news.  However in roughly 2005 many sites began to mature in ways that I find counter-productive to their nature.  Sites began to use very structured style sheets which allow them to fit more information and advertisements on a page; but they pay no mind to those of us who enjoy a larger font experience.  I pretty well summarized my complaints in my October 1st, 2008 post here so I wont go on and on about it.

Thankfully around that time a new syndication method was becoming widely popular on the internet.  RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, puts all the updated content from a web site into a “feed” and allows the “reader” application to then view it in any way it wishes.  RSS readers, whether online or as an application on your own computer usually offer you a lot more customization on features like font sizes and font families as well as whether you wish to see the included images or not.

With Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Livejournal and the numerous other personal blogs and blog hosting providers out there I have begone to run into the same issues I had of years ago with the news.  The content was there, but often in a way I didn’t find it to be pleasant to read.  Be it fonts that were too small, horrible choices of background images, themes that use horrible styling or just a poor choice of configuration I’ve come to the conclusion that these sites, jsut as the prior news sites, are not accessible for me.  At first I didn’t know what to do about it.  I ignored these sites for a long time however as they’ve become very popular, especially among the geeks of the world, I’ve been wanting to participate more and more.

Recently I spent quite some time with Google and found how to get all of my Social Media right into my RSS reader.  Some of it was as easy as just adding the feed, others required third party sites to interact with private communities to get friend only posts and some just required me to open my eyes and notice links to RSS feeds.  This has made my reading, following and staying in contact with friends much easier.  Now, if I could easily design a single site with my parameters to make updates to these sites I’d be rocking out.

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Because a picture paints a thousand words and I could literally waste thousands trying to explain this to you I’ve chosen to hilight two very popular and very visited websites.

NYTimes home page with large fonts does not present right

While this one is bad, the site still remains usable.  It is difficult to use some aspects of the site and on some stories the difficulty becomes even greater, but no section of the site is as bad as,

ESPNs site is almost completely unusable with larger than average fonts

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All modern DVRs offer the ability to record only new episodes of a show.  Recently when upgrading to HD TV service we’ve put aside our Tivo and moved to Comcast’s provided DVR.  The reason for doing this is quite simple, it’s a lot cheaper!  The Comcast device does not offer nearly as attractive of a user interface as the Tivo, it’s a bit more complicated to use and unfortunately it has a few hiccups we msut deal with but it does its job well enough.

Recently I have realized a major problem however.  As the new seasons of shows are shortly to begin many networks are airing “marathons” of their shows so you can re-watch or first catch-up on what happened last season.  My DVR, while set to only record the new episodes, is grabbing tons of these shows and filling itself up almost constantly.  This bothers me as I am continiously deleting items and often sitting in front of the DVR for blocks of time going through the next few days recording schedule to wipe off things it shouldn’t be recording.

I’ve done some research as to why this is happening and have learned a few things that disappoint me greatly.  In this day and age when every cable and satellite provider offers DVRs I find these issues to be unnacceptable and they make me as a consumer believe that the networks and other companies involved are doing their customers a large disservice.

Laziness on the side of the networks:
First and foremost of an issue is that some of the television networks are just plain lazy.  I’ll use two networks and specific shows as an example.  USA Networks Burn Notice is about to air its final episode of the season on Thursday and they’ve been re-playing the entire season over-and-over throughout the day.  The service that provides the guide and program information for DVRs relies on the networks to upload information to them.  USA has chosen not to give information and in the cases that they have they do not notify the service that these are repeats.  The DVR doesn’t see that it’s a repeat as it’s not flagged as such and things that every episode being aired, all sharing a non-descriptive description, are new.

Bravo Network has taken it one step further and airs their Project Runway so often that my DVR could fill up on it in just a matter of days.  They, just like USA, are not putting in notification that the episode is a repeat but they’ve taken it a step worse.  They’re neglecting to put ANY description in and airing ten episodes in a single day!  So not only does your DVR record every episodes but even if you wanted an older one that you missed you’d never be able to tell which one it is!

These two shows and networks are not the only ones.  Shotime’s Weeds, HBO’s Entourage and numerous others are all cluttering my DVR to the point that last night a show I wanted to see was not recorded!

Stupidity on the side of I-Guide:
From what I have read very recently I-Guide, the leader in interactive guide services for cable boxes and other services, has upgraded to a new database server/system.  In this upgraded they dropped the values for “initial airing”.  Now your DVR, or self if using other services, can not tell when the show was originally aired and thus is unable to determine its status of new, repeat etc.  Did they think that this was un-important information or where they simply hoping the TV networks would always be accurate?

In either case, we now have two major contributers to DVRs being unable to do what the user wants easily and leaving people like me having to strongly fight the urge to remove these programs and networks in general from their season pass / serries recording lists.  The shows are “alright” but the trouble involved now in getting them and mantaining the sanity of my DVR usage is too much!

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