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First Lite Brights, then Geocaching

Alright, again, I don’t like to get political on my blog, but right on the heals of my previous post about the “Boston Aqua Teen Hunger Force Hoax Devices” I saw a news story about how Geocaching can be mistaken as a terrorist activity.I can understand why, but this is a perfect example of letting fear stifle our liberties.For those who don’t know, Geocaching is a sport where users get GPS coordinates to where a box (or cache) is hidden.Users then use a GPS receiver to find the cache, and log the find in a notebook inside, and also online at a later time.Their reward for the find is to take a small treasure from the box.

This is a sport that I took up over the summer, and it really disturbs me that I need fear legal prosecution for simply getting outside and enjoying the meshing of nature and technology.So during all the hype we are seeing from this “Boston Hoax Device” saga keep in mind the hobbies and other innocent pastimes which could become unnecessarily regulated.

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Shit ATHF Happens!

I try not to let this page turn into a political forum, so I try not to discuss things that bring up politics too often here. In the case of the “Boston Aqua Teen Hunger Force Hoax Devices” however I feel that I must bend my rule and point out something absolutely ridiculous.

I think that no matter where you are in this country you have probably heard about the “Hoax Devices” found scattered throughout Boston. Many people are bursting brain cells trying to figure out who to blame. Who do we blame!?! Who will pay for this?!?! Well folks, the more and more I think about this situation, the more I deduce that this event really shows my political feelings/stance. Sometimes things, aren’t just black and white, hot and cold, liberal or conservative. Sometimes, things can’t just be put in one bin or another. In the world we live in we are but one small part of so many, many other parts. Sometimes we are bound to see something or some event we have never seen before. You can look back at this guerrilla marketing attempt and say what you will about it. You can say they should have known better, they should have warned people, they must have expected this reaction, or so many other things. However, the truth is, who knew what to expect, something like this has never happened before. The only thing I know for certain here is that “shit happens!” To this many people might say but what if someone had died? Well to that person I would ask if they knew how many people died making the Panama Canal, or how many people died during the construction of the Hoover damn. These are both things of value of great value that didn’t come with out great sacrifice. I can’t possibly understand giving away my freedoms and living in fear of something so simple as a Lite-brite giving me the finger.

I guess I would make a bad judge in the eyes of the public, because I think that in regard to this unprecedented event, I probably wouldn’t punish anyone. Instead , I would commend the response that was made. I certainly wouldn’t be happy that all this happened, but I would absolutely take the opportunity to point out some of the problems that this sort of thing did create. I just don’t think that I would, or could punish any of the involved people, because I see absolutely no intentions of malice from anyone who ever had anything to do with this.

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ToDowntime

The coolest thing happened yesterday. I had to get an oil change, and recently I have been in the position that I can not be without my car for the day. Since I get free oil changes where I bought the car, [Webber Dodge] I had to bring it there. I decided that I would get the oil change while I waited, but this meant that I had to sit and wait in the boring waiting room. Now here is where a little tip I read online came in oh so handy. I had read an article about “downtime.” In this article it was recommended that you make a list of things that you could do when presented with a little downtime. This includes things such as making that phone call you’ve been putting off, deleting those old contacts out of your cellphone that you haven’t spoken to in years & many other things (many of which made significantly easier having a Treo with Internet access.) In my case I decided that since I also had my camera with me I would take it out and repeatedly view the video that my friend had taken of me snowboarding. No I wasn’t being narcissistic, I have this thing that I “supposedly” do with my shoulders while making a turn. Well, after sitting and watching this video over and over, I finally found it, and even started to think of what I could do to eliminate it.

I can honestly say that without finding this free time while I sat there waiting for my car, I would have just continued to push this off more and more. Being forced to sit around in this case however helped me to finally accomplish a task that always seems to sit too low on the list to get accomplished, even though I have been wanting to get to it for a very long time. So that’s it, I strongly recommend taking that little note program in your cell phone and writing yourself a list of things you could accomplish the next time you find yourself waiting for that oil change or your doctor’s appointment that never seems to be when you appointment is actually scheduled.

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College & Textbooks

Now, I’m out of college, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t still remember the sour taste that each new semester left in my mouth from buying new books. Preying on poor college students and letting them get further into debt. I recall once buying a book that had been published 15 years earlier, for $40.00 and then finding a receipt inside from another store 2 years earlier when the book was sold for $10.00 less. Enter Xerox and my sales slip, I’ll take my $40.00 back, thank you very much. That was a good way to save money, but boy was it wasteful, it took a bunch of paper. So here’s a better idea.

Thank you Web2.0. Chegg lets students with university email addresses buy or sell their goods through “personal, face-to-face interactions–eliminating the hassle and costs of shipping and other fees that plague most used textbook-finding services.” Watch out evil campus bookstore.—MEGHANN MARCO

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Greed..

Greed, say it out loud. GREED. It kind of sounds funny. It’s almost a taboo word in our culture. Why? I guess because we all are somewhat greedy in the United States. It’s ok, I don’t blame you, the average citizen. It’s large companies that portray materialism as happiness. One company that I have really seen as stepping up to the plate and hitting a real “Greed-Slam” is Apple. Today I am going to talk about them a little bit.

Apple is really no different then most tech companies. In our culture we crave the latest and greatest technology. I’m no exception (*brief pause to check this incoming email on my Treo 700w.*) The thing that I feel really separates Apple from the the rest of the pack however is how they like to keep their new products a complete secret until the day they release. I could go out today and buy a new iPod and tomorrow it could be yesterday’s big thing, and I consider myself somewhat on the pulse of new technology.

The thing which really possessed me to make this post however was this. Last night, while trying to set up my girlfriend’s new iPod, I ran into the following string of events:

-When Trying to hook up her iPod nano, I was told to update to iTunes 7.0.2.
-After downloading iTunes 7.0.2, I was told it couldn’t be installed without upgrading to mac OS x 10.3.9
-After downloading 10.3.9 I was told that I could not update unless I upgraded OS X from 10.2.8 to 10.3.x

Now, I’ve run into this before, and here’s the issue. Let’s say I bite the bullet and get this upgrade, it is often the case that after upgrading, some other program doesn’t work and you are forced to upgrade that. You find yourself stuck in this spiral, and the biggest spiral is the money spiraling out of your bank account.

So I guess my final thought is this. When it comes to those Apple ads with the 2 guys standing in front of the white wall (a PC guy & a mac guy,) don’t necessarily think that it comes down to good, and bad. Think of it rather as bad and worse, and I am not even going to say which is which.

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Flag Etiquette

Lately I’ve been noticing that people are flying the American Flag at half mast for way too long. I understand that it is perfectly acceptable to fly the flag at half staff to mourn & honor a passing president. Don’t get me wrong from what I know of Gerald Ford, he was a great president, however this is the second time in a short while that I am seeing flags flown at half mast for the better part of a month. Our Flag is supposed to be flown proudly, waving from the tops of flag poles, it seems to me that flying it any other way seems week and shameful. This is all just my opinion, but for what it’s worth even on Memorial Day the flag is displayed at half staff only until noon and at full staff from noon to sunset.

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