Oh snap!

I just got a great photo of another bum digging through the garbage, not 15 minutes after posting that last one.

This is a different bum, but I see this guy every other day, all around the neighborhood. He's usually truckin' it down the sidewalk or street with his shopping cart caravan with organized bags of recycled goodies hanging off it. He snatched a few cans out of our dumpster, along with a couple of 24 ouncers. He's experienced because he rounded up a handful of cans in less than a minute. Damn, what a life.

Extra Credit

Here's a photo of a bum, after digging through my apartment dumpster. I almost got a good photo of him actually digging through the dumpster, as he was making a lot of racket, but the camera kept focusing on the window screen.

I sure hope he got all the beer cans I left in there. I try to set them aside out of consideration for those less fortunate, but I don't always remember. Usually I end up throwing a few in the trash instead of saving them to set aside, on accident of course. And because I don't usually drink that much to have a separate bag set aside for that. After a long night of drinking, sometimes I'm just lucky they got to the trash can at all. For the bum, those are the extra credit cans. At least I don't buy bottles. That's because I'm a nice guy who looks out for the bums of my 'hood.

Fun With the California DMV

This is what I sent to the DMV along with my registration renewal after a lot of confusion over how to accomplish this seemingly simple task.

August 1, 2004

Dear DMV Representative,

I just wanted to point out that I am a member of the military and I’ve called the DMV twice to make sure that I’ve got the right paperwork filled out to get around paying the extra costs that do not apply to non-resident military drivers.

This being the first time I have ever had to deal with the CA DMV, I made a trip to the local San Diego office, only to find out that they don’t do registration renewal at the DMV office. But let me back up. After following the sign that says, “No Credit or Debit cards accepted, Only CASH or Check” I had to walk to the corner liquor store to get cash to renew my registration. After waiting in line for 40 minutes on a hot July Friday afternoon, I eagerly approach the counter to have the lady tell me that she can’t help me because I don’t have a check. She failed to mention that was because you only do registration renewal by mail, phone or Internet, so I thought it was because I didn’t have a check on me. I’m a guy and I don’t carry around my checkbook, as most modern businesses accept my credit and sharecheck cards just as they would cash. But the lady didn’t tell me that, I found out later while looking at the DMV website. While it DOES NOT specifically say that on the notice that came with my renewal, I just assumed that you could renew registration at the DMV because I grew up thinking that’s what the whole purpose of the DMV is, to conduct DMV related activities live in person. I thought doing it by mail, Internet, or over the phone was an OPTION, not MANDATORY, as I had the extra paperwork REG 256 to have taken care of because of my military status, otherwise I would have never stepped foot in my car to go to the CA DMV considering the other convenient options. I have an idea: maybe the DMV should put that in BIG BOLD RED LETTERS on the registration renewal paperwork that they send out instead of posting it in some obscure place on the DMV website (that amazingly, I can’t for the life of me find anywhere on the DMV website at the moment) for frustrated customers to find after they drove to the DMV, walked to the liquor store to take out cash (and get charged a bank fee), then wait in line for the better part of an hour to happily be told they don’t do that at the DMV office because I didn’t have a check, without any other explanation.

Failing that rather logical train of thought, another good option for those that may not have the Internet or know otherwise (I have the Internet) is to post a big sign on the DMV door and around the office (I obviously didn’t see one if there was one) that says:

IF YOU ARE TRYING TO RENEW YOUR REGISTRATION PLEASE READ HERE:
REGISTRATION RENEWAL IS ONLY CONDUCTED BY MAIL, PHONE, OR INTERNET OR YOU CAN DROP IT OFF HERE ONLY IF YOU HAVE A CHECK TO SAVE A STAMP.

That way, if someone doesn’t know that you can’t renew registration before getting in their car and going there, they at least don’t have to wait in the inevitable long line that always exists at the DMV.

Ironically enough, on the return envelope that the DMV gives you with your renewal notice says:

For the price of a postage stamp you:
• Help fight air pollution, traffic congestion, and tax increases.
• Save valuable time, money, for gas and wear on your vehicle. By using the mail, you have chosen the easiest way to submit a DMV application and have assisted us in providing a better service.
Thank you,
Department of Motor Vehicles

That only applies if the person KNOWS BEFOREHAND that you don’t do registration renewal live at the DMV. I wasted my time, gas, money, and energy driving there and waiting in line.

If all this weren’t enough trouble, I called the DMV and asked if sending the REG 256 form in with my check for the registration renewal was sufficient to prove my military affiliation, as there is nothing on the form to actually indicate or prove that I’m in the military. I don’t care except for the fact that I’m afraid that I’m going to get something back explaining that I need to send in proof that I’m in the military, after my tags have already expired, which will make me look like an irresponsible moron. To that end, I also asked how long it would take the DMV to send me the registration tag stickers for my vehicle. The lady at the DMV explained that it could possibly take up to three months to send out the stickers. My stickers expire at the end of August, but my renewal isn’t officially due until August 8th. Going on the theory that the stickers could take longer than that to get to me, what is one to do in the interim time when the stickers on my car at this moment go past their date until the stickers get to me? What am I to explain to the overzealous cop that pulls me over (explaining things makes you look bad to a cop)? Or what about the aggressive apartment manager that tows cars because of out-of-periodicity tags in their lot? That actually happened to someone I know. I understand that maybe for some bureaucratic reason, those two tiny stickers can’t get sent for up to three months. Fine. Going on that assumption, why doesn’t it say that on the renewal notice that it could take that long and it’s my responsibility to get them before they expire? Better yet, why don’t they make the deadline for paying the registration renewal three months before it is expired to prevent all this pointless confusion? Or even better than that, why don’t they find a more efficient way to send the tags out to people in less than three months? I am generally the type of person who pays things when they first come in the mail, but sometimes it gets put off until it comes up closer to the due date. If I had KNOWN of all this confusion, I would have happily sent it off as soon as I got the notice.

I am certainly glad that I am not paying the full $197 for my vehicle registration yearly for this kind of sub-par service. It’s bad enough that I have to pay $52, which is twice as much as I have paid in VA. I understand the CA government needs the money. But why can’t the CA government find a more streamlined way of conducting this business? I’ve been doing registration with VA for 6 years before I bought a car in CA, and I have never experienced this kind of utter confusion as to how to take care of such a simple process as registration renewal. Going on the assumption that the silly bureaucratic guidelines for not doing the registration renewal at the DMV office and the longer than usual wait time for the stickers is something that can’t be avoided, please EXPLAIN THIS TO PEOPLE before they waste their time, gas, money, etc trying to figure this all out. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person and if I am having a hard time with this, I can only imagine what the rest of CA thinks of it, especially when at least ¼ of them don’t speak English as their first language. Wait, that doesn’t apply because it doesn’t say it anywhere for them to read it anyway, English or otherwise.

Have a great day.

Ironically, it says on the BACK of the return envelope: Once renewal fees have been deposited in the mail, California law allows you to operate your vehicle while DMV processes your renewal.

I'm sure glad they put that on the back of the return envelope, the last thing you read before sending it off.

I don't think they could make this process more confusing if they actually hired a team of people to do just that. Let's put pertinent information where most people won't read until after they are confused and frustrated or where they just might not find at all!

That, Governator Ahnold, is what we call streamlining here at the DMV.



Time saving alternatives? Yeah, right.

Turning Off Your Brain

"You go to your TV to turn your brain off. You go to the computer when you want to turn your brain on." -Steve Jobs



One night years ago, after partaking of a plant that rhymes with Heyyouwanna?, one of my friends said something prolific that I will never forget: "TV is nothing but a bunch of people watching other people live their lives instead of living their own."

Deep, huh? I have a hard time explaining to the people that I work with (and people in general) why I don't watch TV. When someone asks me if I've seen a commercial, I feel like an alien. I can't stand to watch TV because I feel like somehow I'm being brainwashed by the commercials and I feel like I'm being dumbed down by TV in general. I don't know why this is, but I can't remember a point in my life where I've ever liked television. As a child I watched movies over and over. I have Stand by Me and The Three Stooges Meet Hercules practically memorized. When I was a teenager I was too busy riding my bike or playing Dungeons and Dragons. As an adult I can hardly bring myself to watch most movies, much less watch a 30 minute episode of mind-numbing contrived situations. Not that I dislike all TV. I do like some comedy, like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, South Park, King of the Hill, The Chappelle Show, Married with Children, and most of all, The Family Guy. Those are all pretty edgy comedies that to me are funny. But I prefer to watch them without the advertising and the timing of trying to base my schedule around a TV show, so I usually rent or buy the DVD's after they come out.

Two people at work I know watch TV all the time. One of them is confused as to how I could spend so much time on the Internet as opposed to TV. The other one is trying to convince me that I really need to watch the show Smallville,..."because man it's really a cool show after you get into it." That certainly sounds enticing. Both of these people at different times have asked me what TV shows I watch and when I told them that I don't watch TV they just looked at me confused like, well, what do you do then? As if one couldn't live without TV. I explained to one of them that I surf the Internet because I feel like it's an interactive experience that I choose the path of (active) instead of just watching a screen waiting for whatever comes on next (passive). I read news. I look at websites. I follow Apple news religiously. [I think this is mostly because I'm trying to major in business and I find Apple to be an exciting business to follow, for many reasons.] I even, get this, read books sometimes. I go to college 4 nights a week. I go to the gym 3 times a week. I go out and take photos. I listen to spoken word (Henry Rollins and William S. Burroughs) and comedy (Bill Hicks, George Carlin, Patton Oswalt, and David Cross). I listen to (recently) audiobooks from iTunes. I used to play video games quite a bit for a little while, until I deemed that a waste of time and decided to stop that pretty much altogether. I go out to see live comedy instead of watching canned laughter on TV. I try to live my life instead of watching other people live theirs on TV.

Don't get me wrong, I sit on the Internet more than most people could ever stand to, probably more than most people even watch TV. And I'm an Internet-loving homebody. I knew the first few times that I got on the Internet back in '96 that I was going to spend a good majority of my time on the Internet when I got my own computer. Nothing has changed. I'm on the Internet all the time. I'm addicted to it and I freely admit that. As far as TV and culture go, consider me willingly ignorant to whatever is going on there. I understand that some people are up on things more than me because they watch TV. Again, I'm willfully and happily ignorant to that side of culture and I'm completely happy with that decision. If it weren't for DVD's, I wouldn't have a TV.

Not that there is anything wrong with watching TV, as long as you realize what you're dealing with. And most importantly that you watch the right shows. With that said, I'm off to browse the Internet.

And now for some links to some anti-TV sites I just found:

WhiteDot.org
TurnOffYourTV.com
TV Turnoff

How's that for propaganda!

I have a Macintosh... duh!

[This post was originally written on July 18th, but I saved it as a draft to finish it later, so I'm posting it now.]

This is a funny story that has been leaked from Newsweek in regards to the 4th generation iPod that is supposed to be unveiled this coming Monday. The beginning of this little tidbit is where they are talking about the 100th million download contest that Apple finished last Sunday night and Steve Jobs personally called the winner to congratulate him.

Apple had promised a prize to the person who moved the odometer to 10 figures, and as the big number approached, fortune seekers snapped up files at a furious rate. At around 10:15, 20-year-old Kevin Britten of Hays, Kans., bought a song by the electronica band Zero 7, and Jobs himself got on the phone to tell him that he'd won. Then Jobs asked a potentially embarrassing question: "Do you have a Mac or PC?"

"I have a Macintosh... duh!" said Britten.

I can't believe he said that to Steve Jobs the way it seems here, but I think I would have done the same thing. In fact, maybe Steve Jobs kind of embellished what he said just a hair to make it sound good, but I think it's great anyway.

Another good quote:

Even though Macintosh sales have gone up recently, he [Steve Jobs] knows that the odds are small of anyone's owning a Mac as opposed to the competition. He doesn't want that to happen with his company's music player. "There are lots of examples where not the best product wins," he says. "Windows would be one of those, but there are examples where the best product wins. And the iPod is a great example of that."

That is basically what I have always thought. I've owned both and I can honestly say that Apple beats Windows hands-down. The only thing that Windows does better is support more games, but they don't really do anything out of the ordinary to accommodate this. They are just the consumer giant (for now), so game companies naturally cater to them. It's not like they do anything out of the ordinary to help out this natural flow of business, they just happen to be the one raking in the cash for it.

To me, this is the old market share argument. People say that since this is a capitalistic society, the best product wins. Not always. This is also the BMW vs. (insert lower-quality non-luxury car here) but we'll use Isuzu, just for this scenario because I've owned one. No one argues that Isuzu (I'm pretty sure, but I could be wrong) has a higher market share than BMW because it's more economical, but I think it's safe to say that BMW is a better built car. Or so I hear. Actually, I think for clarity, I think this argument would be better if you used the Lexus vs. Isuzu argument. This is because Lexus (Toyota Motor Corp.) remains the most dependable in a study done by JD Power last month. This is the 10th year in a row that they have won. From the article:

Toyota Motor Corp. remains the automaker in the United States with the most dependable vehicles, led by its Lexus luxury brand, a survey shows.

Going on the market share theory, whoever has the largest market share in any industry is king. That doesn't necessarily make it better. Quantity does not equate quality. Not to mention, the BETTER a product is, the less it needs replaced. That obviously has something to do with the inflated market share numbers for any inferior product because people have to replace it more often. The thing is, Windows (and many products) work just well enough to keep people buying them without totally pissing them off to consider another option. Most people consider it their lack of knowledge in computers as to why their computers don't work properly (which in some cases might be true), instead of questioning the operating system and considering something else. Sure, Windows will work for you nearly hassle-free if you are really tech-savvy and know what you're doing, but you still have to go out of your way to make that happen. Spam blockers, virus protection, pop-up blockers, daily updates, etc, all takes away from your time.

But I will stress, you get what you pay for. You might pay more in the beginning, but it pays off in the end. I have a low tolerance for being bothered with the daily updates, website pop-ups, those annoying warning boxes every time I booted the machine, software being installed on my computer without my knowledge (spyware), viruses, etc. My Macintosh lets me do what I do without bothering me every five minutes to update something or other and none of that other stuff is ever a problem. I haven't had a software update in a while and when I boot my computer amazingly nothing is popping up telling me to renew this and do that. The whole idea of the Macintosh is that it is intuitive and it doesn't assume that you know everything about the technical side of computers enough to understand the most complicated of warning boxes. Windows is not intuitive. I work with Dells with Microsoft 2000 installed at work. You don't know how many times they will freeze up for 30 seconds to a minute at a time, at least 5 times during the time I'm there. Pop-ups come up on every other website I visit because it has spyware on the computer that I can't delete because I'm not an administrator. If I type something into Google, a separate search page comes up giving me shopping information on whatever I typed in. On some of the other computers, when you log off you get a warning box telling you that if you log off some program will be terminated (which the average user doesn't understand what the hell this means, nor do they care), so you have to hit 'end now' to log off. Not to mention the shitty Internet Explorer browser. IE is easily the worlds worst browser. The whole experience is just aggravating.

The other problem is that Windows has gained an advantage because it has become the default computer for everyone to use out of a seeming lack of options due to consumer ignorance. Most people don't even question it. Every time I bring up Apple in conversation with those that are just basic computer users, they know very little about it. It's always been regarded as "the other" in the computer world, but nothing to really compete against Microsoft. I got into an argument with a guy in my shop about this. He was saying that Microsoft was a monopoly, but I said it wasn't. He goes, "Well, there isn't really any other operating system to buy." Yeah there is - Apple. And it's better. I explained it to him, but he disregarded it, as I had until a friend showed me how much better it really was.

The other problem that Windows causes, is they make many would-be great computer companies (Sony, for example) look bad. I won't argue that I didn't like my Sony laptop before I sold it to my cousin, but it was Windows that I couldn't stand. The daily Windows updates, the way I felt like I was trying to train a little kid when I used it, the list goes on and on. But I did like the Sony laptop for what it was, and for the most part, it never failed me.

The only thing I'm saying is that I think it's disheartening that a computer company as good as Apple is generally regarded as the inferior when, in my opinion, that is by far not the case. I'm not going to say that Apple is perfect, but it is considerably better than Windows, and I say that coming from a Sony computer using Windows XP. When I say considerably, I mean I will never again buy a Windows-based computer. I read something in the book, In Defense of Elitism recently about how immigrants who come here are usually much harder working and their survivability factor is higher than the fat-cat WASPS (a member of the dominant and the most privileged class of people in the U.S.) who have no reason to further themselves because they are already loaded with money. This is an example of how I see industrious immigrants compared to the precious privileged like I see Apple vs. Microsoft.

"Being a poor and persecuted outsider can also be a source of strength, because it forces the immigrant into a ruthless self-examination, reinforcing the values that are crucial for survival. [In this scenario, Apple is the underdog immigrant]
...
Older and more secure groups such as WASPS [Microsoft] in America face decline precisely because their established social status deprives them of any need to claw their way to the top. [for this scenario, innovating new products]"

That's why I think Microsoft will hopefully one day topple. They are getting too fat and too rich, and eventually that causes people to get lazy. This is perfect evidence of that same trend. They don't innovate. They just hawk the same crap year after year to people who don't know any better.

One last note to this argument. I didn't know how great Apple was until within the last year. For all I know, Windows could have been better than Apple until the last couple of years or so, although I sincerely doubt it. But I can say, without a doubt, Apple is by far better now. If by some miracle you took every Windows user on the planet and brought an affordable Macintosh to their house to use for a week with a small tutorial on how to use it and comparable programs, you would see Microsoft go under within a couple years.