This is my favorite otter shot of the day.

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They try to up sell you on nitrogen which has nominal to NO practical value when fitted to your average car. I had read anecdotally that Honda were not a fan of the practice and I send a tweet to see if I could get a reference for this. 

There you go.  I’ve been to this dealer twice and while the service was done quickly,the waiting area is clean, nice wifi,play area and coffee  It’s only been after the usual chat re, “service this to Honda’s requirements to keep the extended warranty valid”How they then want to add injector cleaning agents, N2 and suggest a transmission flush on a < 30k car, a 30k MANUAL car is beyond me. Despite declining the injector cleaning they billed me for it anyway and took money of the air filter instead. They must have some kind of weird  bonus structure going there but a 30k car that’s performing well does not need it. 

Needless to say I’ll be using another dealership  for future warranty work.

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Owle, not a Pixar sequel, is an acronym for Optical Widgets for Life Enhancement  housing that allows you to add additional lenses, an inbuilt mic,add lighting and stability to your iPhone 3gs which markedly improves real time video gathering  while remaining hand held portable. Why write what you can see

It’s pretty obvious  how much the viewer stands to benefit from this platform ,YEP  that’s the viewer. Local company too   : ) 

I’ve often thought of the iPhone as being a glorified controller that just happens to make phone calls.

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Owle, not a Pixar sequel, is an acronym for Optical Widgets for Life Enhancement  housing that allows you to add additional lenses, an inbuilt mic,add lighting and stability to your iPhone 3gs which markedly improves real time video gathering  while remaining hand held portable. Why write what you can see

It’s pretty obvious  how much the viewer stands to benefit from this platform ,YEP  that’s the viewer. Local company too   : )

I’ve often thought of the iPhone as being a glorified controller that just happens to make phone calls.

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There’s a slight issue with that subject line which one could charitably call a willing attempt to deceive,to appear fraudulent or maybe even to be an outright lie.

The price refers to you already having Windows 7, aka Windows 7 starter edition.

How can you upgrade to 7 by already  having 7? This is such a trivial thing that it pains me that they would even try this line out. Upgrades –from- $78 or Upgrades –to- $78 are still speaking in weasel-words but  at least it’s supportable on logical and grammatical grounds. 

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I’m not a fan of clouds , other than flying through them, when it’s the sole method of storage. User’s of the Sidekick have found out that the distance between back up and fuck up is a little more then inconvenient. 

How would you like this mail from a service you PAY for ( It would be easy to bitch at 2.0 companies that have lost my data but realistically I got what I paid for) 

We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers’ personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.

Inconvenience in the street lawyers thesaurus  sounds a little more like negligence:)

Own your own data or lose it and three years later win a class action suit, with 100k of your “friends” that gives you a month’s free service but only when renewing your contract for two years.

http://mashable.com/2009/10/10/t-mobile-sidekick-data/

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In this article from the AZ Republic a newspaper that decides what stories we can comment on, this not being one of them,the word psychic is not in quotations yet the word excessive is. I’m going to attack,for it’s not possible to gently chide, suggest or be reasonable when dealing with the local government licensing woo-woo is bullshit. I’d love to know by which standard Gilbert are verifying the psychic’s services. Who on the council ensures that the chakras are handled in the correct manner and that no psychic residue escapes into the streets?

That made me a little angry. What made me a lot more angry was her concern of passing on the pricing of the licensing to people yet the comfort with charging money for fairy tales is quite ok. The rest is a free advert from the paper without challenge to what could be considered as a reasonable question aren’t you full of crystal powered poop?

Psychic wins battle with Gilbert over permit

A Gilbert psychic has challenged the town’s license and permit fees and won.

Paula Parris said the requirements to get a license and permit as a fortune teller in Gilbert were “excessive,” costing her $1,300 more than most other businesses.

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Akamai Technologies is extending its content delivery network to the Apple iPhone as it introduces the Akamai HD Network, a system for streaming high-definition live and on-demand video to a variety of devices. Source.

It’s been said twice in the comments over at Mashable that HD streaming to a device that cannot render HD is a bit of a non starter. It’s not been said with a Douglas Adams line from Dr Who.   May as well get started then.

“The concept is simply staggering. Pointless, but staggering” 

Actually it’s not that staggering. While there’s a case for streaming HD it’s maybe better if the end device could actually  utilize it.The  iPhone’s can not and is  likely been mentioned just to fulfill the buzzworthy compliant criteria of the release.

The iPhone’s max output currently is 640 x480,the screen resolution of the device itself is  is 480 x 320.  HD is usually considered to be 720 or above but realistically anything under x2 ( 960) the resolution is really stretching the term and  even the mighty 3GS currently falls far short of either mark without an external screen and short of the mark with one.

Thankfully a better post than I can justify the time in writing,without need to claim lack-of-talent, appears over on the streaming media blog. with the main thrust of the argument coming from the Workflowed blog.

Akamai…..as long as it’s above 700 kbps and starts as an HD source, it can be considered HD. So the house of cards of the iPhone claims in the rollout of the Akamai HD Network rests on HD ‘quality’ that’s below that of today’s average standard-definition stream

And in my unrefined language.

 Just because you start out with a HD source doesn’t make that which you receive HD. If I were to hold my cell phone to the speaker for you to hear the song would you be happy with the term CD quality being used to describe it? If I have ATT iPhone it’s unlikely the call would last long enough to finish this experiment. That’s the second part. Even running at 640×480 with 2.5Mbps , back to those iPhone specs again, you are still not HD and are still exceeding what you could likely extract from ATT on your iPhone. 

In short Penn and Teller don’t need to do a show about this claim because it’s prima fascia  Bullshit!

Want HD Video on the iPhone? Akamai Is Making it Possible

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Mobile post sent by haltse using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

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Posted via web from haltse’s posterous

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One readily accessed bromide is that of customer service being better in the olden days. That is was more personal  and alas those days are gone due to the pace of modern life and no one having the time

To which I say bollocks! That’s bollocks to my continual attempts to reference time while I’m really looking to show off the new timepiece and the excellent service I received from the company that sold it to me NFW Watches.

First let’s get started on how I came to know about their existence.

It started with a no way are you going to buy a $4000 watch inner dialog that had some echoes from those nearby. I thought that was very reasonable as I’d already set my sights lower than the Wyler that  comes in at over five figures, my father wanted to certify me for that, that I’d been drooling over.  I really like the square case, aviation/military aesthetic .I also wanted to keep it high contrast and so I hit the search engines and found these. Stuhrling  ‘Raven Diablo’ Automatic Watch , Invicta   Corduba  Watch and many shameless clones heading  towards the counterfeits which deserve to rot in hell. Seriously homage is one thing, theft is another.

I didn’t want to fake a watch and was just about to knock the endeavor on the head when I came across a post suggesting that people that like the Bell and Ross models may appreciate NFW’s Autopilot range.  A review on Watchtalkforums.info convinced me that this was the way to go. The Autopilot has it’s own character, more attention to detail than I thought likely at this price range and the owner of the company is active online ,particularly within forums in a very real and substantive manner. I just had to give them a try.

I wrote George Fox, the owner, designer  of NFW and inquired about the model.   I received a mail back and  then dammit!,things got complicated.

Holy choices Batman! They’ve sold a lot of the Autopilot,owning one now I can see why, but the rest of the range was on sale.A day after considering something from the Vector line I went ahead and bought the one I’d set out to get in the first place .We had a chat on the phone after exchanging mails and a couple of days later it was on my wrist.

For those interested in ordering the NFW AutoPilot and are willing to  pony up the $495.00  that the dealer’s charge I have some good news for you.NFW sells them direct for $350 and slightly more for the mechanical version. You can mail George directly gfox at nfwonline.com to get the ball rolling.

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When I was in need of a quick pocket camera to go on vacation I stumbled on this at Walmart,the camera seems to be exclusive to them, for a considerable sum under the usual selling price.  A few days before I bought a cheap point and shoot Panasonic which also has a video function.

No matter how much I read about the acceptable nature of crappy sound and video online the garbage coming out of my sanyo hd100r  would seem to be taking the piss.  Why even make such a lo-end piece of crap  at the risk of poisoning your brand?  ( Thankfully I paid nowhere near the msrp but it’s not hard to see why.. ) 

It’s autofocus hunts for faces like Cheney and then pulls the trigger at the incorrect time. It’s hideous at capturing indoors without a spare nightsun(the lights you get on the bottom of helicopters) and it’s not so hot with movement during daylight.  It’s garbage.  The panasonic tz5 on the other hand does 720, it’s HD, can focus ,and works in lower light and it’s a  point and shoot camera that does video. The Sanyo is a video camera that can do stills, er no it can’t since they too suck.
 
Why even compete at the crappy end? There’s nothing here that makes me want to try a better Sanyo, all they’ve done is out crapped the market at a higher price than Aiptek.

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The conclusion of Medical Examiner Mark Fischione is that the cause of death was due to “complications of hyperthermia due to environmental heat exposure.” The manner of death is ruled an “accident.”

No one could forsee that forced exposure to the AZ sun would result in any health issues. You would spend longer in jail for forgetting a dog in your car should our “protectors” happen upon it. Ha you actually thought there was anyone here to be held accountable , nope  it’s the usual accident. How can a willful institutional decision,without which you can’t explain the existence of the holding area  under their complete control, be an accident?

For the state to even call this an accidental death is repugnant.Yep we have a defacto death penalty for victimless crimes and a pathetic write up in the state’s paper-of-record.  Thankfully one group of investigative reporter from the near MSM model still takes the time. Phoenix New Times 

Coroner’s report confirms heat death of Perryville prisoner

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A test run. This is my son’s first self portrait. He turned on, turned round and then zapped himself in the face Not quite Bresson but it’s a start)

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I would love to spend more time with my kid, work less and hell yes I would like to have a larger house and faster car. I don’t. I bought a sane car that gets 30+mpg,  oh wait have 2 cars that get 30mpg. An affordable ( under 1/2 the loan I could have gotten) house whose valuation had been hit,hard. Sadly we earn to0 much to get a reduction on the loan. Earn too much for EVERY frigging thing we’re asked to fund for people that claim through no fault of their own that they couldn’t possibly save or live in a smaller place   or  drive a vehicle with sub 20″ rims.

There is a rational argument for one of us to quit working, and the other to take a job with 50% of the wages because it’s as near as dammit to breaking even.  Hell I should just quit altogether judging by the liberating feeling one has from  being out of work.From Newsweek

This theory has played in showrooms, where consumers like Ellen Ribitzki of Ringwood, N.J., recently traded in her General Motors sport utility vehicle for a Santa Fe Hyundai. Though she and her husband are currently unemployed, she called the deal too good to pass up. “We do a lot of traveling and that engine light kept flashing on and off,” she says about her old SUV. “It was a good incentive.”

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I still think that Disney should  let us make copies that doesn’t rely on a separate item being within the package or better yet, just forget about the codes. It’s way easier for anyone to get the illegal version to their player than begging permission. Sad but unavoidably true.

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Cash or Credit.

Since I left it appears that most debit / credit transactions occur with a chip embedded in the card. This means that the US cards don’t work unless the operator is smart enough to swipe it. Even when told to we had a huge failure rate with various store staff looking bewildered and more than one calling their supervisor. This is a colossal pain in the ass and I usually used cash whenever possible ( Saves on the stupid conversion rates too, seriously banks you should be dead, act like it. )

BAGS

If you need to do grocery shopping there are many  “”bag free”  towns, sadly that doesn’t apply to the women;), and you have to purchase each bag. That’s fair enough except some people take it as an affront that you haven’t had the foresight to know just when you would be going shopping and how many you would need.  The religion of environmentalism allows the masses to spot the sinners and then stone them with glances.

SERVICE

Service, is lame. Slow, and I don’t mean respectfully slow. The drinks always go dry, the check isn’t often an automatic consequence of

SODA

These people have soda coolers, sorry they appearance of soda coolers as they chill the contents to about 3 degrees below the ambient room temperature.

IKEA

This is weird but in a prior post I identified Ikea’s customers as being the rudest, least respectful of children and  possessing abominable car parking manners. E.G, When they have any event on to get a free breakfast,cheap pan or the like it’s knock the kid out the way time.( that’s why they wont let you carry guns I bet;) )

Ikea in Scotland. Same fucking behavior what in the name of flat-packed hell is going on here?  Interestingly they have vodka for sale and I was able to have a pear cider with my tray meal.

More in a bit.

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Scottish beauty contest,
originally uploaded by haltse.

Ok when was the last time you had an attraction based on the domesticated sheep breeds? Anyone?

Taken at the Scottish Game Fair held at Scone. July 2009.

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The UK has exceeded the US for nanny-state BS in a way that seemed to be decades off in the USA.I’m sure we’re into years,or even months,at this stage.Here’s some progression http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/2009/07/happy-fourth-of-july.html 

More in a bit. When we actually go out and do things.

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Around 0430. View from the window,
originally uploaded by haltse.

Does this explain where my messiness comes from?

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We’ve bought every Pixar movie on release date, seen every movie on release date and have spent an embarrassing amount of money on Cars , and other movie, memorabilia for our son. This  bullshit has sufficiently damaged my view of things Disney to the point that Kennedy Space Center rather than Disneyworld is looking like the preferred destination for our son’s 4th birthday.

Irony?  They think we’re thieves yet we paid for an item that’s not present and in a sane world circumstances wouldn’t the company responsible for the error apologize for the oversight rather than make the public jump through a pile of hoops?  

Amazon.com: Customer Discussions: Wall-e missing digital copy code!!!

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Zadi Diaz – Home – Advertising is FAIL. Communication is WIN.

3. STOP calling people consumers!
People are not mindless drones waiting to consume. We are all people hoping to
connect and you are hopefully facilitators of conversation. As soon as
we change the language we will change the action.

I’m wondering if we are missing out on a large part of the problem here,and that’s with those “consumers” Oh hell I’m being contradictory
but if you can give me a few seconds to work out my confusion I’m sure it’s all going to be OK in the end.

There clearly are consumers, though not self-identifying and maybe it’s better to remove this learned behavior at the source? Would it not be more useful inoculating those on the receiving end of the advertiser’s missives, at least giving a framework for understanding what’s going on would be a start?

Take iPhone3Gs and Video as an example. Youtube saw a huge increase in videos that were posted. Does this strike anyone as creatives all having a new tool or the marketed-to masses waiting to be told that video online is indeed cool and they have Apple’s permission? What was stopping them before? 

In other words are people using what’s fed to them?

Yes it’s an issue complicated by data plans and that most decent phones for video,aren’t subsidized but it’s not been hard to avail yourself of expression via video in the last two years but even that didn’t appear to be easy enough. Seriously most of the article makes very good points for trying to sell to those whose lives are interwoven with the net, but as long as there’s more and more people from the old-school getting on line I fear we’re stuck with this until it’s no  longer a viable audience to talk at rather than talk with.

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Sky TV built the market for satellite TV in the UK, ass punched the woefully lacking BSB and merged with them. Then they made a mistake, getting big. See the UK spirit isn’t that of Dunkirk and stoicism under pressure  any more than the majority of the US is of freedom loving  don’t tread on me types.  It’s wanting other people to give you things for free and acting like a mob the moment it doesn’t go your way.

BBC NEWS | Business | Sky may have to share TV channels

The proposal to force Sky to wholesale its content is welcome, but we now need Ofcom to step up the pace and to enforce this rigorously,” said Gavin Patterson, chief executive of BT Retail.

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