Category: Rants & Observations

GlowGolf

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We took the kids to Stratford mall today to try the new glow in the dark miniature golf called GlowGolf. At $30 for four of us (3 adults, 1 child) it was a bit pricey, but it does include 54 holes (there are two 18-hole courses so you get to play one twice) which do not have to all be played immediately. They will stamp your hand if you want to go shopping or grab something to eat and come back.

GlowGolf

I do have a complaint about the place – there’s a small area in the front where they have a few booths which encourages parents to sit there while their kids play. Not so bad if the kids are old enough to behave themselves, but certainly not for a five and six year old like the siblings left to their own devices who kept getting in our way. God forbid someone look after their own children in a public place!

Another annoyance was the mom with her two pre-teen sons who kept blazing through the hole behind us and then practically standing on top of us obviously impatient while we were trying to putt. Finally they got tired of waiting (no WAY was I rushing through for their sake) and skipped a hole so they could play ahead of us.

Seriously, I’ve never understood the people who pay good money to play miniature golf and then rush through each hole as if it’s a race to the finish. I’d like my money to last. Call me crazy.

In any case, the place is ok but I doubt we’ll go back. People are just way too annoying, and that was at noon on a Wednesday. I’d hate to see the place on a weekend.

People & Their Pets

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Sometimes I don’t understand people.

A few weeks ago a lady from one of the townhomes across our courtyard was outside looking around calling, “kitty kitty kitty”. It wasn’t until she went back inside that I saw a cat come out from under a huge pine tree. I slowly approached the cat and he seemed friendly enough, but he didn’t have a collar on so I had nothing to grab and I didn’t want to try picking him up and chance freaking him out, so I left him and approached the woman’s patio door. It was open, but as I peered inside her home, I couldn’t see anyone, so I walked around to her front door (also open) and peered through the screen, but again, no one was in sight.

I rang the doorbell. After a minute or so, she came downstairs with a baby in her arm. I asked her if she lost her cat and she replied, “is he fat?” Well, I didn’t think so, but I described him to her and mentioned his lack of collar, to which she replied, “yea, he always takes them off” and just stood there. I asked her if she wanted me to show her where he was. Finally she came outside and followed me to the tree where he was still sitting, chewing on some grass. As soon as he saw her he ran back to the home and then she thanked me as an afterthought as I started walking back to my place.

This woman also owns an older dog who is very well-behaved. In fact, up until two weeks ago I had never heard him bark. She doesn’t leash him when she lets him outside to do his business and he doesn’t stray away from their patio, but the one day she let him out and forgot about him and eventually he got impatient and starting barking through their screen door to be let back in. After 5-10 minutes of him barking, her husband came outside to let him in.

Two days ago while eating dinner we spotted a small grey dog running around the courtyard but there weren’t any people in sight. He ran off toward the street but reappeared a few minutes later. I went out on the patio and he came running over, barking furiously at me, but keeping his distance. I noted he had a harness on – the type you’d clip a leash to – but no collar.

Eventually he began to calm down, so of course that’s when our next door neighbor decides to let her dog out, which prompts this strange dog to go into a frenzy and start barking in the other dog’s face. The neighbor’s dog barks at everything under the sun but for some reason didn’t bark at the little dog with the Napoleon complex. What I found bizarre is that our neighbor watched this for a moment, then turned around and went back inside, leaving her tied up dog to fend for himself. How did she know that the strange dog wasn’t going to bite her dog? Stupid.

Eventually some guy with a toddler started walking our way across the courtyard, but when he spotted the grey dog, he picked up the toddler and started walking back the way he came. The dog spotted him, however, ran past him, and they disappeared behind some trees. I still don’t know whether that guy was the dog’s owner or not. If so, he didn’t seem too terribly concerned about the whereabouts of his dog.

I don’t understand such behavior. Perhaps it’s because I can’t have the cat I’ve always wanted that I cannot relate to the indifference some of these people have to their pets running off. I’d be worried sick if my dog or cat got out of my sight while outside. It doesn’t take long to run into the street and get squished by a passing car. I saw it happen to a little baby squirrel on the way into work today, in fact. :(

Monday’s Tweets

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* 18:42 Throwing a cigarette out your car window still constitutes littering. Just thought you needed some reminding, smokers.

* 18:46 Trying out our new rice cooker.

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

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Interestingly enough, after my rice cooker tweet, Aroma Housewares started following me on Twitter. How did they know that was the brand I bought? Oooo Big Brother!

The rice cooker is great, by the way. I can cook many things, but rice is not one of them, so this purchase was definitely worth it. On sale @ Target for only $30.

Still not loving iTunes

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It’s a year since I got my iPod and iTunes still doesn’t have the ability to watch folders for updates. It’s so aggravating!

I use Windows Media Player to rip my CDs to a folder called New then drag my files into my directory structure (sorted mostly by Artist, then Album with the exception of Compilations which get their own directory). I do not allow iTunes to rip my music because I despise the way it names the files and sets up the directory structure. Contrary to what Apple clearly believes, not everyone wants iTunes to manage their files for them. You should see what a mess my brother’s MP3 directory is thanks to iTunes. Thanks but no thanks.

It just irks me that pretty much every other program out there (such as WinAmp) can watch folders for updates and automatically remove files from the library if their location has changed, but iTunes can’t won’t. You have to manually delete missing files or point them to where they were moved. Why? Why does iTunes make this so difficult? There’s no doubt in my mind they are able to design a feature to keep your library updated automatically. They just don’t want to. They want you to remain dependent on them for all facets of maintaining your media library. All fine and good until you need to back up or move those files and/or you try to find a file via the explorer. Good luck!

I was searching Google this morning for a third-party add-on for iTunes that might accomplish what I think it should have been doing several version ago. I found one, but it requires messing with code and I’m not comfortable with that.

During my search, I came across this post, talking about this same frustration, and I couldn’t help but laugh at one of the comments someone left after someone else suggested that the reason iTunes on Windows sucks is because Windows itself sucks:

I’ve tried iTunes out on a few Mac’s too, and they actually perform pretty badly even on their native platform. I’m sure it’s slower on Windows but either way, Apple just does NOT listen to their market. They have no idea what they’re doing, they’re just confidently releasing more and more crap while pulling Microsoft’s products. Unfortunately, all the pre-pubescent teenagers listen to the guy in jeans that looks like that guy from Blues Clues, and not the guy wearing a suit and glasses (who is clearly more intelligent).

That Blues Clues comment had me actually laughing out loud. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Apple releases crap products. I think the iPod is fantastic. It’s iTunes that I have my beef with. It could be sooooo much better if Apple would just stop and listen to their users. Who here can honestly say they prefer manually dragging music into iTunes and deleting missing files as opposed to letting the software scan your music directory and make the updates automatically?

If you rip all your music directly into iTunes and allow it to organize your music, you’re not going to be able to relate. I refuse to hand over the controls to iTunes because it lacks the flexibility to dictate exactly how I want everything organized, therefore I don’t trust it. Not to mention that it has ripped tracks before and gave them all the wrong names and tags. I’ve yet to run into that problem with Windows Media Player.

This commenter put it nicely in respect to the way iTunes changes filenames:

Why does itunes change filenames of songs? Could it be because they’re greedy and they try to make it as hard as possible to share music? Yeah, like that extra twenty bits of info used to include the REAL SONG TITLE in the file name makes a difference. If that was the case then why not let it be an option? APPLE’S GREED, that’s why. Why randomly place songs into different folders? GREED, that’s why. It makes no sense why you can drop an entire folder of an album into itunes to have it move around the files in to eleven different folders names f00, f01, f02, f03…etc. GREED, that’s why.

Oooo and here’s another article with an even better comment about the file management, or more like lack thereof:

#15 Peachboy says:

I totally agree, Judaschrist. For how mainstream and almost cult-like Ipod and Itunes has become, I rarely hear people mention the GLARING, incredibly obvious fact that Itunes library manipulation options not only suck, but are pretty much nonexistent. For those of us who would rather manage our music folders ourselves than let Itunes organize them for us (which I assume most users would like to do), there is no way to rescan music folders, import new songs and clean up dead links short of reimporting one’s music library. And for someone who is constantly rearranging his music library like myself, it just doesn’t cut it. The ability to refresh one’s library is so basic and integral to most other media players. Winamp’s library scanning function is great. Even WMP has a far superior library manipulation layout. Why is Apple so dense about this? Honestly, to me it always seems that Apple assumes their users are complete morons. Sorry Apple, I don’t want you to decide how my music folders should be arranged… Does that mean I shouldn’t be using Itunes?
What a pain in the ass.

How sad is it that these posts are 2+ years old and yet still relevant? Come on iTunes, get with the program already! I don’t want Genius, I want you to manage my library effectively and unobtrusively. Really, is that so much to ask?

Disappearing Acts

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Have you ever been contacted by someone from your past who disappeared shortly thereafter? It’s happened to me a couple of times in the past few years.

I get an e-mail from a long lost friend, a dialog begins, then nothing. Just one day they don’t return my e-mail. Weeks turn into months and I begin to wonder if I just imagined it to begin with.

It’s bizarre. Kinda rude too. I mean, YOU contacted ME. Now you’re blowing me off? WTF?

My friend says I expect too much from people. I guess I do. I expect if you contact me after years of not talking that you won’t disappear without explanation. But what do I know? Maybe it’s an ego thing.