Havenbasin Road

You don’t really want to keep all the summer dirt inside to mingle with the new winter dirt that is sure to appear. They don’t really mix well. You will find yourself living in a sewer as far as health goes. Cleaning is a good thing, even if you don’t do it all the time it really should be done in the fall and in winter. At least that has worked for me. Not that I don’t clean at other times. Heck, I’ll even take a shower more than twice a month so you can bet that I clean the place more than twice a year. People forget about fall cleaning when they talk about spring cleaning. Fall cleaning is just as important if not more important. It is just like stretching before you start exercising, limber yourself up and get ready for the work ahead. In the case of fall cleaning it is more of, a clean things up and get ready for the long winter months of dirt ahead. 

Complaint time. Vacuum cleaners. I am not fond of mine. It works great, is the eco friendly type, low on power usage and everything, but its bag just sucks. No pun intended. After vacuuming things, emptying out the bag is a chore, I normally end up sneezing. It doesn’t have an actual bag it instead has the container you empty. While that may seem like a great idea; what happens when you go to dump it? That is right. You get crap all over. Even if you dump it into a bag or trash can, the fine dust you pick up end up curling up into the air around and you end up breathing it. Plus, now you have more dirt and fine particles all over the place again. Depressing, makes a person not want to clean up. Unless the vacuum is supposed to be some type of one use thing, although it was a bit spendy for that kind of item. I am seriously considering considering it as one.

I did a fast search and you can find several places online that will let you watch UK and states TV. Could save some money. I also know that the local stations tend to offer many of their shows online for watching as well. Actually, one of the things I like about the local stations online is the way they handle their advertising there. The advertising online for the local channels is much more focused. Each show normally has only one or two sponsors so that is all you get as far as commercials, plus the amount of commercials you get is cut down a lot. It makes for a much more pleasant viewing experience to be honest, don’t forget, you can pause online as well.

It is still really frustrating sometimes to try and watch TV with an antenna. I talked about that yesterday but I didn’t really discuss IPTV, and I am sure many of you were thinking about that while reading my complaint post on antenna TV. Just getting TV over the internet would actually meet both of my requests, having more stability and being able to pretty much watch when I want to watch instead of being restricted to a schedule around TV.  I like the idea but you have to have your computer connected to the TV or a big enough screen that you can use it as both a monitor and a TV. I bet, though, that they have other things out that are all in one items, where you can surf through your TV. The only ones I can think of in that regard, though, require you to have cable television as well as the internet. I will take a quick look. I am sure there are other options besides having to have SDSL.

I really miss cable, but  HDTV is a beautiful thing! The antenna works and receives HD signals over the air but it really drives me nuts that the signal is so weak. It goes in and out, depending on the channel. What is worse is the one channel I watch daily has real, actually most of the channels, have real problems when the microwave is being used. If I run the microwave then I lose the signal to the TV, it gets weaker and is a big pain to try and watch. I have thought about trying to tune it with a baseball bat but figure I would really regret it later when I couldn’t watch anything. I was thinking maybe I should try and find some sort of technology forums to get some better ideas than the baseball bat fix. I haven’t tried that yet, mainly because, honestly, I just thought of it. Feel kind of stupid as I use the internet most all day and that should have been one of the first things I thought of doing.

I will still probably hold off for a bit before getting the cable or satellite, though it is very irritating! Holding off, cause of course, I want the more expensive options. A DVR. Have to have that, makes watching TV so much more convenient! Being able to record the shows and watch them later is very nice. You get used to it after a bit, then you get spoiled with it and really miss it when you move. At least I did. Ah, well sooner or later I’ll break down and get it again. Then I can start watching more TV. Right now so much to do I don’t get much chance to watch a lot but if I could record things and watch them when I wanted to, like at lunch, that would definitely fit my schedule!

Boredom makes it even harder to focus on required class stuff.  Learning, I usually find fun, especially if you are learning something you are interested in, but having to learn stuff only  because it is required for your degree is a bit of a pain sometimes. Don’t you hate studying? I mean the school required class type studying. Especially when you have other stuff you want to do, but you know you have to get this done. What really sucks is that if you don’t do it and study for the stuff you could care less about, you will be stuck with it again. If it’s required for your major you have to have it. The  Clep tests and other college test out things have saved me some pain, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and deal with the agony of college class requirement induced boredom.  Speaking of agony I am kind of down to the wire here, so time to go put something together fast.

I usually find myself getting over boredom about the last day of the semester when I can dump all the crap I had to learn that I will never use again, but still some stuffy fellow or lady somewhere decided it was good stuff for the program, people needed to know it to be successful. Yay, right. Most of the times it is only in their dreams and in their pasts where what they are requiring to be a part of a given degree path is really relevant. Seriously drives me nuts. And yes, you guessed it by sitting here typing to you about how annoying it is I am procrastinating, putting it off and basically trying to ignore it as long as I can. I know that is a pain when I am rushing at the last minute to finish things, but, heck, I still do it. Only for so long though, cause I really don’t want to be stuck doing it again next semester.

I talked about business bank accounts and my current issues with one last week, well I am still having issues with them . I originally went with the bank because they were friendly and had decent savings rates, but the rest of their services are leaving a whole lot to be desired. So, guess I take my business somewhere else. Small issues, irritating issues none the less. Seems  to be complaint week again. At least they are minor complaints, which is one point I am not going to be complaining about. Alright, enough with the digressions, back to your regularly scheduled complaint. Banks and business accounts. So, think I complained a bit about how long and what they are doing in regards to my business card. I have, at this point decided to forego the card and just use one of my own personal ones for business stuff only. It is just to much of a pain dealing with them and it has taken entirely much too long to even get the card. They did apologize a lot, saying the delay was really not acceptable, which it wasn’t, but it is somewhat to little to late at this point. I still think it would be less painful to make use of a foreign currency bank account. Actually, I know it is less troublesome

Banks, especially credit unions should be consumer friendly as it is our money they are using, but they seem to lose sight of that fact. Most of the ones I have been to, if you go inside the bank they are fairly nice but if you call them you might as was have well not bothered, although that is really a lot less so with the credit unions. The big banks, though, are often good at wasting your time on the phone.

I say B.S. on fox and universal. The idea that they are upset because somebody is making money legally that they don’t have their greedy, slimy hands in just really rubs me the wrong way. If they did get Redbox stopped I would stop renting movies and then campaign to get everyone else I know to boycott those studios and all their releases. Why the heck don’t they just move to compete with their own type of Redbox and give people what they obviously want instead of trying to suck everything they can get? That would make a lot more sense than pissing off all the people, customers, who really appreciate what Redbox offers, legally. The movie studios were saying that it undervalues their stuff, well they are seriously overvaluing their stuff. I enjoy movies but, you know what, you stupid movie studios, I could live without them and you.

People are getting a great deal, and to be honest, the Redbox thing is what made me actually rent movies again because otherwise you pay a ridiculous price for like five days. I don’t need a movie for five days, so I felt like the rental stores were ripping me off by forcing me to take a movie for five days so I just stopped renting movies. I make regular use of Redbox which allows a person to rent most new movies for 1 dollar a day. But I saw this article about the big movie companies like fox and universal demanding that wholesalers not sell to the company because they are not getting any type of profit sharing. Redbox is suing and I hope to god they win, because the greed of the movie studios in this case is sickening. Seriously so.

My pets are really not fond of the heat. I can completely understand that, because it would really suck to have to wear a fur coat every day, even in really hot weather. People tend to forget about the coat their pets are wearing all the time. You see on the news a lot, about pets dying because they were left in hot cars or hot houses.  I guess you can’t really be too surprised about it, though. Some people are just stupid, and when you hear regularly about children dying after being left in a hot car it makes it so much easier to understand how people can forget about their pets. I can think of a couple of things to do for your pet, depending on what kind of pet you have. The first thing I can think of is something you should do for yourself as well. Air conditioning. That will make a huge difference in their comfort and in yours. It doesn’t help much if you don’t have it, though. Guess what. Yep, I don’t have it.

Normally, when it is really hot I wake up early and open the windows to air the place out and let some of the cooler morning air in to replace the stale air from the evening. I usually open things up in the evening as well when the temperature drops. Then close the windows before I go to sleep, although sometimes I leave them open during the night, just depends how hot it is inside. Besides trying to keep the place cool you can also use frozen water bottles for your pets. Maybe wrap it in a towel and set it someplace where they can lay beside it, of course that only works if you have small pets. Strategically placed fans are another good thing to do. I like to put cold water in front or behind the fans, that helps cool things down inside a bit. Speaking of which, think I will go do that before I melt away.

If an ISP choose to go with a usage type of rate structure then hopefully any company that didn’t would have many new users. I know that if I had the choice of a company who charges on usage and one who charges the regular way, I would boycott, swear at and work against the company that tried to charge by usage. A 2mb leased line provider is nice for some, but not if their where other charges involved depending upon usage. I wonder how that would affect those who provided hosting service.

I hope broadband providers do not embrace the pay as you go idea for internet bandwidth usage with open arms. The practice in the states seems to be gaining traction, and in Europe I am not entirely sure what the current status is, they may already be on that sort of sliding usage rate scale. The basic idea behind it is that for those who play online games or those who download a lot of things, they would be charged at a higher rate do to their usage of the bandwidth. It really doesn’t make much sense to me, the only thing it really has going for it is the greed factor, and that only works if you are one of those who would benefit financially by that type of rate change. In other words, those who work for a broadband company could see benefit, of course it probably would only be the ones who ran things, not those who actually did things. If they did that would it be the same for the home user and their ISP? What about business broadband providers, how would businesses deal with that kind of bill increase, especially in these times? One would hope, that just like the current credit card issues, that people would have an alternate choice for their service.

With all the stuff available you could really have your own personal surveillance society set up at home. A CCTV system at home would allow you to record everything you do, although I don’t really see the point on that one.  I can see it for security purposes, sure, but if you did I know I would want a closed system. Mainly cause if you are connected to anything then you have to deal with people hacking into your cameras and watching you, also the premise of a few movies. I wonder how they deal with that in Britain, is it something they have problems with. Can you imagine, with all the cameras they supposedly have around? I wonder if they are all connected and feeding to a central database?  They might even have people watching their cameras and not have any idea.

Security companies who provide monitoring and recording services probably have to be fairly secure because they could be liable for any problems with their services. I wonder how many people actually take that into consideration when picking a security system for their homes. I think that would really be more of a problem than the cameras all over Britain or the ones in the United States. Most of those are in public places so you really wouldn’t be seeing much you couldn’t see by sitting in a roadside café and watching the people go by.  There are cameras that people are supposed to watch; most of the traffic cameras in the states are accessible to the public so they can take a look at conditions themselves. Then there are also the Google camera stuff, although it is not current. There are a lot of other cameras available though, tourist cameras and summit cameras and cameras like that.

CCTV has been picking up in the states, while as I understand it, in Britain it is a given that anything you do is being recorded. Although, I don’t honestly know if it is truly that bad yet. It certainly seems like it from the news stories and stuff you see.  I am not really bothered by it that much. If people want to watch that is fine, it is just the other side of it that is a bit scary. If you can have the surveillance society without the police state I think that would not be a problem for most people. The problem is that when you move into being a surveillance society it seems like the police state tends to follow, whether it is immediately or slowly grown on people so that they accept it as normal. As an example, call recording can easily become just something that happens, and not something anyone thinks about.

There is a certain degree of danger and instability in any society, to have freedom and avoid a police state. The funny thing is that, again, just due to the way people are if you do have a surveillance society and police state you will still have the danger, because no matter how hard a society tries to change it. People are different and therefore will only put up with certain restrictions before they choose to rebel. It comes from the teenage years, I think. Who hasn’t rebelled when they were a kid? It’s like a boiling kettle, too much heat or control and it explodes, but not enough heat or control and things also fall apart. It all makes a person think about the the media depictions of  that kind of society.