Dumping Grounds

OK, so the liberal Democrats have Michael Moore, who is a certifiable lunatic with a personal vendetta against the Bush family. (I have to give him credit though, he got people to pay $7 each to watch his 90 minute long section 527 political ad disguised as a movie… The Swift Boat Vets had to buy air time for their hatchet job.)

Not to be outdone, the conservatives have their own freaking nutjob, in the person of one Michelle Malkin. Her most recent book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror, is a defense of the Japanese internment in California during World War II, and possible applications of a similar technique that could be used today against Muslims. NOTE: I have not read the book, and maybe it’s not as Stalinist as it sounds, but I have heard it characterized as an argument for the internment of (at least some) American citizens of the Islamic faith, without charges, given the current war on terrorism. If I’m wrong, Michelle can contact me, and I’ll edit this paragraph.

While on Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC (where she was supposed to be discussing her book), she said the following in reference to John Kerry during a discussion about the Swift Boat ads:

“Well yeah. Why don’t people ask him more specific questions about the shrapnel in his leg? There are legitimate questions about whether or not it was a self-inflicted wound.”

Ahem. OK, Let’s get our facts straight. 1) Chris Matthews is an asshole. On this point we agree. The way he handled her outlandish statement was deplorable. Ms. Malkin was busy hanging herself without Matthews gleefully throwing more rope around her neck. 2) She was misquoted by Keith Olbermann on his blog recounting the incident (and congratulating his friend and co-worker at MSNBC) [the offending blog entry has mysteriously disappeared from the MSNBC site] 3) Olbermann claims, among other things that Ms. Malkin is lobbed softballs by FOX, and is not used to real journalists questioning her, uh, unusual views. (To be fair, Ms. Malkin was coddled on Dennis Miller Live [on CNBC, MSNBC's sister channel] less that two weeks ago when presenting views defending her somewhat questionable book)

Now, all that aside, she’s a nut. Her blog entry on the subject cites numerous quotes about Kerry’s wounds (from Unfit for Command) and claims that the accusation of self inflicted wounds occurs on pg. 36 (which strangely, among a large number of other book quotes in the very same paragraph… goes completely unquoted). I don’t see ANY quote, even on her own website that seems to indicate that ANYONE said the wounds were self-inflicted. Even if the wound was caused by the incorrect deployment of a grenade launcher… how is it relevant? Who cares? All it proves is that President Bush is (likely) better with firearms than John Kerry. Not exactly one of my prime concerns when selecting a President.

Her comments were exceptionally poorly placed, and reflected poorly on her, and conservatives in general.

I think that any service of your country in wartime (or otherwise, as a matter of fact) is honorable, and worthy of respect. A Purple Heart as recognition that you were wounded while serving is a nice gesture, but it is not the type of medal that makes you qualified to be President.

(Please folks, I am not trying to disparage ANY veteran… but a Purple Heart does not indicate any particular competence or valor, it proves you can stop a bullet.)

Ms. Malkin is just as bad as Mr. Moore, she’s just not as well known, or as good of a self-promoter. Neither of them documents their sources, because that would really cramp their style of making the most outlandish statements possible. Both candidates have plenty of flaws that can be exploited by the other camp. Personally, if I don’t hear the word “Vietnam” for the next 20 years, it will still be too damn soon.

Here is a wonderful little tribute to one of the greatest movies ever made, one that launched the career of Steven Spielberg. (Specifically, it’s # 48, and it’s on my Amazon Wish List)

So, how many of those movies have you seen? I’ll count later, and post my number.

What struck me as a little funny about this link was the fact that I re-read Peter Benchley’s Jaws earlier this week. If you have never read it, especially if you liked the movie, you really should. The book is quite a bit different than the movie, and one of the most shocking differences is that the shark is actually a fairly minor character. Ellen Brody is a much more complex, involved character, and Hooper is, well, let’s just say he’s not the same person Richard Dreyfuss played in the movie. It’s a very quick read, give it a shot.

“John Kerry has been busy in the weeks leading up to the Republican Convention. I mean, he’s adopted as many positions as Courtney Love.” – Mike Murphy, Dennis Miller Live, CNBC

Every once in a while, a problem gets solved so elegantly that you wonder if someone is looking out for you. Today was one of those days, so hopefully with a little luck, I can get the Google-indexed, so if anyone has the same problem, they can solve it just as easily. (I am incidentally, the #1 indexed site for the phrase “Classic BMW sucks”, which I think is funny.)

I am sure I am not the first person to have gotten the idea of using the PVR-350 hardware MPEG encoder card for the purpose of digitizing video for your DVD Studio Pro projects without having to use Compressor (which, while versatile and elegant, is slow). However, there don’t seem to be many people acknowledging the problem I had with their incompatibility (which is not surprising, I guess, since one is a PC product, and one is a Mac product… maybe not everyone uses them together. Personally, I think it’s a great combo, since I don’t want my authoring machine (the Mac) tied up while I am digitizing video on the PC. The problem arises when you try to import the resulting .mpg files into DVD Studio Pro. You will get the incredibly informative message that tells you that the file is of an “incompatible format.”

Well, with that very helpful piece of information, I went about trying to get that file into Studio Pro. (Without re-rendering that file through Compressor, which defeats the whole purpose of using hardware encoding in the first place) I knew that Compressor outputs two files, one audio and one video, with timecodes to keep them in sync. The PVR-350, on the other hand, outputs one file, with both audio and video included, which Quicktime reports as “muxed.”

Well a little Google investigation on “DVD Studio Pro” and “Muxed” turns up what turns out to be a little miracle worker of a program, called MPEG Streamclip, by Squared 5. This application does a huge assortment of things, but the particular feature I needed was the “de-muxing” of MPEG files. The incompatibility seems to lie in the exact resolution I was using (NTSC standard - 740×486) which gets scaled to an exact 4×3 ratio. Specifying the output from MPEG Streamclip to be “scaled” and the audio file to be MP2, rather than AIFF (for maximum speed). The resulting file set goes into Studio Pro with no trouble at all, and it even associates the two, so that when you place the video into the current project, the audio automatically comes along for the ride.

MPEG Streamclip is also extremely fast. It successfully de-muxed a 2 GB MPEG file in about 10 minutes on my Powerbook G4 (1.25GHz) The same file would have taken around 2 hours to re-encode in Compressor. It’s fast BECAUSE it doesn’t re-encode. There is no loss in quality, as there would be in Compressor.

Oh, and by the way, did I mention that MPEG Streamclip is free? Completely free? Sans charge?

Sound too good to be true? Maybe it is, but it saved my butt this afternoon.

I think every single person who reads this site is from the Dallas area, but I ask the question anyway… are all cities as screwed up as Dallas, or does, say, San Jose, California have their shit together?

I present my evidence: 1) Dallas manages to screw up the opportunity to move the home of the Dallas Cowboys to one of the most financially impoverished areas of the city, thereby revitalizing the area, presenting a financial boon to the African-American community, and allowing the Cowboys to actually (for the first time in over 30 years) play in the city that they sport their name. To be fair, much of the problem was centered on Dallas county government, and it’s inability to work with the Dallas City council in any constructive or creative manner.

2) Last night’s Dallas City Council meeting deteriorated into a screaming match, with Council member Maxine Thornton-Reese wagging her finger at Mayor Laura Miller while accusing her of racism. Ms. Thornton-Reese is black, Ms. Miller is white. At the root of the conflict was a measure before the Council that would have subsidized the Universities of Oklahoma and Texas to keep their annual football game in Dallas for the next five years. The total of the subsidies? $1.25 million. Also included was $450,000 in economic development for Fair Park (which, of course, would have been taken care of already if they had just managed to lure the Cowboys into the area) Does the Texas-OU game benefit the city of Dallas more than $250,000 per year? Undoubtedly. Would this be a good investment? Unquestionably. Besides pumping some money into Fair Park, it would guarantee that the game stays here for another 5 years (sooner [no pun intended] or later, these schools are going to figure out, tradition be damned, that there is more money to be made for the cities of Austin and Norman, and the schools themselves, with a home and home arrangement). On this point, I actually believe there was little disagreement within the Council (inasmuch as they ever agree on ANYTHING. I’m not sure you could get a 15-0 vote on whether the sky was blue). the problems arose when the Council member whose district includes Fair Park, Leo Chaney (who as far as I can tell, was simply doing his job, trying to get more money for his district) asked if it might be possible to also subsidize the Prairie View A&M vs. Grambling (both traditionally black colleges) football game. This game also brings money into the city, and without a subsidy, there was some danger of losing it to Houston. The sum TOTAL asked for? $50,000 over 5 years. I, and most people reading this site, pay more than that individually to the IRS each year. Finding $50K in the budget for a city the size of Dallas should be a non-issue.

To this point, there is still not a problem. However, city lawyers advised that the motion should not be voted on in the same week in which it was proposed. So the vote for the Prairie View-Grambling subsidy was tabled until next week. This was when Ms. Thornton-Reese got up on her high horse, and insisted that the vote on Texas-OU should be tabled until next week as well. To do otherwise would smack of racism, she insisted. The Mayor did not want to delay the Texas-OU vote, as to her, the subsidies for the two games were completely separate issues. Well, at this point, the screaming match was on, and Ms. Thornton-Reese’s aforementioned finger waggling and accusations toward the Mayor began.

How childish. Let’s recap how every single party in this escapade acted poorly.

Council Member Thornton-Reese - her actions speak for themselves. She is a racist, and a reactionary nut who woke up yesterday morning looking for a fight with the Mayor.

Council Member Leo Chaney - should have known the rules about voting the same week a motion was introduced. Asked for a delay to a non-related issue (seemingly) to allow Ms. Thornton-Reese to go on her tirade. This reeks of having been planned beforehand.

Mayor Laura Miller - Good grief, on the other hand, why did she get so uptight about a 7 day delay? She was outvoted 12-2 on that count, and the measure was delayed anyway… but when you are dealing with a hostile city council that sees EVERY issue as a matter of race, then why do you open yourself up to such abuse?

Now, do both subsidies make sense? Yes. Are the relative sizes of the subsidies correct? Probably. Texas-OU is tremendously larger both in national interest and in financial impact that Prairie View-Grambling. Should the two subsidies in any way be linked? No. Should the City Council meeting have fallen to the level of a third grade temper tantrum? No.

It should be noted that I not only do not live in Dallas, I also do not live in Dallas County. I didn’t vote for any of these idiots. But the fact that people did, and the fact that their “representatives” are a bunch of petulant children, is why we’re now rooting for the Arlington Rangers, and come 2009, we’ll be rooting for the Arlington Cowboys. If they’re not careful, we’ll be driving interstate 35 (north and south) to see Texas-OU and Prairie View-Grambling. If that happens, I hope someone remembers to knock the cobwebs off the Cotton Bowl, it looks creepy when you just let them sit there.

While I am nowhere near as dedicated as my friend Liz, I am trying to get in some semblance of shape, and with that thought in mind, I went rollerblading this morning. My normal work out is half a mile to the “loop,” 4-6 “loops” @ 2/3 miles each, and then half a mile back to the car.

Well, today, I decided I would see how far I could go (and honestly, I probably went a lap or two longer than I should have) and I up and did 11 laps. By my, admittedly, foggy-minded math, that’s 8 1/3 miles. About 2/3 of a mile further than I have ever gone before, and 2 miles further than I have gone at any point this year. Woohoo!

I’d like to thank my iPod, who selected good songs, and kept me going!

The title is a play on Orson Scott Card’s “Uncle Orson Reviews Everything” which I used to read all the time, but don’t often anymore because, although he is my favorite author of all time, I don’t get the impression I would like OSC in real life very much. He has just a little bit of an elitist attitude that comes across pretty strongly in his columns (he also writes a regular column for The Ornery American, a rather conservative political web site). He scores major points for introducing me to Eric Snider, who I also used to enjoy reading. I changed computers about the time that he was let go from his job for a perceived conflict of interest in a story he wrote. I didn’t move the bookmark over, and as many of you who know me are aware, I don’t browse the web very often. If I don’t have it bookmarked, I probably don’t go there.

So for this week, I guess those are my first two reviews OSC’s weekly column gets 2 stars, (out of 5) and Snider, assuming he has resumed writing will get 4 stars. Note: I just went and re-bookmarked the sites again. I have to lower Eric’s rating to 3 stars, as he now charges to read any of his new columns. The movie reviews are still free.

Next, we’ll review some recent customer service experiences I have had. We’ll go in chronological order:

Classic BMW sucks.

Well, I guess I have tipped my hand on this one, but I want to see if I can get “Classic BMW sucks” indexed in Google. For anyone unclear, that’s Classic BMW, in Richardson, TX, on Central Expwy (US 75). They suck. Yes, Classic BMW sucks.

OK, that should do it.

I got the battery replaced in my car recently. Well, when I did, that pretty much involved cutting power to my radio, which immediately came to the conclusion that it had been stolen. The anti-theft system kicked in, and the radio would not play again until I entered a CODE (caps BMW’s, not mine). No problem, I thought, I’ll call Classic (they suck) and get them to read me the code, so I can play American radio again.

Side note: Apparently Japanese car radios do not have anti-theft systems. Don’t know why. Maybe Japanese folks don’t steal radios. Regardless, if I went into admin mode on the radio and convinced it I was in Japan, then the radio and CD would play. Unfortunately, the standard frequencies for Japan are not the same (or even similar) on the AM or FM bands, so this was, at best, an interim solution.

Anyway, back to Classic BMW, who sucks. So I called them, and asked for the radio code. “You have to bring it in” they reply.

“why?” I ask.

“So we can get the serial number off the back of the radio.” says Gary, the idiot (although I did not realize that he was an idiot at the time).

“You don’t have the serial number in your database?” I ask incredulously.

“Nope.” Gary the idiot responds.

“BMW has no record of what radio they put in my car by the VIN number?” I asked (having written systems for Ford and Land Rover, I know that this is not true, unless BMW is run exclusively by imbeciles).

“Nope, no record at all.” I now have my first inkling that Gary (the idiot) is an idiot.

“Well, you guys are quite a long drive over there for me, can I just read the serial number off to you?”

“Sure, you have to pull the radio out of the dash.”

“There’s no other way?”

“Nope.”

I am surprised by this, but I do not know any better, so I head out into my driveway, and proceed to pull the radio out of my dashboard. There is nothing labeled “Serial Number” or “SN#”. I place another call to Gary, the idiot, who works at Classic BMW, which sucks.

“Which one of these numbers is the serial number?”

“I dunno.” (I now no longer merely suspect that Gary is an idiot.)

“What is the format of a serial number? Numbers, letters? How many digits?”

“I dunno.” (I resist the urge to scream).

“Try this… DSX548920356″

“Too long.”

“How do you know it’s too long?”

“Computer won’t accept it.”

“Well, Gary (you simple-minded shit) how many did it accept before it refused?”

“9″ Now we’re getting somewhere.

“OK try this 9 digit number…”

“It took that. Now you know we’re not supposed to give these out.”

“Then why do you have a computer program to look them up?”

“I dunno.” He’s nothing if not consistent.

“What’s the code? I am sitting in my car, I’ll try it while you are on the phone.”

“XYZZY” Of course I chaged the code, because I don’t want any of you goofballs reading this to steal my radio.

I enter XYZZY. You see this coming, right? “Code didn’t work.”

“What do you mean, it didn’t work?”

Let me say it slowly for you, you dim-witted pimple on the ass of humanity… “It. Did. Not. Work.”

(For those of you who think I am being too hard on Gary, the idiot who who works at Classic BMW, which sucks, keep in mind, I know where this story is headed, and I am angry about things I have not told you yet.)

“It still says CODE?”

“Yep, that’s pretty much what ‘It did not work’ means.”

“Oh, ok, you will have to bring it in.”

“Why? What are you going to do that we can’t do over the phone?”

“We’re going to take the radio and send it to California for re-programming.” (sounds oddly like removing an impressionable teenager from a cult, doesn’t it?)

“How long does that take?”

“About a week.”

“You have got to be kidding me. And who pays for this little adventure?”

“You do, it’s your radio, and it’s not under warranty.”

“I don’t care if it’s under warranty or not, this is a manufacturer’s defect if you have the wrong code, and I am not going to pay for it, you are.”

“No, we’re not.”

“That’s total bullshit.” This is the very first time I have cursed at Gary, the idiot, who works at Classic BMW, which sucks.

“Well, sir, I have done everything I can do for you.”

“Which is exactly nothing.” Screaming angry, I hang up.

Classic BMW sucks. Remember that this is a review? They get zero stars. None. They did nothing to help me. And I refuse to believe that this is an unusual situation. People change batteries all the time. And yet they were totally unequipped to handle my issue.

So, the story continues with my next review.

John Roberts BMW

I call and leave a message, explaining that I have a radio asking for it’s CODE.

John calls back in about 5 minutes. (notice that John has not earned an epithet)

“We need you to stop by, to verify ownership.” This strikes me as a reasonable request, given that I have not done business with John Roberts before. I HAD done business with Classic BMW (sucks) before, so they were held to a slightly different standard.

“I will come by tomorrow at 4.”

“OK, I will be out of the office tomorrow, but I will make sure Peter is up to speed and is ready to take care of you. Just ask for him when you get here.” (Notice how John deflects a potential problem before it ever becomes an issue.)

(skip to tomorrow)

“I’m here to see Peter, he should be expecting me.”

“First desk.”

(explain issue to Peter, total elapsed time, 90 secs.)

“I have the serial number, I pulled the stereo myself.”

“You pulled it out of the dash? You don’t have to do that. You can get the radio to report it’s own serial number from admin mode.” I knew this by now, but I present it to the reader as further evidence that Gary (idiot) from Classic BMW (sucks) is a simpleton.

“Do you know if it as Alpine or Blaupunkt stereo?”

“Blaupunkt”

“OK, I’ll go ahead and write the codes for both down, just in case.” Uh…. both? They had two radios with the same serial number?

“Thanks”

I leave, go to the parking lot, and type the code into my radio. It works. Unlocks instantly, just the way it was supossed to. I look at the Alpine code… “XYZZY”

That idiot never asked. He never bothered to figure out what kind of radio I had.

Regardless… John Roberts took care of a simple problem in the expected amount of time. Total elapsed time? About 4 minutes.

5 stars. Simply doing what you are supposed to should not warrant a perfect score, but they get bonus points for not being Classic BMW, which still sucks.

OK… non car related reviews of customer service…

CompUSA (4 stars) and Best Buy(3 stars). Both their rating for simply doing what they said they would do. In specific, honoring their return policies, without making me feel as though I had committed some terrible act of heresy by asking them to honor said policy. Actually, CompUSA went a little above and beyond, which is why I rated them a little higher. I wish I could tell the story about what they did for me, but I think I might get someone in trouble, so I better not. Suffice it to say, they took care of me.

The next entry will be the reviews of the products that I purchased at CompUSA and Best Buy, respectively, and maybe something else, we’ll see how the mood strikes me.

For a variety of reasons:

John Kerry has been blasted on, of all things… his military record. (3 links)

George Bush has been declared, by John Kerry, of all folks, to be indecisive. (2 links)

Bush claims to be progressive on stem cell research. (OK, I’ll admit it, this one strikes me as a bit disingenuous, but he does have a point. Regardless, this line of research needs to be expanded)

The Rangers lost four in a row to the woeful Orioles, then beat the tar out of the Yankees.

The Cowboys cut their starting quarterback.

The Stars missed out on signing a star player because they were cheap. (Wait, that’s not unusual)

My Jimmy Buffett quote of the day has inadvertently become the Jimmy Buffett quote of the month.

Apparently, George W. Bush is now afraid of horses.

The bang to hype ratio on another M. Night Shyamalan movie is all out of whack (Sorry, that’s not unusual, either).

It’s August, and we’re still getting some rain.

UPDATE Adding to the strange week… Delaney seemed to spontaneously “learn” how to fetch today, at least a little. Many of you have heard me bemoan the fact that I cannot get her to fetch at all, and that it is a little tough to get her exercise because of that. Well, I went and got some balls (some that made noise, even some with particular tastes) to see if I could get her interested in anything. Nothing. No chasing, hell, she would not even pick them up. So I gave up. Later, out of nowhere… she brings me one of the balls. I throw it, she brings it back. What the hell? So from not fetching at all she learned at least the beginnings of the behavior almost instantly. Ridiculous. I think she’s a long way from actually chasing a ball in the park, but she’s at least fetching from one room over when I throw a tennis ball. She did it about 25 times tonight. Surprisingly enough, she will NOT do it if I have treats, to reward her for bringing the ball back. she wants the treats too bad, and ignores the ball completely. /shrug We’ll see if she remembers any of it tomorrow.

I’ll add more as I think of them.