mjm wired :: Rants

Battlestar Galactica is Bad Fiction

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:15:19 -0400

I've been watching BSG since it premiered as a mini-series. I admit that the show is entertaining and has just enough mystery/curiosity in it to keep me watching it. What I do find horribly annoying is that it's science-fiction is nonsensical (they have FTL, but nothing else). They try to merge in some quasi-allusion to religion (Neo in Matrix was bad enough). And the worst thing is that the characters have nothing concrete about them, they keep changing dynamically from a show-to-show basis. And somehow all the "critics" say that the show is sooo edgy and provocative. Hmmm, would they say that about a Soap-Opera???

I saw this post about "clues" being hinted in the recent episodes, and out of all the fanboys only one commenter wrote reply that made sense:

But seriously, what would I call this other than "hard sci-fi"? Bad fiction for one. The stories are so damn pat, and they've been following the "Issue of the Week" formula since half way through the second season. It's like some after school special in space, except with angsty speeches. Their idea of character development is to have people wake up one day and say "I'm going to cause unexpected, out of character mayhem today because dagnabit; everything's going to be back to normal tomorrow anyway." People need to stop mistaking conflict , emphatic voices, deus ex machinas and self-righteousness for good writing.

Yes, I'll bet he'll keep watching the show till the finale as will I. And while some fans have already admitted being immensely "sad" about the impending culmination, I, for one, will feel relieved that I have one less obligatory sci-fi show to watch.

New Dilbert Website

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:29:28 -0400

As part of my normal morning activities, I have to do a quick visit to Dilbert.com to figure out if I should laugh, cry or be depressed about my job. Today morning I visited the site to find some horribly broken Flash based website. I could not view the comic strip at all in Mozilla Firefox for whatever reason. Internet Explorer showed the strip, but the site was still a little quirky. I saw a "Save" button which I thought was pretty cool, until it told me I had to login to use that feature. Normally I could save the image with a right-click. The only slight positive was it showed in color, but I don't need Flash to do that, nor does it matter: the brilliance of Dilbert showed colorfully in black and white.

On the blog (which I can't see in Firefox) of Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams, he gushes about the new site:

We spent most of the past year, and a small fortune, to unwrap all the pent up Dilbert goodness and provide it to you for free, embracing the new realities of intellectual property on the web.

It seems as if I might be able search old strips which might be cool? Maybe "interact" with the script? See the old strips for free? Perhaps take the good with the bad.

To be fair the site says "BETA", but still, it disturbed my morning routine which is quite unforgivable considering Scott Adam's supposedly understands the cubicle culture.

Cell Phone Companies Suck

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:20:22 -0400

I hate cell phone companies. I truly do. Yesterday I got a call from my provider during dinner trying to get me to renew my contract. I signed up 2 years ago and in the past few weeks I've been getting nonstop mailers, emails and now calls trying to get me to renew.

Cell phone guy: "So how many minutes do you use per month?"
Me: "Like 100-200"
Him: "Hmm, so it looks like ... umm, good ... so how often do you exceed your minutes?"
Me: "Never"
Him: "Oh, never, well ummm ... so I can see you only have a very basic LG flip phone. I can upgrade your phone with a $150 discount to something with music or video. Would you like that?"
Me: "I am NOT going to get a new phone if it will require me to renew my contract."
Him: "Umm, well, umm, can I ask why you do not want to renew your contract?"
Me: "I don't understand why I am expected to get into a new contract when YOU GUYS can go and change rates and fees on me during the contract. Why did my messaging fee increase? Why did the data rate increase? What's the benefit of the contract to me?"
LONG PAUSE
Him: "Hmm, well, ummm, I can see you have 1 phone on your account, I can add a new line and increase your minutes for a low rate, would you like that?"
Me: "I don't have any reason for a second line for a single person."
Him: "Hmm, well, okay, I ... ummm ... thank you Mr. Miranda for taking the time to talk with me."
CLICK - Call Time: 5:32

I was waiting anxiously to mouth off about the rates and fees changes but for whatever reason I held back. I guess that's just the poor guy's job and I don't need to make his job any harder. But that doesn't change my view of how much I hate cell phone companies. I think they are evil, greedy, cheats, monopolistic, and more bad things.

I was glad to read a Wired Blog post about 10 Reasons to Hate Cellphone Carriers. It summarizes everything I don't like and then some.

Okay enough brooding. No one calls me anyways.