Archive for the 'Rant' Category

The Hidden Cost of Home Entertainment

Published by Rich on January 25, 2010 under Rant

At Christmas time we considered buying a new Blue Ray player. Last week we decided to get a Tivo. In recent years these devices have come down in price to what I consider reasonable.

Things like these have all kinds of hidden cost, but here is one you might not think about. Most modern equipment needs an internet connection to function properly. What many people may not know is that lots of Blue Ray players and DVRs do not come with built in WIFI. You could wire you house for Ethernet to get these online, but who really wants to do that? That means you have to buy a proprietary USB network adapter. An adapter you can only get from the manufacturer. These adapters usually run between $50 and $80 dollars.

If you do consider getting one of these "Home Entertainment" devices just make sure you know how it connects to the internet and if you will need one of these adapters.

The Price of Unrealistic Expectations

Published by Rich on January 20, 2010 under Family, Rant

About 10 years ago all our friends were getting married. Five years ago they were all having kids. Now, many them are getting divorced. Rachel and I have noticed with this trend that it is the women in the relationship who are unhappy and looking to get out. We’ve mused on the cause of this and how do we improve the sanctity of marriage again. In these musings, We’ve come to the conclusion that in many of these cases, the root cause of the problem is unrealistic expectations. Expectations of what a man is, what a marriage is about, and what women are really looking for.

Apparently two-thirds of all divorces are initiated by women. With that fact and our musings about divorce I wanted to ask these questions: What shifts in society need to occur so that women are happy in marriage? What can be done to help combat the Twilight Effect, Princess Syndrome, and Unrealistic Marriage Expectations?

In an aside. While researching this post I thought I coined a new term "Princess Syndrome". A quick search proved me wrong though.

Halloween Prank Gone Too Far

Published by Rich on October 30, 2009 under Editorial, Rant

Halloween is not just for treats, it’s about tricks too. Most everybody I know loves a good Halloween prank, there are even sites dedicated to them. Today in my hometown was an example of Halloween pranks gone too far. The Indianola high school is closed today because vandals damaged the radiators on 14 buses last night. You can read more about it here. My Facebook feed has been consumed with the news today. Not only does this disrupt peoples schedules, having to find last minute baby sitting, etc… but the day will have to be made up at the end of the year. That’s not to mention the cost of parts for the buses and the overtime paid to repair them.

I feel sorry for the parents of the kids that did this. If the vandals are caught, what do you think is an appropriate punishment?

State of Broadband in Rural Iowa

Published by Rich on August 17, 2009 under Family, Me, Rant, Work

I work full time for AOL, LLC and telecommute to work. Because of this I need to have broadband in my home. We currently live in the smallish town of Indianola, Iowa and we use Mediacom for our broadband access. The current high speed package we have is $50 a month (7MB download, 512KB upload, and no usage cap). I typical average about 300MB up and 2GB down a day. We’ve been in the process of building a new home less than ten miles away, about 5 miles outside of the city limits. I’ve been trying to find out what kind of broadband options are available in the area so I can figure out what carrier we would have for the home office. This has lead me to discover just how abysmal coverage is in rural areas and just how difficult it is to even find out what’s available in my area. Here is what I’ve been able to find out:


View House Locations in a larger map

An interesting side note: I started working on this post over the weekend. OM Malik has two stories today about the state of broadband in the US.

Code Monkey

Published by Rich on April 4, 2008 under Me, Rant, Work

Jonathan Coulton’s “Code Monkey” is a niche song about software engineers. It describes the feeling you get from time to time as a developer. I have to admit that I use to get these feelings quite a bit, but since I’ve changed jobs I don’t feel this way nearly as often. Sometimes you still just have to say:

Code Monkey get up get coffee
Code Monkey go to job
have boring meeting with boring manager Rob
Rob say Code Monkey very diligent
but his output stink
his code not functional or elegant
what do Code Monkey think
Code Monkey think maybe manager oughta write goddamn login page himself
Code Monkey not say it out loud
Code Monkey not crazy just proud

Here is the full song

Jury Duty Rant

Published by Rich on September 10, 2007 under Rant

Last Month I was on call for county jury duty. This was the first time I had to do jury duty, and it really showed me how inefficient the system is.

Talk about a huge waste of time and resources. Since this was just for county duty I don’t know if the federal process is the same, but it really illustrates what is wrong with our judicial system.

You tube posts

Published by Rich on June 25, 2007 under Rant, Videos, Website

I’ve been trying to post a video from YouTube onto this blog. I’ve tried three different times, and each time I get the message that the video will be posted shortly. The videos have never appeared. First why can’t youtube do this more interactively instead of in batch later in the day. Second, if there is a problem, let me know about it. Do not just fail silently!

Red State Living

Published by Rich on June 19, 2007 under Rant

I’m ready to move to a red state. Let me preface this rant by saying that I view myself as a libertarian, although I tend to have more Republican leaning views than Democratic. I also want to note there is some sarcasm in this post, so be on the look out.

For the first time in more than 40 years the Democratic Party controls Iowa’s Governor’s office, Senate, and House. To commemorate this achievement the government raised taxes.

Taxes on cigarettes were raised a dollar a pack. This raise was said to be for health care related to cigarette smoking. They then tried to use the money for “universal health care”. I’m absolutely for helping insure the uninsured. I just don’t like the way the money was appropriated for one cause, and then people tried to use it for another. This is our government at work, folks.

This is just one example of how the democratic legislation raised taxes this year. They also created a one-time tax amnesty. Just like the one-time tax amnesty of 1985. They also tried to tax digital downloads. Because taxing the Internet is how you entice kids to stay in this state. There is also a vote in July to raise the local option sales tax. So what do we get for all these tax increases? We received a 10% increase of spending over last years budget. woohoo.

Dad’s Section

Published by Rich on June 4, 2007 under Parenting, Rant

I’ve decided to start posting a regular feature about things that drive me crazy. I’ve categorized them as rants if you want to see them all. This weeks rant is on the father (dad) section of parenting magazines. I swear these have to be written by moms. They are almost always about how you can support your wife in parenting your children. They are never about how to be an involved father. Never about the interaction between fathers and their children.