SteveWords

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Chicago at Timmy’s Toy

Well-Mary and I went to see Chicago at Timmy’s Toy (The new name for for Tim’s Toyota Center in Prescott Valley) tonight. A very interesting and LOUD experiance! Chicago as a band is still very good. The sound guy, to put it sucinctly-sucked! The first several songs that they played were practically unrecognisable as to what they were because they were so loud that the sound system was in total distortion mode most of the time! He had lots of watts and used them all-all the time! There were a few songs in the middle that he came down slightly on and they became slightly easier to hear, but by and large the concert was a great dissapointment to me. In the beginning I wasn’t sure that the band on stage was really Chicago. They sounded a little like them, they were introduced as the real Chicago, but you couldn’t prove it by me. Even now they could be easily a fake. The sound was that bad!

Maybe I am too much of a critic. I have been in the sound and video business for almost 40 years. I know what I like and what I don’t like. I have been to many shows that were really messed up by a bad sound guy. I good example was a Beach Boys concert that I went to a few years ago. The same thing happened. It messed up the whole show for me, because it was just loud, not good. Having new, really good sound equipment doesn’t nessessarily make for good sound. The key is the guy who runs it. He will make or break the show.

The other side of this is shown by a show that I went to quite a few years ago at the Mile High Middle School. It was called Prescott Junior High then. There was this band that came in with this really raggetty sound system. The speakers were patched up and re-glued. The boxes were scuffed up. The microphones were an eclectic collection. You would think that these guys would sound bad. I was surprised when they started playing. They sounded really good! The sound was clear and you could hear all the instruments really well!

This proves to me that maybe the big boys should be a little more careful when they hire a sound guy. They need to remember that a good sound guy makes the show wonderful. A bad sound guy makes the show stink and gives the band a bad rep. Something to think about!

What’s your take on this? Were you there at the Chicago concert in Prescott Valley? Please leave your comments here or send me an e-mail at steve@angelfireaz.net . I would love to hear from you!

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Do You See The Vista?

Miscosoft’s new successor to Windows XP is called Vista. I have been hearing a lot about Vista lately. If I used a PC would I buy Vista? Probably not. Here’s why. (Remember that I use a Mac to do most everything I do. My opinion might be slightly slanted-or refreshingly observant as a spectator, as I have no intentions of ever becoming a Windoze user in a regular basis, other than repairing them.)

1. Vista, from what I have learned is just a rehash of XP. Windows XP really has a lot of problems with malware and other issues like drivers, security and crashing. Will Vista be any better? Probably not if it is only a bloated XP.

2. Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make Vista so that you can’t use one copy on multiple computers. So much so that there will probably be millions of people making the change to Linux or Mac OSX. Windows is probably good only if it is free. Why pay for problems when you can get them for free? Linux is free and Ubuntu is a good choice to rid yourself of the Evil Empire. Although Linux is ready for corporate environments where everything is carefully controlled by fearful administrators, Linux in the home is not quite ready yet. It will be ready when we don’t have to use the command line to do basic tasks like install Flash into Firefox. Apple, with OSX is already there. OSX is based on Unix like Linux is, but the user interface is very good and everything is easy to install and uninstall. All this makes getting away from Windows easier every day!

3. Microsoft is cocky! McAfee and Norton as they are now won’t work in Vista. Even though I don’t use either, a whole lot of clueless people will be very lost without their old virus checkers. This will slow adoption considerably. Maybe M$ needs to realize that people do not change easily and will want Norton and McAfee to protect them. Even though there are other better free solutions the two giants still prevail. and will continue to. To make Vista really work and be a success, Vista needs to be more like Linux and Mac and be impervious to viruses.

4. Vista requires a very fast, heavy duty computer to run on. If you bought your Dell or HP cheapie computer at Wally World, most likely it won’t run Vista very well, even if it is only a year old. It won’t have have enough speed or memory or the special video card required to run Vista correctly. Buying a cheapie computer today will leave you unable to upgrade.

Microsoft, in my opinion is crusin’ for a brusin’. Mac and Linux are very much on it’s tail and gaining market share daily. In the server market Linux is king. In the graphics and creative market Mac is king. 40% of laptops sold today are Macs. The percentage of total machines in use is now about 10% Mac and growing every day. This leaves Microsoft in quite a position as their solution is still to try and be more Maclike. Why not just buy a Mac and solve the problem? It seems that the future belongs to the Unix-based machines, not to Windows.

What do you think? Leave me comments!

Politics Ain’t Fun!

Have you been ignoring the political ads recently? Have you been disgusted? Alarmed? Feel like vomiting on a candidate?
I have-all of the above. Maybe we should vote for someone who isn’t smearing his opponent. Do you really want a guy that can sling the mud like that? Do you want a guy who thinks that smear is more important than issues? Think seriously when you vote. You might end up with someone who really knows nothing about things that are important like the real issues beyond who screwed who. Would an honest guy smear his opponent like this? Probably not. Leave your ideas and opinions here and I will write more!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

An Interesting Scam by the State of AZ!

The State Of Arizona is making millions off you and you probably don’t even realize it! This scam is a rather interesting one. Just buy an item using a manufacturer’s money off coupon. Here’s how it goes: Say you bought a mattress set that was originally $500.00. You have a coupon for $50.00 off. What do you have to pay tax on? The tax on the $450.00 that you actually paid for the item, or the original price of $500.00?  You guessed the tax on $450.00 didn’t you? WRONG!!! You have to pay the tax on the full $500.00 price! You end paying tax for something that you didn’t pay for. Yes! You get the honor of paying the tax on the $50.00 that you saved with the coupon! Kinda rips doesn’t it?

The interesting part that this is all perfectly legal because of this ADOR rule:

R15-5-129. Discounts, Refunds, and Coupon Redemption

C. When coupons issued by a manufacturer are redeemed by a retailer the amounts refunded to the purchaser are not permissible as deductions from the selling price of articles sold by the retailer. In these cases, the gross selling price is taxable.

It took me a while to find this out as I originally thought that the store was ripping me off. It even took me three calls to the Department of Revenue to find someone who actually knew about this!

This is just the type of thing that needs to be changed. Our government looks very greedy when they do this type of thing. Any Idea how we can fix the problem??? I would love to hear your comments on this!

Monday, August 21, 2006

An interesting scam from way back!

This is not the latest scam, but it deserves mention anyway.

Quite a while back my daughter Amanda got caught stealing a pacifier from Fry’s food store in Prescott. The pacifier was worth a little over $2.00. They of course made a big stink over this trying to get me to sign documents that implicated me in her crime. I loudly refused to do this. They also made me pay for the pacifier, which they kept using “evidence” as an excuse. The most interesting part was they also tried to collect a “fine” of $100.00 which I refused to pay, because they had no legal right to collect fines. The only thing that saved me was my strength of will to thwart their intents. I think most people would cave under this type of pressure. I bet that Fry’s made thousands from this scam!

This was over 10 years ago. Are they still trying to pull this type of stunt? Leave me comments and your experiances on this!

Politiks-An answer to comments…

Thanks for your comments! It’s nice to see that someone is actually reading my drivel! As to the politics and stuff, I agree with you at there being probably way too many screamers out there. These days they (the government) would probably put you on some stupid terrorist list if you say too much. A couple of weeks ago an aquaintance of mine dropped out of the blue and tells me that I am on the Yavapai County domestic terrorists list because I faught CPS and won many years ago! Is there even such a list? He told me he would drop off a copy. He hasn’t yet....

You ever know. If it is that easy to get on “the list” maybe everyone is a terrorist anyway! What do you think?

I would love to hear from you!

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

I need feedback!

Should I make comments on political BS here? Please leave me comments as to what you think!

Thanks!

Get out of real estate now!

Several months ago my wife and I were on one of our walks and we happened on a duplex for sale. I grabbed one of the info sheets on the pole outside and began reading. Shock hit! This very average building was for sale for $350,000.00! It was built about 1 year before for something like $180,000.00. I decided to run the numbers on this property. The payments on a standard 30 year loan were about twice what it rented for! There was no way that you could double the rent and still find tenants willing to pay that much. There was no way to get a profit out of this property as an investment. I tried everything that I could think of to find a way to make out on this property. This is-to me-a sign that real estate has finally hit the wacko level in our area.

Now the news is saying that house sales are down. I wonder why?

Nerd Note! Lightnin’ and your computer…

This is the time of the year when thunderstorms hit our area. Lightning is your computer’s worst enemy. So you have a surge protector in the power line. Yee-haw! Think about how big a lightning bolt is. See how big your surge protector is. Nuff said, eh? A surge protector helps for little surges, like when your refrigerator starts. A lightning bolt is humongeous.

How do you protect yourself? Easy! Just unplug everything when lightning is near. You can tell the approximate distance away of a strike by counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder sound. Each second is one mile away. If the strike is a couple of miles away you are relatively safe. Any closer and it’s unplug time. This also includes the computer, the monitor and all accessories. You also need to disconnect the modem or ethernet connection as lightning also destroys bunches of modems every year.

Also think about the other things in your home that are electronic. Your TV, clock radio, stereo, VCR, etc all need to be unplugged too. They are in the same position as your computer when it comes to surges, and could even start a fire and burn your house down!

If you are going to be gone you also might want to be disconnecting everything just in case!

Monday, August 14, 2006

Always read the fine print!

Living today is always rather interesting. There seems to be a scam around every corner. Remember when marketing was an honest affair such as buy one get one free? No longer! Every time you see an offer you must really check it out to make sure the deal is really a deal. In this section I will write about “deals” that I find and tell you where the con is. Feel free to comment on any of these!

Nerd Note!

Nerd Notes will be about computer use or repair issues.

First of all I should warn you that I do not consider myself to be a nerd or geek. I am that way in some ways, but computers are not my life. At the end of each day I shut everything off. I see no reason to waste electricity keeping something on when I am not using it. It just costs money that I don’t want to spend. I even go around after my son and turn stuff off that he leaves on. I probably turn off 2 or 3 times the stuff that I turn on! A geek leaves his computer stuff on all the time and computers are the main focus of his life. I have many, many other things in my life!

Should you turn your computer off or leave it on? My feeling is to turn it off when you are not using it. Some people have told me that turning a computer off and restarting it every day makes it die earlier. How many computers die from hardware failure? Practically none. Windoze needs regular restarts to work right. A Mac doesn’t, usually. I have never in all my years in computer repair seen a regularily maintained machine that was harmed by turning it off. Give your computer a rest and it will last longer and work better!

Category note. What this is about!

Beginning notes for catagory-about me and the way I think.

I need to explain where I come from in this category. The computer that I use everyday is a Macintosh. Most of these entries will be typed on my MacBook. I do everything from video editing to web page design to audio program creation on my Macs. I own several of them that I use everyday.

I also own several Windows PC machines. I have tried all the things that I use my Macs for on them. I have one Windows 2000 machine that I built just for video production. I use it for converting film to DVD. It does a passable job at this but it is a rather badly thought out program. It makes a DVD that works and looks OK, but it is hard to use and slow. I have been in computers and networking for over 20 years but I still have yet to get a decent video signal out of this machine, even though it has the best video card available in it.

The Macs on the other hand, with a Sony video converter connected by FireWire, put out a pristine video signal. There has never been any problems in this area. It just works and works very well. This is the way things generally work with a Mac.

I have been involved in computers for a long time now and have used Macintosh, Windows, Linux, Amiga, BSD, and a bunch of other operating systems over these years. When I say something, I don’t just blow wind. My decisions and opinions have been formed through experiance on these platforms. When someone tells you that they hate one operating system or another, just ask them how much they have actually used the system that they speak of in the last 5 years. If they are truthful with you, you will have a better idea of where they are coming from. Then make your opinion from this information.