Prices

There should be different prices based strictly on how tech-savvy a person is or not. Tech savvy? Less frustration, lower prices. Not tech savvy? Higher annoyance factor, higher prices. This isn't how things work, though. It seems like everybody pays (and charges) the same prices no matter their level of technical ability or incompetence. Unfortunately, teaching people who are not competent at technical things is a somewhat challenging endevour if you are relying on them for something other than their techinal skills.

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God

I am convinced by the weather forecasting combined with my umbrella carrying schedule that God has the same sense of humor as the jerk you knew in high school who would quickly, in a low tone, rattle off the phrase "A spincter says what," and even though it's not a question the jerk raises his voice at the end to indicate he expects you to respond.

Why does it never rain when the forecast calls for rain, but I am carrying my umbrella? Why does all the rain come when I am not carrying? Granted, it has rained today and recently but the rain has been almost completely absent when I've needed to be outside. Thus, irrefutable proof that God is a jerk.

Though, I think saying God is a jerk is an oversimplification. The Bible would have us believe that God made us in His image. What is scientifically more plausible is that We made god in Our Idealized image. Which is to say, We figured out all the least jerk-worthy traits were and then assigned them to the god character to make an example for Our children. Of course, the children don't need to know the actual truth about god's origin story... kinda like Marvel dug its heels for thirty years before it gave Wolvereine a proper origin... because the god character is meant to teach lessons of mortality, ethics, and generally not being a dick.

Which is why having god be an all-powerful deity was kind of a bonehead move. If We acknowledged that god has no more influence over the weather than we do (not counting the Chinese, who employed weather control methods during the most recent Olympics) then I couldn't blame him for this umbrella problem.

But I digress... I am actually happy it doesn't rain on me. I just wish rain would actually come when I'm outside AND carrying my umbrella. Real rain, too, not this wimpy Bullshit Seattle continuous dizzle crap.

That's all I have to say about that.

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Sony

This whole Playstation Network thing presents an interesting question concerning the rights of companies versus the rights of individuals. Sony is essencially making the claim that companies have no responsibilities beyond providing some service that is sufficient to some percentage of their customers. What I am refering to is the fact that Sony deleted support for OtherOS from their Playstation 3 product. This left users who purchased this product in part because of this feature with something that amounts to cheeseburger w/ a piece of yellow cardboard instead of the cheese.

Add to this is Sony's wishes that their customers shouldn't use their Playstation 3 systems except for the approved way. The approved way doesn't amount for whatever George Hotz did. I'm even willing to say Sony's request to censor Hotz website are reasonable to prevent these ways of using the Playstation 3 from "going viral". Unfortunately, Hotz can do whatever he wants to *his* Playstation 3. Sony needs to embrace that idea and they don't. It they want to stop letting "hacked" systems onto their network, fine. They have a right to control *their* network. But they shouldn't stop people from hacking systems they bought (and setting up their own networks).

But all that is unimportant. The key points now are that Sony has sold systems that they can't keep functional to millions of people who are playing by the rules. Sony has taken my money and given my personal information to hackers. Where is the outrage against Sony for running a system that could get hacked so easily? Or the outrage for disabling features that originally came with the system?
We need more outrage against companies that play by their own rules. Companies willing to change agreements should be punished. Agreement changing forces consumers into "sunk cost fallacy" situations. Consumers have a reasonable expectation for a company to maintain a minimal level of service quality and dropping below that level of quality should have harsh repercussions.

But that's not how the pro-business economy works. Sony will recover and may even learn from this. But customers will eventually forget and things will return to the status quo until the next time. Unfortunately, stuff like this is simply tolerated. Because what other choice is there?

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Running Month Four

Another month, another set of running data. I had an awful week off in April. I can blame that on some ruminations going on while my condominium was preparing to transition from "Developer Controlled" to "Owner Controlled". It appears as though elections will occur in June, but nothing is official yet.

Still, 50+ miles for the month. It would be conceivable for me to hit 400 miles by my wedding and 800 miles by the end of the year. Rock, rock on!!!

Choice Rights

I'm as much a fan of pro-choice rights as the next liberal, but whoever placed the sticker at the Otis Street Bus Stop in Downtown Crossing (Boston, MA) showing a set of diagrams illustrating how to perform an abortion on a one week old fetus is an asshole.

Seriously, the answer to defunded clinical abortions is NOT to teach people how to do this stuff at home... even if there are simple, low-risk methods (which I somehow doubt there are).