Verizon Hates Our Troops (IMHO)

It seems Verizon has a bone to pick with the military. I don't think they support our troops. What am I basing this inflammatory accusation on? Well, NONE of the Verizon phones support 24 hour format clock. The phones are capable of the feature, but Verizon has purposefully disabled this feature on ALL the phones they offer.(╥_─) If you didn't know, the 24 hour format is also called military time.

I'm not a computer guru or a rocket scientist, but I think NTP doesn't care what format the time is set to. I don't think mobile phones use NTP, but they must be using something similar. Unless they are idiots, I don't think they would lock it into a set format. After talking to Verizon tech support, she made it sound like it's what at least Verizon does. I guess, never underestimate human stupidity or Verizon's in this case or perhaps the telecom industry's. (If anyone knows about the time synchronization used by the telecom industry, please post a comment.)

I'm getting tired of script monkeys at Verizon telling me about nonexistent menu options. It seems like they are reading the stuff off the manufacturer's documentation rather than their crippled up the wazoo phone documentation. I had one tech support guy tell me to go to the time format change option to change the setting. Guess what, it doesn't exist!! (-.-¤)

If you have a choice in vendor, stay away from Verizon. They cripple their phones beyond recognition and usability. I'm not sure about other carriers. They might do the same. I can understand some of their crippling is motivated by greed ($.$), but some of the other things seem just asinine and just done to annoy and piss off end users. Or perhaps because they don't want to support our troops. Damn, pinko commies. (¬_¬)

CD & Manga [Updated]

I went out to lunch my friend and ended up at the used CD & book store. It looked like they remodeled. They have a big selection of DVD's now. I found a new CD for $7. (O.o) You find new CD's mixed in with the used ones if you look carefully. It's a rare find. I found a few more, but they weren't that cheap and they had tape and stuff over the sticker so I didn't get those. I did pick up a few CD's for $3 in the bargain section. I bought bunch of comic books for $1 each. (^_^)

One of those $3 CD packaging is in pretty bad shape. (T_T) But it turns out one of them is brand new. (^o^) That was super cheap. (^_^)

They are hilarious. One of them is らいか·デイズ (reika.days) and it conveys perfectly how I feel about smokers. It's just perfect without any words. Another one is ももいろ スウィ～ティ～ (peach color sweetie). I'm not going to translate this one because it's a little adult. It's natsumi's mistake in English. I guess this is why people make fun of foreigners' English. It's hilarious. (^o^) The down side of it is that it smells like smoke. (>.<) I guess the previous owner was a smoker. I guess I'll need to air it out.

If you want to know what it says plug the following into some translation from Japanese to whatever language you want. (Google Language Tools butchered it so it made no sense. YMMV)
母ー♡、抱き　抱き、ファック♡、ハグハグよなつみ、そっかー

(Blogger butchered this post so I had to fix it. (X.x) Damn Blogger spell check.)

RIAA Is Dumb, Mkay.

How's that for stating the obvious. You know I love commercials. Well, just the good ones or the ones with cute girls. (^.^);; I like the Levi's CM. I like the song in the new Hummer CM, just the song. The CM makes no sense. I had to scour the Internet to find out about these songs. The Levi's song was easier to "discover".

If you're wondering what the songs are, read on. Levi's CM uses a songs made famous by Johnny Cash. It's I Walk the Line. Their version is by Megan Wyler and it's awesome. The downside of it is that it's not available outside of the 30 second clip from the CM. The Hummer CM song is Ruth Brown's This Little Girl's Gone Rockin'. It shouldn't be this hard!! (>.<) If the RIAA was smart, they'd give us CM's like Japan. Over there you see a lot of singers peddling stuff and guess what, they use their own songs. Surprise, surprise, surprise... If watch the CM, you'll notice there's the title of the song in a corner. Imagine that!! (O.o) You watch the CM and instantly know who's singing unless you live under a rock and they tell you the title of the song. How much easier can it get? I guess some of you are wanting interactive TV... Well, it's easy enough. RIAA need to have the contract say the singer name and the song title must be shown. Should put something in there that says it must be readable. I imagine the ad company putting it in tiny, unreadable print. Also it wouldn't hurt to have it available for sale. Japan has CD singles of CM songs. I own a bunch. (^.^); The one that pops into mind is さかともえり (sakatomo eri) CM song 好きになったらキリンレモン (sukini nattara kirin lemon). (That's ともさかりえ (tomosaka rie) before she changed her name.)

The industry would sell more songs if they made it easily accessible or even available instead of suing dead people and whatnot. I would open an iTunes account just to buy the Megan Wyler song. Of course I would have to burn it and rip it to get rid of the DRM, but I really like that song and would open an iTunes account just for that.

RIAA, get smart and give us what we want, not what you want. Sigh, I think I'll go spend a few bucks at the used CD store to add to the music collection. Ha, you're not getting my money without getting rid of your DRM.

I Miss My Old Phone

I miss my old Panasonic mobile phone. It was small and had an LCD with about a dozen color options. I got it because it was cheap compared to the new color models. It was small, light, and pretty user-friendly. You hardly noticed it in your pocket, but that could be due to my preference for shorts. It had web capabilities, but I never used it since it's pain surfing on that small screen and I didn't need to. Also it was kinda expensive too. Now phones are getting ginormous with all kinds of bells and whistles and downright fugly. My old phone is J-P02 if you're curious. I think the J stands for J-Phone and P for Panasonic. I miss that phone. (T_T) I wish they would have some decent phones on the market. (>.<) I can't find a phone that's as cool as a six year old model. (>.<) Now that's just sad. (T_T)

If you're wondering who the heck J-Phone is, they are no more. They got bought out by Vodafone which got bought out by Softbank and will change their name in October. If you're still confused, it's a Japanese mobile provider.

Good CM

It's hard to see good CM on US TV, but I've come across a very compelling CM. It's for Levi's Skinny Jeans. The song is great too. I loved those Levi's CM with Jennifer Love Hewitt. If you've never seen it, look for it. It's Ggggrrreat!! They make good CM when they want to.

Image courtesy of Levi Strauss & Co. USA

Craptacular Packaging for Mediocre Cake [Updated]

I tried a slice of green tea cake from Paris Baguette. It was mediocre at best. Made me miss the green tea cake from Grand Vase. It came lying down in this crappy plastic package. I miss the paper packaging from Grand Vase where the slices of cakes were upright. Look at all the cream smudges on the packaging. (>.<)

The green tea cake was a fat little slice. It's about 2-3 times the size of the one from Grand Vase and also about twice as much. (I can't really remember, but I think it was 250 yen or so.) The slice from Grand Vase was creamy and yummy. The one from Paris Baguette was spongy and bland.

Photo uploads still not working. I guess Google doesn't want people to add photos to their blogs. Maybe I'll devise a work around...

Waiting on Secret Service

I just heard back from my Senator's office and they tell me that they finally got a response from the Secret Service. She told me that the Secret Service liaison said they will have a response in one to two weeks. You'd think a year is more than enough time to settle things or prepare a response, but apparently that's not enough time for the Secret Service. I wonder if they sit around eating donuts all day or something...