We all know how much fun it is to bitch on your blog, but honestly, man does not live by rant alone. So let me take a moment to spotlight outstanding service from a vendor I discovered online. A heads up: this post continues my recent trend of geeky pursuits, this time cars again.
My search for a steering wheel hub adapter for my soon to arrive steering wheel led me to nipponpower, a Miami, Florida shop. They’ve been around for a decade so all you seasoned tuners go ahead and have a laugh at the newbie discovering a longtime vendor. They get mega bonus points for a real human answering the phone. He was courteous, understandable, and he insisted on verifying my application with the manufacturer since my car wasn’t on the list of supported applications. After verifying, he arranged shipment of the part.
That was last week; the Post Office notified me of a parcel today. Nice! Prompt shipping! Additionally, the original guy I left a voicemail with returned my call to ensure my order had been completed satisfactorily.
Vendors, take note. This is the kind of service that I’ll pay a little extra for. Everyone interested in sport compact performance parts hit ‘em up.
Just a quickie cause I haven’t posted in a bit. I ran across a new low for sport car tuner wannabes while looking for performance parts for my car. Apparently, if you can’t afford to put a real turbocharger on you can still have that lovely blowoff valve whistle between shifts. The product depicted here is a vacuum pressure triggered audio sample that plays through loudspeakers as you drive. Go ahead and give the sample a listen! You get all this simulated turbo goodness for only $400. Will all the real tuners out there share a moment of silence with me?
Earlier this evening I stumbled across my Gary Puckett and the Union Gap Greatest Hits CD. In itself, that’s nothing to write home about. I have more than a couple of handfuls of stray CDs littering my flat. But perusing the chosen song selection, I noted two cover tunes: Neil Diamond’s Kentucky Woman and the Bee Gees To Love Somebody.
Contemporary artists have always put their own spin on each other’s songs. But Gary Puckett’s versions started me thinking about what other interesting covers I have lurking in my eclectic collection. So welcome to the Gary Puckett edition of Cover Me. Below, you’ll find Puckett’s cover of To Love Somebody. The song was the Bee Gees second single from their 1967 Polydor release, Bee Gees 1st. Andy and Maurice are still sorely missed. I’ll spare my usual analysis and comparisons (this time!) and simply let the music speak for itself.
I fully support freedom of association, but I have to ask… What’s up with the one Black guy whooping it up for Senator Clinton in all the West Virginia primary speech news clips? You know, the one with the banana yellow tee and his dreads tucked under the knit cap.
Those are not the four words Senator Clinton wanted to hear regarding the Indiana Primary. And I’m sure none of her supporters were waiting with baited breath for Mayor McDermott of Hammond, Indiana to spin her 2% lead (12:49 am, May 7) into another “comeback kid” victory yarn. Yet, here we are.
And as the last champagne corks hit the confetti-littered floors in North Carolina, I can’t help but look ahead to the twin uphill battles of selling Clinton supporters as well as Independents and open-minded Republicans on an Obama candadicy.
The battle lines are drawn and unfortunately the story is the same as it’s been for too many years. Blacks vs. Whites… men vs. women… youth vs. age.
Fear vs. hope.
CNN’s John King is working the magic map like a deranged Einstein discovering the Theory of Relativity. Honestly, he’s unintentionally drawn a smiley face around Gary, Indiana!
Regardless of the Indiana outcome, Obama still has a long road ahead of him. But with a continued tug-of-war, the Democratic Party may have an even longer one.
First, I participated in my state’s Presidential Primary today, and I had the pleasure of a close associate new to the political process joining me. Woo Hoo! I’m happy to report the elections office was busier than I’ve ever seen a polling place–even on general election day. It’s nice to see Blacks exercising a right many of our ancestors never had.
But this post is really about the sidebar banner change. It’s been a while since I geeked around with Linux, but I cut my teeth on Redhat. I used to run a headless server (DNS, SAMBA (file and print), Apache, and masquing NAT) in my living room. In fact, I wrote my first masquing firewalls using IPTABLES. I built custom kernels and compiled Firefox from source way before it became the popular alternative to Internet Explorer that we know and love today.
When Redhat offered Fedora as their community maintained distro, I hung on for a few whirls around the dance floor. Their accelerated production schedule soon had me switching to the longer life, quieter Suse. However, I’ve been away from Linux all together for a while now. But I’m once again considering the mighty penguin for my general purpose, multimedia friendly living room machine. I’ve also considered a Mac Mini, but persisitent rumors of its demise and the $600 price tag most likely rule that option out. I’ve downloaded an ISO of Fedora 8 to keep me busy relearning where everything in *nix land is until I can grab version 9. Meanwhile, enjoy the countdown banner and join me in celebrating free (as in speech and beer) and open source software.
Having a successful career in communications depends largely on the ability to communicate, successfully. It’s a simple idea that sounds obvious when put into words. But think about the last time you tried to explain something to someone who just couldn’t quite grasp the concept. Now consider the advertising industry. Imagine being tasked with convincing millions of people you know only through demographics research that your product is superior to a similar product already in use by more than 90% of the population who use such products. Finally, the target audience has to get the message in 30 seconds. Maybe it’s not movie of the week material, but that’s the dilemma faced by the creatives hired to promote Apple computers.
I never read comics as a kid. I discovered the publisher Vertigo, home to Neil Gaiman’s cultishly popular Sandman series, well after I became an adult. I immediately fell in love with Death. Older sister to Sandman’s central character, Morpheus, Death helps guide the recently departed from the corporeal world into the next realm. However, Gaiman’s Death is the antithesis of the traditional scythe-slinging, black-robed angel. She is an angel though: a pale beauty with jet black hair and real Suicide Girl cred. She’s also witty and smart, and like your best friend’s sister you’d love to take her out if you knew she wouldn’t be your last fling.
Having swept away the crumbs that real death leaves behind, one might wonder why this persona is so appealing to me. Other than her previously noted enticing qualities, I have no idea. But I still feel a bit calmer every time I see my poster of her. I finally got around to making a wallpaper (1280×800) of it. Enjoy it and remember to have the time of your life before you meet her.
An Internet acquaintance sends me a passel of emails on a fairly regular schedule. They are mostly the kinds of things we all get in our box: “CC’d” and “Forwarded” bits of humor, hope, and political ramblings. A recent letter included a modern retelling of the Ant and Grasshopper parable. The updated story imagines the grasshopper calling a press conference, pressing for tax hike legislation on ants, suing his oppressor, and eventually moving into the ant’s government confiscated house. In its telling, the new fable manages to impeach single-parent welfare recipients, a few current senators, and of course, grasshoppers everywhere. But the last line and so-called moral of the story is the real clincher.
Amid declining sales and slowing growth, Starbucks has unleashed a flurry of effort to rejuvenate its brand. Beginning with Howard Schultz’s return as CEO, further efforts have included retraining baristas, a new signature brew, and a curious return to their former logo seen above. Although the design change is temporary, it has been met with strong reactions from brand consultants and some customers. Brand Autopsy showcases a photo history of Starbucks logos, as well as some interesting reader commentary on the artwork’s alleged mythical and religious connections. However, before researching this post I made my own spooky discovery when I turned an empty cup upside down.
