A journal of geekery, music and joy
For the second year in a row, we got a smoked turkey from Little Pigs, a BBQ joint in Socastee. It was so tender that trying to move it from the pan to the platter made it mostly fall apart into shards of turkey meat. I picked up a few bits and ate them and at one point realized “I totally am eating this turkey’s butthole. And it is delicious!”
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On the October 26th episode of Penn’s Sunday School, the boys were discussing self-driving cars and then Penn’s route to work at the Rio. The couple of streets mentioned give a hint as to which part of town he lives in. It then took me about 90 seconds with Google Maps to locate his house armed with that much information and what little I know about his house and nearby environment.
No, I won’t give you the address. This is part of the fun. I don’t plan to do anything with the information, it was just an exercise. I have thought the same about Marc Maron when he talks about his neighborhood but I never got around to dinking with it for him. It’s amazing how little information it takes to bootstrap this kind of search nowadays. Be warned, citizens.
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Two notable things from today’s podcast listening:
1) You can tell I’m making progress when a single day’s listening includes three episodes of Nathan Lowell’s dailyish podcast tommw.
2) Holy crapping crap! New episode of Michael Geoghegan’s Reel Reviews Radio! This has been on my Xmas request list to the podcast world every year for the last 4 or 5 years and now I got it. Thank you, Michael! I do believe that he might have set the record for longest time between podcast episodes at 5 years, 10 months. Check the paperwork on that.
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In this episode, I wonder aloud if I “mansplain” to my friends; I discuss the difference in how men and women tout their own achievements; I discuss how the much maligned “political correctness” is just an implementation of Will Wheaton’s “Don’t be a dick” motto; I talk about how I can’t even watch television anymore; I talk about my growing “nerd apathy”; I talk about my inability to consume media and my mainstream media lockdown.
Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, October 30 2014
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I had this exchange with my daughter the other day after having been to the Dia de los Muertos event at the Art Museum in Myrtle Beach.
Punkin: “Daddy, your calavera is pretty …”
Me: “Well thank you.”
Punkin: “Pretty crazy looking!”
Me: “Oh.”
The prodigal LG G2 has returned. In 7 hours, it hasn’t locked up or rebooted once so it clearly is better than it was before I sent it off. I’m glad to have it back but am now even more mad at LG. I wanted them to send me a refurb and just take the broken one back and refurbish it on their own time. Instead, they made me send this phone back, twice, and essentially gave me a refurb that was my own original phone. It had the same net effect as what I asked for except I didn’t have the use of it for 5 weeks. Screw you guys.
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I just preordered Tales of a Tesla Ranger. This anthology is a tribute to the late great PG Holyfield. I am looking forward to getting it on December 1st and reading it. It’s a very small gesture to buy a $5 Kindle book so I urge anyone with a connection to PG and his work to do it. Do it for the children! In this case, literally.
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I called LG about my still broken phone late on Friday October 17th. They sent me a prepaid shipping label and I dropped it in the Fed Ex box on Sunday October 19th. The phone had finally made it back to me earlier today. I watched the Fed Ex truck pull up to my house while I was in a meeting with customers in Europe so I couldn’t jump up and answer the door (which I never heard a knock or bell, only saw the truck.) Despite having previously filled out the pre-authorization for Fed Ex to drop off signature required packages, they didn’t do it this time. I still don’t have my phone.
I basically begged LG customer support to just send me a new phone and let me send this one back to be refurbished, which they did not do. Bear in mind, I sent this off having gotten it back the weekend prior from sending it to the same facility for the same problems which were not at all fixed. From Fed Ex inexplicably not checking the box on Monday to then weirdly not delivering it today, from LG making me send it back twice, every step of this has been painful. It’s early November and the last time this phone was able to be used was the last week of September. Considering the average lifetime of a smart phone, that’s a good chunk of its expected life to be out of the game.
On September 20th, I was extremely happy with LG and this phone. Now I am strongly leaning towards avoiding LG in the future. Perhaps I’ve been trained to have a high bar with Amazon level support and their “we’ll send you a new one, you send us the broken one and we’ll sort it out” strategy. In the brochure, everyone touts the quality of their warranty and service but wait until you actually try to invoke it. That’s when the real test begins, and LG is failing this one for me.
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