Been a rough year really with everything going on..

but this past weekend, on Sunday, my kids went to turn on my Wii to play it and it didn’t come on, I just bought it on the 30th of March.. got it replaced no problem but still, not even a month old and it died. Of course I lost all of my game info, so everything I did up to that point was lost so now I’ll have to re-play all of the games, which isn’t a bad thing I guess, but some of them I finished already and had many things unlocked

Then my new 47" LCD HDTV decided to start going as well, got that the 20th of March… all the black went a pixellated green color, it was a Vizio brand, and after doing some research I found this to be a common problem with that model… so back to Costco I went, and of course they stopped carrying that model, and the only one in the same price range was a 46" model, but it would be stupid for me to get a smaller one since I’ve already got a 47" screen protector. I was talking to the customer service rep at the returns and he said maybe I could talk to the manager and try and get a discount on another 47", there was about a $400 difference between the one I got and the one they had in stock. The manager ended up giving me a $100 discount on the new TV since they couldn’t replace mine with the same model. It’s another Vizio, but it’s the newer model, the 120hz version with three speakers built-in, and motion smoothing or whatever they call it along with some other odd named features..

I don’t know, it was the first thing I ever bought at Costco and I’m not too happy that I had to return it a little over a month after getting it, and honestly they weren’t very helpful about getting a new one for me. They kept trying to sell me the smaller one even after I explained to them that I had the 47" screen protector already. I guess $100 discount is better than no discount though…

One observation was that the manager just didn’t seem that willing to even help me out at all, I guess he didn’t really have to help me, but you’d think since it was my first purchase with them, and I had to return it they might be a little more willing to help me out. The manager was trying to say he couldn’t give me any discount since it was a newer technology, which I don’t understand what that had to do with it at all, I bought the TV from them in good faith, and it didn’t work, I was out of a TV and they didn’t have a replacement for it, I would have been happy to get the exact model as a replacement honestly..

oh well, live and learn I guess

So, one of my articles hit Slashdot, Engadget, Boing Boing and many other sites the other day, and is still actually being linked from sites… we had so much traffic the site was having problems handling it, moved some stuff around and we were fine again, but Alexa has our rankings as worse, actually the worst it’s been in like a year… how the hell does that work?

Our stats says it’s like the most traffic so far this year, but yet Alexa has traffic and the ranking as going up, or getting worse, I don’t get that at all..

For the daily ranking we had 9,000 something, then for the day we got the traffic it gave us a 19,000?!? How do we lose 10,000 points in ranking when we were slammed with visitors?

There’s something funky going on there….

yeah so I just basically made a fool of myself in front of 300,000 people… yeah it sucked

I had a list of questions with my answers etc all ready that we were supposed to talk about and they decided that’s not what they were going to talk about…  totally caught me off guard with that.. I was like “what now?”

I was just like huh? what? when?

I mean I guess I can laugh about it now, but why would you have a set of questions then just not do them?

I didn’t even realize it was some Wall Street show either, they like wanted to talk business and how businesses and companies were doing this year during the holiday shopping season..

boy did that suck….

I hate Christmas, but I didn’t always, when I was young it was this magical time of the year (that sounds cheesy I know) but Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years were always a happy time.. then I guess that’s from a child’s perspective who didn’t see the stuff going on behind the scenes. What I do remember though were fun times, family gatherings, lots of food, and of course more family and presents.

I remember the shopping yes, it was fun trying to find that perfect gift for your friends and family, but I don’t ever remember people getting killed over a product on sale… where has the common sense in the world today gone? Since when is getting a few dollars off a product worth the life of an innocent person?

I look back and everything has changed, and sadly it’s not for the better, only worse, much worse.. I can remember a time when people left their doors open, their windows open and even their cars open, now though we’ve got security systems on everything, bars on the windows and even cameras monitoring our houses. When did society degrade to the point it has? When did people not care anymore about others? Now we have to worry about home invasions, car jackings, kidnappings, robberies and getting hit by a stray bulllet in a drive by, it’s to the point I don’t like my kids going out, I would be more than happy if they stayed at home and watched TV, played with their toys, or whatever, but just stayed home where they’re relatively safe.

We’ve evolved into a society where bad things are so common that we’ve become numb to them, so numb that a story like the guy getting killed by shoppers over a deal gets the second page of the paper and something about Brittany Spears (or fill in name here) gets the first page coverage. There was a time when we as a society would be outraged by something like this, but the majority out there aren’t. The person or persons out there who killed this guy know they did it, and those who walked over his body, and those that even stepped on the police and paramedics should be ashamed, and should take a step back and try and find their humanity again.

I’ve lost most of my faith in humanity long ago, I’ve seen too much and been a victim myself a couple times, that I’ve learned that there isn’t much hope left unless something drastic happens to change people and their attitudes towards their fellow humans. If we as a society don’t change soon, it’s going to get a lot worse…

I thought Christmas was a time for giving, but it’s turned into a time for greed, and not only by the companies that sell the products but by the consumers as well. Sure when I was younger Christmas was commercialized, but no where near the point it is today, Christmas has lost all of it’s meaning, the only thing there now is shopping, spending money, getting things, which is just greed.

I don’t quite understand why people who aren’t Catholic or Christian celebrate Christmas, sure there are those that are and do, but the meaning of Christmas has long since been forgotten and been replaced by a different meaning altogether…

I don’t know…

so, two days ago I posted about turing my furnace on because it was cold.. well it died yesterday, so I’m still cold… it was 32F outside when I got up this morning, and the part I need was just replaced about four years ago, and it’s going to cost me about $300 for it.. it’s just the motor that went bad, but of course I have to buy the entire housing setup as well.. and I won’t have any money till wednesday, so I guess we will be cold till then…

gack… I hate my life sometimes