Rants!

My rantings…

YouTube Says microUSB Cables are Inappropriate and Offensive Now

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So I recently did a 58 second long video of me unpacking a pack of three microUSB cables and YouTube flagged it as inappropriate and offensive content and put a strike on my account for it.

Really?  What is offensive about microUSB cables? Someone please tell me!

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YouTube of course won’t answer me as to what is offensive or inappropriate about microUSB cables.

In the video all I said was the name, price, where you can get them, and I showed the cables but somehow it was offensive. I don’t understand and I don’t know why they won’t tell me what the reasoning is here?!

All my videos are really the same I unbox and sometimes do video reviews but now all of the sudden an unboxing or unpacking is offensive to the powers that be at YouTube.

it makes no sense to me.

Getting Paid to Review Products is Unethical

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I’ve been reviewing products since 2004 and I’ve literally done thousands of them. I stopped counting at 1,000 and that was years ago, it was fun to count but then after that many it’s just tedious then to keep counting.

Recently Amazon has sued a bunch of people over paid reviews, guess you could call it reviewgate2015 and I think it’s a good thing.

I’m Sick, There’s Something Wrong with Me

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I’ve debated posting about this as I’m a very private person and I don’t like sharing private things on the internet. I guess this is a rant because I’m angry, but it’s a confession maybe as well.

I’m sick, and no one can tell me what’s wrong with me.

I’m 43 years old and my body is betraying me, at least it feels that way.

They think it’s possibly MS, but they don’t know, all they say is ‘it can’t be ruled out yet’.

Been to medical doctor, he’s baffled, sent me to neurologist and he’s baffled. Neurologist sent me for tests, all kinds of blood work been done but really showed nothing except some vitamin deficiencies which would not cause my problems. Have more tests scheduled, want me to get EEG which I’m going for tomorrow, then he thinks I’ll need a spinal tap. I can’t have an MRI since I have plates and screws holding my skull together so I have to get spinal tap. Not looking forward to that.

I twitch randomly, especially when I’m relaxed. The twitching is really annoying.

My hands shake, my fine motor skills aren’t what they used to be. I have to concentrate hard on what I’m doing to do anything detailed.

Right now it’s hard to type this as my left hand just doesn’t want to work. It’s like I have to force it to type. And they’re both trembling, the left is worse though. I’ve been using a computer since I was like 8 years old and my typing speed is down to about hunt and peck right now and all kinds of mistakes.

My left hand/lower arm is like it’s asleep all the time, pins and needles like feeling. It’s always there, sometimes worse some days, but always there faintly. Sometimes it’s actually numb.

I drop things all the time now with both hands. I haven’t broken any dishes in a while though so I guess that’s a good thing. I have to concentrate on what I’m holding to make sure my hands stay closed on it so I don’t drop it. I still drop things though all the time, thankfully they aren’t breakable things I’m dropping…

Have good days and bad days, sadly the bad days far outnumber the good days.

I love to cook, was a chef, but I’m nervous now about using a knife. Afraid I’m going to twitch at the wrong moment and cut off a finger. That wouldn’t be a good thing I don’t think….

I get horrible headaches a few times per week. No it’s not my eyes, been checked, prescription is fine.

I can’t walk really now. A few years ago it started where my knees would just give out, and it’s progressed to the point now where I literally fall to the floor numerous times per day. I have to walk what I call ‘straight-legged’ where I don’t bend my knees or they just keep going and I fall. Even walking like that isn’t really helping anymore either so I use a cane. I’m afraid it’s going to come to the point where a cane won’t be enough either, at least that’s where it’s progressing.

I’m 43 years old and I need a cane and I don’t like it.

Three doctors have said I can’t work, so I can’t pay my bills. I don’t know what to do. Getting shut off notices now as I can’t pay utility bills. Wife works but her income is not enough and no one can help me.

I have no family I can ask for help, really I have no one. 

I thought about doing one of those go fund me things to try and get some help, but I’m afraid people wouldn’t believe me as there are so many scams out there now. Then again, why would someone just give money to a stranger? Then again there are good people out there I guess, or at least I hope there are, I have to believe that there are still good people out there anyway.

Yeah I applied for disability and was denied. I see these people out there who are clearly not disabled but yet they get it. Me, I have real, actual physical/neurological problems and I’m denied. It’s not fair. I do have an appeal hearing coming up but that still not going to help now, even if I win it could be another year before I even see benefits from them.

I don’t know, but there it is, it’s out there now…

Netflix New Interface Redesign is Horribly Not User Friendly

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I love my Netflix. I have cable, Verizon FIOS, but I can’t remember the last time I turned on the box to actually watch something. There’s never anything on and the commercials are ridiculous so most everything I watch is through Netflix. I have Amazon Prime too and I watch a few things on there that I can’t get on Netflix but I’ve got a feeling I’ll be watching it more.

I’ve been a Netflix subscriber for many years and I’ve dealt with the price increases, it’s worth it to me as I more than get my money’s worth from it.

I also dealt with the last interface update and didn’t like that one either but I got accustomed to it as they did revert my list back to the way it was originally and I could go to a page and there was everything. The last interface wasn’t that bad, at least you could go to a page for the movie or show, but now you can’t do that it seems.

This new interface is horrible, it’s dark and you can’t go to a shows page anymore.

I’ve been catching up on SHIELD and there is no page for it anymore with the episode listings. You have to actually click on it, it starts playing, you have to hit the X button up in the corner and then you’ll see sort of a list of episodes which you have to scroll through. What the hell was wrong with the old way as just having the list of episodes there for you? (oh wait I just noticed an arrow there at the bottom when you hover that opens the overview and episode listings, not exactly intuitive is it?)

What’s with all the clicking I have to do now? Before I could go to a page and there it was. Just hover over and click ‘more info’ and I was taken to the shows page with everything right there for you. Now I have to hover, click the arrow, click the episodes, click the ‘more like this’, click the details, and of course I have to click the arrows to scroll through the episodes. Who thought it was a good idea with all the clicking now? What was wrong with having everything on the same page for you to EASILY read with basically one click?! Reviews are now overlaid on the screen so more clicking there yet again. Going through it, it’s hover, click (to open/expand), click (episodes), click,click (to scroll through episodes, with more clicks for more episodes as it only shows 5 at a time ), click (to start episode), click (more like this), click (details), click (reviews), click (to close reviews), click (to close expanded view). It’s basically 10 clicks to watch a show?! Even more clicks if you want to find a certain episode to watch as the screen only shows 5 eps at a time. Who though that was good idea?

And what happened to clicking the section title on the homepage? I used to be able to click something like ‘New Releases’ or ‘Watch it Again’ and it would take me to that page so I can see them and sort them as well. Now I can only scroll through them left or right on the main page. Some of them you can click, but the ones I want to be able to click I can’t.

Who thought this new interface was a good idea?

Also the interface is broken:

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Where’s the rest of the screen? And no I can’t scroll anymore. That’s the sci-fi section that I sorted A-Z, so where’ the rest? It’s just cut-off, I thought there was supposed to more?!

I refreshed the page and got this:

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A little more but that’s it?! It just stops at ‘Big Fish’!  Where’s the rest of the movies? Where are my movies?

I do most of my watching on my PC and it’s not exactly a mouse friendly site. It might be easier to use on a tablet, but on desktop, no it isn’t.

Also, why is it so dark? Nighttime mode I guess right?

As I said I’ve been a Netflix customer for many years and through everything I’ve dealt with it, never really thought about seriously cancelling my membership until now. This new design is just horrible and it makes the user do more work than they should have to.

I Need A Sponsor for My Site…

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So I’m on GoDaddy hosting and when you buy one of their hosting plans they advertise unlimited storage but apparently they’ve taken a page from cellular companies and their unlimited isn’t really unlimited at all.

TestFreaks the Blog closed, they decided to focus on the business to business aspect of things and they basically gave me the blog but I had to change the name and we came up with Technogog, which is fine. To get started I picked a GoDaddy shared hosting account, one of the middle tiers and I upload my site and got a warning that I was running out of resources and so I spent the money and upgraded the server to resource level 3 from the default thinking that might solve my problem. More ram, dual CPU etc and it didn’t fix the issues apparently.

I found out that there’s some fine print I didn’t read, and GoDaddy doesn’t have an asterisk by the ‘unlimited storage’ that they advertise but I found the fine print and I found out that there’s a limit of 250,000 files and folders you can have on the server, which I’m at about 211,000 right now. I called then to see what I can do and the guy I talked to was actually very helpful and I need to move to a new server it seems but I don’t have the money as I’m not making money since the server can’t handle the site now. (decent servers are expensive and at this point in time I would be paying more than I’m actually making and can’t do that) The site crashes every time I post something now, it’s annoying. Having a site and not having it be able to be visited can be a problem when it comes to making any money from it.

Since I don’t have any money to upgrade I wonder how hard it would be to get someone to sponsor my site? I’ve never looked into it but I’ve learned it’s possible.

I was looking into new hosting providers and found that Namecheap actually has a sponsorship program but it says it can take several weeks for them to review the submission. Yeah I get it, they’re busy, but I need a server now so I can actually post content so I can get visitors so I can maybe make some money.

I don’t know, this is just a rambling post I guess, just complaining, but I’m allowed as it’s my site, but as of now I don’t know what to do unless I come into some money.

If I stayed with GoDaddy they have specific WordPress hosting without the files and folders limitations.  Right now they have a special on it for the middle tier of just $9.99 per month, it’s regularly $19.99 per month. So if I had about $120 I could get it for a year but I’m worried as there is a limit of 250,000 monthly visitors. I’m not sure what my exact visitor count per month is right now as I thought a plugin was the issue with the site so I didn’t have Google analytics on for a few days and of course the site being down all the time doesn’t help either. According to the Cpanel metrics on  GoDaddy for the site I got about 190,000 visitors in December and as of yesterday it’s a little over 170,000 visitors. So that middle tier wouldn’t work as it only has a 250,000 limit so I would need the highest level which is on sale for $29.99 per month which is regularly $69.99 per month so I would need at least $360 for a year of hosting to be locked into that price. That level of hosting says ‘millions’ of visitors per month, whatever that means, but it’s better than a 250k limit right?

I wonder if I could get an advertiser or sponsor for this, and it doesn’t have to be GoDaddy hosting of course, that was just an example.

If I could like sell a couple advertising spots for like $500 per year that would be awesome, I could lock in the price and pay for a couple/few years in advance with that GoDaddy WordPress hosting. Any takers?  A nice 300×250 sidebar banner ad?

I don’t know what to do at this point…  blah…