Today marks the one year anniversary since myself and my wife have given up smoking cigarettes!  Woot!!

If you didn’t understand the two words in the story title, then you are an example of what I’m talking about.  They are not big words, they are not hard to understand.  I feel our society is degrading.  Yet most kids I know don’t know what those words mean and are not capable of spelling them correctly or even using them in a proper sentence.  I play online games and I have no need to hear someone actually pronounce lol {lawl} over ventrilo.  It’s bad enough to try to decipher the hieroglyphics of all these acronyms in the chat window.  How about actually laughing?  It simply frustrates me the shortcuts we make and take to sound cool.

Before I go much further, let me explain the picture.  I sincerely love Scott Kurtz, and his work with webcomics.  However, his character lolbat emphasizes everything I hate about today’s society.  Between text messaging, instant messaging, video games, we’ve created an entire sub language that completely undermines our American Language.

Every day I see new useless words make it into the dictionary.  In my youth, we constantly said “Ain’t, ain’t a word”.  Simply because the word ain’t was not in the dictionary.  It is now.  Along with “bling” and “phat” and a thousand useless other words.  Granted, I’m not perfect, I’m sure my English teacher is cursing me right now, but at least I make a serious effort to get it right.  More than most of our society does now.

It drives me insane to have to talk with my kid’s teacher and hear them speak street language.  When they have to “Ax me ’bout my child’s behavior.”.  How can I take my child’s education seriously?  I actually pay taxes for this?  If they complain that they don’t make enough money teaching, perhaps it’s due to the fact they hardly make a serious effort to truly educate our youth.  If I could afford private education, I certainly would go that route.

This has led to the work place as well.  I can’t enter a store or many fast food restaurants without seeing an employee jabbering away on their cellphone.  I remember several handbooks that said “personal phone calls are not permitted”.  They will talk street talk on the phone while ringing up my coffee and not say two words to me.  Or look at me like I’m wasting their time and say “Dat it?”.   The atmosphere certainly isn’t conveying  any kind of welcome.

And all of this is worsened by the fact that we now have computers, cellphones and all sorts of easy access to one another that makes it so our society doesn’t have to even bother to get up and go out to be social.  We sit at home, or in the car or at work, talking, texting, messaging or {ahem} blogging.  We’ve gotten lazy to, dare I say, epic proportions.  This laziness carries over into our brains and we don’t even try.  We don’t fight our schools for their poor education to our children.  We accept the new useless words in our language because “that’s what everyone is using now”.  When will the madness stop?  Will we in a hundred years have a totally new language?  Will American English become an ancient dialect we used to speak?

It constantly amazes me that I say a simple word like “facade” that I think my high school kid should already know and use.  Yet she has no idea what I just said.  She’s even in journalism.  Which leads me to think that someone who writes about things like a person who is hiding their true identity.

Well it may not make a difference to the masses in general, but I certainly try to do my part by helping my kids understand words and their definitions.  Help them with grammar and spelling.  I refuse to talk with people who won’t speak or write English properly.

However, if all else fails, you can communicate with your children using this handy translation tool.  Just don’t use it when writing me.

Just got done deleting my Twitter account.  Just like all the other social networking hotspots, it’s just not for me.  All it is, is a commenting tool really.  You make comments in 140 characters or less.  Supposedly answering a simple question, “What are you doing?”.

Well, my life doesn’t need constant updates, I don’t need people knowing every little thing I do.  So it’s either not getting updated, or there’s not enough room to really say what’s going on.  I am not such a social tard to have a constant need to twitter I’m having coffee at Starbucks from my smart-phone.  Who cares!  Whatever makes you people feel good and self important I guess.

Not to mention, many of my subscribers where bots.

That’s what this blog is for.  If I feel I need to say something, I have limitless room to say it.  I have time to think out my thoughts carefully and can edit them prior to posting anything.  It has a commenting system built in.  It auto cuts off comments in 14 days so conversations don’t go on after going stale.  Done.

Facebook is a god awful place where you spend all day replying and dealing with “apps”.  Fuck that.  People always tell me I need a facebook.  For what?  You have to search for me to find me.  Or have some facebook.com/imaretard, yeah that’s about as professional as having a website with a yahoo.com email account.  You can always find me at www.castlerain.com, no need to fuck around searching.  And all my emails end in castlerain.com because I know what the fuck I’m doing on the net, I don’t need some social app to do it for me.

Here I get to layout my content as I want you to see it.  I can show off my website making skills in designing themes.  Not some same old everyone else has facebook or worse.. MySpace.  You can hardly even read any MySpace page, they are horrid and painful to look at, these are geared for the socially inept who feel they need this to be popular and have no talent to make a unique design what-so-ever.

Frankly I think all these social networking places are just gates to allow retards flood onto a place that was once for the intelligent.  Now I have to train these tards to use a bookmark because they’ve owned a computer for 2 years and never knew what bookmarks were for.  They go to search and type in the same things over and over.  God forbid if they lose their browser history.

This is the response you get from many software makers and publishers when you have difficulty downloading or running their software.

Try turning off your firewall and antivirus.

This is a disaster waiting to happen.  You tell the average Joe User who most likely doesn’t have all his/her patches for their Operating System installed, to take it a step further and run on the internet without protection from hackers and rampant viruses/malware.  Sure why not just ask them for their credit card info while your at it, and inform them that they will be used to buy vacations in the Caribbean for the company employees.

Several studies have been done over the years warning users to keep their Operating Systems patched, Firewalled and Antivirus/Malware software up-to-date to protect themselves.  Yet right behind them, companies who produce software are telling the user to disable it so they may download or run the software.

I think that one would have to have been on an extended vacation from both computers and cyber space, not to have an understanding that the Internet is now the playground of cyber criminals and has been for a considerable time.

~ Bill Mullins Weblog

In many studies conducted in 2004 (here and here and many more), say that an unpatched and/or unprotected computer can be compromised with viruses or hijacked by a hacker in as little to 10-20 minutes.

Today it’s most likely even worse with malware and identity theft on the rise.

Yet, here’s the software maker RealmCrafter (screenshot taken from the official members forum – not seen to general public) who if you are having trouble downloading their software, this is their official advice (I took screenshots of these yesterday in case they decide to change their wording after I post this).

A game publisher for Rohan Bloodfeud has this to say about running the game and getting an error.

In all honesty, no one should ever have to put themselves, their identity or their computer at risk just to play a game, run some software or to just do something simple like download a file.

Honestly if these companies can’t make their software or website play nice with your security, then they don’t deserve any support from any customer.   If a company asks you to disable your security to download or run the software, ask for a refund or stop using it and do not promote their business.  They don’t deserve it.  If they can’t create proper software or websites, or if per chance the end user is having issues with it due to an incompatibility between security and software/website, then it’s up to the company to assist or point the customer to a solution (should it be found that the security software is to blame – say have them contact the security software provider to fix the issue with the security software), not to further add insult to injury by asking the customer to put themselves at risk.

Here we go again with something new from Mac.  All the Mac weenies who spend too much for something pretty, but no more functional.  And as Steve Jobs does yet another mind fuck in a media based frenzy.  Here comes the new iPad.  And just like this video says, it sounds like a fucking Tampon!  (not that I like Hitler, but damn this video is funny!)

In what our local media is sure to call the worst snow storm in Virginia’s history…  (pft, I’m from Michigan Bitches)  But it is cool when you know that yesterday was in the 40’s and not a flake in sight.  This is what today is:

I don’t like being lied too just to get a sale on something more expensive.  The weekend before last, I happened to be on my way to make a donation of used computer parts and old video games to the local thrift store.  As I passed I noticed the Treadquarters was open in Williamsburg where I live.  So on my way back, I decided to stop by and see if they can get me fixed up with new tires.

Now, I’m an online shopper.  So I had already gone to www.mrtire.com (Treadquarters main site), and had priced out tires for $67 per tire “on the rim and out the door” price.  I already knew what I wanted.  Captain goatee behind the counter was not only short with me as if I had ruined his Sunday, but then proceeded to tell me the following: “We don’t have any in stock, (1 click of the keyboard button and no pause for breath) and we don’t carry any in the local warehouse so none of our stores have them.”  As I live in HamptonRoads, I can go to one of many locations, this was his way of saving me the effort, or in this case, to discourage me from bothering.  Then he said, “But if you buy today, I can get you some Yokohama’s, buy 3 get 1 free even though they sale ended yesterday.”.  Of course this means a hundred and some dollars more than I had budgeted for.  I said “no thanks” and walked out disappointed.

Last weekend after months of dealing with bald tires, I was determined to find some somewhere.  My wife worked in Newport News that day, so I started there.  I went to Sam’s Club and they had some for about the right price, but they don’t take credit cards.  WTF?  Who doesn’t take credit cards?

Then I went to Pepboys and just about shit my pants at the quote they gave me.  Never did like Pepboys anyways.  So with a resounding “hell no”,  I left.

Next was Treadquarters in Newport News.  Why?  Because Captain Goatee boy pissed me off.  I didn’t like his attitude and being I work in computers, I know that there was no way he even bothered with the warehouse that fast.  He just wanted to fuck me over for a sale.  Don’t mistake me for a dumbass, I will call you out.  Sure enough, they not only carried them, the gentleman who helped me was also kind enough to get them on in a few minutes and had me new wiperblades to boot.  All for my target price.  Hmm.. Guess Williamsburg Treadquarters are not anyone I would recommend dealing with, but Newport News has great service.

This country is loaded with them.  People who are unnecessarily rich.  Either from self publishing on how they got so rich schemes, Sport Stars, Actors, Musicians, Politicians, and more.  What do these people really do for our society as a whole?  Not much.

Sports Stars, Actors, Musicians all provide a level of entertainment.  But should they really get paid so much for a few minutes of entertainment?  Sure I love a good movie or song, but don’t think it’s worth the millions they make.  I really don’t think the industries that support them should be so filthy rich either.  These bastards get rich for having a good time, while every day people like me bust our asses to make 25K a year and wonder how we will make the next day.

Politicians are even worse.  They promise us such great things, jobs, pay, etc.. While they tax the piss out of us and put it in their pockets.

You know who I admire?  Bill Gates.  Say what you want about the guy, but he’s made computers popular for the every day person.  Affordable, and fun.  He’s done more for our society than most of these others I’ve jabbered on about.

Tell ya what, I’ll tell you if it works.  You send me $10 and I’ll send you how I managed to create such an idea.  I’ll even tell you if it’s working or not.  I won’t promise however that it will make you rich.

I’m so sick of email.   Not sick of me personally using it, but troubleshooting it for customers.  For me, email is simple to use and if you follow some simple instructions, you can pretty much avoid spam all together.

I would be very afraid to find out what the average Joe User does to his/her computer to have so many different problems with email.

I sincerely miss being a regular computer tech, working on format reloads, hardware replacement, troubleshooting Windows issues and drivers.  It’s all I really had to know.  If a customer had a problem with a software, I just had to know how to uninstall and reinstall it.  If that didn’t fix the problem, they had to contact their software manufacturer or their ISP.

Now I’m the ISP tech.  I can troubleshoot connection issues all day long.  No problem.  I can deal with hosting without too much trouble.  Email, is a true pain to deal with any way you look at it.

People have all sorts of odd issues.   Can’t send, can’t receive or both.  They can’t read the error messages when I ask for them.  Or just say it isn’t working and the dramatic pause waiting for a miracle answer.

Some of the common issues:

• Incorrect POP or SMTP server
• Incorrect username/password
• Filtering out friends email address (so they never see it)
• Friends have them filtered
• Corrupt mail boxes
• Viruses
• They “never had a password” why would they need one now
• They have been blacklisted so their friends don’t get their emails

This list can go on forever.  It’s almost as if every customer has a unique issue with email.  And it’s scary to know how many don’t have any antivirus on their systems.

The worst part is customer is dead set on it being our fault they have things incorrect and get very very nasty if I don’t have an instant magical answer.  More over, when I find out it’s not our problem (99.9% of the time it isn’t), but it’s with their receiving party’s ISP or they have been blacklisted, they go on a long rant of how it can’t be, as their friend knows all about computers (but works as a refuge technician for a local disposal company).  It’s as if they just refuse to listen to reason.  It’s frustrating.  I wish all these blackberry, iPhone, email popping people would just use Gmail.  This way it’s not my problem and they can do their email from anywhere at all.  (don’t get me started on people who love to check email on 10 different devices)

~ “We the unwilling are doing the impossible for the ungrateful.” (and trust me, this current issue, this woman is not only ungrateful, she’s malicious)

It’s the beginning of a new decade.  I figured since I’ve honed my website design/theme making skills, I’d go for an overhaul of all my sites starting with my home.

Interested in my doing some work for you?  Take a look and get in touch with me.