I’m a rapper. Ok, not really. But I should be. It seems everyone is a rapper these days. I was watching a video of CunninLynguists that aired on television in Sweden. They are on tour in Europe right now and the interviewers asked what the difference between fans in Sweden and fans in the United States. Kno responded that the fans in Sweden are just that, fans. In the US everyone is a rapper. This is so true. Everyone is trying to make it big as a rapper these days, and who could blame them? With the music industry the way it is, they’ll accept anything and put it on the radio as long as it has a good beat. Lyrical content doesn’t mean anything. How else do you explain Solja Boy and Lil John. At least with other forms of music, there has to be some additional talent involved, usually involving singing or bands. With rap, you just need to find some beats or some samples and start rapping crappy rhymes. I found a site tonight that had some of the worst music I’ve ever heard. (Link Removed) Just because you have equipment to record your “music” doesn’t mean you should. People need to stop thinking that they have talent and they are going to be the next big thing and start being fans again. Maybe that’s what will save the music industry. Start focusing on talent and stop mass producing crap and raise the bar for future artists. Of course, this will never happen. They are always looking for a quick buck so they will waste money on a one-hit wonder just to get their royalties, meanwhile, great artists, like CunninLynguists, suffer because the industry is settled on a standard of mediocrity.
Tag Archive for: Rants
Yes, it’s time for a rant about the Department of Motor Vehicles and how inefficient the process of getting new plates for a car is. Come with me on a journey to the bureaucratic maze that is the DMV with a quick detour to the St. Charles County Collector’s Office.
As you may (or may not) know, I recently purchased a brand new 2008 Pontiac G6 GT. This is the first property I’ve owned, so I have not paid personal property taxes in the past. Last year’s personal property tax receipt is one thing I needed in order to get plates on my car. If you’ve not paid personal property taxes before because you’ve not had property, then you have to get a waiver saying you haven’t. On Saturday I go to the Collector’s office to get my waiver. Guess what? They aren’t opened on Saturday. In fact, they are only open 9-5 on Monday-Friday. Great to see that the government services I need are only open during the normal work day so if you need something from them, you have to take off work to get there. My wonderful tax dollars being put to great use (sarcasm).
Monday I decide to try again for my waiver. Luckily, I work at a school and get out at 3:15. I head down to get the waiver. I stand in line for about 10 minutes at the window I was told to go to. The lady looks up my information so I can get my waiver. I was thinking, wow, this isn’t bad. I’ll be out of here in no time. Wrong. The first window was just so I could get a sheet of paper printed saying I needed to have a waiver printed. This lady looked at my tax history and asked me several questions. Why she couldn’t just print the waiver I’ll never know. I head to the next section and pull a number. Number 63. They’re serving number 46. Great. I wait. And wait. And wait. Right now I’m thinking that there was about 15 people here. If they were on number 46, that means the majority of people come at the end of the day, so why do they only have two windows open at the end of the day? Typical government. Finally, after about 45 minutes, my number is called and I get the waiver printed. By this time, it’s too late to make it to the DMV by the time they close. That will be saved for Tuesday.
I go to the DMV on Tuesday. This was relatively painless. I had to wait, but not long. The only bump I ran into along the way is that she wasn’t going to give me new plates yet because my new insurance card with my new car on it says it starts in March. I needed proof of current insurance. Luckily, for some odd reason, I had a card from my Mazda in my glove box. Here’s the part that makes me wonder about the DMV’s efficiency. In order to get personalized plates, I have to fill out a form, mail it to Jefferson City, wait 8 weeks for a letter stating that my plates are in at the DMV, then go pick them up. This can, and should, be much more efficient. I should be able to go in, choose personalized plates if I want them, the DMV should be able to search the records to see if they are available, request those me printed for me, then either mail them to my house or notify me that they are ready to be picked up. I guess if they were efficient, they wouldn’t be the government, right? It’s 2008. It should not be this tedious to get license plates. How hard would it be to get all these forms and things computerized so that nothing needs to be mailed anywhere and it can all be done on the computer at the DMV? Not very hard.
I really hate websites that only offer a part of their post in their feed. I know why they do this. They do this so you have to visit their site in order to read the rest of the story. The more visitors they get, the more money they make. Here’s the problem though. The reason I am subscribing to your site is that I don’t find it useful enough to actually take the time to visit it. Most of the articles are a waste of my time but there are a few shining nuggets in there that made me want to subscribe. Whenever I subscribe to a feed and realize that it’s a partial post feed, I immediately unsubscribe. Why? Because I know I’ll never click on the link to continue reading the post. I don’t want to visit your site, that was the point of subscribing in the first place and making me visit it isn’t helping your cause. So for all you people out there that insist on making people visit your site just so you can generate a few extra cents of ad revenue, is it worth it? You’ll lose people like me. Who knows, I might have become a regular viewer of your website if you hadn’t driven me away by not providing the full text of a post. That’s been known to happen with me before.
So, Dell finally called me back Friday night. That’s three days after they were supposed to call. Three days after they said they would call. Guess what the outcome was? Well, the “tech” told me to do the exact same things he told me to do on Monday. I told him no, because we already did all that and the buzzing in the monitor was still occuring and I wasn’t going to waste my time doing it when the buzzing was still there and it would get us nowhere since he was going to tell me “he’d call back the next day” just as before. So, he says he was going to look for possible solutions with his supervisor or whatever and call me back in 10 to 15 minutes. I guess 10 to 15 minutes in India is the same as three days, because I still haven’t heard back from him. This is unacceptable.
I’ve been happy with my two computer and one mp3 player (1st gen Dell Jukebox from a long time ago) purchases from Dell. I’ve never had a problem with any of their products. I’ve never had to contact their customer service, and I’ve recommended them to others. That has all changed this week. On Monday night I contacted their support via the live chat on their website. The problem I’m experiencing is an audible buzzing that my 22 inch wide screen monitor is making. Googling for a solution to this I found some people say turn the brightness down under 75. That made my buzzing worse, so I went the opposite direction. When I got up to about 91 the buzzing stopped, but wow, what a bright screen. Since the computer and monitor are less than a year old I decided to contact support. I don’t want to go a few months and have my monitor go out on me right after it’s out of warranty. So I chat with the technician. They have me do all the same things I told them I’ve already done. Move the speakers away, plug it into a new outlet. Check to see if the buzzing is there when the monitor is off. I answered all these questions before they ever told me to check it, but they told me anyway and I did. Well, the tech told me he’d follow up with me the next day with a phone call. Guess what. No call. So I respond to the ticket via email on Tuesday night after not hearing anything form the technician. No response to that email. I emailed support again this morning and I have yet to hear anything from them. I should call, but do I really want to spend 5 hours on the phone with someone in India, only to have them hang up on me several times and put me on hold forever as well? I guess if it means getting a product that’s not defective it’s worth it.