Tag Archives: stupid

LJ – Stupid Warning Labels

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From 7/29/2003

Stupid Warning Labels
In case you needed further proof that the human race is doomed through stupidity, here are some actual label instructions on consumer goods:

On Sears hairdryer: Do not use while sleeping.

On a bag of Fritos: You could be a winner! No purchase nesessary. Details inside.

On a bar of Dial soap: Directions: Use like regular soap.

On some Swanson frozen dinners: Serving suggestion: Defrost.

On a hotel provided shower cap in a box: Fits one head.

On Tesco’s Tiramisu dessert:(printed on bottom of the box) Do not turn upside down.

On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding: Product will be hot after heating.

On packaging for a Rowenta iron: Do not iron clothes on body.

On Boot’s Children’s cough medicine: Do not drive car or operate machinery.

On Nytol sleep aid: Warning: may cause drowsiness.

On a Korean kitchen knife: Warning keep out of children.

On a string of Chinese-made Christmas lights: For indoor or outdoor use only.

On a Japanese food processor: Not to be used for the other use.

On Sainsbury’s peanuts: Warning: contains nuts.

On an American Airlines packet of nuts: Instructions: open packet, eat nuts.

On a Swedish chainsaw: Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals.

On a childs superman costume: Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly.

LJ – Shrublet In Hell

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From 3/17/2003

Here we all sit, on the brink of war… and all I can think of is “We are a Nation of Peace” as a flying image, colliding with the notion that we are essentially going to flood the Euphrates and Tigris rivers with blood. We’re going to most likely bomb Iraq into the stone age – so much for being a nation of peace. I see Dubya’s new anti-war stance not as some honorable position but rather it’s the “Get the Hell out of Dodge” policy, that it’s just about Dubya and Saddam. Why don’t they simply just sit down like civilized people and try to bludgeon each other to death with their own hands? I’d go so far as to say that this may very well be Generation Y’s Vietnam. Our proud soldiers go off to fight some foreign battle and what of them when they come back? How many Vietnam Vets came back to a chilly America? How many “Rumble in the Sandbox” troops will come home facing a public that doesn’t believe in them because they fought a war against one single man and an idea? Where is good old fashioned 20th century thinking? Ah yes, right here in the enlightened 21st Century. I suppose it’s better to bomb Iraq into the stone age and create thousands more little Saddams than it would be in pursuing a more peaceful and more lucrative solution, say, flooding the middle east with American goodwill. Hah, fat chance of that happening now. The best way to battle terror is to blindly lash out, that way you can create destroy it with a war.

I sit back and think upon loftier thoughts because all of this depresses me, and I find my mind wandering towards what Jesus Christ said, that the solution was to not kill, but rather to forgive and to love. I find it quite engaging to hear Dubya invoke a God he is currently plotting on rendering moot. What footing does any good Christian have if they in good conscience allow this war to proceed, knowing that they have turned away from the teachings of their God because of laziness? It’s far easier to bomb and kill and murder than it is to forgive. I can just imagine the knot in the pit of the Pope’s stomach when the first bomb falls on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

In brighter news, the Yahoo! main page is a cavalcade of good news items:

  • Bush Says Saddam Has 48 Hours to Leave or It’s War
  • U.S. Raises Terror Alert Level Due to Iraq Crisis
  • U.S. Sees Signs Iraq May Use Chemical, Bio Arms
  • Turkey to Debate Helping U.S. on Tuesday
  • Annan Orders UN Staff Out of Iraq
  • Deadly Pneumonia Defies Global Health Experts
  • Charges Delayed in Elizabeth Smart Case

The part that particularly drew my attention was this one: * Deadly Pneumonia Defies Global Health Experts. I wonder if this is the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?

Multiple iOS Ringtone Surprise

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Apple’s provision for Ringtones and Alerts on their iOS devices leaves quite a lot to be desired. I bought a handful of alert tones from the iTunes store and thought I could place them on my iPhone and my iPad. Turns out that unless you have your devices synced completely to the iTunes Library, something I never do, you are pretty much out of luck. If you want to get ringtones or alert tones on your other devices, you have to buy them multiple times! This is very shortsighted of Apple and I won’t play that game. That being said, I have bought enough ringtones to make me happy for what I need on my iPhone, so it’s not like I’ll ever go back to the ringtones again for more.

For those out there with multiple iOS devices, watch out. Apple only sort of loves you, they also kind of hate you too.

iTunes Wish List!

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Apple is missing the Titanic of Cash as it sails on by them, seeking out that iceberg in the North Atlantic. It’s been weeks since I’ve looked at my iTunes Wish List and I just went back to add more tracks that I caught with Shazam, an app on the iPhone that you can use to listen to music and then tag it on your phone so you can remember the details later on.

So much is being missed! This whole thing hurts my head. I’ve got $300 in music that is languishing in my iTunes Wish List and there is no way for me to share it with anyone else. The list is a dead duck. What good is it that I can edit the list and buy things from it if I can’t hand a link out to family and friends? It seems so stupid that I can’t even wrap my mind around it. Apple has all the pieces arranged on the chess board to make a holiday killing but they are playing dead on the whole subject! iTunes, which handles music and it’s store quite deftly (I think), iCloud which enables every connected iOS device to get music all at the same time. It’s like a perfect moneymaking storm! Here’s how I imagine it could go:

  1. Someone (like me) uses iTunes or Shazam and starts to flesh out their iTunes Wish List. This information is stored at Apple, so there isn’t any reason why it can’t be used in other ways to help sell music. Just think of the shameless cross-functional promotion that Shazam could roll out in their iOS app! If you hear music you really love, set Shazam to listen to it, then add it to your iTunes wish list!
  2. On November 1st of the year (date pulled from thin air) Apple emails the primary account holders email address (which is what the Apple ID is formed on) a very friendly email that says something like “For the holidays, we thought you might like a link to your iTunes Wish List. Here’s the link: http://itunes.apple.com/wishlist/634323421232100” Happy Holidays from Apple! Unbidden you get a handy link you can then embed in a tweet, a Google Plus status, a Facebook status, a WordPress Blog Page, or even cross-promote using the Amazon Universal Wish List site. There are so many ways to share links it’s disgusting.
  3. People go to the site and put checkmarks next to the albums or the tracks that they’d like to buy for that person as a gift. Lets say you want to get someone $30 worth of music, but you don’t know what music they’d really love, why not just go to their iTunes wish list? It boggles my mind! As people make checkmarks the total builds and they can cash out using a credit card, paypal, or whatever. The next screen gives the purchaser a great option “Deliver Now” vs. “Deliver on a Date”. If they use the first option then Apple can send a gift receipt immediately, otherwise Apple defers the purchase until the date and time specified.
  4. Apple can then leverage iCloud and so the receiver of the gift watches on the date and time that the gift giver indicated when all their purchased music either becomes available for download or starts automatically downloading over iCloud! At least the person can get a gift receipt letting them know that they have music that they can download on iTunes after they login to their Apple ID.
  5. As people buy tracks and albums from this website Apple can arrange their site like Amazon does to give the recipient a choice to “spoil the surprise” by listing what has been purchased or “decline to spoil the surprise” by either locking the wish list down or hiding tracks that are “in play” for giving.
  6. This would be a great way to avoid collisions when it comes to gift giving. When someone buys an album through iTunes as a gift for someone else that line item is dropped from the wish list website link so that nobody else can buy the music and effectively buy-a-gift-twice.

This entire idea is great for everyone! Music labels love it, it’s selling music. Music artists love it, it’s selling music. Apple loves it, it’s selling music! Gift givers really love it because they can go to a one-stop-shop, plunk down exactly how much they want to get for their loved ones and it’s all taken care of! Gift recipients love it because they get a clear demonstration on how cool iCloud can be when they see a flurry of gift receipts coming from Apple over email and then iCloud chats up the iOS devices connected and all that music starts to load into the device!

Marketing? Jesus Christ on a pogostick! This stuff writes itself! You could put a little animated iCloud character in a Santa outfit! Apple could try to market itself as one of Santa’s favorite elf! If the iCloud symbol is too abstract you could put a animated musical symbol in a box with a bow and show it off that way! The television spots encouraging people to flesh out their iTunes Wish List would be an utter gold mine for Apple, for the Labels, the Artists, to say nothing of making life easier for the rest of us!

And just to state the obvious if Apple ever reads any of this, I want you to have all of this blog post to use as your own. This entire post is copylefted, I don’t give a damn what anyone does with anything I write. Want to make money? Please bring this to life!

All that music is just languishing on my dead-end iTunes Wish List. Duh Apple, DUH!

New Drying Machine

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This past weekend my very old Kenmore Clothes Dryer died. It was showing distinct pangs of death during the Halloween Movie Marathon of course but I ignored those. I couldn’t ignore the hum, no start, and hot electrical smell. When the machine had well and truly died I figured I would go out and get a replacement machine.

I started looking at Sears. They had a Whirlpool, pretty much an updated replacement for what just died on sale for $404 bucks. Before plunking down my cash to buy it, I thought I would wait for Black Friday sales to begin. Then everyone pretty much joined the same chorus together and said it was silly to wait and that those sorts of things aren’t usually included in Black Friday sales. Of course I was also a little irked by Sears because they wouldn’t haul the old machine away for free, they charged $10 for that.

I went to Lowes and found they had the same machine, same price, and they had free delivery and free take-away. Already a better deal than Sears. Of course while we were looking at machines we noticed one for sale that had more bells and whistles than the one we were looking at first. Another Whirlpool of course, but bigger and more eco-friendly. The list price on this new one was $699 but since it was the last one Lowes had, it it was “Last Years Model” they knocked the price to $491. I added a 4-year warranty to the mix for $99 and bought a 3-wire electrical hookup to boot.

Before the new dryer arrived I decided that I should pull the old one out and tear into it to see how it was set up. The vent came right off the back, as I half-expected it to, and I was able to clean the 40 pounds of lint-bunnies out of it. I then tore the electrical panel off (unscrewed it, there wasn’t any tearing really) and it was the same industry standard block there that was on every other dryer I looked at. Altogether a very dull arrangement, anyone with eyes and hands could do this work. This thing required absolutely zero skill.

There are some oddities in my home, the laundry service has a breaker and a fusebox. It’s overkill. But there it is. The wires are directly tied in, there isn’t a plug at all anywhere for “plugging the dryer in” to, so I took the wiring off the old dryer and simply re-attached it to the new dryer. I have to return the plug-bit for a refund later today. So when they dropped the dryer off they offered to set it up for me and I declined. When they got into my basement, they saw why I was willing to do it myself, mostly because of the wiring and vent and nodded and left. I popped the vent on, moved it back to where it belonged and assembled the wiring. I screwed it all together, screwed on the service entrance shield and that was that. I turned on the breaker and I closed the fusebox control so it was on as well. I turned on the dryer and the lights came on, the chime sounded, and I ran some clothes in it just to see and the drum went around.

All in all a very exciting and then very dull thing altogether. Upon reflection I could have probably hauled the dryer home all by myself in the Santa Fe and done all this work on Saturday, but at least this way I don’t have to deal with the dead dryer and have it clogging everything up or have to haul it somewhere to get rid of it. Lowes took it away, and frankly, for all the rigamarole I had to go through, it was worth it just for that.

The one thing I did learn was that buying new hookup wiring for these devices is dumb. Just unscrew the old stuff, pull it out, and then put it back together afterwards. Save yourself an easy $20. It’s not like old copper wire is somehow less worthy than brand new copper wire. If it was aluminum, then fine, yes, but copper? Come on.