Christmas Lights - The Lame, The Tacky and The Just Plain Creepy

Last night my family and I drove around our general area to enjoy the local Christmas light displays. This is something that we do every year, at least a couple times, while typically eating some ice cream. Why ice cream and Christmas lights? I don't know, why not?

Most of our time is spent singing made up lyrics to the Christmas songs that are playing on the radio like "Jingle balls, jingle balls, jingle all the way, oh what pain it is to go with them left loose to sway-ay!", and making fun of people stupid inflatable shit.

Since my kids are pretty snarky like me, fun is had by all. Even though my wife doesn't make funny of anyone herself, she does appreciate our humor.

Our favorite display style to make fun of is those which contain more than one inflatable or animatronic. Usually people that have more than one of either have multiples of both, which creates a sort of creepy scifi Christmas at the droid factory / Christmas in the land of misfit toys look.

I know people put this shit in their yard to entertain their kids, but it does spread joy to guys like me as well. The joy of making fun of what a mockery they have turned Christmas into. Just how many semi-inflated snowmen and robotic Rudolfs do you need to get into Heaven anyway Jesus?

Most people put lights in their trees, around their bushes, their front doors, maybe down the drive way like some kind of fucking landing strip (which I totally don't get; probably the same people who as kids drew stick figures). Some folks do blinking lights and icicle lights on the house and eaves, but some people just have no taste.

At all.

Like the ass-wipe that puts five different colors of lights all over his yard then uses net lights on the bushes to get that whole "fish net Christmas" thing and finishes it off with the creepy three candles with the orange flames in the windows. You know the ones that they USED to sell in the 70's, that they must have either kept when their grandmother passed away or bought at a garage sale.

Or the people that run three strands of multi-colored lights around on goddamn straggly ass tree in their yard, in front of their 8,000 square foot three story. Come on douche, like you could afford another box of lights?

But aside from the tacky and creepy there are two displays that I totally want to get out and knock over. The first is the manger scene. I don't care that Christmas is supposed to be about the birth of Jesus. Especially since he wasn't born in December anyway. The manger is creepy. Bunch of fucking bearded dudes with hooks standing around looking at a baby while his mother tries to cover him up and the step father collects the gifts all in a horse stall with hay everywhere and farm animals milling about, probably lamb shit all over the place. Creepy.

The second display that makes me want to get out of the car, knock on the door and ask the douche bag who put it up to take it down is the strand of white lights up a pole with a half-ass star on top. Too religious, not fun, not Christmasy, all it lacks is an inflatable Pope in front of it.

Finally, what is the deal with LED lights? They are so frigging bright that it hurst my eyes and who the hell pays $11 for a strand of 100 lights, when I can get a strand of 100 regular lights for $3? In the words of Charlie Brown, Good Grief! Give that extra Christmas light money to the bell ringer Griswold!

With all due respect,
The Chief

100% Compatibility - Microsofts' Ransom Note

I hate Microsoft. Lets just get that out of the way.
Actually thats not accurate, I hate Windows. I actually really like Office, but Windows regardless of the version is complete shit.

Shut up, yes it is. You know it as well as I do. How many times in the last month have you had to restart your PC because it just locked up? How about in the last week? How many times have you had to get out the restore disc to get that Piece-of-Chit working again?

Ok how many times have you not been able to print to a printer that you just used? How many updates and security patches have you installed? How about the number of times you've tried to shut down or restart for whatever reason and watched the "Windows Is Shutting Down" message on the screen for an hour?

Probably more times than I have, I guarantee it in all cases.

Now that I've laid that out, lets look at Windows 7, otherwise known as Windows Vista - Pig in Makeup Edition. 100% backward compatibility. Remember the commercials? Or the ads? I do. I remember a faint tinge of fear that they might actually get it right this time forcing me to stop bashing their shitty OS. But no, the one thing Microsoft never lets me down with is their ability to NOT DELIVER.

Windows 7 was supposed to be 100% compatible with XP programs and all hardware that was "current". Really, they actually stuck out their skinny geek necks and promised 100% compatibility. But what they didn't tell you 100% backward compatibility is not available to everyone.

In fact some XP and Vista users, will not have access to XP compatibility at all unless they fork up the $199 to upgrade to Ultimate.

You see, in the Microsoft viewpoint there are no poor students or families just able to afford their computers or any customer respect. No just greed.

To get XP compatibility you have to run your XP programs in a "virtualized environment". Essentially Windows creates a second computer running XP inside your Windowns 7 computer. You can imagine that this is probably not going to give you the speed, graphic performance or stability that running the program in regular XP would, and you'd be imagining right.

The funny thing is that I run Windows apps on my Mac all day long doing the exact same thing, the difference being it doesn't crash my Mac or make it run slow and the rest of my computing experience is stable and smooth and doesn't require weekly security patches.

My most recent personal experience with this was with a new netbook computer running Windows 7. I bought it for work purposes and installed the one and only PC app that it had to run, which was written for XP. Guess what? The little netbook only comes with a crippled version of 7 called Starter and Starter doesn't include XP mode or even support it. My options were two, buy the $199 upgrade making my $400 netbook a $600 one or send the fucking thing back.

Give you one guess as to the option I chose.

What I don't understand though is why some many people are willing to put up with this crappy company, their crappy products and their complete lack of customer appreciation. I guess the world really is full of idiots.

Like you didn't see that coming.

With all due respect,
The Chief