After a mediocre rib dinner today, I decided to go see Star Wars for the third time. Mom & I got our tickets, got seated, and relaxed for another dose of the kick-ass cinema experience that is Star Wars.

About 30 minutes into the movie, I hear a poorly-rendered clip of some rap start playing loudly from some teenager girl’s purse. It was her shiny cellphone, one of those camera-flip phones, and it had enough LEDs in it to light up the whole damn theater. It looked like a pocket-sized UFO from a 60s alien movie. She did something to it and it stopped ringing, and once the other movie goers stopped giving her dirty looks, she called the person back and started yelling into the phone over the movie! She was sitting in my row, so I lean over and start motioning for her to look over at me. I finally caught her attention, and quietly asked her to turn her phone off, and she gives me this look like I’M the rude one, and says “Dude, this is, like, important!” She did hang up a few seconds later, and I relaxed again.

A couple minutes later, I hear what sounds like a vibrator from the guy next to me. I glance over, and he too has an LED-packed flip phone that nearly blinded me in the dark. Blue LEDs are not a good addition to a cellphone. He blushed and hid the display with his jacket while reading the text message he’d just received.

Two more people had their cellphones go off throughout the movie, and all of them were just as rude as the teenage girl who did it first. Is it really so fucking difficult to turn the phone OFF for two hours? Not silent, not vibrate, OFF! Believe it or not, there IS a power button on even the newest phones, so why don’t people fucking USE IT?

I’m going to start bringing a bag of gravel to every movie. 5-10 of those half-dollar-sized limestone rocks that they make parking lots out of. And every time I see someone messing with their fucking cellphone or PDA after the movie starts, I’m going to bean them in the head with a rock until they turn the fucker OFF.

I got new plates for my Integra today! They say “Lupinia”, so I made them into a new LJ icon

Silly me, I got so caught up in Lupinia stuff that I forgot to mention the real adventure I’ve had with my cellphone.

See, I’ve had a cellphone longer than most people, but I’ve always used it rather minimally. My current plan, a pay-as-you-go setup through Verizon (like Tracfone but better), is adequate for what I use, and costs about $20/month with no wasted minutes. I currently have a pretty old phone, a Nokia 5185 that was made in late 2000. It’s one of the first phones to support text messaging, it predates colour displays, and it’s from a time when networks were beginning to switch from analog to digital, so being tri-band was a big selling point then. It’s been with me through all sort of conditions, conditions that would destroy most phones many times over. I’ve dropped it countless times, dunked it in water, run over it with my car, zapped it with static electricity, and cooked it with radio waves. Aside from a broken display (which happened early on when I got pissed at my dad and threw it through a wall), it’s withstood anything I can throw at it, and has proven itself to be pretty much indestructable.

A couple years ago, I took it to the Verizon store and asked if they could fix the display. They said they couldn’t because it was old (it was only three years old at this point), but they sure were eager to sell me a new one! I refused, stating multiple times that this phone was irreplaceable, and their response was to give me funny looks, as if someone who resisted compulsory consumerism was something they’d never seen.

Fast-forward three years, it’s now 2005. I found an identical phone to mine on the side of the road (horrors!), and it was missing a battery and antenna, so I assumed it had been trashed. I took it into the Verizon store, asked to speak to a manager, and requested that they replace the display in my phone with the one from this junker. The supervisor acknowledged that their tech could do it, but they were strictly prohibited from doing anything to phones older than two years. No amount of persuasion/begging/bribing seemed to work, so I gave up and resigned myself once again to having a half-visible LCD screen.

A few weeks ago, I had a sudden flash of inspiration: Ebay. That magical place where anything is for sale at ridiculously low prices just might have a new phone I can replace mine with. So, I started searching. And bidding. Finally got one that seemed perfect. It was still in the original box, had never even been activated. It arrived, I brought it to work with me, and went to the Verizon store with it on my lunch break, figuring that they could just give me a code to punch in and life would be good. I get to the Verizon store, went to the service desk, and asked them to do an ESN switch from the old phone to the new one. The guy looked at my phones, gave me a funny look, and called for his supervisor. The supervisor came out and powered on the new phone for the first time, and up came the startup display: Alltel. Not Verizon, not unbranded Nokia, Alltel. She said that they couldn’t do anything with it since it’s not a Verizon phone, not even a direct transfer from one to the other. Apparently, their programming cables are tossed after two years, and the software flashes are deleted from their system. The term “wasteful Americans” is coming to mind. So, after more conversing with this supervisor, she finally tells me that if I get a Verizon phone from Ebay, they can reprogram it over the air.

After minimal searching, I found a refurbished Nokia 5185 that’s already set-up for Verizon networks. It arrived, I got it programmed, and life is good. I had forgotten what it was like to have a phone with a functional display :-). My beloved indestructable phone is still around, and I intend to keep it as a spare, but this new one will be much nicer, with caller ID I can actually read.

HOWEVER, I’m still pissed at the cellphone industry over this mess. I know this sort of forced obsoletion exists somewhat in the computer industry, but its prevalence in the cellphone industry is just sickening. There are thousands of perfectly good phones out there, many even older than mine, that would work fine, but the cell companies force people to buy new phones every two years. And you pretty much have to do it! At the cost of $100-500, for a device that accels at everything except MAKING CALLS. I don’t want a camera, I don’t want games, I don’t want text messaging, I don’t want a colour display, I don’t need an address book, I don’t even need a fucking clock. I just want a device that sends and receives phone calls, and does it at least vaguely well. Is that really so much to ask?

(On a side note, I now have two cellphones, three faceplates, a car charger, three AC chargers, and nine batteries, all for less than the cost of one new phone. Including shipping.)

(Side note number two: Verizon just redid their voicemail system, so ignoring its existance no longer means that people can’t leave me messages. So, I set up my voicemail for the first time ever, and I can now get messages left for me. BUT, if you call my cell, and get the voicemail, do NOT leave a message, because it costs me minutes to check messages, and I hate Verizon’s voicemail system with a passion. Just try my VOIP line, or wait for me to see a missed call and call you back.)

For the first time in two years, I’ve managed to hit a self-set deadline for a writing project. Chapter 2 of the Lupinia series is finished a couple days ahead of schedule, and will be posted on June 3rd, pending a review from the pool of character contributors and editors. The first Friday of every month will be update day from here on out (and yes I know this conflicts with AC, I don’t really care). Wee!

Who here is good with DVDs? They really aren’t my strong point (I work with audio, not video), but I’m trying to extract some rare songs from music videos on DVD. I’ve tried several programs so far, and they either flat out don’t work, or they’re barely-functional shareware. Any suggestions? I’m not interested in shareware programs (unless you have a crack for them), and I’ve tried AC3Dec already, it won’t run for some reason. I don’t necessarily need the audio converted to individual files, or even to MP3 at all, I can break ‘em apart myself, I just need to get the DVD converted from DVD audio to WAV.

My sister received this school dance invitation the other day, and I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. However, I read through it more carefully today, and it’s quite sad:

Society makes me sad.

What’s your native language? Do you speak any foreign languages? If so, how did you come to learn them?
My native language is American English, spoken with an Appalachian accent that’s softened in recent years, but according to people I meet it’s quite noticeable, I’d hate to hear what I sounded like five years ago. I speak enough Spanish to have a basic conversation, I learned that from three years of high school classes. I also know a tiny bit of Russian, and I’d like to learn more, but haven’t had much success with that.

What’s your native country? Have you visited any foreign countries? If so, which ones?
I am a natural-born United States citizen, and I’ve never left this country. Yet.

Are there any foreign foods, books, movies, or other items that you are particularly fond of? Name some of your favorites.
I love Italian food, and Japanese. Russian culture fascinates me, as well as Italian.

FQ NATIVE: If you had to trade your nationality for that of any foreign country, which would you choose and why?
Either Canada, because it’s like the opposite of America and it’d be a nice place to live, or Britain, because it’s just plain cool

———–

Stolen from woofiegrrl, who seems really cool, yet I’ve never met her.

An LJ written from the perspective of someone’s car? Hmm, very intriguing concept, and undoubtedly unique, I look forward to seeing how it turns out. Perhaps the originator will start a trend

Check it out for yourself, it’s at vwrabbit

Oh…my…god! Velvet Revolver fucking ROCKED! I have never been to such a kick-ass concert in my life! I’m still giddy from it, I got to see one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived perform live! Squee!

We got a late start heading down, so we were a bit rushed. Lots of rain, lots of traffic slowdowns, and dozens of wrecks. Yuck. But, somehow we managed to make it there with plenty of time to get our tickets checked, find our seats, and relax a bit from the drive.

Hoobastank was the opening act, and damn did they suck! They have a couple marginally decent songs, but for the most part, my reaction to their performance was mostly “I could do better than that” and “They look & sound like a middle school garage band”. Thankfully, they were only up there for 40 minutes. I know it’s a bit unfair to compare them to a band made of a bunch of rock & roll legends, but this was like an elementary school choir opening for Led Zepplin, it just doesn’t work.

Then came the ridiculously-long wait that seems to happen at big-name concerts. But, VR finally did take the stage. Their lead singer has never really impressed me, but while is voice is a bit generic, he put on a hell of a show, and did it well, so he’s an acceptable Axl substitute. Slash was absolutely amazing, even moreso than I anticipated. His best work on albums seemed like just a warmup compared to his performance in this show. And we had center-stage seats with a completely unobstructed view.

And the stage show matched the music’s kick-ass factor. Perfectly-timed light cues, strobes, mini-spotlights, and a light-up banner obviously inspired by KISS. It seemed like there was a smoke machine, but that effect appeared to be more from the constant smoking of the band members

The return trip kinda blew as well, but I don’t care. I got to see Slash live, that’s all that counts

I suck at LiveJournal

Work sucks, as usual. I have pretty much nothing to do, and if I decide to check out the security forum on DSLReports.com instead of sitting around watching dust settle, my boss whines about it. Hopefully I’ll be out of there soon, but it still grates on my nerves to get an email saying “You should spend your time on things other than web surfing”. Shove it, [boss's name here].

In other news, I’ve decided that I definitely want to sell the Rover, and I want to do it as soon as I get a couple things taken care of in it. It’s a good truck, and a hell of an off-roader, but I can’t afford the payments right now, and it’s not what I want in the long-term. So, if anyone’s interested in buying a ‘95 Land Rover Discovery that’s in good condition, call 540-867-5309 and let me know about it.

The Integra needs new tires, front and rear. The fronts were replaced last March, right before Megaplex. The rears have been on it since before we got the car, and I’ve put over 30,000 miles on it since then. My mom wants to buy some cheapos for it, and thinks that spending more than $40/tire is a waste, so I think I’m going to save up and get four nice tires for it at some point, possibly before AC.

I downloaded a bunch of new UT maps tonight, ought to be fun for LANS, especially for the people who say that they’re tired of playing it all the time. Some of them suck, some don’t work, but most of them kick tail and I look forward to playing them at LANs

Speaking of LAN parties, I hosted the first one of the season (aka summer) last night, had a couple people over, it rocked as usual. Didn’t get to play quite as many games as I wanted, but there’ll be lots of others. Now that school is out, and all my nerd friends are back home in Harrisonburg, we’re looking to have at least one LAN party per month, hopefully 2 or more.

Many of you know fox_cub, but did you know that he’s moving? Well, you do now! He’s moving from Pittsburgh, PA, to Harrisonburg, VA (the town I live in) on June 10-11, and we’ll be needing some extra paws to load his stuff in Pittsburgh, and to unload his stuff down here. Pizza and drinks will be provided to all who assist, we need 4-5 people down here to unload, and an unknown number up there to load up. This will be posted to the furry lists in NoVA, MD, and PA once I get a couple more details, but I figured I’d put it here first.

Tomorrow I’m going to a Velvet Revolver concert (which is basically Guns ‘N’ Roses, for those who don’t know) in Virginia Beach, and it’s soooo gonna rock! I can’t wait! [bounces lots]

Next week is the final concert that my high school band director, Jim Warner, will be conducting. He’s been at Harrisonburg High School since 1979, and he taught my uncle (class of 1980), and I played my uncle’s trumpet in middle school and high school. Mr. Warner was a bit of a hard-ass sometimes, but he was always cool, and it’ll be sad to see him go.

The discussion board that accompanies the web comic I Drew This by David Craig Simpson is now hosted at Lupinia. So, check out the comic, and if you have something to say about it, come to www.lupinia.us/ireadthis and post to your heart’s content!

I think that about covers it. Yep. [curls up and falls asleep]