I found this on a friend’s blog, and decided to repost it myself. I wish I had this thing, just to watch the reactions on people’s faces when they saw it.

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One of my “guilty pleasures” is a fondness for the movie “Waiting“. If you haven’t seen it…well, I’d have a hard time recommending it to anyone, on the same level that I’d recommend any other movie. It’s quite possibly one of the most disgusting, poorly-written movies I’ve ever seen in my life. Yet, I can’t get enough of it, and anyone else who’s worked in a restaurant will understand why; despite the poor quality of the film itself, it make a great deal of sense to anyone who’s worked in a restaurant, to the point that it redeems itself. It’s like how “Clerks” is viewed by convenience store cashiers, or how “Office Space” is viewed by anyone who’s worked in an office with cubicles.

The sequel, “Still Waiting“, is about on-par with the original, in terms of film quality. The writing is considerably better, with a storyline more involved than “these characters work in a restaurant”, and character development that blows the doors off of the original in a few places, but there are other elements that feel very unfinished. And, the acting is just weird. In the original, it was flat-out bad across the board, with maybe one good performance. The sequel, however, has an odd conglomeration of acting talent; many of the original actors make return appearances, with greatly-improved skills, but they’re joined by a group of no-name n00bs who are so laughably bad that a few scenes made me think I was watching one of those “Scary Movie” parodies of the original (doesn’t help that it largely takes place in the exact same location).

On the plus side, the gross-out factor of “Still Waiting” was much lower than in “Waiting”. Despite the fact that I watch it all the time, there are scenes in Waiting that still make my stomach turn. The humour in this new installment, on the other hand, is more story-based, and while it goes way overboard on sexual content, it’s really not that bad.

And, a big positive point for “Still Waiting” is that it knows it’s a sequel. So many movie sequels try to be stand-alones as well as sequels; they want to appeal to people who never saw the original, and create a whole new storyline, while still tying the viewer into the original just enough to give the people who saw the original a warm fuzzy feeling. So, I’ll say this point-blank; if you didn’t see “Waiting”, “Still Waiting” won’t make a damn bit of sense. It’s very purely a sequel, with much of its character development based on the original, and while that doesn’t necessarily make it a good movie, the fact that they didn’t even try to break it away from the original saved it from being unredeemably bad. Since “Waiting” doesn’t really have a well-defined beginning or end, the appeal of “Still Waiting” lies in the fact that it cleans up a lot of loose ends from the first movie, answering a ton of questions you probably had at the end of “Waiting” (assuming you weren’t stoned when you saw it, which is a big assumption). Put another way, the sequel makes the original feel more like a real movie.

So, that’s pretty much all there is to say about this movie without giving a spoiler-filled synopsis.

Bottom Line
If you liked “Waiting”, you’ll love “Still Waiting”. If you didn’t like “Waiting”, or didn’t understand it, don’t bother. And if you haven’t seen “Waiting”, you’ll probably think it’s the worst movie ever made (as well as never wanting to eat at a generic Americana restaurant again), unless you’ve worked in a restaurant as your primary job (doing it on the side while working a white-collar office job doesn’t count).

I always thought that Virginia would be one of the last states in the US to get a state-wide ban on smoking in restaurants/public places. This is one of the most tobacco-friendly states (that produces a huge amount of it), where several big tobacco companies are based, and it’s always been behind the times on tobacco laws. We had the nation’s lowest cigarette tax until just a few years ago.

But, a few days ago, it passed. And I, for one, couldn’t be happier.

It always surprises me to see where some of the opposition to these bans comes from; in addition to the smokers themselves, many rather liberal-minded non-smokers I’ve talked to also feel that restaurants should be free to allow smoking in their establishments if they want to. I see the logic; there are a ton of things people are allowed to do in restaurants (or anywhere else), in the name of personal freedom, so why should smoking cigarettes be any different?

The reason it should be different is that, in an open room, smoke permeates the entire room, and a smoker’s right to smoke in such an environment interferes with my right to breathe. The people I hear supporting smoker’s rights are typically the same people who insist that the rights of one group must not trample the rights of another group. So, could someone explain to me why the right of someone to fill a public room with dangerous, sickening fumes on a whim should trample my right to breathe clean air and not have to dig for an inhaler?

Now, I do agree with the anti-ban group on one point; ideally, the restaurant owners should be the ones to decide. And, some have, there are a handful of restaurants in the town I live in that are already smoke-free. But, the vast majority allow smoking because they feel they have to, or it’s the way things have always been, or any number of other idiotic reasons, and without legislation to enforce this, it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. In the meantime, those of us who want to see all you smokers set yourselves on fire have to do constant research to figure out where we can and can’t go to eat in peace, while smokers can go to any restaurant they want. Yes, that’s right, if you’re a smoker, you can still go to a non-smoking restaurant, just don’t smoke in the damn building! See how easy that is? Personally, I don’t see why smokers don’t do that anyway, I can’t imagine food tastes very good mixed with smoke, but that’s beside the point.

And for all the restaurant owners who are worried that this will affect their business? Chill. Seriously. Plenty of states have passed far more restrictive smoking bans than Virginia’s new one (it’s still rather lax, for my tastes, but at least I’ll be able to go to late-night places for a change), and the world didn’t end. In fact, some of you will probably get better business from people like me. You’ll probably get some whiners at first, but they’ll get used to it; they can either go outside like they’d have to do at any other sane business (hotels, hospitals, grocery stores, movie theaters…), or you can stick ‘em in a glass jar like they do at airports. You have more to worry about if you try to circumvent the new law, because I’m sure I’m not the only one who’ll have the health department in their speed-dial once this goes into effect.

…

[takes a deep breath]

I realize that what I wrote is going to upset some people. And, well, I don’t care. I’m not typically a very divisive or hate-filled person, but every time I go out for a nice meal and gag on a whiff of burning tobacco, I have seething urge to find the culprit and make them eat the damn cigarette. It’s the same instinct that makes me want to destroy every cellphone that lights up or makes noise in the theater, or think up new recipes for dead child every time I hear a screaming baby in a public venue. We all have anger-buttons, those are mine. Cigarettes, cellphones, and yowling babies.

And, before the accusations start coming in:
-No, I’m not addicted to anything myself (except caffeine, which is surprisingly annoying to be addicted to for someone who doesn’t start their day with it), so I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t care, either; there’s an entire industry dedicated to breaking the habit, give it a try sometime.
-Yes, I have friends who smoke, though very few of them smoke cigarettes. The ones who do know better than to light up in any enclosed space with a non-smoker, especially me.

So, despite the fact that the new law is somewhat half-assed, congratulations to Virginia for passing it. You’ve finally sorta-caught up to every state north of us.

After having the ability for quite some time, the ability for users to create accounts on Lupinia’s main site is now public knowledge. Please note that this is seperate from Wordpress and Gallery accounts (someday, in the future, these are likely to all be merged), these accounts are for the main site, which is entirely custom-coded by me.

I’m still working on the system, as I try new things, but it currently provides the following features:

• Bypass the human-test on the Email Form
• Available option to send email to my cellphone
• Add new links to the Link Directory, and edit links you’ve created

More will be added later, including a Report Dead Link feature for the Link Directory, database-stored viewing options, and integration with Wordpress.

You can create an account here. Enjoy!

It’s been awhile since I added new pages to the main content sections of the site, but I felt that my review of Google’s Chrome browser would be a good fit. So, it’s now part of the writing section of this site.

Awhile back, I heard that cellphone companies were going to start offering personal coverage extenders to be installed in one’s home, to enhance their networks for users who have difficulty getting decent signal strength in their house/apartment. In theory, this should be really easy to sell; you get awesome service at your house, and the company gets reduced network load over their primary towers. Everyone wins!

Well, not quite. In the spirit of all things related to cellphones, all of the companies offering this service are really screwing it up. For instance, AT&T, which hasn’t quite launched theirs yet, will offer these features:

• Up to four simultaneous users supported
• No unauthorized access
• Supports 3G data service
• Unlimited minute plans available

Ok, so not too bad, honestly. But, notice the wording of the last point; unlimited minute plans available. In cellphone-speak, that means that you have to pay extra to get unlimited use of a network device you paid for, that’s attached to your internet connection. In other words, by purchasing this device, you’re basically paying for the privilege of reducing AT&T’s network load, with no real benefit aside from better service in your house.

Unfortunately, it only gets worse from here. Let’s take a look at the microcell offering of Sprint, my new provider:

• No unauthorized access
• No data service supported
• Unlimited minute plans available

Similar to AT&T’s offering, but without data coverage. But, the kicker is in the pricing: $99.99 one-time price for the base unit, $4.99/month to use it. Not only do you have to buy the device itself (which isn’t that big of a deal, honestly), but you have to pay a monthly fee just to use the thing. That monthly fee doesn’t provide any sort of extra minutes, or unlimited use, it’s just an arbitrary fee for no real reason. To get unlimited use of it, it’s $10/month per line, or $20/month per family-plan account.

The worst offender, however, is Verizon, my former provider. They already kinda suck at billing, and at high-speed coverage (among other things), so it should be no surprise that they completely flubbed their microcell offering (despite being the originator of the idea, claiming it would be the “weapon of the century”).

The only point in Verizon’s favour is the lack of a monthly fee to simply use the device, like Sprint requires. However, their microcell device doesn’t support data service, doesn’t even offer an unlimited calling option for using it, and costs a whopping $250. But, the most insulting part of their microcell product is the fact that you can’t restrict its use to only authorized users. You can give priority to your own account/your family plan, and it only supports three users at a time, but any random user in-range will see a microcell as an ordinary cell tower.

So, let me get this straight, Verizon. You want me to pay $250 to set up a low-range public cell tower in my home, using my broadband connection? How the heck is that beneficial to me? Oh, and if they’re encouraging this to be used in areas where the signal is pretty much unusable, that means that the device will have a nearly constant load on the user’s internet connection, due to other Verizon users in the area being routed through it. Shouldn’t they be the one’s paying us for this?

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I loathe text messaging via cellphones. I have a number of reasons for this, but one of my biggest reasons is the pricing scams used by cell providers for these things. And this article on DSL reports reminded me of it.

We’ve frequently discussed how SMS/MMS services are a cash cow for wireless carriers, the costs being marginally insane when compared to the actual bandwidth consumed. The New York Times has an interesting article on the high costs of text messages, 3.3 trillion of which are expected to be sent in 2009. With most carriers now charging twenty cents per message bi-directionally for each message, they’ve attracted the attention of some lawmakers, who’ve begun to inquire how much the services actually cost to deliver. While carriers try their best to keep this hidden, the Times notes that once carriers have storage covered, the costs to deliver small 140 byte messages is virtually nothing. Of course the market dictates what consumers will pay, and many consumers simply keep paying.

Text Messaging: Nice Profit Margin You’ve Got There on DSL Reports

Now, I’m already boycotting text messaging, but more people need to do it as well, especially teenagers whose parents are more than happy to keep paying out the nose for the most overpriced data-transfer service on the market. Hey, parents: If you quit buying into this tripe, the cellphone companies will stop raping you, and your kids will learn that there are better and cheaper ways to chat with their friends from their cellphones, if they absolutely must use a sophisticated voice communication device as an email terminal.

And yes, I’m aware that for the low-low-price of $10-20/month extra, a cell user can purchase unlimited text-messaging. But, it’s still a ripoff, because that’s just for SMS messages, and doesn’t cover anything else (except for “Pix” and “Video” messages, which are basically just emails with attachments). To get data service (a vastly more useful add-on), it’s an additional $15 on top of that. Which is fine, but can anyone explain why (beyond “to make money”) a cellphone-only email system costs as much as (or more than) a relatively unfettered internet connection over the same networks, using the same protocols?

On a personal note, part of my disdain for text messaging comes from my own family. My sister is addicted to texting to the point that she’ll probably have carpal tunnel in her thumbs when she’s my age, and this has caused all sorts of havoc every time she switches providers. My mom has received several cellphone bills costing almost a thousand dollars from both Verizon and Alltel at various points in the past, thanks to my sister, and just thinking about it makes me sick. If any other company pulled this crap, they’d be out of business in a month.

The cell providers have spent years trying to make themselves a vital utility in the eyes of the public, while still maintaining the pricing structures and billing policies of a luxury service (Internet providers don’t even require credit checks just to sign up). Now that they’ve succeeded in the former, they need to adjust their billing procedures accordingly, but it’s not going to happen if people keep supporting their current business methods.

Just an FYI, I’ll be out of town from Thursday through Monday, but I’ll be responding to emails and phone calls.

A new committee says they’re recommending ABC Cabs be allowed to continue operating in Harrisonburg.

Harrisonburg’s City Council recently approved a new committee to look at the renewal process for companies’ certificates to operate in the city.

Last year ABC Cabs co-owner Musa Syed was found guilty of misusing state inspection stickers. A few weeks later, its city certificate was up for renewal, but the city council delayed approval.

The council will have final say on whether to approved ABC Cabs’ certificate. A public hearing is scheduled for next Tuesday.

ABC Cabs to Receive Endorsement on WHSV.com

Great, just what this town needs, the sleazy, nasty cab company re-opening and taking business from the legitimate ones. We already have two successful cab companies, a cheap one (Yellow) and a nicer one (Royal), and both of them run legitimate operations with good workers. ABC, on the other hand, cuts every possible corner they can to save money, their drivers are downright scary, and they still barely break even. Half their cars are falling apart (literally), they make every effort to circumvent the licensing process that they can get away with, and they’ll hire anyone who walks in the door as a driver without so much as a driving record check. As a testament to their sketchy business model, their cabs are marked using vinyl stick-on letters from Wal-Mart that usually aren’t even lined up.

This town simply doesn’t have enough business to support three cab companies, and I would love to see this one shut down for good.

Update (Feb 10, 2009): ABC’s taxi license for the city has been renewed by unanimous vote. Yippie.

This journal is now being re-syndicated at Harrisonburg Blogs, a service for blogs that talk about stuff in this local area (or, at least, blogs written by people who live here). I thought about signing up a few times in the past, but I wasn’t sure I posted about local stuff enough to really justify it. But, now that I’ve been doing this awhile, and significant portion of my posts (not counting the ones reposted en-masse from my LiveJournal) are about local news, I figured I’d give it a shot.

So, if you’re reading this on that site, or got here from there, welcome! There’s a lot more to my website than just a blog (though, admittedly, this probably gets updated the most), so feel free to look around. And, if you’re interested in hiring my web design services, don’t hesitate to email me