Apple announced today the new version of Apple TV, a tiny little device for streaming HD movies to your home television.  This is very cool – the form factor looks awesome and beautiful, as we might expect of an Apple product.  It’s eschewed the HDD in favor a small amount of flash memory for programs and buffering, and otherwise is streaming only.  A bunch of cool streaming services (like Netflix, Flickr, etc.) are also embedded.  All of this is great.

What’s funny to me is that no one seems willing to call this thing what it actually is: a set-top box. (Abeit a tiny one that’s cool looking.)  Engadget, Crunchgear, Boy Genius Report, and about a zillion other blogs have all posted about Apple’s announcement.  But all of them are consistently leaving out the set-top nomenclature which has, at this point, accumulated a lot of negative mojo.  It’s also conspicuously absent from Apple’s press release.

I think this is because no one likes set-top boxes. They’re clunky, take up space on the media console, take up an HDMI input on your receiver or TV, add a remote control to your coffee table, and cost extra $$$.  Lots of companies are focusing instead on embedded devices, including Google TV and VUDU.  (Disclaimer – I’ve worked with VUDU in the past.)  Basically these folks embed their streaming services into televisions and Blu-ray players, so that instead of needing an extra device on the console, you stream content directly into the device you already own.  This is more efficient for the consumer, and adds value to the manufacturers of devices people are already planning to buy (like TV’s and BDP’s).  It sort of leaves hanging the folks who make set-top boxes, like ROKU and Apple.

It’s just strange to me that no one is willing to call this thing what it is.  One blogger refers to the new Apple TV as “streaming-focused device…” which is true by the way.  But it’s also a friggin’ set-top box.

I don’t know why this bothers me.  I’m an admitted Apple fanboi.  I’ve had three generations of iPhone, own several iPods, am on my second Macbook, and want to get an iMac. I might even get an Apple TV – it looks sexy. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s a set-top box, and I think it should be labeled (pigeonholed) as such.

If I were going to rate the new Apple TV set-top box (sight unseen) on a numeric scale from 1to10, I’d call it a 9 (until they prove me wrong.)  But if I were going to numerically rate their fishy attempt to avoid an ugly label that is nevertheless true, I’d call it a 2.  The sauce is weak.

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011110

Sweet. I’ve always liked palindromes. For the uninitiated, they’re words that spell out the same way in either direction. Simple ones are words like mom, or dad. A favorite one of mine that I learned in the 10th grade goes as follows:
“Satan oscillate my metallic sonatas”

Do you have a favorite palindrome or word game? If so, please share it in the comments so we can all enjoy. In the meantime, enjoy this great example of Nerd Rock by They Might Be Giants: “I Palindrome I” (notably not a palindrome, which is part of the fun.)

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On a scale of 1to10, I deserve a 2. At best.

On January second of this year (about a week and ago) an amazing opportunity arose. My good friend Jeremy pointed it out to me. The date, January 2nd, 2010. Or, written another way: 1/2/10

So cool. Our blogging namesake there, right in the date. On the evening of the 2nd, Jeremy and I were hanging out, and he suggested that I blog about it, use it as an opportunity to reflect on the blog, on life, etc. I agreed, went out to sushi, drank too much sake, and forgot to write a post. And I’ve been so busy I never followed up.

That’s been the story of this publication for a while now, and it’s a bummer. I like writing, and I like 1to10. I’m at CES right now (the Consumer Electronics Show) and being around so much gadget porn and so many bloggers is making me want to write. I missed a cool opportunity on 1/2/10, but I’m going to try and make the most of 1to10 in 2010.

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Now, I’m not trying to be “fattist.”  I struggled with weight as a kid, and I understand the pain of being heavy, and of being made fun of for it.  I’m not having a go at the participants, or at heavy people in general.

My issue, rather, is with the whole concept of reality television, and the American attitude that enables it.  I was going to write “uniquely American” but I don’t think that’s accurate. The plethora of Big Brother national spin-offs (from Spanish to German to Australian) belies the idea that only Americans can be moronically shallow, self-absorbed and voyeuristic.  But I think it’s fair to say that Americans revel in crappy, scripted, poorly-written and smugly self-satisfied “reality” television more than anyone else.

My annoyance stems from the fact that More To Love screams ignorance, falsity of purpose, and hypocrisy from every cathode-ray pore.  The people who watch are not tuning in to absorb the humanity, feelings of loss, and sense of righteousness of people who feel down-trodden and misunderstood.  They want to watch fat people struggle into “sexy” clothes and make fools of themselves.

I’m no “down-on-America” communist.  I love this country.  I just think that most of it is filled with people who give little or no thought to the actions they take, or what those actions mean about themselves.   Thougthlessness is an ugly quality; sometimes it makes me sad, and othertimes it makes me angry.  This show makes me angry.  Not just because it’s exploitative, but because the producers would hide behind false argument that it’s empowering.  It is not empowering anyone.  It’s social usury.

I suppose this post is more of a rant than a review, but so be it.  It’s my blog after all.  The television show “More To Love” (as yet, un-aired) get’s a 1 out of 10.  Boom.

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Good lord.  Where to begin.  Let’s start with a disclaimer.  I haven’t touched or seen the new shuffle in person.  Deride me all you want, I don’t care.  Apple has made several colossal, incredible mistakes with this device.

Anyone who’s read this blog before (only a rare few have come back more than once) knows that I care a great deal about Apple, and that I adore the aluminum shuffle.  That review was one of my very first, and it took place almost exactly 2 years ago.  I like that shuffle so much that I even got a second one and had it waterproofed.  But this new one… sigh.

Let’s see.  No buttons. Brilliant, let’s use an earphone-based switch.  Except, wait a second, what if I want to use a different set of earphones?  I can tell you for a certainty that some people (Sol) don’t like Apple’s earbuds – they just don’t fit.  So now I’m locked into Apple’s proprietary earphones whether I like it or not.  I will be unable to skip songs, pause and play, or change the volume without them.  Epic Fail.  And the controls are not very straightforward – Adrian Covert over at Gizmodo compares it to Morse Code.  Haha.

Form factor.  The new one is smaller.  Small as a house key.  Whoopee.  I use my square shuffle when I run, and I clip it to the waistband on my shorts.  It fits easily and doesn’t pinch or push against my skin.  The new one is long and skinny instead of square.  Maybe it occupies less cubic space overall, but it’s still longer than the square version, which means that it sticks further down the leg and is significantly more likely to pinch and press against the top of the leg while running.  Wahhhh!  I know, I’m a crybaby.  Don’t care.  I don’t see how making it rectangular and slightly smaller is an improvement.  Doubling the flash memory while shrinking the device (and preserving battery function) is a technological feat, I will grant them that.

The point is, they’re messing up an excellent product.  Even sight unseen, Apple just took a 7.5 and made it a 3.  The earphone restriction is egregious.  Moronic. Idiotic. It’s dumb.  The judgement on the form factor is my opinion.  Others may disagree, and that’s cool.  They can write their own blog.  But imho, there is no excuse for this stupidity.

Apple is a money-hungry American corporation that wants to insert themselves into our lives and control all our devices and hence have control over our actions and more importantly our buying habits.  For this I applaud them.  Seriously, I’m an American and a capitalist.  I love Apple, even if I find some of their practices annoying (DRM anyone?)  But when they start making bad (or worse yet, stupid) product decisions, that shakes my faith and my confidence in the world of consumer electronics.  As noted above, if I were force to rate this product (albeit without playing with it in person) on a scale from 1 to 10, it would get a 3.  If it weren’t being compared to such a superior previous version, it might score better.  But the earphone thing is pretty stupid.  Gahhh.

This review is also published at LIVEdigitally.

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If I were forced to give this a numeric rating between 1 and 10, it would be a 10.

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Now, these guys are not the first to do this kind of thing.  This sort of tongue-in-cheek, backbitten prose is fun and clever, but not necessarily original.  Kevin Smith penned something similar in the opening frames of Dogma for instance, regarding Platypi.  But as a full-blown geek who loves Star Wars and old school Star Trek both, I got enough of a kick out of this to take a photograph, sync it to my computer, email it to myself, and eventually blog about it.  If I were to give this a numeric rating, I’d call it an 8.5 for sheer silliness.

BTW, this was the screen from this week’s episode.  Another fine example.  Beware: Movie Spoiler Alert

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Let me be clear.  I do not mean to denigrate, descry or besmirch Rick Riordan’s books (the first of which came out after the first book in the HP series) in any way.  I love the Percy Jackson and the Olympians stories; Greek mythology has been a fascination of mine since I was eleven years old.  I think he’s brilliant, and that it’s a wonderful anthology of original, wonderful books.

That being said, there are a very large number of corollaries between the books.  Let me elucidate:

• Harry = Percy
• Harry starts preteen = Percy starts preteen
• Harry ages 1 year per book = Percy ages 1 year per book (more or less)
• Hermione = Annabeth
• Ron = Grover
• Dumbledore = Chiron
• Mr. D = Snape
• Fudge = Zeus
• Malfoy = Luke
• Voldemort = Chronos
• Voldemort gets a body in book 4 = Chronos gets a body in book 4
• Harry’s hair won’t stay flat = Percy’s hair won’t stay flat*
• Malfoy starts to look weak, wasted and used late in book 6 (being used by Voldemort) = Luke starts to look weak and used late in book 4 (being used by Chronos)

*Sea Of Monsters (Book 2) on Circe’s Island, Percy is frustrated that his hair never lies flat = Harry’s discomfiture that his own unruly hair will never lie flat (throughout the HP series)

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My buddy Kurt turned me onto this video when I was down in Phoenix for a meeting.  I’ve since watched it 6 times, emailed it to seventeen people, dugg it, and enjoyed it immensely.   The gist of the video is a call between the sales department and the IT department, also known as Sales Guy vs. Web Dude.  The video is called “The Website Is Down” and can be found at the URL of same name.  I’ve embedded the video here for your convenience:

My favorite part of the exchange is when the IT guy manipulates the exchange server to remove an email that he never read, making it appear as though it had never been sent at all.  If you’ve worked with IT people before, that’s their bread and butter (CYA, always.)  :)  But the entire scenario, from the fact that he uses a Mac, to his switching between apps, to the remote desktop, Linux / Windows virtualizations, Skype telephony and playing Halo on work time are all freaking awesome.

Let’s be clear.  If you’re not somewhat techno-geeky, this will probably not be incredibly amusing to you. There are some funny conversations, but a lot of it will seem boring.  However, if you have even the slightest peripheral interest in computers, IT, and the inanity of some human beings, you’ll find a lot of comedic value in this video.   And almost everyone can find some joy in the final minutes when they’re discussing Chip’s desktop.   Josh Weinberg (the director of the video, and the voice of “Web Dude“) did amazing work here, and I think it’s brilliant.  Johntash, a guy in IT, also thought it was awesome.  That makes him awesome.

If I were forced to give this a numeric rating, I’d call it a nine out of ten.  Great work guys – so awesome.

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Malaise – a general feeling of weakness in the body?  Downer.

Ennui – weakness or discontent due to boredom?  Get over it.  Start a blog.  Buy an Xbox 360.

Je ne sais quoi – a certain… “I don’t know what?”   Shut up.  Figure it out.  Figure out what you’re trying to say, and then say that thing.  Gosh.

And just to put the icing on the cake, here’s a cartoon that is depressing.  But it also made me laugh out loud (I have a sick and twisted sense of humor.  (Oh, and this one us even more effed up.))))

So if you have this persistent feeling of ennui, a malaise of the spirit (if you will), and you feel like your life is lacking, that there’s something missing, a certain feeling of je ne sais quoi… get over it.

If I were forced to give depressing French words that have wormed their way into the English vernacular a numeric rating between one and ten, I would give them a 2.

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(And BTW – the title of this post?  That’s a paraphrase from National Lampoon’s Vacation.  Clark Griswold says something along the lines of: “I can’t believe it.  I’m on a pilgrimage to see a moose.  Praise Marty Moose!  Hallelujah, holy shit!”) 

In case you hadn’t noticed, some things have changed.  I started this blog in March of 2007, wondering what this whole “blogging” thing was really about.  I’m still not actually sure.  But I’m having fun, and that’s what’s important.

For more than a year friends and acquaintances have been espousing the advantages of switching from a Wordpress.com blog, to a self-hosted blog using the software from Wordpress.org.  More customization options, more control, and a better overall experience.  I dragged my feet, hesitated, waffled, experienced anxiety coupled with ambivalence, generally procrastinated the switch.  Then, one Wednesday night, I decided to just do it.  I contacted GoDaddy, bought a hosting plan, set up a Linux server, installed a database, and installed Wordpress 2.6.  I would have gone with 2.5 because I’ve heard it’s more stable, but there was a one-click install for 2.6.  So there you have it.  I changed my DNS, and re-set my MX records.   I exported my Wordpress.com posts in an XML file.  I imported that same file into my new blog.  And guess what… fail.

Much to my consternation, my posts failed to transfer.  I only got about 3 months worth, taking me through to June of 2007.  Not acceptable.  I re-imported, and more posts showed up.  I repeated that process 6 or 7 times, and got more posts imported each time.  But then I hit a wall.  After around December 2007, I couldn’t import any more posts.  I emailed for help, checked the forums, no luck. I started manually recreating my posts, which truly sucked.  The posts themselves were not so hard, though I had to remember a lot of details (trackbacks, tags, date/time stamps, etc).  But the worst part was recreating all the comments.  Ughh.

However, last week I caught a break.  Nick, one of the AWESOME people in the Wordpress.com support group responded to my request for help.  He offered a number of suggestions, and then actually did some testing himself.  We decided that the import was timing out for some reason, and that the XML file was too big.  He helped me split the file into four smaller chunks, and when I tried to import the most recent posts, we finally met with great success.  So let me say it now, loud and clear, for the world to hear:

Thank You Nick, from Wordpress.com on 12seconds.tv

So, here we are.  My buddy Justin is helping me to learn a teeny bit of CSS, and I am trying to customize the sweet theme I picked.  (Simplish 1.7.3 by Simplish Project, K. Pitt, J.A. Hardy)  I want to develop a logo / header soon too, but I am a terrible designer.  So I am trying to figure out how to get something put together.  But, I am enjoying playing with the new setup, and I hope you enjoy it too.

thanks for reading,

David

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I froze. How totally, terribly, embarrassing.  Don’t let this happen to you.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.607018&w=425&h=350&fv=video%3Dfiles%2Fclips%2Frecord_1213826501067_LWHSU.flv%26host%3D%26]

Think about what you’re going to say before the camera starts rolling.  For this, I get a 1 out of 10.

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Real quick, let me just say: this is my 100th post.  Yay 1to10.  Ok, now on with the review.

I’ve had the same Swingline stapler for 8 years.  I bought it in 2000 with my expense account when I was selling drugs (read: pharmaceuticals.)  I decided to review my stapler for two reasons:

1. I love Office Space and it was the best homage I could think of right now
2. This is hands down the strongest, ablest and most dependable stapler I’ve ever had the privilege of using

I think number one speaks for itself.  But regarding my second reason for this review, what makes it so darn special?  Well, I’ll tell you.  First, the aesthetics of the stapler alone make it stand out.  It’s sleek, silver, and the red plastic bumper on the front of the stapling mechanism really pops.  Don’t you think?

Also, the heft and feel of the stapler is impressive.  It’s solid and weighty in your hand.  15-20 pages of heavy bond paper at once is no problem for this king, this champion of office accoutrement.  And the long handle up top extends way past the business end, providing a great deal of leverage to the stapling.  Also, the bottom is a firm yet tactile black rubber that holds tight to a slick desktop without slipping, yet doesn’t mark or stain the surface.  Here are some pics of my shining prince of affixment:

I’m not the only person who cares about staplers.  Kevin, a guy trying to blog professionally actually put “stapler” into the header of his blog. That’s a big step.

I looked on Swingline’s website, and this is the closest I can find to the same model as mine.  They are selling this one for $44.78, and if it really is the same one as mine then it’s worth every penny.

What’s your favorite office tool?  Do you have a stapler (or scissor, pen, mechanical pencil, etc.) that you love and can’t live without?  Tell me – I want to know.

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OK, so maybe it’s biased to give your friend’s blog a high rating just because they’re your friend. But I don’t really care.  Shaan writes a cool blog, and you should read it. And then go watch the movie he recommended, because it sounds awesome.

Yum.

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My friend Allison (not my wife) likes to use the phrase “on a scale
of 1 to 10″ in unusual ways.  Rather than finishing the sentence with a
number (like 3 for instance) she’ll say something like: “on a scale of
1 to 10 that’s awesome.”  Or: “on a scale of 1 to 10  this sucks.”

I think it’s brilliant, and on a scale of 1 to 10  she’s fabulous.

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On Thursday January 10th, driving from Las Vegas back to the San Francisco Bay Area, I felt my throat tightening and my energy level dropping. During the 8 and a half hour drive, I grew steadily more congested as well. When I finally reached home around 1:30 AM, I knew I was definitely sick. I did not, however, realize that I was about to spend the next 4 days in bed, sweating and fever-filled.

I don’t get sick all that often, about once a year, and sometimes less. I haven’t taken a sick day home from work in almost 2 years. This year’s CES-Flu knocked me on my ass. I was full of snot, overcome with fever, simultaneously shivering and sweating, and losing my battle with with a bad headache. Friday, Saturday and Sunday I hardly left my bed. On Monday and Tuesday I felt well enough to sit on the couch and ache. Wednesday I tried to go to work, and came home early after a doctors appointment. This was a bad flu. No, I did not get a flu shot. I don’t know if it would have helped or if this was a different strain.

You spend most of CES face to face with total strangers, shaking hands with dirty people all the live long day. There’s not enough Purell in Nevada to kill all the germs. Late nights and long hours don’t help your immune system either. I think I just shook one too many hands and breathed one to many people’s germy breath while glorifying in all the technology.

This year’s CES-Flu laid me up pretty bad, in spite of repeated handwashing and lot’s Airborne and Emergen-C. I was bummed to get so sick, and I can’t really think of any redeeming factors to the flu. So it gets a 1, a rare grade here on 1to10, but I think it’s deserving.

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At last, the long awaited follow up to the earth shattering first post about the big blue. The Pacific Ocean. The largest body of water on earth.

This post is going to focus on a couple of the less savory aspects of the Pacific Ocean – subjectively speaking.

One thing I don’t love is swimming out in the ocean. Or rather, I do love swimming in the ocean, but sometimes it creeps me out. Especially if I don’t have a snorkel and mask, and I am solely swimming on the surface. That is kind of scary. I always think there’s some creature underneath me, either patrolling for a snack, or just waiting to “slime” me. It’s creepy.

The other thing that is less than wonderful about the Pacific Ocean is… well, the smell. Especially at low tide. The smell when you’re out on the open ocean is great. But at a beach, at low tide, with dead creatures and seaweed drying in the sun the smell can be unpleasant.

Now, all of my negative commentary is eminently debatable, and all of it comes with qualifications. Please do not look at today’s rating or these negative aspects as the sum of my outlook on the Pacific Ocean. They are merely a snapshot, one small slice of the big blue pie, and really are more reflective of my current mood than of the ocean as a whole.

Does this call into question my ratings? Does this mean that my ratings are not objective and based partly on mood, feeling and instinct? Totally. That is exactly what it means.

Thanks for reading, and for your continued support.

The big salty blue gets a rating of 4 today.

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Diane Rehm is the radio-program host of the “The Diane Rehm Show.” She hosts her program on WAMU through the American University in Washington D.C. The show is nationally syndicated on National Public Radio (NPR.)

I love NPR. But Diane Rehm is driving me frigging crazy. Everyone just gushes on and on about how wonderful she is: she’s articulate, educated, well-spoken, interesting, insightful, etc., etc. and blah blah blah.

The truth is she is maddeningly annoying because she talks…so…god…damned…slowly. It’s making me crazy. I frequently listen to NPR on Sirius Satellite radio, and they play her show constantly. 3 times a day I find her on the air.

Now, I know that she has a speech disorder. She has Spasmodic Dysphonia, a disease of the larynx which causes involuntary spasms of the muscles in the throat and larynx. This cannot be treated with speech therapy or vocal training. The most effective way to treat it is with Botox injections directly to the throat. And that sucks. The disorder caused her to take a break from broadcasting. My assumption is that she speaks so slowly as means of coping with her disorder.

That’s all well and good; I applaud her efforts and sympathize with her plight. I am very sorry for her and for other S.D. sufferers. I know full well that I sound like an insensitive prick. A real asshole. But the fact remains that she is driving me crazy. I can’t stand the sound of her slow, warbling chaotic voice. IT DRIVES ME NUTS.

So I give her stupid voice on her stupid program a stupid rating of 2. I don’t care how articulate or intelligent or sensitive she is. She is a radio personality, and that line of work depends on a solid, commanding mellifluous voice. Diane Rehm does not qualify.

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I think Guitar Hero, the series of games from Red Octane, kicks motha-flippin’ ass. I love to rock out, it’s simple and fun. So I am not going to review Guitar Hero in general; everyone already knows that it rules.

Instead I am going to review, specifically, GH3 for the PC.

I don’t own a gaming console. I know, it’s crazy, my bad. For a techno-weenie geek-boy to not own a gaming console is like a Kansas City holy-roller only owning one bible. Not normal.

Nevertheless, I don’t own a gaming console. I’ve played GH2 on the Xbox 360 with friends, and played GH3 on the Wii. I had a lot of fun, but I didn’t want to sink $400-$700 into owning a console so that I could play one game. However, I did recently build my own PC. My buddy Jeff helped me put together a custom computer. This was my first time building my own machine. I bought all the components, installed everything, the works. Jeff helped. Here are the major stats:

• NZXT Apollo mid-tower computer case
• Antec Tru-Power Trio TP3-550W power supply
• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz processor
• Asus P5E-VM DO motherboard
• Corsair XMS2 240-pin DDR2 memory (4 x 1 GB)
• 2, Asus 18x lightscribe DVD-RW burners
• Nvidia GeForce 8400 Graphics card w/ 512 MB dedicated video memory
• 2, 7200 rpm Seagate 500GB hard drives in a RAID 1 (hardware RAID)

Being as I have a brand-new bad-ass mother-jammer (three hyphenated double-words in a row, yes!) I figured maybe I should search for whether there is a PC version of Guitar Hero 3. Wouldn’t that be cool? Maybe it’s nicer to rock out in front of your television, but I do have a 22″ widescreen LCD monitor, so that’s not too bad. Since I already built the computer anyway, this seemed like a cheaper and more reasonable alternative.

So, 1 or 2 Google search results later, lo and behold there is a version of GH3 for the PC.

Aspyr, a gaming company, contracted with Red Octane to port a version of GH3 for the Mac and the PC. Sweet. Better yet, on my routine visit to Costco the next day they are selling the PC version. Right there at Costco. Life is good again.

So, now I have a sweet machine and the video game I’ve been drooling over. How does it all stack up? Not that great.

It’s not terrible, but I have some deep concerns. For one thing, it stutters a little bit. When you are playing a musical game that depends on your being able to follow the rhythm of the song, stuttering present a pretty big issue.

The minimum system requirements for the graphics card list a “Video Card: 3D Hardware Accelerator Card Required – 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible 128 MB Video Memory.” They recommend 256 MB video card. Mine is a 512 MB card, and it still stutters. The only way I could find to mitigate the stutter was to lower the graphics resolution in the game options to the minimum setting. This did not wipe out all the stuttering, but it did help enough so that the game is playable. Yay.

Now Guitar Hero is not really a graphics intensive game, and truthfully I don’t really notice the difference all that much. However, I think it is totally lame that it was necessary to lower the resolution to the minimum. My new computer meets or exceeds all the other system requirements in addition to the graphics card. That tells me that the problem is probably not my system. I think it much more likely that Aspyr did not make a very good port.

It is also possible that Red Octane did not do as good of a job with GH3 as they did with GH 1 and 2. Harmonix (who is now making Rock Band, a Guitar Hero competitor) did all the coding for GH 1 and 2. Red Octane contracted with a different company to code GH3 – that’s part of the reason that it looks significantly different from previous versions.  The new company coded it up pretty fast, and perhaps they didn’t do as good of a job.  I have seen stutters on GH3 even on the Wii, though not as bad as what I experienced with the PC.

Another bone I have to pick is the controller.  The guitars for all other versions of Guitar Hero 3 are wireless.  Not so for the PC version.  In fact, the guitar for PC is actually the Xbox 360 guitar for Guitar Hero 2, right down to the little Xbox logo.  That is pretty lame.  I can (sort of) understand using a wired guitar on the first version, probably simplified a few things.  But at least give me my own guitar, and not one that has Xbox symbols on it.

Apparently Aspyr has released a patch for the game, patch #1.1, and it is supposed to resolve certain issues. I am going to download it and try it out, but I am not overly optimistic.  I supposed any port is likely to work less perfectly than the original.  And it honestly  isn’t that bad.  It’s just not great either.  Not the experience I was hoping for anyway.  So, because it is mediocre, it gets a solid 5 out of 10.

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I am incredibly disappointed. I have a bone to pick and a forum from which to descry the ineptitude and irresponsibility which is www.myshoestore.com. To put it another way, they suck as badly as it is possible for an E-tail shoe store to suck. Al Bundy would be an improvement to their sales team.

My fiancee (soon to be wife) needed a pair of hiking boots for our honeymoon in New Zealand. We looked the old fashioned way, and 3 different brick and mortar shoe stores were unable to provide the right boot for her size 5 1/2 foot. So we went online, and found the right pair of boots, “available” in the right size, for a good price. And with free shipping! El yay.

So I placed the order, received an on-screen confirmation with the promise of an email confirmation to come. No email came. I check my spam folder, and still no email. My credit card was charged – a total of $158.99. I waited three days, and when I still had received no word I called the customer service line. I was told that the order had been placed and received, and that it normally takes 10 days to fill an order and ship it out. The customer service rep said that my email had most likely been placed in spam by accident. She promised to re-send the email, and suggested that I check my spam folder. Great.

So, I kept an eye on my inbox for the rest of the day. No email. I checked my spam folder repeatedly. No email.

Oh well, they said it would take a little while for the shoes to arrive. So I waited. I waited for 12 days. No email. No tracking number. Nothing. So I called again.

I spoke with a woman who informed me that the shoes I had ordered were out of stock. At this point I have paid $160 for boots. I’ve waited more than 3 weeks. My honeymoon is now less than 2 weeks away. I’ve received no emails from the company. I was told, in person over the phone, that my shoes were on their way. They have my money. I have no shoes.

Enough I told her. Forget it, please refund my money. And that is when I learned that it takes 30 days to process a refund. A refund for an item I never received, an item that is not available. So I ask for a supervisor. A supervisor was unavailable, so I asked for a call-back. Guess what happened.

I hate myshoestore.com. They are evil, smelly, and despicable. They deserve less than a 1 rating, but this blog is called 1to10reviews so I cannot give them a lower mark. It just wouldn’t make sense.

So I am making it my mission to join every review website and rating website I can find to give them a poor ranking. The have created an enemy in me, and I will shout from every rooftop available to me that they have terrible customer service, lousy communication, they steal money without providing goods or services, and they should be run out of business as quickly as possible.

Here is my review from RateItAll.com:

Here is my submission to the Better Business Bureau:

I’ve threatened to submit companies to the BBB, but this is the first time I actually did it. It feels good. I am still looking for more review sites. If anyone knows of any good ones, please leave a comment and let me know.

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UPDATE:

According to the most recent comment, MyShoeStore.com seems to be out of business.  When I visit the webpage it seems to be down.  I’d like to think that I had a little something to do with it. 

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FURTHER UPDATE 7/7/08:

It’s official.  Their site has a goodbye and goodnight message posted up.  Here is a screenshot:

I don’t know if I really had anything to do with it, but I sure feel vindicated.

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Comments on this thread are closed.

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I love Aspen trees. There is nothing I don’t like about them. The trunks are lovely, silver grey with very few branches until you reach the upper foliage. The leaves are shaped like a short, broad paddle and delicately veined. They are green in the spring and summer, and in mid-Fall they begin to turn a beautiful, bright yellow. Towards Winter the leaves will drop, and then bud again in the Spring.

Aspen trees typically grow in Alpine and sub-alpine regions between 3 and 8,000 feet of elevation above sea level. They are often called quaking aspens, because in high winds the leaves (which are paddle shaped) will blow and beat against one another, causing a soft rustling, or quaking sound.

Here is an Aspen-lined road Some of the leaves

Some of my favorite regions in the world have a great deal of Aspen growth, including the Western and Eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range (South Lake Tahoe, CA and Tom’s Place, north of Bishop, CA)

Aspens up in South Lake Tahoe, CA

Gorgeous Aspen in full Fall foliage

Tahoe Forest with Pines and Aspens

Here is a video of a “Quaking Aspen” in motion:

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6713288611472713854&hl=en]

Incredible golden Aspen leaves

I find no fault with Aspen tree, although I do wish that it grew in more places. Though, perhaps, that is one of the reasons I find it so special. The quaking Apsen, especially in its full Fall regalia, is a full 10 out of 10.

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Do you have a close friend of the same sex? Someone with whom you spend a LOT of time? I do.

We drive places together, drink coffee together, eat together, play Guitar Hero together. It’s very sweet. Sometimes we argue, we laugh a lot, and we make fun of other people together. It’s like we’re dating, or even married. But we’re both straight. Sometimes I think I’d be good at being gay, but I am pretty much into women and boobs.

He’s married, I’m getting married in two weeks, and we both like girls, so we don’t have sex with one another. Which I think probably makes the relationship less complicated than it might otherwise be. We piss each other off, buy presents for each other, and help each other feel better about ourselves. We’re in a gay relationship without the sex, and it’s awesome.

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Buying goods at a Costco brick and mortar store requires a certain kind of mind-set. If you are in a hurry, you should not go to Costco. If you are tired or cranky, you should not go to Costco. But, if you want to browse around, buy goods at a great value, and/or have a great return policy to in the event of problems, then Costco rules.

The variances between certain stores make it difficult to specify a lot of hard and fast attitudes. For instance, does your Costco have the full cold cases at the back of the store with fresh foods and designer cheeses, or only one simple cold case with a few deli type items? Does you Costco make rotisserie chickens? At the checkout lines, do they offer bags, let you purchase re-usable bags, or hand out boxes from unpacked deliveries? These things affect the overall experience.

But if you enjoy commerce, and you like buying new toys (or a lot of damn food) then Costco can be a magical place. I remember the first time I shared it with my friend Rochelle. Having never been there, she had adopted a supercilious attitude about it, bemoaning the excess of American commercialism and excess. But once she walked around, and saw the shiny electronics and flat screen TV’s on the front, right-hand side of the store, she was as much in heaven as the most hard-core consumer. You can’t help but be excited about all the quantity.

Currently I live close enough to Costco that I can walk there. Having done so, I don’t know if I can give it up. Sometimes I still drive (if we’re buying things that are too heavy or too bulky to carry) but it’s so exciting knowing that I can walk there. Sighhh. But crossing the acre-long parking lot (after parking at the rear to avoid the competition for spaces at the front) contains a special joy. Perusing the various samples can be joyous and exhilarating.  (Although it is irritating when people wait in line, clogging the aisles, before the samples are ready.)  Eating an over-sized hot-dog and a soda for $1.29… sometimes I am overcome with emotion. Is it joy, nostalgia, indigestion? I’m still not sure, even after minutes of self-examination.

As long as I am ready for the crowds, mentally prepared for the long lines and the over-stimulation, buying goods at Costco remains a wonderful and exciting experience, even after 20 years of shopping from Price Club to Costco and beyond. The jury’s still out, however, on Sam’s Club.

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Meetings, in general, are difficult to like. They can be fun, with the right group, and if they are stay relevant and on track. But too often meetings end up lasting 6 times longer than necessary. Right now, I am sitting in a meeting that started at 10:00 AM. It is currently 2:40 PM. We broke for lunch (about 20 minutes) but basically its been straight through.

Jeremy (a friend who writes a blog called Live Digitally) once said that he thinks meetings should never need to last more than an hour. I buy into that philosophy, and here’s why:

• Once you go past 1 hour, you are probably beyond the attention span of most of the participants
• If you have more to talk about than you can fit in one hour, you are probably trying to do too much in one meeting
• Or, you have more people in the meeting than really need to participate

Now, a good meeting can actually be pretty enjoyable. You feel like you accomplished something, you reached consensus with a group of people you trust, and you have a clear plan of action to move forward. And you did all that in 51 minutes. That would get a 7 or 8 in my book, because there is a lot of satisfaction in work done well.

But too many meetings run over long, with too many people expressing dumb-ass opinions that don’t move the topic forward. So on the whole, I have to give “meetings” (in general) a score of 4 out of 10.

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Update 8/23/2007

It is now 4:13 PM, and I have been in the same meeting for more than 6 hours.  Sighhh.

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There may one day come a time when the subject of a review will receive a 0. For the moment though, as the title of this blog is “1 to 10 Reviews” I will restrict the lowest possible score to a 1. And cubicles receive that score. They suck.

Thus far in my professional career, I have avoided cubicilism, or the state of being ensconced in a cubicle for the 8 working hours of one’s daily life. I am opposed to the cubicle on moral as well as practical grounds – I believe they are wicked and immoral.

Ok, that’s kind of hyperbolic, but I still don’t like them.

It’s hard to explain why I dislike cubes so much. Office cubes I mean, the type like you see in the movie “Office Space.”

I think they simultaneously restrict and expose the self. You are shut up in a public space; that’s something of an oxymoron, but maybe that’s part of the reason I dislike them so much. There is a serious lack of privacy (if you need peace and quiet for making phone calls for instance), but there is also this weird type of territory that is created, carved up and doled out in the use of cubicles.

The office in which I work installed some cubicles recently. I politely requested to have space in one of the offices (with a window and a door) that were still available, and I was much relieved when my request was granted. I would probably have gone into crisis mode had I been asked to occupy a cube.

The point here is that the cubicle lifestyle is not for me. I think it makes a person feel exposed and confined at the same time, and neither of those are good feelings. I oppose the cubicle lifestyle, and I rate it a 1 out of 10.

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