RIP Dio

Just a minute ago I heard the tragic news of the passing of one of the great fathers of metal Ronnie James Dio (or just Dio) died today the 16 May 2010. Dio had been battling against stomach cancer. And until a few months ago it seemed he was on his way to recovery although the more recent news pointed toward this unfortunate day.

Indeed we must mourn this day for Dio truly was one of the greatest influences upon the metal genre. Being the vocalist for Black Sabbath be gave us the Corna (horns) not to mention some Über Metal. No doubt his greatest song is Holy Diver, while my personal favourite would be The End of The World, and more recently Heaven & Hell rocked us.

So to you Dio we hang our heads in morning, but we raise the horns high. You have earned your place in eternity. Your music is eternal.

Don't get emotional but we're out of time
The melody's gone
And fools have got the sunshine
If I'm mistaken and I see you again
Don't leave me alone
Maybe tomorrow
Could be the end of the world -Dio (The End of the World)

Inefficiency

Well I don't mean to rant. Actually I do, this time. To be clear I didn't start this blog to be a personal rant page nor do I intend for it to be but there are times when a rant is in order.

So the 'cause of this rant is rather simple I am moving into an apartment close to my university (college for those American folk) and more than one week after applying for an electricity connection I am still in the dark. And for my South African readers I can't even put in a eishkom how did we fucked it up joke here.

So to start off my lovely *seething with sarcasm* experience with this company (impact meters). Last week Tuesday I start moving my stuff through to my apartment and contact the company for information as to how to get electricity at my place. After waiting on hold only to be told that I had to contact another branch I promptly called the other branch to inquire as to how to get connected. Do they email me an application form that I fill in digitally print out sign then fax to them?

Simply no. I have to go to them and pick up a form to be filled in. To which I thus ask what their location is. The response was to give me directions. I ask again for an address explaining that I am directionally inept and need to check out Google maps and my GPS to get anywhere. Once again she tries to give me directions. I sincerely explain that I am not a native of the city in which I study and thus directions do not help me but an address would help me. After about eight minutes of waiting she eventually give me an address.

So now that I can finally find the place I go there to get the form. Upon collection of the form I see why it can't be done digitally, well not that it can't just the idiots wont. The form is on carbon paper, remember that old stuff that you press on one page and it writes on another. Way cool in the 80's but this is the 21st century.

So while I begin to fill in the form I am informed that I need my lease agreement. So I take the form run to my real-estate agents and get a copy of my lease. While reading through the terms and conditions of the electrical supply I notice something things like that they can just change my rates, the landlord can ask the company to charge me extra, and lots of other bullshit. But the Pièce de résistance is that all communication must be by email otherwise they will charge me extra. The idiots can't set up a system with any digital incorporation into the application. Yet they want to charge me extra if they can't email me.

But back to the thing that really bugs me it's been over a week and I still don't have power. Are they that inefficient that they cannot even provide what their business is setup to do. And I contacted them on Monday and was told that I would have power but when I got back to my apartment it was completely in the dark. Thus leaving me to drive to another city so I could do anything besides just pass out on a bed.

So now my question why are things always so blasted inefficient. Do people simply lack innovation, are they too lazy to do anything decent? Do they just not care. But if people do not innovate or progress then they stagnate and if you stagnate while others progress you are left behind causing you to be inefficient. This basic problem can be applied to many field. Actually I will do a proper no rant type write up on this. That soon. But for now can they just fucking connect my electricity.

Facebook

So Facebook, recently this booming social network has begun to annoy me. Ok that was a lie, I was being nice, facebook annoys the fuck out of me.

So why do I use it. Well it is convenient for what it was originally intended for. Keeping in touch with people, events, and so on. Basically social networking. Ok so if I think it's good for that then why am I ranting? Simple facebook fails at everything else. I've been using it since there was a mandatory 'is' in your status updates and you had to refer to yourself in the third person. So when I started using the site it wasn't the complete shit sauce I was expecting it to be, guess it lived up to my expectations in the end.

So what went wrong? Well the first thing was the apps. See back in the day you only used to have one facebook page, no tabs imagine that, and every-single-fucking-thing was on that page. You used to spend 20mb of bandwidth to load a page just to let a friend know that they left a cellphone at your house, and that they are an idiot for having so many apps on their page.

But facebook has it's redeeming qualities in that aspect that the devs soon realised like browsers facebook pages needed tabs. So crisis avoided and I started using facebook again.

Then came the one reason I still bother with the site. Events. These lovely little things let me know what's going on with music, lans, etc. So this little nugget of gold is rather helpful and convenient for my life. Since I run around to a lot of gigs and the bands can let me know what's going on. On the personal side, friend having a party, or myself, set up an event and problem solved.

So far I have mentioned the things I like about facebook and that's about all of them. So now to why I hate it. I'm an IT guy I'm passionate about it. Thus the facebook devs simple fucking around annoys me. Sure they have had some innovation. But really could that not have found a way to make it easier for the user? Every day I get 49 farmville, 20 petville, and what ever other app request. Then there are the group request, page request and so on. And sometimes there is that nugget of gold in the pile of shit. Often enough I lose it 'cause ignore all is just that convenient.

So let me go onto my recent gripes. Fan pages. Recently there has been an out break of page such as "Funniest pic evar join 2 c" besides horrid spelling of the name you have to join to see what is this less than humorous image. And you get spammed by an endless count of these.

If you are clever enough to catch onto a pattern here then you aren't in need of help. Facebook is a cesspit of viral trends from apps, to groups, to more app, to fan pages, to even more apps, to who the hell knows next.

In the end the problem is that a vast majority of facebook users are bored idiots who have nothing better to bide their time with than playing annoying apps and trying to coax their friend into joining them into playing these as well.

The sad part is the in the base concept facebook was brilliant. Social networking, well the next generation of it anyway. But a couple of mistakes by the devs has led to it being just a cesspit. Who wants all their information to be linked to fan pages? Hey is I was a self centred dev who was trying to prove to the world that I'm awesome I might make annoying things like the those mentioned above. In the end I'll just bide my time until the next generation social network comes along and I just hope it has events in it.

And so it begins.

Hmm where to begin? Well I've been thinking for a while that I need a place to put all my crazy ideas and thoughts down so why not do something linked to my google account (one of the many) for convenience sake?

So here we are in my plain of meandering kaos (yes a purposeful misspelling of chaos but isn't that just kaos being chaos?) So basically you can expect anything from reviews on games, books, gigs, bands, to philosophy about games, music, and the universe or anything else my mind decides to spew out.

On that note if you have any comments or criticisms about about the blog in general just comment here and I'll take it into consideration