Just some random, semi-political observations:

• There’s something wrong when your country doesn’t create its own Stuff. Cars, dishwashers, TVs, refrigerators; we don’t make our own stuff, and that strikes me as a Bad Idea. I don’t have a solution; when you can manufacture Stuff for a fraction of the price in Taiwan or China or Indonesia or wherever, you can’t continue to pay workers in the U.S. a living wage to manufacture the same Stuff. But still, something’s out of whack.
• I don’t think Hillary has a prayer of winning the general election, and it drives me nuts how many people try to rationalize their way around it. I don’t give a rip what the polls say in “head to head matchups;” there are just too many people who hate her and won’t vote for her. It’s really that simple. All else is pundit-and-campaign blather.
• Speaking of Hillary, I used to really like Bill Clinton. I think he did a good job as president, and has done pretty well since then. Now, though, he simply won’t shut up. He’s fomenting civil war in the Democratic party just so his wife can be elected President, and it stands a good chance of putting another Republican bonehead back in the White House. Bill: shut up!
• And frankly, I’m am so ready for the Clintons to go away. Very very ready. What next; they run Chelsea for office? Go away!
• We have got to have energy independence. We used to, but now we’re stuck. It’s absurd. Why haven’t we brought the hammer down on Saudi Arabia, when the majority of the 9/11 hijackers came from there? Why are we playing footsie with Iranian speedboats in the Straight of Hormuz? Why do we give a shit about Iran at all? Why did we just “sell” $20 billion of military hardware to these extremist whack jobs? Because they have the oil, and have us by the balls, is why. Why U.S. companies don’t invest in alternative energies and try to corner the market now, I have no idea. It baffles me. Isn’t that what Capitalist Robber Barons are supposed to do?
• We’ve tried Trickle-down economics now for 23 years; it doesn’t work. Tax cuts don’t pay for themselves, budget deficits are bad, and Reaganomics only creates huge budget deficits. Which will destroy this country in the end. The Reaganauts out there can bellow all they want about how “If there had been government cuts, it would have worked!” Well, maybe, but I think that a quarter of a century proves that Government doesn’t have the ability to do that matching, so Reaganomics doesn’t work. Sorry, kids.
• And due to Reaganomics Bush-style, we now have larger deficits, and a larger debt, than Reagan could have possibly imagined. And what does this do? It means that with countries like China, we have basically zero diplomatic leverage because they hold our markers on so many loans. (How much of our debt does Saudi Arabia finance, I wonder?) Ditch the Reaganomics and get back to some fiscal discipline, you boneheads.

That’s enough bitching for one day, don’t you think?

Or “whinging,” as they call it in the British world.

Ol Steve Jobs just finished his new products announcement at Apple, and it’s funny for me in a number of ways:

• I never used to give a rip about MacWorld, as I work in the PC universe pretty exclusively
• I was just whining myself a few months ago about how innovation at Palm is completely dead, and here’s Apple–itself given up for dead multiple times over the years–literally en fuego with innovations
• I have resisted going to Macs for years–about 25 years, to be exact–due to the price, and the fact that as a freelancer, I need to be able to use certain particular applications that are PC based; and yet, I find myself actually considering getting a Mac (at least as a secondary system)

But that being said, let’s start with the whining:

• I’m glad to be able to personalize my Home screen on the iPhone, but I would have appreciated things like Bluetooth A2DP or voice dialing.
• No announcement about a new iPhone with 16GB (or more?).
• No word about the timeframe for the 3G iPhone?
• No word about things like–oh, I dunno, native games?
• The worst thing, of course, is Apple’s simply idiotic restrictions on “rental” content. Look, I know Jobs probably had to accept some compromises in order to get so many Old Media companies to sign on, and I can sorta accept the one month limitation on “rented” movies. (I put “rented” in quotes, by the way, because “renting bits” seems like a weird concept to me.) But forcing you to finish watching movies within 24 hours of starting them? That’s utter stupidity. One of the beauties of buying a movie or TV episode is that you can watch as much as you want, whenever you want. It will frequently take me two or three or more days to watch a movie (on DVD or an iPhone); I don’t see any good reason why I should be limited to “hurry up and watch!”

  I can see no reason–honestly, none–for “renting” a movie through iTunes when I can get the same movie, probably for a less price per-unit, from Netflix, which I can then watch whenever I want, as many times as I want, taking as long as I durn well please. This is a hugely stupid move, in my opinion.

• How about copy and paste capability? Seems pretty important. Hey, call me crazy.
• And lest I forget, still no eBooks! C’mon, Jobs! Get on the stick!

Anyway, like I said, I’m just whining. I’m still pretty excited to see what Apple will come out with over the next few months (my guess: a 3G iPhone by June).

Rudy Guiliani is of course one of the most terrible cases of a public figure being a Johnny one-note. For Guiliani, 9/11 is the answer to every question. How do you feel about the Iowa results? “I felt much worse things on 9/11.” What do you think of Hillary Clinton crying? “I cried too sometimes during 9/11.” The word “shameless” doesn’t even begin to describe this guy.

But Bush is just as bad. Worse, really, since he’s the President. Yesterday he gave a “wide-ranging” press conference about the economy. Here’s what the Washington Post said:

President Bush gave a wide-ranging speech about the economy yesterday, but proposed no new policies to deal with the emerging economic distress.

That perfectly sums up Bush. Bush–who chooses a policy and then sticks to it no matter what–never proposes new policies. He’s like all those “New and Improved!” products: the same old crap in a brand new package. With a tiny bit of rewriting, that quote can apply to every Bush speech:

“”President Bush gave a wide-ranging speech about Iraq yesterday, but proposed no new policies to deal with the emerging sectarian strife.”

“President Bush gave a wide-ranging speech about North Korea yesterday, but proposed no new policies to deal with the emerging dangers of their nuclear capability.”

“President Bush gave a wide-ranging speech about Iran yesterday, but proposed no new policies to deal with the Iranian Government.”

And so on.

I can’t wait until this guy is out of office. The only question is, how much more damage can he do in his remaing 12 months?

In reading a “Best of 2007” movie list on Moviefone, I had a bunch of random thoughts about the films and the actors that I thought I’d bore you with:

• Why do all actresses–even the naturally voluptuous ones like Scarlett Johansson and Kate Winslet and (most alarmingly) Jennifer Connally–have to be rail-thin? First of all, every guy I know likes women who are shaped like (gasp!) women. You know: with breasts and hips and a backside and so on. But second of all, what on Earth is someone thinking by taking a womanly knock-out like Christina Ricci and trying to make her look like Kate Hudson? Yeesh. Does anyone find that attractive?
• Speaking of Johansson, did anyone think that her appearance in Home Alone 3 would be the steppingstone to massive stardom? You never can tell.
• Do Ethan Hawke or Timothy Hutton ever comb their hair? Do they even have combs?
• Having Cate Blanchett play Dylan is genius. But it’s not enough to get me to watch “I’m Not There.”
• What the heck do people love so much about Naomi Watts? I admit I’ve only seen her in a couple of movies, but she’s a) a block of wood, and b) totally generic looking in that “skinny blonde Hollywood actress” way. I mean, there have got to be a million of them (and I mean that literally) in L.A.; why so much love for this one?
• Am I the only guy in the world who feels sorry for Chris Cooper, who always seems to be stuck playing dicks?
• Speaking of feeling lonely, while I like Knocked Up, I certainly didn’t find it as hilarious as The 40 Year-old Virgin or Wedding Crashers (to name a couple of recent comedies I liked). Did I miss something?
• Every critic in the world seems to love The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and I may well too, if I ever see it. But honestly, I would have to be pretty worked up to want to see a movie about a guy who can only move his eyelid, for crying out loud. All the reviews I’ve read sound a lot like my mother when I was 10, telling me that I would love those lima beans, if I only gave them a try. (I tried them, nearly gagged, and ran outside and spit them out, in case you were wondering.)
• I’m a big animation fan and I love Brad Bird, but does anyone really think Ratatouille was better than The Incredibles or Iron Giant?
• I’m still waiting to see Juno, but the backlash against it kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth. My guess is, 7 years of Bush has made reviewers grump.

Tune in to my next fluffy offering, weeks from now!

Am I the only guy in America who has noticed that Mitt Romney bears an uncanny resemblance to the late Fred Gwynne, most famous for his role as Herman Munster? Judge for yourself:

Illegitimate son? Illegal clone? Separated at birth and cryogenically frozen for a couple of decades?

I can’t believe all those political columnists–and, more importantly, political cartoonists–have missed this. Tom Toles, get cracking!

In the meantime, contemplate the prospect of a President Herman Munster. America, the choice is yours!

I have long maintained that Bush can’t possibly be as dumb as he is portrayed (or sounds when he’s mangling English). Personally, I think he suffers from dysnomia, aggravated by alcohol and drug abuse when he was younger. But even if you’re a legacy, it’s tough to get through Yale and then Harvard Business School if you’re a dolt.

(I do have some friends who disagree, though, insisting that Bush’s family put pressure on those institutions to help him slide through.)

That being said, it does drive me nuts that Bush absolutely and adamantly refuses to actually talk to people. He has his talking points, and then he has his joking, frat-boy, friendly mode that a lot of people seem to respond to (I friggin’ hate it, but that’s me). For the benefit of both my readers, I herein give examples of how Bush would react to everyday situations with his pre-programmed, Auto-Bush responses:

Hits another car: “This is an unfortunate situation that I am sure trial lawyers such as John Edwards will be quick to take advantage of, which is one of the things holding our country back.”

Bounces a check: “Tax cuts would alleviate these kinds of problems.”

Overbilled at a restaurant: “Tax cuts would alleviate these kinds of problems.”

Homeless person asks for money: “What you need are tax cuts that stimulate the economy, creating jobs.”

Attends a party and, with the other guests, trashes the house, accidentally dumping beer in the aquarium (killing all the fish) and running over the family dog his car: [watching host clean up] “You have to stay until the job is done. Leaving would be defeat. Not finishing the job is to become a defeatocrat. Complaining would give succor to the enemy.” [leaves, handing cleanup bill to homeless person’s kids]

Gets caught shoplifting: “As the Commander in Chief in a time of war, I have to do whatever I feel is necessary to ensure our victory. These supplies are desperately needed by our brave troops. Do you want to be seen as not supporting our troops?”

Gets caught beating someone up: “America does not torture. I refuse to comment on the sources and methods we use to obtain information.”

As Molly Ivins said, in times like these, sometimes the only fun we can have is making fun of the folks in charge.

Today–Iowa caucus day–I drove from Lake Charles, Louisiana back home to Austin. We left late to miss the Houston rush-hour nightmare, not getting in until a little after 10. So as a political junkie I figured: “Excellent; I’ll find out the results of the Iowa caucuses!”

Well, what a stupe I am.

Reuters gives lots of news about Obama and Huckabee’s big wins. Lots of talk about Edwards coming in second, and Clinton third (of course; it’s been “beat up on Hillary” time for a few weeks now, and now they have some actual data). But who came in second in Iowa among Republicans? Third? What are the percentages? Reuters is mute.

So is Yahoo news. And Andrew Sullivan. And Salon. And if you can find the info on the Iowa Caucus Results web page (“in real time!” they proclaim), you’re a better man (or woman) than I.

I’m currently googling to get the actual, you know, results, but I have to say I’m utterly appalled. It’s bad enough that the “mainstream media” spends ‘waaaaaay too much time on giving us opinions and bullshit; now they think their opinions matter more than the results.

Jeez, guys; even with baseball games (even local minor league games!) I get a box score if I want it. What are the friggin’ RESULTS?

If the media can’t even report the most basic, salient facts, what the hell is the point of them? (Over 10 MSM web sites now, and I still haven’t found out how Ron Paul did other than “fifth”.)

I was reading Farhad Manjoo’s year-end technology wrap-up on Salon, and he talked a lot about the iPhone. He also included a pointer to a post by Harry McCracken of PC World (any relation to Ed, I wonder?) about the iPhone’s shortcomings. And it got me to thinking about my experiences with the little guy.

The first thing to say is, I went down Harry’s list and kept thinking, “Geez, I don’t really give a rip about that.” Things like Skype, using Lotus Notes (ugh!), Slingbox . . . he just has an interesting set of priorities. After 6 months with the iPhone, I’m still loving it. It is far and away my favorite purchase of the year, and while I can’t wait for the upgrade–Doug’s estimate: June of 2008–I have a hard time getting irritated for it’s faults.

What do I want in an iPhone Rev. 2.0? Right now, just a few things:

• 3G; while I can live with Edge when I have to, it is definitely far too much slower than 3G. Apple says they’ll have it next year. (June?)
• A2DP. I’m stunned that I can’t use Bluetooth devices like the Cardo S-2 on the iPhone. That was boneheaded. (Another June fix?)
• Better ear-buds. The ones that come with the phone break in just a few months, and at $30/pop, that’s not okay.
• More memory. I can live with 8GB, but it’s not really 8GB. The OS takes up some space (about .75GB), and I have found that if you pack it too full, weird things start a-happenin’. I have found you need to leave about 1GB of free space, which is pretty annoying. But since the Touch comes in a 16GB model, I’m thinking this problem will be solved soon, too. (June?)
• There are lots of games available on the web for the iPhone now. I don’t want them; I want games that are native. Jeez, Jobs; the friggin’ iPod nano comes with games–what’s up with not having any for the iPhone? Get on the stick!

With regard to some of Harry’s specific complaints, I wanted to give my countervailing opinion:

• “The iPhone requires too many clicks to get stuff done.” With all due respect: baloney. Perhaps Harry can get to stuff quicker or with less clicks on his 8525; I couldn’t say. But I do know that on my wife’s RAZR, my old v180, the HTC Universal, and any number of other phones I’ve tested that it’s generally a pain in the ass to do almost anything not “dial a phone” related. Where do I go to turn on Bluetooth? How to I use the video camera? (My wife has had her RAZR for 3 months and didn’t even know it had a video camera!) How do I download ringtones? Etc. On the iPhone, I never get lost in menus and I rarely guess wrong about where some feature is located. The interface is simply superb, and as a guy who documents software for a living, believe me, I’ve seen a lot of lame interfaces. It may take “more clicks,” but who gives a rip as long as it’s fast?
• “The iPhone doesn’t have enough storage to be my primary media player.” Well, it doesn’t have enough space, that’s true. On the other hand, it’s far and away the best media player I’ve ever tested, and I’ve tested a bunch. I’ve tested several that had 30GB or 60GB of storage, and frankly the extra space isn’t worth the screen that’s not as good, the interface that’s not as good, and the lack of quietness that those devices always have.
• “The iPhone’s virtual keyboard is surprisingly good; the 8525’s real one is better.” Maybe. On the other hand, I’m not using the iPhone to type notes on; I just use it for SMS and answering the occasional email, and it’s just fine for that. I don’t want to trade a virtual keyboard for a real one unless I get something of the quality of an HTC Universal or an OQO version 2. And those babies cost over a grand, and weight 3 times as much. I don’t think that’s a good tradeoff. Your mileage may vary.

One final thing I wanted to mention: as a phone, the iPhone is by far the best cell phone I’ve had. It’s reception is better and more consistent, I can hear better with the stereo earbuds, and it’s interface–in case I haven’t made this clear–is excellent. So I don’t know what the people are expecting who complain, but I have been way happy just on the phone end.

It’s not a perfect device, by any means. But it is the only device I have ever actually be willing to carry on my hip; all other devices have gotten tossed in a gear bag. The iPhone? Naw; I clip it on my belt in a beautiful Vaja case. And while you may not know it, for me, that’s saying a lot.

A couple of months ago, Farhad Manjoo of Salon posted about this last summer’s snit between NBC Universal and Apple. The short form: NBCU wants more control over the price of downloads of their content from iTunes, and Jobs was insistent that the price remain the same for everything ($1.99/download). So NBCU said “Screw You,” and walked away from iTunes, taking their bat and ball with them.

Why am I writing about this now? Because NBCU’s policy only became effective early this month. And so now, while the writers are on strike and it might be a good time to download shows from iTunes that you haven’t seen before, you’re hosed, because they’re gone.

And I don’t mean just the latest seasons; NBCU pull their entire catalog. And this isn’t just for NBC shows; it’s for NBCU-produced shows. So while Heroes and 30 Rock were on NBC and are of course gone, so is Monk, which is on USA. And Eureka, which is on SciFi. And so on. Don’t matter about the channel; just matters about the production company. And who the hell pays attention to that?

This is asinine from so many different directions that it’s hard to unpack. But consider these few main points:

• NBCU loses all the iTunes users. That’s a lot of users. Yes, they’re offering their stuff through other channels–e.g., Heroes is available through Amazon.com’s UnBox–but how many iTunes users are going to want to fart around with a new format, try to come up with conversion tools, or whatever? (You can currently only watch UnBox videos on your computer.) Those iTunes users are lost.
• If NBCU jacks up the price–as they clearly want–who will pay? While I would hesitate to say “all,” I have to believe that the vast majority of their content is available through torrent download sites. One of the great advantages to iTunes is that it is reasonably priced and easy to use. If NBCU makes it unreasonably priced and difficult to use, who on Earth is going to pay when they can use some other difficult method that’s free?
• I don’t know how much NBCU was making for their downloadable shows, but for their back-catalog, not only are they not stealing away their own viewers, they’re getting that legendary holy grail of business: money for nothing. They upload their episodes to iTunes–episodes that may be years old–and people pay for them. That revenue is now gone. And for what?

As a personal user, I have purchased ‘way more TV episodes than I probably should have, simply because it was easy and reasonably priced. I watched half of last years’ episodes of Monk through download. All of Heroes. A few episodes of Eureka. And now NBC is getting no revenue from me–none–because I simply don’t watch commercial TV. I’ll wait and order the DVDs from Netflix. That’s not a lot of money–$100, maybe–but now NBCU will get none. Multiply that by tens of thousands, and that’s a lot of dough. That they were getting for no extra work.

I always knew that entertainment companies were idiotic about new media distribution formats, but this really takes the cake. NBCU wins the Doug Corporate Boneheads of the Quarter award. Congratulations, guys!

When the fambly and I moved from California to Austin, we were able to leverage our real estate in CA to get a pretty nice house in Austin, which turned out to be in a frou-frou neighborhood.

The nice thing about our neighborhood is that it is close to everything, including downtown, but feels like its own little neighborhood. Plus we can we hear all the big concerts in the nearby park; last summer we listened to the Stones by opening our windows, and I could hear Dylan while I walked the dog.

On the downside, there’s a lot of pretty conservative folks here–a problem for a yutz from Santa Cruz–and all the stores like to be “upscale.” Which means that the hardware store looks more like a boutique. But the worst, as far as I’m concerned, is the local Randall’s grocery store.

First of all, everything there is overpriced; the nearest H.E.B. is quite a bit cheaper (and a lot farther away). But also, they introduce new products, and then as soon as I learn to like them, yank them away again. I’ve lost track of how many “Doug enjoys this!” items have come and gone in this place, while still being available at Albertsons or H.E.B. But the worst is, they’ve upgraded their store twice, and we’ve only been here 5 years or so. And how do you reckon those upgrades are paid for? Not lower prices at the checkout, I’m telling you.

First, it was adding faux-wood floors to the produce section and a Starbucks outlet. Aside from the fact that I don’t give a rip what my grocery store floors are made out of, there’s a Starbucks right across the friggin’ parking lot! I hate to break it to these folks, but when I go to a grocery store, I want groceries, not Starbucks, not wooden floors, and certainly not marble tile floors (which is what they are putting in now). Groceries. You know: milk, eggs, butter, bread; that sort of thing.

If I want a frou frou fancy-pants grocery store with all the hard-to-get stuff and organic produce and so on, I’ll go to the bloody World Headquarters Whole Foods 5 miles away. In the meantime, stop taking away my yogurt breakfast bars and keep your marble tiles.

But the worst thing in the new remodel there is, they took out the “Express” checkout line and installed those idiotic “self checkout” machines. Let me ask you this: when you go to a store that has those things, how long are the lines manned by actual human beings vs. the lines at the “self checkout” machines? Personally, I always see lines where there are real, genuine people, but hardly ever at the self checkout.

This is a greed thing, pure and simple. Higher prices, smaller stock, fewer employees, greater profit. None of it is for the customer who–in case I didn’t make this clear–just wants groceries.

I could go into what’s lame about these self checkout machines–they’re really badly designed–but I’ll leave that for another post. I think by now everyone knows that I am hardly a luddite–I am a regular poster to Gear Diary and own an iPhone, for crying out loud!–but I am happy to complain about corporate greed and lame engineering when I see it. And that’s what this is, kids.