Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Plague of Frogs!

Hope your turkey is delicious!

Summer vacation, here we come!

But it’s November, you say…it’s cold outside, you say…

We don’t care. We’re going to Key Lime Cove, right here in Gurnee, for an overnight. We’re going to have fun at a water park, in our swimsuits. We have a room with a whirlpool in it, and we’re going to put lovely Lush bath products in the tub and relax. It’s going to be awesome.

I’m all packed and about to head over there to check us in. Yay!

A Good Explanation

From Marcus Gilmer at Chicagoist:

We’ve received a couple of emails asking us, “Why do you love the snow so much since you always complain how cold it is?” Let’s see:

* 1. Snow is pretty.
* 2. Snow is awesome.
* 3. Snow is tangible evidence of the cold; at least there is something to result from the cold other than our freezing ears and noses.
* 4. On a personal level, as I’ve mentioned before, I grew up in a part of the country where snow is seen as a sign of the apocalypse and is referred to as “the Devil’s tears.”

We hope that helps.

On So-Called User Agreements

It’s not an agreement if it’s forced on you. It might be a rule or a declaration or even a law, but it’s not an agreement if you don’t get the chance to agree to it.

The trend in online-enabled software these days is to have some kind of user agreement, generally that spells out if and how you can distribute the software as well as specifics on use. You agree, often by clicking a button, when you install the software or start the software. Usually, if you don’t agree, you’re kicked out of the software or prevented from installing it. That, I have no problem with, because you are prompted to agree or disagree. I also have no problem with this because you haven’t paid for anything at the point where the prompt occurs, or if you have, it’s generally easy enough to get a refund at that point.

My issue is with companies that change the user agreements at a moment’s notice, after the point of purchase, and remove services you previously had if you don’t agree. Specifically, the Nintendo Wii user agreement has been changed with the latest “software feature update” to state that Nintendo can update your system at any time and that the update may delete games or applications from your system at any time to “protect the safety” of the system. I do not want to agree to this, but if I don’t, my Wii will not function in the way that it was promised to function when I bought it.

Furthermore, if I do agree to the update, Nintendo may update their user agreement again at some later date without notifying me, as that is what is specified in the new user agreement. This further undermines the agreement. What’s more, I’m pretty sure that if I took my car to the dealership for maintenance and as part of that maintenance, without my agreement, they removed my custom radio and replaced it with a standard one, I’d have a legal claim. There is no law to protect consumers from that same sort of shenanigan in software, however.

In short, it’s not a user agreement; it’s a user edict. And it pisses me off.

I have not done the Twilight hack. I have not downloaded the Homebrew Channel. I haven’t really planned to do it, because the features I get aren’t worth the trouble to me (yet). So, I’m not the person that they have in mind in making this change. Nonetheless, I’m pissed off by it. Unfortunately, I have no effective way to express my grievance. I could stop buying Nintendo games, but my one purchase means little. I could write a letter, but again, it won’t mean anything. Nintendo has already dismissed my type as “geeks and Otaku.”

What’s worse to me is that the Homebrew Channel is not hurting Nintendo in any way. It is not sapping revenue from them. It doesn’t allow users to do anything that they shouldn’t already be able to do. Yet, Nintendo is going after it with a vengeance…seemingly just because it’s there.

I do not like this trend in user agreements. First, I’d appreciate the honesty of calling it what it is. Second, I want some consumer protection enacted that would protect software users from abuse of so-called agreements.

TR: Underworld

Holy crap…I cannot wait to play this!!! I already pre-ordered from Amazon based on the demo…but wow….

It was bound to happen…

This morning, in a crazy rush to get the car backed out so I could take the garbage cans to the curb, I slammed my passenger side mirror frame into the edge of the garage. The garbage truck was on the street already, and I was in my nightgown, down coat, and slip-on shoes to try to make sure our stuff got out before they got to our house.

You’d think the odd scraping noise I heard as I backed up, in the second or two I had before it happened, would have clued me in that something was wrong. Instead, I thought, “Hmm, that’s an odd noise.”

The good news is that it’s a simple part to replace. The part itself runs around $30-40 unpainted on the internet. We’re going to do some research to see if a nearby junkyard recycling center has one in stock in my car’s color and year, so that we can skip the paint job. It looks like something I can do myself, but I have a back-up mechanic in case I fail.

The better news is that the mirror itself is fine; it’s just the plastic frame. This means my car is still legal to drive.

In other news, I got to visit with a dear friend on Saturday! We played Rock Band, and we had lots of meat. Sadly, the neo-futurists sold out before we could get there. But, it was an awesome afternoon nonetheless. And then, on Sunday, we had folks over and we played silly games (mostly) and watched reality TV. So, it was a good weekend.

Geo Greeting

Message your friends using buildings!

First class: A!

I got my first grade back from my MBA classes. I got an A! My numeric grade was 97.75. I hate that they don’t give A+ as a grade. If B+ is a grade, A+ should be a grade. Otherwise, just don’t give pluses and minuses at all.

Still, yay! I’m shooting for valedictorian this time. I’ve never been valedictorian before. I was 4th in my class in high school, and nowhere near the top in undergrad.

I also have my first class rep meeting coming up the Friday before Thanksgiving week. That should be interesting.

Picture of us at last night’s Obama rally

Behind us is the building lit up with “USA” that you may have seen on CNN during long shots of Grant Park last night.

Us at the Obama rally in Grant Park

Tonight until now

Best part of tonight: Shouting at 10pm, along with a few hundred thousand of Chicagoland’s finest, “7…6…5…4…3…2…1….(pause for CNN animation/graphic)…..YEAAAAHHHHHHHH! WOOHOOO!”

Worst part of tonight: DH driving me to train station where I left my car this morning only to find a dead battery due to me leaving the lights on. Also, spending 90 minutes trying to jump start proving to be unsuccessful…likely SUPER dead battery. Bad experience with roadside assistance suckitude. too tired to write more.

Edited at 9:45am to add: Car is fine now. The tow company that came this morning was able to jump it. Took straight to AutoZone for a battery test, and the battery is good. Must have just been really dead and we weren’t able to get enough juice from DH’s car to get the engine to turn over. (Tow company had one of those super-powered battery zappers.)