Apparently, RadioShack® no longer knows what a “radio shack” is supposed to be. Wikipedia lists Radio shacks as ‘a slang term for a room or structure for housing radio equipment.’ RadioShack® doesn’t even carry Radios anymore, Ham or otherwise. I don’t even think you can even get an FM Radio there now days, much less a radio scanner. I’m glad they got rid of the slogan “You got questions, we got answers” as usually for me it is “You got questions, we got blank stares”. It’s hard to find the right resistors lately at their stores. About half the stuff I look for they either no longer carry or are out of stock, and usually don’t refill it. Cell phones are what they push now days.

Best Buy® (or as I call it: BuyMore) sales people haven’t a clue. Or at least most of them. I was looking at Blu-Ray players a while back and a “sales associate” came up asking me if I needed help. I told him I was looking for Blu-Ray players that had wired ethernet, Netflix and hopefully Divx support. I don’t like running things wireless and I couldn’t get thru to him that wireless can be unstable. I was also looking for one with composite outputs so I could run it on my old non-digital CRT TV. He couldn’t fathom that I wanted to hook up a Blu-Ray player to my old TV. I know it won’t show up as HD on a non-HD TV, and I told him that. I want to build up my setup slowly and not jump in with both feet. He then started to try to get me to get a Best Buy credit card… ugh.

iFad

Is Apple the new AOL? I’m not talking about the contant busy signals I’ve heard so much about, but Apple wants the “Walled Garden” for it’s devices. I currently have an iPhone as well as a MacMini and a couple of iPods. I’m not a Apple Fanboy. Especially not now. I know I’m not part of Apple’s target audience. I love to tinker. Scripts can give you great power. I like to automate things. That’s what computers are for. Apple makes it so hard to do things like scripts, even in Mac OS X. Even Microsoft realizes that people script. That’s why DOS is still around in today’s versions of Windows. The iPhone and iPad both lock you down to what they will allow you to run. For supporting a device that’s fine. I rarely ever call a company for support, and that’s only if a service is interrupted. I never call for software support. Fine Apple, don’t give me support. Just let me do what I need to. Granted, even Google Phones are locked down. But even Google knows the power of scripting. They even allow you to run Python on their phones.
Honestly, I didn’t buy the iPhone to make telephone calls. The iPhone sucks at that. It’s a mobile computing device that happens to make phone calls. I will be getting rid of my iPhone. I need something that doesn’t hinder me from getting things done. I know that Android is not quite the answer I’m looking for. But, it’s the best thing out so far.  I want something that just works… for me, not against me.

Crapbook

What’s with Facebook and Groups? I use Groups all the time on the main website, and, I’m sure I’m not alone. If you use the iPhone App or the Lite version of the website, Groups are either extremely limited or just not working. I’d like to make a post or just find out how many members are in one of the groups that I belong to. But, no. You have to go to the main site. Ok, fine. But please Facebook, set a cookie, an entry in the database or something so I don’t have to go through so many hoops just to get to the regular site on my iPhone or other mobile device. If I wanted to go to the lite website, I’ll type the URL. At least give me a splash page or something asking me what site I want to go to instead of assuming that I want the stripped down, reduced functionality site.