The Angry Drunk

Concern

By The Angry Drunk

Apparently the new right wing tactic is to express their concern that we progressives don’t get our hopes up too high over Obama. Thanks douchebags, I think we’ll manage.

Porn:

By The Angry Drunk

If I ever go into porn, my stage name will be “Deuce McCockle.”

Before getting started here I want to make a few things clear. I do not like the Clintons; neither Hillary or Bubba. I’m firmly of the opinion that they, and the Democratic Leadership Council that they represent are, in many ways, nothing more than “Republican Lite.” Having said that, if the situation was different and Hillary had cinched the nomination, not only would I be voting for her in November; I would be enthusiastically campaigning for her the whole way. Not because I like her or dislike McCain, not because of any “loyalty” to the Democratic party, but out of loyalty to the United States of America. Because I don’t think that the lower and middle classes of this country can survive even another four years of the criminally inept “leadership” that the real Republicans bring to the table.

Now, given that, I have to say “thank you” to Hillary for the speach she gave last night at the Democratic National Convention (text here). It couldn’t have been easy for Senator Clinton to swallow her pride and deliver the rousing endorsement of Barack Obama that she did. And have no doubt, it was an endorsement; regardless of how the Old Media Douchebags and Neocon pundits will attempt to spin it. Here is one small quote that sums up, for me, the point:

I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?

This is the bottom line. Vote for Obama. Not because he’s black and that’s a nifty narrative, not because you’re a Democrat and are toeing the party line, not because he has the powers of a magical hobo and can heal the sick and farts rainbows. Vote for Obama because the alternatives are all too clear, and all too terrifying.

Brilliant Logic

By The Angry Drunk

I’m going to take a quick break from Apple and New Media Douchebag related topics to point out some Old Media Douchebaggery. I don’t follow sports much (read, “at all”) but I can spot some dipshit logic as well and anyone, so this piece by Alan Abrahamson at nbcolympics.com caught my eye. The bottom line is that some Jamaican cat named Usain Bolt broke some world records. Apparently this dude is really fast. The part that I want to highlight is this. After questioning whether Mr. Bolt is under the influence of anything more powerful than some tasty jerk chicken, Abrahamson writes:

And while no evidence of any sort has surfaced to suggest he’s not, it’s naïve not to wonder how Bolt is able to run so fast. Because no one in the history of human beings, from the first primitive soul desperately trying to outrun a saber-toothed tiger to the sophisticated races of our times, has ever run as fast as Usain Bolt has run at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Fuck me running! Isn’t that the point of breaking a record? Apparently, in Alan’s mind, doing anything more competently than a neanderthal is suspicious. Anyway, we all know that there only one real performance enhancing drug. Everything else is ashes and dust.

Suck It Blogosphere!

By The Angry Drunk

MacRumors is reporting that some bunch named the American Customer Satisfaction Index have ranked Apple at the top of some customer satisfaction survey. But wait, I thought that Apple was doomed by it’s horrible hubris to a fate worse than corporate death. Oh, that’s just what the doucheblogs want us to think. In reality, the average consumer probably hasn’t even heard of the majority of the issues that we’ve all been nattering about for the last few months.

Let me tell you a story…

Once upon a time, when I was at EarthLink, I was part of the team that was in charge of data gathering and reporting for customer satisfaction survey data. This means that, among the various unpleasant things I was responsible for, I had not only access to the compiled survey return data but access to the raw stream of survey returns. Of particular note was the survey comments. Based on the comments that we were getting back, it was obvious that EarthLink was possibly the worst company on the face of the planet, and we should all kill ourselves out of embarrassment (a thesis that I’m not exactly disputing).

Now, here’s where it gets amusing. The last year I was with the company, EarthLink won a prestigious customer satisfaction award. In fact, we won that award every year I was there, but this year I was on the panel that got to review the results. It was amazing, these customers seemed to think that we excelled in the very areas that our own internally gathered customer satisfaction data said we sucked ass in. Of particular note was email availability. I’d estimate that while I was in Tech Support, we never went a day without at least 1% of our customers not having email problems (sound familiar), but the external survey group rated us higher than all of our competitors in that regard. What could have caused the discrepancy?

The answer is obvious once I tell you how we gathered our internal survey data. We gathered survey data by sending a survey to every customer who had contacted Technical Support or Customer Service. Simply put, we were surveying a population that was skewed towards people who were pissed off at us.

So, what is my point here? Simple: the douchebag bloggers with their 50 ways to diss the iPhone hit pieces, and the poor saps complaining about their valid, but fairly rare issues on Apple discussion boards, and the borderline criminal “analysts” with their FUD laden speculation reports are about as representative of the actual body of Apple customers as I am of the mass of Hannah Montana fans. It’s time for the blogokleinbottle to understand that.

Douchebag of the Week (Early Contender)

By The Angry Drunk

Hey kids, got this one via the whiny fuckers over at The Consumerist under the delightfully wrong title of AT&T Won’t Honor iPhone Price Announced In Its Own Press Release. The long and short of it is that our Douchebag of the Week contender “Rom” wants an iPhone 3G, and he doesn’t want to pay the unsubsidised price, even though he recently bought a BlackBerry from AT&T too. Hey, chucklefuck, wake up! This is how the subsidized phone trade works. The sooner you dips realize this, the sooner I can stop mainlining Pepto Bismol. I guess I can’t be too hard on Rom though, he is a Ferengi, and we all know what cheap fuckers they are.

(Via Consumerist.)

My God Another One Gets It!

By The Angry Drunk

In a welcome break from the current torrent of “Apple is dooomed” reporting, Jason Snell over at MacWorld hits on, what I think, is the real story in this piece. Jason’s argument, which I agree with whole-heartedly, is that the string of Apple failures leading up to July’s mega fiasco is the result of Apple simply biting off more than it can chew. I think that this is self-evident, and if you look carefully I think that you can see the seeds of this situation going all the way back to the release of Tiger and the PPC to Intel transition. Additionally, I think that the signs are there for those who want to see them that Apple gets this, and is working to pull themselves out of the hole. As one tiny piece of evidence I’ll point to the “no major features” Snow Leopard release. The bottom line is, Apple isn’t “arrogant,” or “incompetent.” They’re simply facing the consequences of being too successful.

Here’s One for All the New Media Douchebags in the House.

By The Angry Drunk

So, I’m sitting here in my office, working diligently (seriously, for any potential employers out there, I’m working my ass off). I’m also seeing tweets fly by, and reading blog posts by Robert “I have more followers that God (literally, 31,617 vs 600 as of this posting)” Scoble shilling the latest New Media Douchebag Approved™ social blogging network whatever. Meanwhile, over in my email client a funny thing is happening. People I know, people I would even go so far as to call friends are emailing back and forth, planning a happy hour gathering for tomorrow (and incidentally accusing each other of being either hippies or red-necks).

Email! I know, it’s fucking shocking. I mean, it’s so 1990’s. No Loopt, no Twitter, not even a dynamic group blog leveraging social networks. Fucking email. Even worse, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, some of us will actually telephone people not on the mailing list to give them the heads up. We may even use landlines.

The point behind the snark here? This is what actual friends do; and this is the point that the New Media Douchebags fail to miss. Things like Twitter, and MySpace, and blogs, and Loopt are there to enhance the social experience, not replace it. People make “social” networks; not technology.

Chuq on MobileMe

By The Angry Drunk

Ok gang, I’m throwing this out there as support for my call for the blogokleinbottle to lay off the “Apple had a bad month, they’re doooomed” bullshit. Here is Chuq Von Rospach, a man who actually know that the hell he’s talking about (imagine that) commenting on the MobileMe launch fiasco, and Apple’s response.

Addendum:

And, of course, the first comment on Chuq’s piece is someone talking out of their ass to disagree with him. Gotta love the internet: everyone’s an expert, except the people who fucking know what they’re talking about.