Jaypoc dotCom

I’m curious why people seem to enjoy griping about big companies. I currently work for a large corporation that provides RESIDENTIAL Internet access to people in a major area. Having been a customer of this company for years and now being an employee of the company I have come to realize that they are extremely fair in their practices and policies, yet I constantly hear people gripe about how Horrible or how Expensive they are when in fact, if you look at the alternatives they’re very fair and reasonable.

In fact, surveys comparing our service to similar services in other areas show that we are among the best as far as product, service and pricing. which makes me wonder… Why do people have this need to gripe?
I saw a post commenting on the company I work for and it’s prompted THIS post:
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They bitch that they can’t send out 400,000 emails in an afternoon… NO SHIT! If I had my own service (and technically I do) I wouldn’t allow it either! If you want to spam, buy yourself some dedicated bandwidth, your own IP and spam away. It’ll only be minutes until you’re blocked and then you’re fucked! OH RIGHT! Then you can’y blame anybody else!

If you’re not getting enough bandwidth? GO OUT AND BUY MORE! There’s plenty of companies that will sell you more bandwidth. In fact, I just found a company that will give you the same amount of bandwidth as my company. With NO limits, No restrictions, No blocking implemented unless YOU want it. AND it’s only $6,106 per month! WHAT A DEAL!

They bitch because we don’t take certain security precautions. THEN they bitch when we finally take those precautions.

I can easily recommend poorer service for over 10 times the cost if you really want an alternative, and you can even customize it to suit whatever warez hogging, spam sending, file sharing, porn ripping desires you may have.

The moral of this post is: You get what you pay for.

If you don’t like the service you’re getting, then you have the right to search for the alternatives. And when you find you sacrifice service for lower costs, don’t bitch that we’re the bad guys. Bitch that you’re expectations or needs are above where your wallet is.

Rant over

I just went to install the Yahoo! messenger and was VERY disturbed by what I saw.

As I work for an ISP, I get calls all day long from people having trouble with software they didn’t even know they installed, and the Yahoo! messenger installation explains a lot of it. First of all, Yahoo! messenger is extremely easy to install. It’s a NEXT NEXT NEXT NEXT N….. operation…. Now, the Installed gives you 2 options (which if you just hit NEXT you miss)…

Typical Installation which installs the Yahoo! Messenger, The Yahoo Toolbar (with pop-up blocker..screws up many web based email and online application services), Yahoo! Extras (Bullshit you dont need but it makes changes to your browsers, and causes general havok on your system.)….or Custom Installation which says “Advanced Users” next to it… now while easy enough, the average user will see “ADVANCED” and decide it’s too complicated for them.

Then below that is an option, pre-selected, Make Yahoo! my default search engine. Of course, I’m a Google fan, so I unchecked this box immediately! WHAT THE FUCK! Nothing Happened! There’s an UNCHECKABLE checkbox.. Those bastards. If people don’t know how to fix this later, they’re STUCK with Yahoo! as their search engine.

Fortunately if you do go into the custom options, you can change this (and any other) settings, but you really shouldn’t have to!

I probably should, but I don’t have the patience to read their TOS. They probably own my soul and my first born. Who knows…

(Side note, it’s time for LiveJournal to add “Google” to it’s spellcheck dictionary!)

Lots going on. Long Island is being attacked by hordes of billions of small white flakes, JaypoCON is just one week away and I finally got a new cellphone

The Invasion
The snow is unbelievable. There’s just tons of it. It’s a great day to own a 4×4, quad or snow mobile. Unfortunately, I don’t own any of those. The thing that sucks is that I do have to go to work tomorrow. If I can’t make it in I have to use my personal day which I was planning on saving for ICON weekend. We’ll see what happens tomorrow afternoon.

The Party
Only one week left! JaypoCON 2005 is going to be a lot of fun. It’s all going to start on Friday when I head down to Atlantic City to celebrate my turning 28 years OLD. The fun begins officially for dinner in AC Friday night, some games, maybe some shows, who knows… Then Breakfast and Lunch on Saturday, separated by some touring and gaming. Then maybe even dinner, then we head back to Long Island. If you want to come, email me. Everyone is invited!

The Phone
I got a new phone. It’s been about 2 weeks but I’m back. I got an Audiovox PM-8920 cellphone for the SprintPCS network. It’s a nice phone featuring a 1.3 megapixel camera, speakerphone, ringtones, alarms, etc… Basically, it has all the features of my old phone (Samsung VGA-1000) plus a higher quality camera and a speakerphone, though the speakerphone kind of sucks, the rest of the phone is cool. I’ve already started transferring my Foamy ringtones (and Banannaphone) to it. Those of you who miss calling me on my cell, call away!

IT’S HERE! And it works great. I have it set up in my room now. I’ll have a page dedicated to the CarPC project once I get it set up. Here’s what I have so far:

VIDEO: 8″ Lilliput Touchscreen VGA/Video Monitor
GPS: Garmin eTrex Venture
SYSTEM: P4 3.06 GHZ Laptop
SOFTWARE:
- INTERFACE: Coyote MediaCAR w/ Pontiac Skin
- MUSIC: WinAMP
- GPS: Destinator with D3 Frontend
- RADIO: Nothing yet. No plans at this time
- APPLICATIONS: Notepad, Calc and Network Stumbler

The eventual plans are to get an FM modulator to play MP3′s on my car stereo and a USB GPS reciever that I can leave in the car along with a MiniITX PC dedicated just for the CarPC project. Until then I’ll haul my laptop in and out of the car.

Okay, I just got off the phone with FedEx. According to them, my monitor is on it’s way and should be delivered sometime this morning. It’s amazing that I’m even awake now. Considering I went to sleep at 5AM, I’m shocked hat I’m up now (at 9:30AM) ] at all, but it will be worth it if the monitor comes. Knock on Wood, I leave for work at 1:30 PM. Hopefully it’ll come before that. Way before that so I have a chance toplay with it!

It’s been 5 days or so and I STILL can’t find my cellphone. If you havent heard from me in a while, It may be because I don’t have your number anymore. If I had your number and havent talked to you in a week or so, give me a call at home (or on the Hot-line… 516-390-7191… and leave a message) so I can get your number again!

You can imagine my excitement when I recieved the email saying that the Touchscreen VGA monitor for my car was shpiped. You can imagine the expression on my face that showed the estimated delivery date as the day after I got the email (yes… 3-day International Delivery)

You can imagine my dissapointment to find out the damn thing never cleared customs and was sent back to the sender. WTF! Now I definitely won’t have it until next week. I was looking foward to installing it tomorrow.

I’m getting tired of driving with the laptop open on the seat next to me. Plus, it makes it extremely difficult to have passengers with the rediculous wiring jumble on the floor and passenger seat when I have all my PC equipment set up in the car. I’ve taken on a new project. The Jaypoc CarPC!

I’ve ordered an 8″ Touch Screen VGA monitor made by a company called Lilliput Electronics. eBay had some good deals on the display at just uder $300 shipped. I got my FedEx confirmation today, so I should have the monitor by the end of the week. I’ve spent some time researching software and found quite a few “CarPC” front-ends to give my CarPC an authentic mobile system look and feel.

For the meantime, My laptop will serve as the brains for the CarPC. Once I work out some of the kinks, I’ll build a dedicated box for the car itself. Anyone who’s seen my room knows that I have the extra computers laying around. It shouldn’t take long to put together a working PC. Who knows. Maybe I’ll even invest in a new mini-itx system or even one of the nifty in-dash PC systems they make now. (Yes, There’s whole computers that will fit in your dash in place of a radio!)….Maybe I’ll replace my radio with a CarPC system altogether…

Okay, I doubt that. But it’ll be fun!

Plans include: