Published November 28th, 2007
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It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything and people have emailed me to see if I’m still around. I am around and am busy as hell. It’s annual report season and that means working way too much at making the short comings of big companies transparent in the eyes of shareholders through fabulously designed annual reports courtesy of yours truly. Don’t worry though, I’m still pissed off and have plenty of rants and incites about this that and the other thing.
The site looks a little funny as I upgraded to the latest stable K2 release and it jacked a bunch of things up, but I hope to get all that fixed. Time, all I need is time damn it!
Published October 19th, 2007
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I can almost taste it. Apple released a new extended preview of OS X Leopard today that really upped the ante for those anxiously awaiting version 10.5 of the Unix-based operating system. Sure Apple has had preview clips up for like a year or more, but this new director’s cut combines all of the previously released features with some new ones in a killer preso showing the final OS in action. Dig it and drive brother> BTW, they say preorders will have Leopard in hand on the 26th, so if all goes well, I’ll be installing the new OS next weekend 
Published October 4th, 2007
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When good commercials become bad shows. Ok, so did anyone think this was a good idea? When I first heard about it, I thought wow, this will be interesting (like a watching a car accident). I managed to watch the debut and let me tell you, it was just as bad as everyone expected. As most anyone that watched this abortion will know, the “Cavemen” are the exact opposite of what they appear to be. In spots for Geico that were created by Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Martin Agency, the cavemen are well heeled and intelligent, not at all like the doltish characters envisioned when Geico explains that buying its insurance is so easy “even a caveman could do it.” That’s where they lose me — the cavemen aren’t stupid; instead, they like gourmet food and have feelings that are easily stepped on — that creates the humor of the situation and makes their ads something people don’t mind seeing more than once.
Spinning a clever commercial spot into a funny, compelling sitcom, however, is much more difficult than buying insurance from Geico. The characters in the program are just plain boring, depressing and not too terribly funny. They still sip chardonnay and have feelings and intelligence, but there’s little for them to get upset about. I felt like I was watching a faux TV show that was crafted to be stupid and placed inside of a movie or another show. There was zero connection between the show and the characters that were such a hit in the Geico spots. Advertisers are surely running from this turd and I don’t think anyone will be too surprised when this travesty gets the axe.
I think they would have been better off running thirty solid minutes of Geico spots then airing this thing. Maybe the gecko will get a show next?
Published October 3rd, 2007
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As if Apple’s batteries didn’t suck enough already. So today software update pops up and informs me that there is an update available for my MacBook Pro. The update is for Apple’s new Battery Update 1.3, which updates battery firmware and addresses battery performance issues with the 15-inch MacBook Pro. I click install and away it goes. Not an hour later I head off to a meeting, laptop in tow. Since our company moves very fast an everyone is absolutely buried, the corporate culture means you work on your laptop in meetings. I’ve made it a good 3.5 hours in an afternoon meeting before my battery gives up, but today I made it all of 15-minutes and worse yet, it just shut down. As in pulled the plug, lights out, no warning, you’re SOL.
Boy was I. I was putting the wraps on a rather involved preso in Keynote when the MacBook bit it and since there was zero warning, I lost quite a bit of work. I tried rebooting, but could barely get past the startup chime before it shut down again. Back in my office I plugged into the power adapter and all was well - it booted up fine and was running great. The strange thing was that my battery level was already at 93%. WTF!? That evening I tried taking it off the charger again and at exactly 15-minutes, dead again. Something is not right.
I headed over to Apple’s support pages as per usual, their own KB had nothing on the topic, but in true form, the user powered discussion forums had lots of info on this very topic. It was good to see that others are having the issue as well, but it was not good what I was reading. Basically, hundreds of MacBook Pro users were posting about the same fake dead battery shut down after installing Battery Update 1.3 that I was seeing. From the looks of things, the battery update fucked up the battery by exposing previously masked latency issues and some other BS stuff that I don’t care about. I’ll be calling Apple on this one as it’s pretty clear my previously working battery was hosed by installing their software, so they better pony up and take care of the problem… stay tuned for more.
Published September 15th, 2007
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It’s just gross. So over the last week or so Promise began running .30 spots for their Promise Activ Supershots and they really make me feel a little ill. They show people walking around, drinking Promise Activ Supershots and these gooey looking letters that spell cholesterol falling off of their bodies and landing on the ground. Ok, so they’ve made cholesterol a physical entity and made it ok to have this bodily substance being dumped all over the place. I mean really, one look at these spots and you’ll be more grossed out than when Crispin Porter + Bogusky dug up Orville Redenbacher. Maybe Ex-Lax should think about doing a spot where people are shedding giant brown letters that spell SHIT all over the place? It wouldn’t be too far from where this campaign has gone and would probably make people just as ill.
Published September 15th, 2007
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Green is not the new red. Ever since Circuit City launched it’s Firedog installation and repair service last year, the brand mark has driven me up the wall. For starters, the name is great, so no complaints there. Even the design of their mark is well though out. So what’s my problem. Well, the name is Firedog. The logo is a dog jumping through a hoop, presumably made of fire. So why the fuck is the brand’s color palette centered around green? I mean, it’s not Moneydog. It’s not Grassdog. It’s not even Goddamn Waterdog. It’s Firedog. Call me crazy, but I think they should have used a nice, fiery color and not mellow, environmental bandwagon green.
Being the faux company/puppet brand of Circuit City, it would make even more sense if they had some warmth in their logo - Circuit City = Red. Firedog= Green. WTF? And don’t get me started on these fake third party service companies that seem to be all the rage these days. Geek Squad anyone? Maybe Firedog didn’t want to have a warm color like the Geeks? Who knows? I hate it and I’m very upset. Then again, I use a Mac and never have to call on these green polo wearing losers or their VW Bug driving counterparts from Best Buy.
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