Monthly Archive for January, 2005

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links for 2005-01-15

links for 2005-01-14

links for 2005-01-13

links for 2005-01-12

Queer Eye Whores Out

I prob­a­bly shouldn’t admit to this in public, but Pres­ley & I are watch­ing the season pre­miere of Queer Eye, and I can’t help but won­der­ing, “when did Queer Eye totally whore out?”.

Prod­uct place­ments and the like were always a part of this show… but fuck­ing JCPenney? I defy anyone to find a queer who shops at JCPenney. Ready…. go!

The whole reason us met­ro­sex­u­als watch this damn show is because of the higher-​end, New York prod­uct placements… the nice fur­ni­ture stores, etc. But, I don’t need to see some cheap shit on my tv. I can go to Kohl’s or WalMart.

(go ahead, send me nasty emails…)

Saab City

I dropped my 2000 9-3 off at the Fram­ing­ham Saab today for its 30,000 mile major ser­vice, and was promised a “loaner” car. Great!, I thought… what a per­fect oppor­tu­nity to check out the new 2005 model, or maybe the new 9-2X, which is basi­cally a fan­cied up Subaru? Right?

Wrong. I was handed the keys to a Purple Kia by an Enter­prise Rep — auto­matic trans­mis­sion, no CD player… (I wouldn’t have chosen this car, were I actu­ally paying to rent it)

Swedish car owners are a spe­cialty niche group, (and a very loyal one), much like Apple com­puter users. When some­one buys a Saab, they are buying into a brand that is dis­tinct from other car man­u­fac­tur­ers, (and they pay a pre­mium for that right).

When you step into a Saab or Volvo deal­er­ship, the first thing you notice is the modern, Scandinavian-​style design. The woods are maple, the glass is curved, and the chairs look like they would cost $5000 at DWR.

So, if Brand is so impor­tant to Saab and its cus­tomers, why would they have such crappy loan­ers? I can’t imag­ine taking my Power­book in for ser­vice, and being handed an eMa­chines pc for tem­po­rary use…

Another side note: this dealer sends me junk mail offers twice a month, asking if I’d like to upgrade to a later model. WTF?

links for 2005-01-10

links for 2005-01-08

links for 2005-01-07

links for 2005-01-06

What 2004 Was Good For

It was so dif­fi­cult to think of good things to men­tion about the past cal­en­dar year, that I decided to skip any year-​end roundup.

But, brows­ing through Kim’s pho­to­stream today, I remem­bered one great thing about 2004 — my Scooter.

It was a year of ral­lies, making new friends and riding that Vespa hard in 3rd gear (4th gear slips).

Look­ing back at 2004:

SixApart to buy LiveJournal?

There have been reports on the net in the past 48 hours, that SixA­part, (cre­ators of Move­able Type and Type­Pad), is set to buy LiveJournal.

Om Malik reports:

The deal is a mix of stock and cash, and could be announced some­time later this month, accord­ing to those close to the two com­pa­nies. If the deal goes through, then Six Apart will become one of the largest weblog com­pa­nies in the world, with nearly 6.5 mil­lion users. It also gives the com­pany a very fight­ing chance against Google’s Blog­ger and Microsoft’s MSN Spaces.

Leav­ing aside the ever-​present wor­ries about SixApart’s ambi­tions, I’m scratch­ing my head to figure out what Live­Jour­nal could pos­si­bly offer. I sup­pose one could argue that MT, Type­Pad, and LJ occupy dif­fer­ent seg­ments of the weblog­ging market, each cater­ing to dif­fer­ent require­ments and needs of its users.

But, still… LiveJournal?

links for 2005-01-05

links for 2005-01-04

links for 2005-01-03

Yea New York

After a fun New Year’s Eve time down in the Lower East Side, I of course decided to leave my beloved dig­i­tal camera behind in the cab. Bril­liant. I called the Limo & Taxi Com­mis­sion, and put a notice on Craigslist… no chance.

We walked over the Brook­lyn Bridge today, and I had to be con­tented with a Kodak disposable… and tomor­row morn­ing, we’re going to check out the new MoMA.

I’m tempted to go down to E 86th street in the morn­ing and buy a new one. this sucks…