So the other day I am out driving to Trader Joe’s, not on purpose – I was actually in the neighborhood.  I figured, “Hey the video store is right by it!” I pull up to the video store and it’s closed.  As in nothing on the shelves closed, lights out closed.  NO!!!

That’s my bread and butter they’re fucking with.  I walked up to the door to read some signs they posted, in hopes of a brighter tomorrow, I see that there is another Hollywood Video down the road from my apartment in the opposite direction.  I’m thinking to myself that can’t be all that bad.

After my stop for snacks I make my way across town to find a smaller version of the video store I used to frequent.  Slightly disappointed I found a stack of movies.  I am one of those movie nuts that when I go to rent movies, I usually walk out of the store with anywhere from five to twelve movies.  The lady at the counter said I get to have only one.  This is my burden since I am new to this store.   Her response is that it’s a new policy since there have been too many thefts.

Let me tell you something counter lady who doesn’t make the rules but just enforces them:

First of all, if this is something that has been happening to more than just one store, (and I am sure it is) how about you centralize your customer accounts so I don’t have to open up a new one every time I go to a different store?  Why doesn’t corporate spend a few extra bucks doing this so when people go to rent movies, they’ll see whether or not if this is a person who has been previously noted as being a vandal or a movie addict who desperately needs his fix. . .  he has the money give him the goods.

Apparently I can rent three movies at once now, Hollywood Video: I have a feeling you’re going to be closing a lot more stores until you fix an easy problem that seems to be costing you quite a bit of money.

Next on my “Bitch about Video Store Day:” I have a big ‘Piss off’ to Hollywood in general.  You’re just setting yourself up for failure and it’s blatantly obvious.  You have this belief that sales are down in DVD’s as well as Blu-Ray disks, you know this is no true because we see the same sales figures as you and if they’re up, then they’re obviously up.  How about this: on all of the new releases, give us back the ‘Special Features’ options?  I’m getting upset opening up a DVD/Blu-Ray case and seeing ‘Rental Copy’ on it to find out it’s just the movie and not the listed special features from the display box.  If I wanted JUST the movie, I would have pirated it from some Bittorrent site, or from the various open FTP networks out there.  But when I look at a movie and it may have some oddball commentary or weird feature – I assume I’m getting that when I rent it.

In lieu to my rant, I have given up on purchasing any movies for the year 2010.  I may even go as far as selling my collection of several hundred.  If there is a movie that I desperately want to see, I’ll just have to wait for it to come to the Valley Theatre where it will only cost $1. 50 plus the two drink minimum.
I had faith in movies, now that faith is gone.

A true geek may spend their entire life in isolation. Not because s/he is antisocial, that is a lie many are. But a geek spends their time in isolation so they can help the masses. One person may sit at a computer developing something that will help thousands if not millions. I think of all those ‘lone coders’ out there that had spent countless nights and endless hours developing code for everyone to take advantage. Napster, MySpace, BitTorrent, even different types of Firmware so we can alter our gaming consoles, music players, cell phones, even the computers in our cars!

Many people think the geeks are cast offs when they don’t realize that a geek somewhere has improved their life. Oddly enough, a geek may be able to list off the periodic table of elements but not their entire families dates of birth. The geek will develop an application that reminds them, though, you may actually tell a geek your birthday is on March 31st- they probably won’t remember to write it down because you probably interrupted them while they were deep in thought about the world coming to an end and they were trying to calculate vertical gardening to maximize their produce output so you could all eat. You get upset that they forgot your birthday but don’t say a word when you have enough food to eat. The geek should have replaced the batteries in his/her digital calendar so they would have remembered, pass the salad.

Why don’t most geeks clean up after themselves? Well they get used to Anti-Virus programs doing that work for them. That is the whole working smarter not harder part. They don’t go examining every bit of code in a program to find out if there is a virus; they program a piece of software to do it for them. Sadly the “Rosie” project a.k.a. “Digital Maid” has not yet been perfected but is being worked on around the clock, so more messes will ensue. Our little pet Roomba is doing an okay job keeping dirt out of the carpet and floors, the flying Roomba for dusting was shelved because it kept breaking the lamps and stealing the “Spacebar” from our keyboards. The broken lamps were too much for floor Roomba (a.k.a. ‘Sparky’) to clean so those are all gone now, our houses are lit by computer monitors, night lights, and our natural glow from a 6-pack of our favorite energy drink

Are you curious why successful geeks have giant houses? The same reason not-so successful ones have a stock pile of hard drives. We have more stuff therefore need more space to store it all. Digital storage is our territory and we are very aggressive in keeping it. Successful geeks have large houses because their territory is no longer in a digital domain 100% of the time. They expand their physical domain to take over digitally, hence success.

Why are there viruses? Because geeks get sick too!
Operating systems are like languages. When one person is fluent in one language they hate the people who don’t speak it. Regardless, when someone is bi-lingual or even tri-lingual, the mono-lingual still hate these people and believe them to be a piece of adware, so they develop a stronger army (I mean better anti-adware) program to suppress (I mean clean) these multi-language (I mean multi OS friendly) people from their databases (or was that homes.) I’m confused but jump into my head then come back out and tell me I’m not crazy.