The reason I’m writing this is because I was just ears-bleedingly-loud-music-rolled by yet another fucking website: http://www.shrutilaya.org (WARNING: the sound on the site is loud…and it never fucking ends).  Look, you amateur dipshits, people actually may look at your website at school, at the library, at work and they don’t need to listen to your shitty music blaring unexpectedly.  It’s annoying and it’s rude.  It’s like if you went to your local library and just started shouting.  It’s like if you were anywhere and just started shouting.  There is no difference between this and acting like a crazy person.  Because that’s what you are — yeah, I’m looking at you, Webmaster G-Dog!, with your Macbook PRO in the coffee shop sipping lattes and furrowing your brow while you work with your webmasterin’ skillz because I don’t know how many years of webapprenticeship you went through and I don’t care how many years you were a webjourneyman before being elevated by some blazing Sword of Greyskull-like dildo that christened you into webmasterhood (pathetic piece of shit, I fuckin’ hate you) — you’re a crazy person.

Here’s the deal.  I want to go to your website, glean some information that I deem important, and get the fuck away.  I don’t want to be pulled into your idea of what my experience should be.  I don’t want to be dazzled by flourishes of pretty colors and smart spacing.  I don’t want a million stupid gadgets in my way for my convenience.  I don’t really care about using your website as a springboard into my social networks because let’s face it, they’re stupid anyway.  And you’re stupid.  I will ignore your ads with every ounce of my being.  I will close every popup you dare to open.  If your entire website is in Flash, I will wonder if you are trying out for the special Olympics because you obviously have Down’s Syndrome…and your mother probably drank during her pregnancy.  All I ask is that you give me what I want and that you get the fuck out of my way.  Who knows?  Maybe I would even pay for that.

bed>

What is a cloud?  Well, let IBM tell you.  A cloud is a “workload-optimized, service-management platform enabling new consumption and delivery models.”  Thanks, IBM.  That clears it up for me.  All this time I thought a cloud was one of those fluffy, white things that appear in the sky from time to time.

Yes, those are IBM-ers explaining the complexities of the new and confusing technological world we live in with even more confusing technological jargon.  Why?  Because you’re stupid and you should buy IBM’s bullshit because it’s scary out there and only IBM knows what any of this crazy, newfangled stuff means.  Don’t worry.  Let the tender caress of IBM’s sacherine words lull you into a gilded sleep where angels poop rainbows and giraffes frolick and sing like little girls.

Funny thing is I actually know what a “cloud” is.  Believe me, it’s not the voo-doo, hocus-pocus the IBM asswipes in the commercial purport it is.  I liken it to Zip Cars.  You can buy your own car, pay insurance, etc. and maintain that car.  All of this comes at a hefty expense.  But it’s great because you have a car that you can use all the time.  But if you don’t need a car all the time, then it’s a questionable expense.  Sure, 90% of the time, maybe you don’t need a car, but it sure comes in handy that other 10%, right?  Well, that’s where Zip Cars come in.  You get a membership and you use a car when you need it.  You essentially pay as you go.

Hosting your own application infrastructure is like owning a car.  It’s expensive as hell, but comes in handy.  However, if you need a lot of bandwidth, hardware, etc. 10% and not so much 90% of the time, it’s a lot of wasted expense.  So you use a cloud infrastructure, which is essentially someone else’s application infrastructure writ large.  IBM as well as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and others all have clouds.  They’re basically selling a service whereby you rent their cars at a reasonable expense as you need it.  You pay as you go.

I’m simplifying drastically, but you get the idea.  And hey, I’m way less obnoxious than those IBM shitwits.

The first reason to hate Twitter: the overly cutsie name. It’s hard to believe we now live in a world where grown people talk about “tweeting”. It’s enough to announce to the whole world for no particular reason, “Hey, everyone who barely knows me and barely cares about what I’m doing, this is what I’m doing right this minute!” It’s enough to say, “!” It’s enough to shout out, “I want to gossip about nothing important and feverishly typing away on my cell phone gives me a euphoric sense of self-satisfaction that…oh, wait a minute, this is so much fun I think I’m cumming!” But to call it “tweeting” gives it that special “retarded” touch.

And Twitter wallows in the mundane and the superficial. Take Facebook for instance. How many friends do you have on Facebook? Now how many “actual” friends do you have in real life? Is there a disconnect? Probably. Be honest. That’s the nature of social networks. We want to connect through them, but they are public by nature and so it is almost impossible to be oneself fully and therefore connect in a genuine way. Take being on camera for instance. When you are on camera, you act different. You put up a front. You play the part of yourself. Because you’re exposed. Social networks are much the same way. Many of us act different on social networks because they in their own way shine a spotlight on us. And as a result, they are anti-social. Because we are not wholy ourselves, we are encumbered from making true connections online.

I am reminded of the old days of IRC. In those heady days when people got online, entered chatrooms, and gabbed with random people they’ve never met, you had a sense of anonymity. You could be whoever you wanted. You could say whatever you wanted. You could be a lover, you could be a smoker, you could even be a midnight toker. And ironically, people are more themselves that way. It’s when your imagination runs wild that you reveal the most about yourself. Nowadays, people no longer have that anonymity. Instead you see people building up their individual profiles, driving up their friend numbers, and generally putting up a face to the world. We get so easily wrapped up in the superficiality of the medium, that we lose sight of ourselves.

The last reason for hating Twitter stems from hype. I’ve heard everything about Twitter. How it has/will change the way humans communicate. How it fundamentally alters your life. How it is a game changer for the Interweb. It’s 140 characters, people. 140 fucking characters! It’s a glorious way to say to the world, “I just typed less than 140 characters!!!” Like all social networks, it’s built on the presumption that the world cares. The world doesn’t care. I’m sorry to have to break it to you. The world does not care! Sure, maybe you’ll touch the life of some migrant worker in Central Zimbabwe with your stunning review of the bag of popcorn you just ate, but that just seems really unlikely.

Ultimately, most people want the web to change our lives. I am reminded of the philosophy discussion group I ran for a while. People clambered for an online discussion and someone finally put up a forum on their site for people to participate in philosophical discussions online. Almost no one participated and it eventually died. Why? I think it’s because you lose the dialog. Admittedly, this is where I think Twitter has the ability to shine. It allows you to have dialogs — albeit badly. Dialogs allow you to connect. But dialogs are hinged on immediacy. When you don’t have the immediacy, everyone having the short attention spans that they do will move onto something else. And there’s nothing social about that.

Okay, so I’m at home masturbating when…my Blackberry Storm vibrates.

I ignored the call, but then…I cram it up my ass and call myself all night.

Is that supposed to happen?

Is it supposed to feel so right?

(Shot of Verizon crowd.)

Oh right.

So yes, I still hate the Blackberry Storm and, worse yet, I have to tolerate those terrible commercials where the dude is talking about how the Storm makes him feel like a natural woman or something. And I still see article after article about whether the iPhone will be able to weather “the Storm.” Gimme a break. It’s been 3 months and nobody is talking about it. I haven’t even seen it in the wild at all. There is barely a mention of it outside of those milquetoast commercials.

My story begins early this year when my two-year contract with Verizon was up. Those who know me know that I have a tenuous relationship with my brick of a phone, the XV6700 (named the XV6700 because Verizon is incapable of offering a phone with a memorable name). I had had it for two years and I was beyond eager to get something new, something that didn’t throw my hips out of alignment when in my pocket. So I began looking.

I had heard rumors that the iPhone was coming out soon, that it would redeem the sins of the first generation, that it would be 3G, would be faster, sleaker, better, etc., etc. So I held out and waited until July to see what the fuss was all about. But when July came, the long lines, the service outages, and the overall disarray of the iPhone launch discouraged me from checking it out. But lo and behold, Blackberry was coming out with a couple of new phones: the Bold and the potential iPhone killer, the Thunder (now called the Storm). So I decided to wait a little longer.

Of course, a little longer became a lot longer. With delays and technical problems, the new Blackberries went further and further into the horizon. Meanwhile, people with their new 3G iPhones were starting to impress upon the virtues of the Apple device. I saw a lot of cute games and apps. But I wanted a real smartphone. Something for big boys. I wanted Blackberry. And since I had Verizon and Verizon was going to be the exclusive carrier of the Storm, I figured I would wait. And wait I did. It was supposed to launch late summer. The late summer became September. Then September became October. Then October became November. Meanwhile, my spine was crying for something new.

Finally, November rolls around the corner and Verizon starts marketing the Storm. “Coming soon” they say. WHEN?!?! You fuckers, stop taunting me! I’ve been waiting forever. I don’t need this “coming soon” bullshit. My back hurts. Just give me the fuckin’ phone. Well, mid-November, I get this thing in the mail about a Private Sale with a big picture of the Storm on the front. Now officially the Storm was supposed to launch on the 21st, but this thing was going on between the 17th and the 21st. Presumably, this meant us “VIP”’s could get a special sneak preview of the new device. I was excited. So early the 17th I high-tail it to the Verizon store to see if I could check it out. Surely they have a demo or something. No dice. The clerk there said she hadn’t seen one yet. OK, fine. A little false advertising…sure, it didn’t say the Storm would actually be available on the 17th, it just had a big picture of it with Nov 17th by it. Fine. Whatever.

So then I came back on the 21st of November. As I approached the Verizon store, I had flashbacks to when the iPhone launched, the long lines around the block, the fanfare. I didn’t see any of that this time. I just walked right in and told the clerk I wanted to check out the Storm. The first thing out of her mouth was, “We don’t have any in stock.” I just flashed a huge smile. After the months of anticipation, after the massive “coming soon” marketing campaign, after the “Private Sale” bungle, today was the BIG launch of the Blackberry Storm…and they fucked that up too.

Fortunately, there was a demo and I was able to try it out almost immediately. Let me just start by saying I really wanted to like this phone. I had waited months for it, read reviews of it going both ways, kept an open mind, and in the end here it was in my hands. Finally. And I hated it. The whole click screen thing was awkward. You definitely have to put more pressure to “click” a button. That made typing a lot slower. Plus the keyboard in portrait mode was abysmal. I couldn’t even type a simple url in the browser. I struggled for two minutes to type something. After that, I concluded that it was simply unusable. And just when I came to this conclusion, the clerk called out my name. “How can I help you?” she asked with fake enthusiasm.

I told her I was checking out the Storm, to which she responded to with the usual spiel about its virtues. “OK,” I replied not knowing what else to say, to which she motioned me to a register obviously assuming I was going to order one that day. “Oh no, I’m not getting one. Thanks.” And I left.

Disillusionment with the Storm aside, I was also disillusoned with Verizon Wireless. Apparently, I had heard that the Storm didn’t have WiFi because Verizon asked them not to include it. Verizon has something against WiFi. Remember old my brick of a phone? The XV6700? It had WiFi. But when you turned on WiFi, the phone would turn off. You effectively had one or the other, not both. I figured there was a reason for this. But then a friend had gotten the same phone from Sprint and upon telling him how this “feature” sucked, he said he didn’t have that problem. Sure enough, he had WiFi and phone running concurrently. WTF? Apparently, Verizon had put in some sort of software restriction (hackable by changing a registry setting). Why? I don’t want to know because I’m sure it’s bullshit. After the debacle with the Storm, I came to the conclusion that Verizon will never offer a great phone.

So time to switch carriers, right? I was interested in the G1, but T-Mobile’s coverage is not that great. That left Sprint and AT&T. Although not quite as bad as Verizon, Sprint doesn’t offer a lot of great phones either. So that left me with AT&T Wireless. And that meant either the Blackberry Bold and the iPhone. So I went to the nearest AT&T store and checked both out. Going back and forth between the two for almost an hour, it finally came down to the the web browser. The Blackberry browser didn’t render some sites correctly while the iPhone rendered them beautifully. So my decision was made. Mind you, I’m not a hipster doofus although I still contend that hipster doofuses go ga-ga over the iPhone. Believe me, I still haven’t drunken the Apple Kool-Aid. But I do like my iPhone. And so does my back.

In spite of the new bells, its failings drove me to uninstall. It was a lot slower than IE 6 and Firefox even. In fact, there were times it took literally 3 minutes to open the browser. It would hang way too often. And worse yet, the Back button didn’t work right. The most basic feature of a web browser did not work on IE 7! This is what happens: I browse from page to page to page as one normally does during a browsing experience and then every once in a while I would hit the Back button only to see a page I had visited 10 pages ago. Every page in between was GONE! This was especially frustrating when I threw Google into the mix. Imagine doing a Google search, then clicking the first result, and then clicking Back to see the results page again and clicking the next result. Not hard to imagine. Everyone does it. Now imagine clicking Back and instead of seeing the results page, you see some page you saw 10 pages ago. And in order to see the results again, you have to re-do the search and click the next result. Now you see why I uninstalled it.

And then I cried.

I was running a query and was amazed at how long it was taking. I mean it was just running and running and running. It got to the point where I was talking to the DBA. He had no idea what was going on. I was running sp_who2 and that was hanging. I was sure it was the database, but the DBA told me everything looked fine on his end. So then I fired up the ol’ Task Manager, and lo, Firefox was sucking up 99% of my CPU cycles. Motherfucker!!!

Well, it came as no surprise. You see, I’ve been collecting my complaints of Firefox for some time. Let me start by saying when Mozilla 1.0 came out, it crashed on me in 30 FUCKIN’ MINUTES!!! Fine. So Firefox comes out and I thought surely things have gotten better. WhenI fired it up for the first time, it took like half an hour to see the damn window. Well, it always takes half an hour to open Firefox. It takes seconds for IE to open.

Okay, whatever, you say. I’ve been using Firefox at home and work regularly, and I can tell you I’ve come to expect it to freeze on me on a daily basis. At least once a day — if not many — Firefox freezes on me and I sit there like a FUCKIN’ DICKWAD GIMP staring at the goddamn hourglass until I finally heave a sigh and kill the damn process.

And don’t get me started on PDF’s. I’m no lover of PDF documents, but the Internet is littered with them and it’s only a matter of time before I click on a link that turns out to be a link to a PDF, and alas, there I am, sitting like a RETARDED CHIMP while Firefox puts the moves on Acrobat…and sucks up all my CPU cycles in the process.

I’m a developer. I hate having to sit there and helplessly stare at my computer. I have a decent computer both at home and at work. But man, it’s gotten so bad, that I’ve thought about switching to Opera. OPERA!!! I know everyone loves to hate IE, but damnit, it opens up quickly, doesn’t get confused by Javascript, doesn’t freeze half the time. Hell, Firefox takes me back to the bad old days of Netscape 1.0, which also crashed on a daily basis. Has it really gotten any better than that???

But that’s okay…I’ll just hope that all of the current problems get fixed in Firefox 2.0…when it comes out sometime in 2012.