After a long day at work and having missed all the new iPad excitement, I came home to watch the Apple announcement of their latest and greatest.  Of course the event was as always a great production.  Flawless and exciting.  You can tell how excited the audience is just to catch a glimpse of what new perfection Apple has brought to the earth.

Now that may sound sarcastic, but I do love my Apple devices.  3 iPhones, 2 iPads, and an Apple TV later.. (thank goodness for Gazelle!)  And Apple knows how to do a presentation.  As my friend Dan would have said, they have the production values.

Now I’m also a PC user.  My desktop has been Windows since Win 3.1 and every iteration since.  I’m very happy with Win7, and looking forward to seeing what Win8 will bring.  I’m intrigued by the Metro interface.  The limited experiences I’ve had with the preview and a tablet have been quite positive.  I was interested to learn more about the new Surface.

I tuned into Microsoft’s release event, but I had to turn it off after a few minutes.  Having just watched the Apple event it seemed…  disappointing.  It seemed to lack the excitement and presentation that would make it interesting.  I think at one point the tablet failed to do something and another one was procured.  Yikes.

I’m still interested to see what comes of the new Win8 tablets, and I’m excited to get a copy of Win8 soon.  I just hope the production value of the software bests that of Microsoft’s press party.

What store is this?

Las Vegas is certainly an interesting place.  I came up with some bizarre metaphors for the place, but I won’t repeat them here.  Suffice it to say that it is a love/hate relationship.

I think Vegas just isn’t my cup of tea.  It’s crowded, people (tourists) are rude, and everything seems complicated.  It took 30 minutes to go around a block corner, people push at you to see a fountain, and to get to your room you have to take your luggage through a mall..  And to buy dinner you might need to sell your arm.  Maybe I’m just more small-town oriented.  Going from Kanab, UT to Vegas was quite the change.

I also didn’t like the weird pretentiousness that I encountered.  It’s like some people/establishments are trying to be something ridiculous.  I know I’m not upper-class, so maybe I just don’t understand.  But a store with 10 garments that each cost what I make in a year?

I did find that once I was a bit intoxicated the whole thing became more tolerable.  I didn’t pay as much attention to the shoving crowds.  And I also found a hotel that wasn’t quite as uppity as the one I was staying in.  The best part of it was hanging out and experiencing the craziness with my husband who always makes me laugh.

Would I return to Las Vegas?  Probably not.  But now I can say I’ve seen the performance of the fountains of Bellagio…

I’m getting ready to take a flight in a few days, and it’s been awhile since I’ve flown the friendly skies.  So I thought I would take a look at the air carrier’s website to see if anything significant has changed.  It’s not really the friendly skies anymore…

It really seems a bit like a big scam.  The baggage fees are downright ridiculous.  $25 for a bag?  It would almost be cheaper to go to the Post Office and ship my clothes to the hotel. Maybe if this extra fee made it less likely that my baggage would be lost I would see some benefit, but I don’t see that anything has been done to make that affair less likely.

The there’s the starvation.  No food or beverages through security. And when you fly almost 4 hours, you will not get any food on the plane.  UNLESS you want to buy overpriced food at the airport, or you can pay $10 for a turkey sandwich on the plane.  Something smells fishy…

I understand the higher ticket prices – jet fuel is expensive.  I understand not taking knives on the plane.  There’s really no reason to have a knife at the ready on a plane.  I get the inconvenience of the security procedures – it makes it all safer.  But the seemingly obvious bag and food scam just seems to have snuck right in there…

I was just watching an episode of The A-List: New York… I’m not quite sure why I tuned into this program, but I ended up watching about 30 minutes of it while I’m waiting for an appointment. I’ve seen bits and pieces of it before, but I think I will resolve to never watch it again.

It’s like a soap opera in a way, but more disgusting. A soap is written to be dramatic, almost like an over-dramatization of life. The A-List is meant to be a reality show, and the thought that this is reality makes me a little ill. The whole thing seems to be one catty remark after another, who hates who, who is better than who, and who is more than everyone else.

In a review of the show, Hank Stuever writes, “The message in “The A-List” is that it’s too easy for gay men to get caught up in whatever status war happens to be available, and nothing is quite so withering as the dismissive sneer from an A-gay.” The ironic thing about the gay community is that often people get caught up in the us vs. them rhetoric that the civil rights movement has fought for decades. Maybe it’s human nature, but I would like to think not.

It reminds me of everything I dislike about the gay community and society in general I suppose. I don’t like the constant one-upsmanship that seems to be ever more prevalent. I find it disturbing how we all seem to take one experience with someone and turn it into the whole of another persons being. It’s like when someone cuts you off on the road and “that person must be a real asshole.” I do it too, and I don’t like that it do it. I try to catch myself when I can.

Life is too short to fill it with crap.

Source: Washington Post

Some blogs are about being like the popular kid in school. How many visitors does the blog draw? How high in the Google rankings can it go? How much money can it draw in? Much of the blog related news is about these blogs. But I think it’s also important to consider that there are different genres of blogs, and many of the new, traditional blog rules may not necessarily apply.

One of these genres is the personal blog. These were many of the blogs that started the original blogging phenomenon. Money isn’t the focus of the blog, nor is the best search engine optimization. It’s really more about personal expression and making connections.

Other types of blogs are about business or expertise. Examples of these would be tech blogs, company blogs, and personal expertise blogs. I read plenty of these as well. But the difference is that I don’t make any personal connections. That would be like watching CNN in hopes of getting to know Wolf Blitzer better.

Many of the blogs I enjoy the most are ones that are personal, that talk about life, and are more organic. There is no editorial calendar. Posts do not have to include an infographic. They just have to be personal, original, and sometimes even insightful. You get to know the author a little bit better. And that connection may even lead you to know something more about yourself.

I’m certainly not saying that all personal blogs are good ones, or that no structure or rules apply. But I don’t think that getting caught up in making the “perfect” blog should detract from just simply expressing oneself.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad