Thursday, August 19, 2010

The times they are-a changing

To many of you this looks completely normal: "oh, once again Josephine is flooding us with Bob Dylan related stuff", and yes once again - this time not on Facebook though - I am smothering you with Bob Dylan. Yes I want today's post to be one of his songs, and yes I know this song so well that I can perfectly hear Bob Dylan's voice as I read the lyrics. And to be honest, I don't really care if you don't read those lyrics, because I am not trying to introduce you to Bob Dylan, chances are you are one of my friends if you read that so either a) I play Bob Dylan so much that there is no way you never listened to him when you're around me, b) you are already a big fan (oh... duh). Whatever you situation may be, I feel like you should gather around and listen to this song again, because the times really are changing.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Posted via email from Jay Gee

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Android: Week 3 of usage

A few weeks ago I did the stupid thing of buying a new phone. 


Sick of MetroPCS lousy coverage (and I won’t tell them to stop advertising and start investing because I know it’s not the same budget and I hate when somebody tells this to a company blah blah) and bored on a Saturday morning, I went  to the AT&T to buy the iPhone 4.


There, a very obnoxious lady told me quite aggressively that yes indeed I had to pay a $500 deposit to get a contract with AT&T.

Indeed AT&T has the annoying habit of charging a new customer $500 for a deposit if this customer has no credit history. I have had my SSN for now a year so I was in this situation. The same argument they always give you after is: “you’ll get it back in 12 months”…”Geez thanks can I pay credit? *facepalm*”… Besides I don’t even know where I’ll be in 12 months.


So I was all “Ok AT&T have rude CS but they have the iPhone 4, wait a minute $500???”, so I was bored and on spending frenzy (just gotten my paycheck) but some of Mother’s genes found their place in my system and that little voice in my head screamed “Josephine, that will be over $700 for a phone, this is ridiculous”…”yes but I love Apple and I don’t want the other Apple fanboys/fangirls to make fun of me”…”then keep your MetroPCS phone and save up”…”no way”. But well, all in all I listened to the voice (we argued for a while) and left AT&T, quite depressed for not getting the iPhone 4. Actually very depressed.


I ended up going to Radio Shack to see if they had anything to say about the $500 deposit. They had not. Grand.


I won’t expand on the story but I ended up buying the HTC Hero on Android, with Sprint (affordable plan… somewhat, and only $50 deposit).


And I was pretty excited, being a true Apple fangirl there was NO WAY I was going to buy a CrackBerry so Android, even though it’s Google operated and blah and blah, was a pretty good compromise. I wanted a Smartphone.


It’s been 3 weeks I’ve had my Android now (more or less) and I can give a pretty good feedback of this product: It is NOWHERE near as good as the iPhone. The problem now is that I still use my French iPhone as my MP3 player (well… duh) so I do use both all day to go on the Internet. The touchscreen on the HTC is slow, the entire phone is slow! Turning it on takes forever  so I never turn it off, therefore I always have to charge it because well the battery is so damn retarded (and I’m retarded for not turning off 3G). Sometimes also the phone will just shut down and restart. It also has this annoying habit of vibrating whenever I dial a number or pick up a call (but consider the 0.5 seconds lag that never ceases to make me believe I have a call waiting or I just received a text). I also dropped a bunch of calls for my phone being too freakin’ retarded to let me hit the “pick up call” button.


Well now I’m not saying I don’t like my phone, it’s maybe that the iPhone is too good and I got used to it. And also when you compare it to my old phone…. Well you better not. At least now I can hear when people talk, I can write more than 120 characters in my text messages and I have coverage in my apartment.


So do I wish I had waited to buy the iPhone 4? No, the old phone was way too much hassle. Will I pay the $200 early termination fee if the iPhone really goes to Verizon? Probably.


As for Android, it’s cool, I really like this, the apps are good – sometimes better than the App Store (you can try an app before buying it, but apparently same for the Apple Store now), and it’s highly customizable, widgets are nice too. I just wish I had another phone…


(pss, don’t tell Mother, she’ll say that’ll teach me how to spend my money)

Posted via email from Jay Gee

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Why did Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize

I was sorting files on my laptop today and stumbled upon this, a text I wrote last year, and realized it was not on this blog. So it's old, but now public.

 

Let’s put it bluntly. BHO won the NPP because he realized the dream of MLK.

 

Ok, maybe not that bluntly.

 

Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Many people are wondering why. And to them I can only say “read the I have a dream speech again”, because that is what I did, randomly, and then it stroke me. Because to my humble opinion, the reason Barack Obama was elected, is because he realized Martin Luther King’s dream.

 

Think about it a little while longer.

 

A little while longer.

 

Okay now we are good.

 

MLK did say he had a dream that someday we would all be equal, that someday the sons of former slaves and former slaveowners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood, that one day his four children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. This day has arrived. And it arrived last year.

 

When Barack, Hussein, Obama son of a white lady and a black man, got elected the 44th President of the UNITED States of America on November 4th, 2008, he created the physical representation of MLK’s speech 48 years earlier. By some wonders, this man managed to reunite the USA, to reunite African Americans and White Americans and give hope to every single one of them. He has this in his blood. After all who better than an African White American could be the pioneer in this giant leap for America?

 

The Nobel prize committee said it awarded the Nobel to BHO for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people”. To what extent can people judge he did not deserve it? In the history of Nobel Prizes award, had we only had war stoppers? Did we never honor efforts? Did we never honor tries? What about last year, Martti Ahtisaari, this Finish man who received the prize because of his important efforts over three decades to resolve international conflicts. Did he manage to resolve those? No, we still have Palestine and Israel throwing rocks at each other, British and American kids dying for their countries in Afghanistan, the Gulf war last for a long time and the two Koreas are still separate and 9/11 happened. Still, he tried, he made “important” efforts, not “outstanding” efforts to resolve those, and we honored that.

 

What about Kofi Annan in 2001? We honored his efforts too. Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin in 1994? Do people forget that that “political act” that “called for great courage on both sides” was the reason of the award because it “opened up opportunities for a new development towards fraternity in the Middle East”. Yes, Middle East, where all those bombs and mines explode and where those same British and American kids go to die.

 

Let’s make a point here, for decades, if not for the entire history of the Nobel Prizes, the prize has been awarded mostly to honor efforts, therefore a behavior that showed willingness to change the world, and that by doing this, in a way managed to change the world by changing peoples’ mind, by letting people ‘hope’ that the world can change.

 

Imagine what the world would look like if no one had ever tried. Well if no one had never tried it would have been because no one had ever cared. People would be selfish enough to feel content about the way they live and not care of what’s going on over there in the Middle East. After all, does it physically hurt my own person that a 19 years old from Dallas died because he got ambushed during boot camp? No you’re right, physically it does not hurt me. But mentally it does, because it makes me realize that the World is not all coloured, it is black and white. It is all good and all bad. And to me it is mostly bad.

 

But recently I changed my mind about that, and thanks to whom? Many people, not only Barack, my dear Obama. No, I changed my mind because people like him, or people like Kofi Annan, the UN representatives or even my next door neighbor, those people believe the world can get better, and by thinking like this, they make it better.

 

By giving hope to people, Barack Obama made millions of other people change their mind about the world. Citizens of one of the most segregationist countries 50 years from now voted for a black president. Those people solely decided that their country had changed enough that they could handle being directed by a “black dude”, a “Negro”, a “former slave’s son”, whatever we may call African American people. And this is not because he is a President that he changed peoples’ beliefs, no, as he said it himself, he was black before being a President. Shocker. Was he? Are you sure? Man that would mean that a black dude was powerful enough to change more than 50% of the population’s of the US of A vote for him and elect him as the head of their Government? Yes, why? Wait, does that mean that the White House hosts an African American? Indeed. Well so does it mean that we are all equal? Um, yes. That we live in a nation where people are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character? Yes. Does it mean that this nation rose up and lived out the true meaning of its creed?

 

It does.

 

Thank you Barack. You gave me peace of mind.

 

 

Posted via email from Jay Gee

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

No soda for 10 days

You read well, starting tomorrow morning I'll begin a series of 10 days experiments.
Tomorrow starts the whole experiment with no Soda for 10 days. So first all I don't drink a lot of soda usually, but I work in an office where I got diet coke for free so I started to drink a lot of those, and this is not good, and not only for my teeth. So starting tomorrow I will only be drinking water (sparkling or flat) for 10 straight days - until the 22nd. If the experiment proves beneficial, I may go longer. 

Then I'm open to suggestions for the other 10 days experiments. On the list I have "no cigarettes", "no TV", "no coffee", "no fish/seafood" (I'm already vegetarian only I eat fish and seafood because it is SO DAMN GOOD)... list is open to comments and/or suggestions.

Yours truly,

Posted via email from Jay Gee