Cars

  Everyone loves cars right? Going to the beach on a hot summer day, cruising down the road, fun fun fun till daddy takes the T bird away. The truth is, cars suck, for multiple reasons. I'm not even going into the environmental aspect, that's been well covered. Cars are expen$ive, really expensive. If you want a halfway decent one, you need to shell out 7 - 12k, and that is for a used car. Then, if you live in a tax hungry state like Massachusetts, you not only have to pay sales tax, but a yearly excise tax as well. Then you have registration fee, drivers license fee, and auto inspection fee. Massachusetts has mandatory auto insurance, and it's EXPENSIVE! The insurance companies have you by the balls and know it, as no insurance = no driving. The fun doesn't end there. Lets say you are late for work, so you drive a little too fast. Get pinched by a cop, and not only are you assessed a fine based off how much over the speed limit you were, but your insurance get's jacked up for years, as they rate you as a "risk". Now you can even get pulled over for not wearing a seat belt, as this is a moving offense your insurance gets jacked up for that too. Think your done shitting out $$$ yet? Think again. Cars break down, and the new ones are extremely complicated. So now you are forced to go to the auto mechanic, who is not cheap. If you are lucky you know an honest mechanic, if you don't then it becomes a crap shoot. The car business is LOADED with sleazeballs, from new and used car salesmen to dishonest, scum bag mechanics. Even after ripping you off for thousands of dollars your car can STILL come back not fixed right. Then you have the fun of going back and forth arguing with thug greasemonkeys. The joys of car ownership just never end.

Valve

http://www.valvesoftware.com/

These guys have made some great games, and they have also made it very easy to host multiplayer games online, no router config bullshit required. Having said that, I do have a beef with them. As they have grown larger they seem to be far less friendly to modders than they used to. This is unfortunate, especially since a mod called Counterstrike help to make them huge. If you take an old game, say Day of Defeat, that game had TONS of different mods. Cigarette bazookas, RC cola grenades, custom player models like Jesus, Hitler, Daffy Duck, a flamethrower, the hook, it just goes on and on. You could also get bots for it, which was great for unpopular maps or playing it off line. Then they came out with DOD Source. Better graphics, but far less modder friendly. Not to mention, every time steam updates, it fucks up the few mods people have made for it. It also has no bots, as they coded it so it's almost impossible for anyone to make bots for it. For a while they were working with someone on a tfc2 bot, but suddenly stopped speaking with that person and now just say "we don't think bots are good for multiplayer games". Pardon me, but that's just arrogant. Why won't Valve let the modders and gamers decide that? Gamers won't play on servers they don't like, so bot servers would be rare if everyone hated them. In addition to that, you can configure the server so that bots get kicked as real players join in. So when you get a decent amount of players, there are no longer any bots on that server. If the server clears out, the bots come back, so if just one guy wants to play on that server, he can. Please, someone tell me why this is a BAD thing? Just a pipe dream, but I wish Valve would remember their roots.

Health Scare

Have you heard the latest health care news? The politicians went from having a public option, meaning cheap insurance from the government, to x-ing that out, and instead now they want to fine people 3- 4K a year if they don't have health insurance. So now some shmo making $5.00 an hour is supposed to come up with the money for his health insurance if the employer doesn't put into it. With the economy sucking, gas and food having gone way up, rents having gone up, and no cheap government insurance option, where is this dude supposed to come up with the money? This sounds like another plan from people who have always had money and don't have a clue what a low budget is. Their idea of thrift is they bought a Bentley instead of a Rolls. Not to mention the politicians have the very best health and retirement benefits, financed on the backs of the taxpayers of course. How about we start off any "reform", by making the politicians buy their own health care, with no cost of living increase in their salaries to pay for it. They should just leave the system as it is if all they can do is try to strongarm working poor people into buying expensive private health insurance.

Case Logic

 OK, so you want an uber cool gaming case. So you of course get the clear plastic side panel, or ever BETTER an all plastic case. Then in addition to your components, you fill it up with LOTS of blinky lights. BAKA!! (Japanese for idiot ) All those components inside the computer generate heat. Then the funky blinking lights that look so pretty add even MORE heat. In addition to strength, steel and aluminum are good heat sinks. Plastic has no such quality. So to compensate for the loss of heat sinking from the plastic, and the additional heat from the cool looking blinky lights, you now need to add more case fans to deal with the excess heat build up. Of course the fans themselves add more heat too. Your new, pimpin' machine is truly a monument to inefficiency and stupidity.