Phileas Mann Is Not Suitable For Consumption

has moved to Phileas' new site @

phileasmann.net.

Haven't posted in a while. Been really, really busy - I'm alternating on work (employment & schoolwork) that I've missed while I've been on bed rest, working on my new pet project (42 Wallaby Way, which is looking quite good), and throwing up a myriad of new medicine I have to take.

I hate it. Today, I've seen so many types of doctors over the past 2 weeks, and they've put me on the following:

1. A vitamin suppliment (I'm actually not really sure what it is!), in form of a drop, where I have to add like 25 drops to my daily cup of coffee. Doesn't look good when at Starbucks - something akin to spiking drinks in clubs.
2. Anti-deps. Bit reserved about this... heard they turn you into zombies. But, I guess it helps.
3. Stress-reducing herb formula. Thank God it's a capsule - if it was in any other form, I'd stop all this treatment altogether.

Anyways, enough about me feeling like a complete zombie/drug addict - rant time. Royal Easter Show - yea or nay? I can get cheap tickets. They cost like $30 normally, but I can get one for $12. But then, that's  not it. You've got the overpriced food, the rides to pay for, and, fucking hell, the bloody overpriced showbags. I mean, who pays $35 for a bag of lollies that you can get for $3?

I remember the days when the Easter Show was good. Those were the days - where the attractions were somewhat, if not, barely, interesting, there was a lot for the kids to do and the parents to see, and the showbags were good. 2 words: Coke Showbag. That was the ultimate! For $15-20, you get a really nice Coke messenger bag, a few 600 mL Coke-affiliated various drinks, some nice speakers/headphones, and some other Coke-branded crap. The total value was definitely worth the $20. It was bloody awesome.

Fast forward to 2008's Easter Show. You get a hat. Wow! A hat! Sooooooo awesome! I pay (now) $30 for a hat! And, what's this? Ohhhh! Sunglasses! Wow!!!!!!!!!!1 [/sarcasm]

The only reason I want to go is for the Pixar showbag. More specifically, the Wall-E showbag. The only other reason I will be going for if there's some special show, like where a true re-enactment of Animal Farm is played by real animals. Or something as remotely interesting as that. But, at this current state, it's a piece of shit.

But, the Wall-E showbag! It's driving me nuts!

I'm a confused man.

Well, being virtually chained to my bed, I've worked on my pet project for the past couple of days - 42wallabyway.net.

I'm a die-hard Pixar fan, and I decided to join Pixar Planet. And it provided me the inspiration to make a (noncompeting!) blog about Pixar.

Kinda finished with the web design, check it out: http://www.42wallabyway.net/site. Bought the code as the base for the theme, and made my own graphics.

... who's to blame for suddenly making a site about my love for Pixar? The AM forums. Discussion has officially dried up there, and I've decided to "move on". Will still go to Aust Media, so don't worry :P

EDIT: Yep, got new hosting. No, I won't transfer PMINSFC to Wordpress, as I'm really content with Blogger ATM.

So, I'm on bed rest on doctors' orders. And I hate it.

No school. No work. All I've been doing for the past couple of days is just feeling like crap, sleeping all day on the couch while Sky News runs in the background.

I am dead bored. I've already completed 50+ games of Solitare, made my Sims have sex 20 billion times already, killed a whole lot of pedestrians in GTA SA, and, proving that I am sooooo bored, finished reorganizing my documents in all of my laptops.

I want to go play a set of tennis. Maybe go biking. Or go spluging my money at DFO. But, fucking hell, I'm too fatigued to do those stuff. Just sitting here, and watching these sons of bitches on TV ranting on about the financial crisis. Maybe it's time to change the channel...

But, heh, I've got to endure 5 more days like this. I'm BORRRRRREED!

That's right, kids. The word of the day today is whores.

Context, you ask? I'll give you context. Today is the last straw for me for crappy customer service. I know, I know, the economic crisis is affecting us all, and I am happy to pay a bit more than "better financial times" (or if need be, much more, hint hint nudge nudge all those companies I suck up to), but the economic crisis does not give a free pass for crap customer service. I should be getting, and I expect, the same service as I was. Morals are still up. People can still afford to go out and shit. It's not like we're in a depression kiddos.

So, I don't understand why I waited 30 minutes (yeah, no exaggeration) to be served at McDonalds on Friday. Those number paper pre-order thingies - they just slow the line down! And when I do finally get in front of the line, when I do finally get served, this whore (word of the day!) screws up the whole thing ("NO! I ASKED FOR A DELICHOICES CHICKEN ROLL! WHY DID YOU GIVE ME A McCHICKEN?!"), and I have to wait. Again.

I have a line of temperament. I'm that (pompous) guy that gets pissed off at people getting pissed off at store employees. And that line is set pretty high. But these days, customer service, anywhere you go, even up in the air (shitty service 30,000 feet is not pleasant), is just soooooooooo bad.

Many businesses undervalue what customer service can do. My parents, God love them, went car-shopping a few years ago. (I've never bought a car BTW, it's called nabbing an old car from your parents.) And they went to Toyota. They had a pretty modest budget, and they wanted something decent, not too small yet not too big, so they wanted a Kluger. Even though they don't need the space. And, mind you, they're as modest as you can get (quite the opposite of me :P). Apparently, when they asked questions, asked prices, extras, and even asked for a test drive, this son-of-a-bitch salesman was really, really snobby and did everything out of hesitation and a sigh. When you're spending $40,000, a hesitating sigh is not what you want. And, naturally, my parents took their business somewhere else - and that's the way it's supposed to be.

Now they have contempt for Toyota drivers. Now I have contempt for Toyota drivers. I also have contempt for McDonalds diners, US Airways passengers (terrrrrrible!), 3 Mobile users, Costco shoppers (long story, I'll tell you later, if I ever get bored), GoDaddy domain name owners.... you get the point.

If I could find one store that is consistent, and provides good customer service, I'll be their #1 customer. While I buy for the use of the product, a majority of my decisions also come from customer service.

Consumer Power! USE IT!

(Footnote: Parents eventally got a Subaru 4x4. They're happy with it. And, you guessed it, it was a friendly salesperson that made them bought it. Waiting to nab that one off them :) )

Shit.

I've got a brand-spanking new white iPhone 3G 16GB just sitting on my desk. Without any applications. Without any contacts. Just full of Queen - Greatest Hits and the Incredibles. A freggin' $850 iPod touch.

One of my best friends sold it to me, unboxed but unused, for only $350. She didn't want it in the first place, so I was the first one to snatch it up. It was a Optus Prepaid pack, and she took the SIM that came with it. I'm a Vodafone guy, and I have no Optus account. Plus, I need to jailbreak my iPhn for tethering reasons.

And, so, when I got it, the worst was inevitable - it came as 2.2.1!!!!!!!!!

This meant that it came with a 2.30 baseband, and, everyone knows you can't PwnageTool that, so, sigh.

So, now, I am refreshing the Dev Team blog every 20 minutes, waiting, waiting...

Anyways, I have a lot of more important crap to sort out before the iPhone, i.e. finding a new psychologist. I find this guy getting more unprofessional as the sessions go by. I don't pay $200 a session for nothing. The last session he did was effectively just insult me about my weight (I'm no fat shit, but I'm no macho hulk either)... and I can't take it anymore. Quite frankly, I could pay someone else $200 to do a better job. I could even save myself $200 by doing the fucking DASS 21 by myself. Hmph.

.... you know how hard it is to find a good psychologist/therapist around in Sydney...?

Music is getting pretty terrible these days. Shizz In My Pants? Shit in my pants is more like it. I can't believe crap like that is getting airtime than other artists who actually have a proper story in their lyrics, let alone a better melody. And so you can realise that good artists are becoming harder to come by. At least there's a few artists still out there putting out songs with at least a hint of a melody, and one of them's Whitley.

I've actually heard Whitley in an ad, more specifically, the Foxtel HD+ ads (hint hint, nudge nudge at the Marketing dept.: it's working. You've got a customer partially due to those ads).

Don't let the whistling and the dialouge fool you - beneath the commotion, you've got a good, catchy song underneath that compliments the whole ad very, very well. Ad at the jump.

Here's the full song. There wasn't an official music video, so credits to Julia Mahoney for creating the "unofficial" video, which could be mistaken for the real deal.

The song has that pure folk-y feel, yet not pop-pish, yet catchy. It's one of those songs that you rarely find, like Croatia as a tourist destination. Maybe the wannabe-teens of today may troll my blog and spam: "WhAt A N00B JiZZ in my PANTS is 133t... and I can troll forums and think I'm soooooo cooool!" And until record companies stop giving all their money to fufil the void of trashy songs (and DRM research, bleh), we will be swamped with crap to our ears and good, hearty songs like these will be lost forever.

More about Whitley - he's a musician who has released his first album, The Submarine, in 2007. He's finally getting recognition these days, and one of his songs, Shot to the Stars, which is as good as Lost in Time, has finally gotten playtime on TV. It's featured on an episode of Army Wives, a television series made and being played in the United States. So that's a biggie for him.

But, besides that, he's one of those small artists, performing in various places around Australia, etc. But I see potential in him and Lost in Time is now in my coveted Top 25 Played Songs list, which comes in at 35 times played.

Next time on PDCM: "Hey, show some love, you ain't so tough, come fill my little world right up, right up..."

I can't believe I could be assed to upload them!

But here's a sample of my trip to HK, mainly Disneyland. It's just me indulging in feeding my inner child. But, meh.

Here's the flickr album! (link)

Oh, yeah, if you're a flickr user, add me as a contact! Will be uploading more photos soon (hopefully).

I was trolling the internet today and I stumbled on an article by PC Authority complaining about the build of the 17" Macbook Pro (link) because they were able to reveal the non-user-servicable battery. But I'm not talking about the actual article, but the way they've (or, specifically, Stewart Meagher) written this article.

Let's take the first line, shall we?

Apple fanboys will be crying into their non-fat soya Lattes today if they wander over to Ifixit as the hooligans who run the joint have managed to get their paws on a brand spanking new 17-inch Apple Macbook Pro...

Huh?, you may be going. Well even dumbasses can see this is a rant to Apple without even reading the damn article. And thus kicks off the start of my post today - PC Authority is the pinnacle of shoddy technology journalism. 

And I am entitled to say that, being a previous PC Authority subscriber back in 2005-2006. Why "previous"? Because they are Microsoft fanboys, sucking up to the folks at Redmond, to keep their measly little jobs by rolling in the Microsoft advertising.

Yes, I hear you guys saying what a Apple fanboy son-of-a-bitch I am. But let me say this - I am being neutral here. Yes, I own and praise Apple products. No, I am not a fanboy. In fact, I am typing this from a PC, and I praise and own Microsoft-affiliated products the same way I do with Apple. So don't be a retard and point your finger at me and say, "Apple Fanboy!".

Notice I said "previous" subscriber. You know why? Because their Microsoft fanboy-isms had affected their competence in journalism. My last issue I had recieved was August 2006, and the last blow for me was a side-by-side comparison of Vista vs OS X Leopard (link) in that issue. This was blatant ass-wiping sucking-uppery by the so-called "Authority", where Vista won 68 to 55, and is apparently "better" in terms of Entertainment, Business, Ecosystems (whatever that meant), Gaming, Bundled Applicationd, Usability (bullshit!), and Mobility. And there goes Microsoft fanboys with their Xboxes (with pizza crumbs all over it) triumphing at that "big, fair, honest" knock-out.

But, oh wait, there was a tiiiiiny, little issue. Vista turned out to be the worst edition of Windows (who can not deny that?), and Leopard was the defining factor for new PC-to-Mac migrators.

I cancelled my subscription upon reading that article. As a teenager back then, I had better things to spend my money on. 

But, with the whole "online journalism" thing happening these days, it's hard to ignore the idiotic imbecillic comments of that shitty magazine. One was in 2007 claiming 32 reasons why PCs are better than Macs (link). Even Mac fanboys can't be that bias in writing.

Just because they're sad that they can't rise up to the fact there's competition by Microsoft (and you could say that too vice versa, BTW, so don't shout, PC Authority, I've heard enough of your annoying voices as it is already), this does not mean that this should affect their journalist integrity and writing skills.

So us non-Microsoft fanboys who "drink non-fat soya Lattes" spit these hypothetical drinks in your face, because you deserve it, PC Authority. Authority, my ass.

If you have a current PC Authority subscription, protest with action - cancel your subscription, because quite frankly there are (link) better magazines (link) to subscribe to (link).

As a previous Something Corporate fan (not a huge one, but a few songs made it to my iPod), I was ever so pleased to learn (just recently!) Andrew McMahon had gone solo. And, boy, does he sound brilliant.

Okay, that was a lie. I don't exactly find all of Jack's Mannequin's songs (name a la Whitley) the best, but one song did stand out and is now stuck in my incredibly small brain. "The Resolution" would be remenicent of an American Rai Thistlethwayte - great melody, good pop/rock beat, etc.

Song at the jump.

The music video was directed by Stephanie Meyer (bleeeeeeeh - sorry, I just threw up in my mouth), but don't let the completely shit theatrics of the music video fool you - I am keeping my eye on McMahon for quite some time. That said, I have a lazy eye...

Next time on Phileas' Dreadful Choice of Music: the artist behind the success of the Foxtel HD ads!

Plus Tris's visits :P

3 reasons:

1. It doesn't help that I can't publicise this blog enough, because my friends and co. doesn't even know me as Phileas. They know me as [censored] and Phileas is an alias. For good reason because [censored].

2. So that leaves me with the only option of leaving my link on bottom of fourm addresses and those who believe my real name was Phileas Mann, that I'm a 17-year-old white male, and I'm one with a lot of free time on my hands. The thing is, all of those facts arn't true. But's it's nice having an alter ego that has a totally different personality than what I really am. (Gasp!)

3 (and my post topic of the day). I don't get political. Disregarding number two, there's something that comes from my real personality: I am a moderate. A freggin moderate. Not left-wing loony (oh, where did I hear that from?), but I can't stand red-necks either. A freggin M.O.D.E.R.A.T.E.

I don't run this blog for hits - this is merely a, well, secret diary with it's chain unlocked, and where my best buddy found it stashed with a bunch of (well, you know what's underneath boy's beds), and where he had then photocopied all the rants and posted all around the school - well, a school's a metaphor for the WWW, and you get the drift...

So you know that I'm a moderate. So what does a moderate do when he/she's dragged along a political conversation? I shut up. Yep, ears open and mouth closed. No words. But I have a few friends (who are real... oh, shit, this alter-ego crap is gonna stuff up this post sooo much) who are either passionately left-or-right wing that it drives me nuts.

I wasn't born into money (and for those who say they are: you're full of shit!), I had a pretty comfortable upbringing, definitely not rich, but my family travelled quite a bit and I, well, not to brag or anything, got spoilt alot.

How does that relate to politics? I go to a private school, and with any private school, you've got the snobbish kids. And there was one snobbish kid who thinks he's so rich and this guy always bugs me about being a moderate, and when he asked me on a two-party-preffered basis what would I hypothetically vote for and I said Labor, he always tries to mock me as though I'm a saving-the-whale hippy left-wing loony.

Enough backstory. One day, he said, "A question: are you rich?" Naturally, I said no, but he continued on, "Well, if you were rich, you'd vote Liberal, like me.". And that just did it for me - I hate any form of party affiliation.

Naturally, as it's a private school, it was very conservative, and you'd get hammered if you were for anything else besides right-wing, so I had it coming. But, besides the obvious snobbishness, I found it really fucked up that there was a mindset that you were only rich if you were for the right! This is absolute bullshit! Unlike those S.O.Bs, I had a concience, and I knew that blue-collar Australians were putting their fucking dinner on the table, and they deserve some rights, so I was appalled at that comment! (This was during the Howard years BTW. Does it make sense now?)

But, then said, don't accuse me as being all mushy for Labor. Rudd's done some wacky stuff to Australia - i.e. let's take the stupid internet filter that doesn't come much to anything. I'm not saying Labor is perfect, but it sure is better than having a fucking mindsets of today's generation of conservatives (from my view anyways).

So, I'm a moderate. So shut the fuck up, and go voice your views elsewhere. I think I'm getting a chronic migrane from political idiots...

And it's so far, so good, then so bad.

I wasn't home for the installation, but when I got home, that glorious set top box sitting on where my (failing HD) DVB-T STB was sitting previously, yelling, "Watch Me! Watch Me! WATCH ME!"

And I did. I got the "newer" boxes (they look different, and they've got a totally new-looking firmare, possibly the same manufacturers of the IQ2 box?) and the quality, considering it's SD, was brilliant.

There's a reason I got it - I saw too many of those Foxtel ads on FTA, and every time I saw it, my craving for overpriced, ad-riddled subscription television got even deeper. And, so, after some teadious budgeting (yeah, I admit, the financial crisis is hitting me too), I was able to fork out ~$70 for Basic + My World + Disney for the little 'un. At least the this month is free.

And, anyways, I turned on the box, and it was brill. I'm having trouble remembering all the channel numbers, but I've got some stuck in my head: 601 for Sky News, 605 for CNN, erh, Arena's 118?

And, while I am familar to the Active Service, I got a bit too excited with the Weather Channel Active showing detailed weather for my suburb. And, after more channel surfing, I got a bit of a surprise - MTV's got it's own Active channel (although unaccessable for some reason at some time).

But now I'm getting pretty pissed at it. Not at the channels themselves, but the freggin' hardware. So I was watching Jeopardy on W (why is it on W? Men watch it too!), and the show was up the last Jeopardy question thing, then it went to an ad break, so I pressed the Power button on the remote (as a force of habit), and so it went to sleep. Went to get a drink, pressed the Power button, and it wouldn't turn on. Turned it on via the STB and it turned on. I turned it back off, pulled out the cord, and plugged it in, thinking it would solve the problem. It didn't, and furthermore, it was downloading the guides... and when it finished after a minute, it ended up on 999 Help, and I was furiously flicking through to W on my knees, using the STB because the remote was still bloody stubburn, and when I did get to W, it was already in the credits!

And, you know what pisses me off? The remote turned off the STB on command when I got pissed at it shortly after.

And, so, meh. Foxtel channels: Brilliant. Foxtel Hardware: Disasterous. Seriously, if I get more problems with this POS hardware...