Posted by Jeremy G. on 21st, 2009
MTV, I’m calling you out
My computer setup is infinitely worse than any crappy car you’ve had on Pimp My Ride. For how much time I spend at my computer, I have a truly TERRIBLE setup, and it needs to be Pimped MTV. There are so many problems with my entire computer area I don’t even know where to begin. Here is The List.
1.) Computer chair - It is the smallest, crappiest chair you’ve ever seen. The back wobbles like crazy, and I constantly have to push it back in to make sure it doesn’t fall off because it’s so loose. Tightening the screw does nothing. Also, the whole house is tilted slightly, so I am constantly sliding to the left because of the well lubed wheels on my computer chair. Every couple of minutes I have to scoot, scoot, back into place, and then push the back of the chair back into it’s slot so I don’t fall over backwards when it falls off.
2.) Headphones - The padding has long since worn off, so hard plastic presses against my ears. The protective housing for the cable has long since stripped off, exposing raw wires, which if it didn’t interfear with the sound quality I could care less about. But of coarse the sound in the left earpiece only works about half the time because of this, and you have to play around with the bare wires to get it to work again. Sometimes it stays fixed for an hour or more, and sometimes it breaks again five minutes later. So now I get to mess with the headphone wires every time I scoot my chair back into place. Fun.
3.) Monitor - 21″ Samsung flat panel screen. Great right? Wrong. When it’s working it looks great, but I managed to get one that turns itself on and off intermittently. Normally it’s not a big deal, it just flashes totally dark for 2 seconds every half hour or so, but lately it’s gotten MUCH worse, doing it three or four times in a row which is SUPER annoying. I already sent it back once when it had 3 dead pixels on arrival, and I’m pretty sure the warranty is up, so I’m just stuck with a $350 defective monitor.
4.) Internet connection - It cuts out pretty regularly, and all the repairman can say is “You have old cables in this house, the only thing you can do is replace all the wire in the house.” Wow, thanks. Put one more checkmark in the column of “Reasons Why Living Here Sucks.”
5.) No PCI-E or AGP video card slots, just PCI - This computer was my first ever PC purchase because I’m a Mac guy, and it was just one of those things that I didn’t know mattered. Bottom line? The newest video card I can get in my computer is from about 2002, and games that are five years old still lag like a bitch.
6.) Needs a System Reinstall - My computer overall just lags like hell, 5 seconds or more to open Firefox or a word processor. Tried uninstalling all useless things, didn’t work. Scanned for a virus. Did nothing. Oh, oh, a spyware scan will help! Wrong. So I get it in my head to reinstall the system software. Can’t find the disk. Call Dell to get new one. I’m told that 3 years ago I forgot to get the ownership transfered to my name from the guy I bought it from. I miraculously find the phone number of the company I purchased it from and give them a call, assuming it is a customer service line. Wrong. Turns out it was some guys cell phone number and I wake him up at 4am east coast time. Not happy. Whoops.
MTV, Are You Up For a Challenge?
Email me the time and date when you can Pimp My Computer, and I will try to be available to film the show. Thanks, and look forward to working with you guys. Mabye make my setup something like this, but with more monitors, but if you wanted to do something crazy, don’t let me hold ya back.
Posted by Jeremy G. on 27th, 2008
My Thoughts on Gas Prices
I wish gas prices were $6, hell, $8 a gallon. You know why? Because then companies would stop fucking around and put all their effort into inventing a car that gets 100 miles per gallon. That’s all I want, just 100. Don’t even think for a second that it can’t be done. It hasn’t been done yet because A. No company cares enough to devote 100% of their energy and resources to making it happen, and B. As gas prices rise, oil companies are reaping hundreds of billions of dollars, squeezing every last penny out of every man, woman, and child in the modern world, and I’m sure they are paying people off left and right to keep it that way.
Don’t tell me it can’t be done. Right this second there is this little robot tootling around in the dirt of Mars digging little holes and making little sand castles and analyzing soil. Think about that, it’s going on RIGHT…NOW… And you telling me that my little Saturn Ion cannot possibly go from point A to point B for less than what it costs right now? Please.
I hope gas prices hits 8 dollars per gallon, because then people will CARE enough to come up with a solution.
Posted by Jeremy G. on 11th, 2008
What is Social Networking?
The whole point of social networking sites is to find cool shit out there on the internet. They do this by allowing users to share sites they’ve found with other people in a variety of ways.
To be honest, when I started using both Stumbleupon and Twitter, I was ONLY doing it to get more traffic for my own website. Pretty selfish I know, but when it’s free, hey, anythings worth a try. But I’ve come to really like both of these sites just for what they are, a new way to communicate, and a great way to find amazing web pages that you would have never found otherwise.
Stumbleupon (be my Stumble buddy here!)
Awesomeness: 8/10
Usefullness in Driving traffic to your web site: 6/10
Stumbleupon is like channel surfing the best sites from all over the world. It puts a button bar on your web browser, and when you press the “stumble” button, it will take you to a random website which people have liked in the past. Like the site? Press the thumbs up button and that site will be showed to more people. Don’t like it? Thumbs down it and it will be shown to less people. Don’t give a shit? That’s fine too, you don’t have to rate sites if you don’t want.
Why is this awesome? Because it takes you to a lot of REALLY great sites that there is no possible way you would have found by yourself. It’s kind of like when you get those chain emails with really funny pictures or something, but instead of getting one email every few days, you can sit there and get as many cool pics/movies/sites/games as you want in one sitting. I don’t feel like I’m adequately explaining it, just try it!
You can also make friends on Stumbleupon, then send them links which they can thumbs up. This is a decent way to get some traffic, but if the content isn’t great, it will die down very quickly. You can only get so many thumbs up’s by asking for them, at some point people will just have to like your content. Still pretty easy to get a few hundred visitors to see a post thought, and if it’s really good, then tens of thousands of visitors to your site is totally possible.
Bottom Line:
A really cool site which can entertain you for hours. Also decently good at sending traffic to your site if you take the time to make “friends” on the site.
Twitter (follow me by clicking here!)
Awesomeness: 4/10
Usefullness in Driving traffic to your web site: 2/10
Twitter is like a big message board for a bunch of peoples text messages. You choose to “follow” people, and when you do, everything they “tweet” (ie messages they send) will show up on you list of recent tweets. Messages are limited to 160 characters, the length of a text message, so tweets usually are from a few words to one sentence. I know it doesn’t sound like much fun, but try it, it gets pretty addictive. What makes it cool is that you can update it via text messages from your phone, allowing you to update with such things as “I just walked past 2 parrots sitting on a trashcan,” which would be pretty tough to do sitting at home in front of your computer 
You can also send links in tweets, but I’ve found this to be just a terrible way to promote your site. I have about 100 people following me, and whenever I send them a link, anywhere from 5-10 people click on it.
Bottom Line:
Can be fun, but don’t even bother if you just want to promote your site, as the effort to reward ratio is terrible.
So join up, be my friend on Stumbleupon by going here, and follow me on Twitter by going here!
