Patrick’s Rants

The commercial introduces us to “Sophie” who wants a touch screen computer. She flies to Tokyo and states that Windows 7 is her idea. Really? The touch screen is over 30 years old according to James Walker on ehow.com. And guess what? The touch screen has been around longer that Microsoft. She didn’t need to fly to Japan or wherever, she could have just gone to Starbucks and seen that flat screens are in use.
Windows 7 was my idea, heh. Your “idea” has been around longer than you (“Sophie” looks to be in her 20s) and it’s more likely that IBM – the absolute king of retail touch screens – had its patent slide into the public domain.

As for the guy who says, a computer that doesn’t crash, that was my idea. Haha. Really. A computer that doesn’t crash? Anyone who has booted a Microsoft operating system has that idea. Windows 7 might be better, but it’s still a crap shoot. I have a Windows 2008 (based on Vista/Windows 7) server that has failed updates and I have to work around critical vulnerabilities. How about updates that don’t fail to install, no reboots required (oh yeah, you better believe they are still required), a company that doesn’t treat its paying customers like thieves and a secure by default operating system. That’s my idea. And it’s not Windows 7.

According to the commercial with push to talk Blackberry’s if a student was missing there would be an all out search for that student. In the search, they find a different kid that they apparently don’t know was missing. They eventually track him down and send him to detention.

Now, here’s the truth.

Schools don’t have the time to track students down. They aren’t “packages” don’t pretend that they are. There is no way to accurately “track” a human being. Give the kid a bar code that is scanned as they get on and off the bus? Some parents might think this is a good thing (and some days I agree with them) but the fact is the kids will lose whatever RFID encoded card they carry, purposefully leave it at home or school, parents will fight it and the ACLU would be drooling at the chance to strike down any “papers please” program.

The transportation people don’t want the school employees on their radio frequency. Really. School employees tend to act like what they want is the only thing that’s important while the transportation department has to juggle multiple field trips and the needy people from other schools. Really. Shut up and get off of my radio.

That and schools/teachers don’t care if the kid is missing from their class. I get an automated call from my kids’ school when they are marked absent. In the case of my high school kid it merely states, “your student was marked truant in one or more classes.” If the teacher follows a strict “ass in the seat when the bell rings” policy I have no way of knowing whether she was standing at the pencil sharpener at the wrong time in one class or hopped a Greyhound to Mexico and missed the entire day. Neither the school nor the teacher is going out of their way to find a missing kid when there is a classroom full of students who do want to learn.

So what if delivery people ran the world? They wouldn’t give a crap where the missing kid is either, that’s what.

Pizza Hut has an annoying commercial promoting large pizzas for $5.99. This dork is standing at the counter asking what he can get for $5.99.
I have two bills in my pocket a five and a one, what can I get The blond behind the counter answers that he can get a large pizza for $5.99. But that’s not true. He can get the hell away from the counter or an ass kicking, but not a pizza. I don’t know many places where that he can get that pizza without paying some form of sales tax except Oregon.

So the dork can get the hell out of everyone else’s way and stop saying A LARGE for $5.99 Yeah. Large can of whoop ass.

The latest Alltel commercial really stretches the limits. It opens on some group of super heroes all complaining that they can’t talk to each other to beat their arch enemy because they are all on different cell phone networks. The solution? Chad from Alltel. They can call anyone they want with the circle plan. The thing is if they all switch to the same provider they will get free in-network calls. Somehow we are supposed to believe that Chad’s plan is the best even though every provider has a similar plan.

So if you missed it the complaint is: we are all on different networks.
The solution: you should all be on the same network.
Well duh!

Jack is riding the range with midgets/dwarves/little people to advertise his mini sirloin burgers. With some magic of the camera and computers Jack, of Jack In The Box, is herding miniature cows all the while singing about “cows the size of schnauzers” along with the helium pumped lungs of the little people. I think the politically correct line got moved just a little.

I have to wonder how old the ad execs at Burger King are. The latest commercial with the Creepy King is made to look like a music video – Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”. Creepy King is singing about liking square butts while his dance troupe shakes rear ends packed with cereal boxes. The scene cuts to Sponge Bob Square Pants, then back to Creepy who seems to sing, “Sponge Bob I wanna git wit ya’”; then he holds up a Sponge Bob kid’s meal. Do the ad execs not understand that this is homo-erotic? “I wanna git wit ya’” means Creepy wants to have sex with Spongy. Oh, and I think Sponge Bob is underage too. Is this the image that the creators of Square Pants want, to have the beloved character go into cartoon porn renamed Spooge Bob? Sheesh.

There is a joke that has been on the internet for quite a while. It goes something like this, “without walls and fences, who needs Windows^TM or Gates?” And now, Microsoft’s own advertising campaign is, “Life without walls.” That means we don’t need Windows.

Vista blog
More at Microsoft Watch

The latest Mac commercial has “PC” sitting at a table with his accountant eye shade on. We hear him as he’s moving money from a smallish pile of money to two other piles,

“advertising, advertising, advertising. Fix Vista. Advertising, advertising, advertising. Fix Vista.”

The pile for advertising is huge while the pile to fix Vista is quite small. Mac asks him about the piles and PC tells him that he has to spend a lot of money on marketing Vista leaving little to fix the bugs that exist in Vista – which might make it a product that people actually would want to buy. PC looks at the stacks and begins to ask if the “fix” pile might not be enough to fix all the bugs in Vista and motions his hands as if moving the marketing money into the fix pile. PC looks at the piles and says, “you’re right” and moves all of the money to the marketing pile.

Inside and outside allergies are no match for Claritin as the man chiseling away on his sculpture tells us.

A sharp mind is more important that a sharp chisel

And…

If I sneeze, this guy could lose his nose

What you don’t see when the guy is creating all kinds of dust and debris is a dust mask – you know, that could go a long way towards reducing the allergy problem buddy. At least he uses safety glasses when he’s using his power tools.

Coworkers are car pooling to work. The driver has a Jack in The Box holiday ball stuck to his forehead on some kind of suction cup device. He explains that he doesn’t have an antenna so he has to do something else. As the commercial comes to an end the fine print states, “Don’t drive with antenna balls stuck to face.” Great – there goes my holiday spirit