Xbox 360 hardware woes
Microsoft really hit it out of the park when it came to the Xbox 360′s software—consider the slick Dashboard, the persistent Achievements and Gamertags, and the top-notch Xbox Video Marketplace. But the actuall 360 hardware is a disaster: chronically glitchy, prone to overheating, and all too susceptible to the “Red Ring of Death,” which signals a critical hardware failure. Indeed, I’m already on my second Xbox 360 in barely a year, and just about every 360 owner I know has had to send their console back to Redmond for repair. In June, Microsoft finally did the right thing and owned up to the shoddy state of its hardware, extending the Xbox 360′s warranty to a full three years and taking a $1 billion charge in the process.

BlackBerry service goes dark
Corporate road warriors love, love, their BlackBerrys—so much so that they freaked when the service ground to a halt for about 12 hours back in April. Luckily, the outage—later blamed on a “software upgrade”—occurred mainly during the wee hours in North America (not so lucky for the rest of the planet, of course), but frantic users had to deal with a sputtering backlog of e-mail the next day. RIM CEO Jim Basillie pledged that the same problem wouldn’t happen twice—although BlackBerry users were hit with another (smaller) outage in September Which leads us to…

Skype conks out
For many Net users and businesses across the globe, Skype isn’t just a favorite VoIP provider; it’s also become their instant messenger of choice. So imagine the chaos that ensued on August 16, when a “software issue” (yep, another one) struck down Skype for millions of chatters. The outage ended up lasting for a full two days, during which time desperate Skypers were left to scrounge for VoIP alternatives. Once the service was up and running again, Skype reps apologized, blaming a “perfect storm” of conditions for the meltdown: namely, a Windows software update that caused a mass reboot of PCs around the world.

Fading picture for Apple TV
The launch of Apple’s long-awaited TV set-top box came amid enormous hype; we were told that Apple TV would be nothing less than the iPod of the living room. But when it finally hit store shelves, Apple TV landed with a thud. Users complained about poor picture quality, a puny selection of movies (only a few hundred movies from a handful of studios are available), and worst of all, no way to browse the iTunes Store from the Apple TV itself. Forbes reports that only 250,000 units were sold in six month, and Apple seems to have lost interest in the device; short of introducing a 160GB model and YouTube support in May, Cupertino has fallen more or less silent about its half-baked foray into home theater. Not so much a train wreck as a slow fade into obscurity. And speaking of slow, sad fades…

Sony shutters Connect
You’d think Sony—the maker of the original PMP, the Walkman—would have been all over digital music, yet it ceded the music downloading market to Apple years ago. Still, in 2005, Sony prepped its answer to iTunes: Sony Connect, a joint venture with a Silicon Valley start-up called Kinoma. But the project was a debacle from the get-go, with corporate in-fighting and botched software releases essentially dooming Connect before it got off the ground not to mention Sony’s stubborn allegiance to its proprietary (and soon-to-be-defunct) ATRAC file format. In late August, Sony finally put Connect out of its misery, announcing that the service (save for its eBook offerings) would shut down sometime after March 2008.

Palm gives Foleo the heave-ho
The makers of the first smartphone promised us a “new category” in mobile devices back in May, and what we got was…well, something, anyway. Palm execs called the Foleo a smartphone “companion”: a little, 2.5-pound laptop that connects to your Treo via Bluetooth, giving you a bigger screen and a full keypad for checking email, Web browsing, editing documents, and so on. Despite the ensuing cackles, I think Palm was on to something—after all, in 10 years, our phones may well be more powerful than today’s desktops, and all you’ll need is a thin-client laptop to go with your powerhouse of a handset. But for now, the Foleo looks—or rather, looked—like little more than an underpowered, $500 subnotebook, which you’d have to lug around with your notebook. The Foleo never saw the light of day; Palm wisely killed it off in September.

Vonage: stuck in the mud
Talk about a slow-motion train wreck. Vonage, the once high-flying VoIP provider with all those clever TV commercials, is facing a mountain of debt, while customers—most of them frustrated by poor customer service—have been steadily defecting. At the center of it all: a pair of court rulings from late 2006 that held Vonage responsible infringing patents owned by Sprint Nextel and Verizon Communications. Vonage has settled all of the infringement charges, including a new set of charges brought by AT&T, but it’s still in debt to the tune of $250 million and climbing, according to BusinessWeek, along with more than $200 million in payments now due to Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T. That’s pretty bad news when you’ve only got about $355 million left in your bank account. Whether Vonage survives, gets bought out, or declares bankruptcy is still an open question. Meanwhile, long-suffering Vonage customers are left hanging in the balance (although service is reportedly improving).

Amp’d Mobile goes dark
It wasn’t that long ago that MVNOs (short for Mobile Virtual Network Operators) were absolutely red-hot—and Amp’d Mobile, a hip, youth-oriented MVNO featuring edgy TV commercials and 3G handsets—was one of the brightest stars. But Amp’d tumbled to earth in June, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection; by July, it notified subscribers that it was shutting down for good. What happened? Turns out that while Amp’d was signing up new subscribers left and right, only about half of them were paying their bills. D’oh!

Apple riles iPhone owners with price cut
Steve Jobs never saw it coming. In September, along with announcements of a new family of iPods, Jobs dropped a bombshell: Apple was cutting the price of the 8GB iPhone to $399 (from $599). How generous, right? But early adopters were outraged: just weeks before, they’d paid more than $600 for their precious iPhones, and now here’s Sir Steve, essentially telling them they’d wasted a couple of C-notes. Jobs ultimately bowed to the howls of protest, offering a $100 store credit for everyone who had bought an iPhone before the price cut. Then, another stumble: Apple in October that re-locked (and in some cases, bricked) hacked iPhones, sparking another wave of anger. Jobs has since announced that the iPhone will support third-party apps (which must now be hacked onto the iPhone) starting next year, but the damage is done. All those warm fuzzies for Apple upon the original release of the iPhone? Buh-bye.

HD format war drags on, begins to feel pointless
The back-and-forth battle between the Blu-ray and HD DVD camps continues to rage, with no end in sight. Blu-ray backers were telling us back in January that they had it all wrapped up, especially with the release of Blu-ray-packing PlayStation 3 consoles. But then something funny happened: the PS3 didn’t sell nearly as well as expected (although sales are on the uptick thanks to recent price cuts). Meanwhile, prices for HD DVD decks fell steadily, while stand-alone Blu-ray price tags stayed stubbornly in the $400 to $500 range. Then, in August, HD DVD delivered a brutal sucker punch when Paramount and DreamWor
ks pulled their support for Blu-ray, choosing instead to go with HD DVD exclusively (word is the two studios were paid handsomely for crossing the street). As it stands now, the HD format war is at (in the words of Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer himself) a “stalemate.” What’s the punchline to this sad tale? By the time this slugfest is over, we’ll probably be downloading all our HD movies anyway.

Last night went to see Tori Amos. I’ve never seen her before but I’ve liked her since that time I saw the video for “Crucify” on 120 Minutes. It was a total surprise. I used to set the VCR and record the show since it was on at midnight on Mondays and I had school.

Then I’d watch it and edit the vids I didn’t want. I remember thinking she was gonna be some weirdo UK sort of person when the video started with an all white backdrop. Then suddenly she started singing and I was engaged for the whole time. I think her music in many ways saved me… from my own teenage self-destructive behavior.

So since that time to now I’ve liked her and yet never got to see her… The concert was amazing to me. Hearing her perform live wasn’t new, I have bootlegs and various VHS tapes of her from tv specials. Seeing her and feeling the music in the room, along with the lights which were trying to catch the emotive quality of her work added to the whole show. Although sometimes the lights would pan out into the audience and blind… that wasn’t much fun. It was like a bunch of trucks coming at you with high beams on.

Her new album is called American Doll Posse. The photos on it are of her dressed as several women who represent women throughout time that we know of – by myth, tales, and folklore. Each woman is also an aspect of a person. “Pieces of me you’ve never seen.” If you go to her website you can read the statement of the new album and her bio. It’s really interesting how she incorporated a feminist perspective into these various personas and then expresses them throughout the album. It wasn’t a shocker to me that she was going to make an album comprised of different “people.”

In interviews I’ve read over the years she has talked of reincarnation, spirits, fairies, and ghosts that all inspire her and talk to her. She’s got this sort of delirium/desire/despair thing going on that makes her so appealing and yet so bizarre. No wonder I like her stuff.

This one is from last night:

Lately I’ve been on a small buying spree but not all for me. However, recent things have included a skateboard… yes, after not riding one since I was 12 or so I’ve decided it’s time again. Little did I know it would be such an arduous task to stay standing on that fucker for more than 10 minutes. I did a decent job the second time out and then had to leave it home when it got really really humid the last few weeks. Today was a good day except it’s been raining and I promised to not go kill myself in the rain.

I also bought my cousin new headphones and my gf an HDMI cable for her PS3. Then I realized my poor imac was dying – well not dying – but it couldn’t handle having the applications that I had on it, they were somewhat too “new” and were eating RAM, making the fan grunt a bit, and the updates were slowly making the computer slower. So I had stopped updating, had stopped pressing my luck and would shut down all apps to use the big ones like CS2. I figured I’d run it into the ground – then again, I’ve never actually been able to run any computer into the ground. I take care of them too well; they won’t die.

So I checked my bank accounts and danced around the notion of getting a new one. It would be a lot of “Oh WOW this is so fast!!!” and “HEY, I can play this now” sort of responses but I wasn’t sure if it was worth it.

Well, it was:

Makes me want to start playing with my music applications again and I moved the M*Audio so it’s easier to access and plug my guitar into. Now – to win the lotto and get a nice apt with J.

1. breakfast – sausage was really a hot dog *ew*
2. went to Jim Thompson house – kinda cool – one pond had a ray in it and some fish that look like a prehistoric croc
3. went to Lumphini Park, that’s where we saw the freakin’ Monitor Lizard! and some turtles
4. sweated a lot
5. went to Eat Me for food… passed by some christian schools with kids going home in their lil’ uniforms.
6. went to the mall that evening to cool off- watched kids playing video games – guitar hero – band- and a DJ one Karaoke booths too.
7. went home
8. Saw an old dude with a young thai boy at breakfast 2 days in a row. *ahem*

Sat June 9

1. went to the big electronic mall – insane! J bought Maya for 10 bucks.
2. had a crying fit
3. went to eat Indonesian
4. Watched a protest for Freethai.wordpress.com

Sun June 10th

1. Bummed around at the mall again to do some last minute souvenir shopping
2. packed up and went to the airport for our flight home.

END

*this is getting boring, I gotta wrap this up soon*

At the night market near the area where many a sex show happens… you are bombarded with many things- candles for sale, tshirts, pants, sneakers, dvds, soap, statues, things with stuff, and stuff with more stuff on it. There’s aisles and aisles of material goods for sale and every now and then a person stops you with an index card in their hand saying, “Ping pong show, pussy!” To which you can only reply, “no thanks,” and keep walking.

We did go down a street where the neon was just calling you to the bars… and peeking into the doorways walking by I saw – 4 girls in white bikinis spinning around a pole looking bored, 3 girls and an older woman sitting in lawn chairs looking bored, 2 girls sitting in bar stools nursing their drinks looking dazed, and one guy who hit on J asking to buy her a drink… hello… why are you picking up a white girl while you’re in a thai bar watching asian girls spin on poles and probably preppin’ to shoot things out of their vagina?

Ah yes, here’s a brief description of what the sex shows are like from wikipedia:
“Several upstairs bars still feature (technically illegal) sex shows, with women performing various creative acts. Perhaps the most notorious of these features women performing exotic feats involving their genitalia and projectile table tennis balls. Some of these second-floor bars are run by scam artists who lure tourists with offers of low prices and later present a wildly inflated bill along with a threat of physical harm should the bill go unpaid. The Tourist Police, usually stationed at Patpong 1 and Silom Road, can help in these situations.

Some establishments in Patpong employ kathoeys (or “ladyboys”) either exclusively or as part of a mixed gender staff. As of 2005 the King’s Corner bar on Patpong 1 was known for doing so. Unlike the kathoey bars in Nana Plaza, many of the staff at these Patpong bars are post-operative trans-sexuals.”

Now we could go into a whole socio-political feminist debate about why/how/and what should be done to help women not enter into such a career… but this is not that kind of post.

After a while we got tired of walking around and found a puppy to play with who belonged to one the of the street vendors. Then we hopped on the skytrain and went home.