Articles/Editorials

Just general thoughts and outburts…

Sunday Update, Free Stuff and Links!

Just some assorted stuff for a lazy Sunday:

Two Giveaways at TestFreaks: Shattered Horizon http://bit.ly/154Hce and Speck Products for Mac and iPhone http://bit.ly/2Oxcjn

My Latest Reviews from TestFreaks:

GlideTV Navigator

Lego Rock Band Xbox360

Speck TwoZip HDD Case

Shattered Horizon

SpongeBob Truth or Square Xbox360

Speck Products TuckPack Sleeve

BUBBLE BOBBLE Neo!

Drawn To Life : The Next Chapter Nintendo Wii

RunCore 64GB Pro IV 70mm PCI-e SATA Solid State Drive SSD

Vantec NexStar Universal Storage Adapter

 

Our latest stuff from DragonSteelMods:

NZXT Guardian 921 PC Case

Thermaltake BlacX Duet HDD Docking Station

QNAP TS-419P Turbo NAS

Arctic Cooling F Pro PWM & TC Case Fans

EFO Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Touch Pad

 

Stuff from iGadgetLife:

Bluetrek Bizz Bluetooth Headset

Verbatim Easy Riser Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse with Nano Receiver

 

From Bona Fide Reviews:

Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit – Solar Edition

NZXT LEXA S Crafted Series PC Chassis

TrickleStar TV TrickleSaver

Cupcakes and Bullying

That’s an interesting title isn’t it? They don’t quite go together but ah well..

Today I was hungry for a sweet snack so I made German chocolate cupcakes with Strawberry icing.. no I didn’t make them from scratch, used Betty Crocker mix and some Betty Crocker Whipped Strawberry icing for them. They came out pretty good, but they aren’t very sweet.. The kids like them of course though, a cupcake is a cupcake to them really.

We can call that the nice intro to a rather aggravated rant on my part. My kids were at Edgewood Primary school last year, well the school district, Woodland Hills, decided, (in all of their infinite wisdom), to move kids around yet again and combine schools and close others. So my 7 and 8 year olds went to Dickson Elementary, my 4yr old thankfully is still at the same place his daycare is, they have pre-school there as well. Anyway, we never had a problem at the old school with bullies, and actually everyone seemed very nice there, I like it, but now we’re forced to go to somewhere that I really don’t know the teachers, and I don’t like the principal or my kids teacher now either.

If you go into the school there are signs all over the place about anti-bullying and no bullying etc. They supposedly have a ‘Zero Tolerance‘ bullying policy, which to me means Zero Tolerance, or it’s just not accepted. Well apparently my definition of Zero Tolerance and theirs differ quite a bit.

Here’s a definition that matches what I thin it means:

“The policy or practice of not tolerating undesirable behavior, such as violence or illegal drug use, especially in the automatic imposition of severe penalties for first offenses.”  (it’s from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/zero+tolerance)

But if you go to the same school my kids go to it doesn’t mean that, to them zero tolerance means just let them keep doing it and ignore it and hopefully it will go away. At least that’s what it seems to me and my children.

oh and here’s a quote about the program from the school website: “Dickson Elementary School along with the entire district is implementing the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program this year. Bullying is not acceptable behavior!”

If it’s not acceptable then why won’t they do something about it?

My oldest son is 8yrs old and he’s been being bullied since school started by one child, at least 7 times now that he’s told me of, it’s probably more actually. I should note that the kid doing the bullying is of a different race than my child, we’re white he’s not basically, I think you can figure out the rest… I’m not sure if that has anything to do with the bullying, but who knows…

So anyway, this has been going on for a while. My son tells his teacher and his teacher tells him that there’s nothing he can do and he should tell his parents about it. WTF?!?!? Seriously WTF ever happened to Zero Tolerance? So this past Friday is when things got bad, but right before that this kid tried to push both my sons down the steps at school, again the school does nothing, he could have seriously injured or even killed my kids. Back to Friday, I get a phone call that I need to pick up my son at school because he’s hurt, my son was in gym and this bully ran as fast and he could and kicked my son in the back while he was tying his shoe. Talk about a p*ssy *ss move, hit someone when their back is turned with enough force to leave him in pain for hours and marked…

So needless to say I flipped out once I found out it was the same goddamed kid that has been doing this all along that these pricks at the school refuse to do anything about it. So I went to the school of course and I got into with the principal, and she’s a winner let me tell you…. but I won’t got there right now. She tells me that this kid is a known problem child who has been bullying kids everywhere, but yet they can’t do anything about it. I’ll be honest I wasn’t the happiest person there, and yes I raised my voice, but wouldn’t you when you see your son crying in pain because of something that has been known about and could have been prevented?

So she tells me there’s nothing she can do about it, and I’m like WTF?! What happened to the Zero Tolerance policy and what is it for… she never answered me on that on by the way. I told her fine, if she won’t do anything I’m going to the police and pressing charges. The principal tells me that I can’t do that because the kid is only 8 years old and they won’t do anything about it?!?! It’s assault, battery, whatever you call it at any age last I checked.. 

Then of course after a few minutes I’m waiting for someone to bring my sons stuff down from the classroom, the principal comes out and tells me the other childs parent is on the way and I could talk to them if I want… not going to happen, and it’s not supposed to happen in a case like this.

So needless to say I went to the police to ask for advice basically and see about filing a report. Guess what? They told me that I did the right thing by coming to them, and they don’t understand why the principal would ever tell me NOT to go to the police… hmmm… wonder why she didn’t want me to go the police.

So that’s how my week end has been, it started out pretty bad overall, but it’s ending up not so bad, but we’ll see what this week brings….

OH well…

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

So I got it, of course I did… and I ended up staying up until almost 12:30 last night playing it even though I had to be up at 5am. So I’m a bit tired today to say the least.

I finished today, the single player part, if I had known that there was only two missions left last night I may have stayed up and finished playing it…oh well, I needed my sleep anyway.

 

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So it wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t as disturbing as the press made it out to be… it’s not for kids obviously, there’s plenty of blood and killing. The guns are cool, and the UAV as well.

The graphics though surprised me, I expected better really, they just didn’t seem very next generation to me. Maybe I’ll grab the PC version as well and see how it compares..

Oh well, more later, I’ve got work to do…

Update and linkage time!

Been a long time for an update, I’m just a very busy person, and my down time is spent just relaxing and watching some Netflix..  I used to play games to relax but now I’ve got several games for review, it’s still fun, but it’s still work because I’m taking screenshots and recording in-game videos.. anyway, here’s some links to my latest stuff:

–TestFreaks:

Spyder3Express Monitor Color Calibration Device

Jabra BT3030 Stereo Bluetooth Headset

Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive Desktop Upgrade Bundle

An Unofficial History of The Unboxing

23″ Hannspree HF237HPB Widescreen 1080p HDMI LCD Monitor

Upgrading to Windows 7

Thrustmaster Tennis Duo Pack NW Dual Racket Pack for Nintendo Wii

–Bona Fide Reviews:

NZXT BETA EVO Classic Series PC Case Review

PowerMobile Advanced Emergency Charger

NZXT CRYO S Notebook Cooler Reviewed

–iGadget:

Extra DVD to All MP4 Ripper Reviewed

–DragonSteelMods:

Bluetooth Mini Mouse

Kingwin F-35 3.5″ SATA Enclosure Reviewed

NZXT PANZERBOX Aluminum Chassis Reviewed

–MobilityDigest:
Logitech Cordless Bluetooth Headset Reviewed

Texting and Driving needs to be illegal everywhere.

The other day I’m driving and I look in my mirror and I see this car right behind me swerving back and forth into the next lane and into the oncoming traffic lane. It’s woman as I found out when we came to the stop light, but then I see she texting, she’s holding the phone on top of her steering wheel and typing. If I didn’t know what she was doing I would have thought she was drunk by the way she was driving, she was behind me for about a mile, but thankfully I had to turn off. She came very close to hitting me several times at stop lights and stop signs, and I watched as she would just sit there still typing as the rest of the traffic continued on when the light changed green. The cars behind her would beep and she’d go and speed up of course. The point is though that she was blatantly texting while driving and she could have caused a very bad accident, and maybe she did, I don’t know as I said I turned off to my destination, but what is so important that you’ve got to endanger your life and the lives of other people around you?

I hate texting, I hate talking on the phone while I’m driving, when I’m in the car I always have my Bluetooth headset on to answer any calls, and I’ll never make a call while I’m driving. If I need to make a call my passenger, if I have one, can dial my phone, if I’m by myself I’ll wait till I get to where I’m going. Usually though there’s no one that I need to talk to that can’t wait a few minutes..

There’s enough I’ve got to pay attention to like people running red lights and going through stop signs, and any phone call I’ve got to make can wait until I get to my destination.

None of you are that important that you must have a phone glued to your head at all times, and surely you’re not that important that you must text while driving..

FTC Blogger Ruling.. Blogger Must Disclose Freebies and Payments

So as of December 1st this rule goes into effect.

The whole article is here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/FTC-Bloggers-testimonials-apf-468964868.html?x=0

but the gist of it is that we must disclose the things we get for free for reviews..

I’ve had it listed on my site for well over a year now that any products received for review are my property, but not in the reviews themselves. I’ve got a separate page on my site that mentions How We Test Etc and it’s listed right there…

I can say that I’ve never been paid by a company to review their product, I’ve been asked yes, but I’ve said no because it could lead to a bias towards the company… I don’t want the company thinking that if they pay me then they’ll get a good review. The point of the review is to be objective and honest, to let people know what’s good and bad about the product and of course toss your own personal opinions in there as well.

I don’t think getting the product for review and keeping it is considered something under these guidelines really..

I mean I get products for review to test them, and sometimes testing requires taking them apart, and actually destroying them.

I personally prefer to get products to keep, mainly because if it’s a loaner product then I’ll be held responsible and have to pay for it if something happens to it while it’s in my possession.. I man I’ve got three kids and well, accidents happen.

Getting and keeping the product for review isn’t really a perk in my opinion, it’s part of the job, you need the product to do the reviews.. well ok maybe it is a perk, but it’s still part of the job plain and simple and I don’t consider it a bribe or payment for the review, it’s what it is, you need the product to do the review.

Now I can see how this applies to those that receive gifts after the review, or special things from the company, but I’ve never never got those kinds of things so I can’t really comment on it…

I can see a problem coming for those companies like ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews that pay for reviews… some of them actually mention NOT to say that you are being paid for the review, and in my opinion that is plain wrong and has always been…

All I can say it’s going to be interesting to see how this splays out..

it’s a shame that a few bloggers/reviewers spoil it for others that do it honestly like I/We do on the sites I write for..

I’ve noticed that if I review something and my results differ then I’m accused of being paid for the review, but it’s just not true, I’m reporting my opinion and my experiences with the product. Those that have been caught getting bribes or being paid for a review have spoiled it for the rest of us that try and be honest… I’ve never been paid by a company to review their product, nor have I ever received any other compensation from a company besides the actual product being reviewed, but again you need the product for the review…

Oh well, we’ll see…

Dog bite and other news..

So yesterday our neighbors Pit Bull attacked my wife as she was walking home from school… she got bit on the leg, drew blood of course. This dog is a nuisance, it’s always chasing people around, it always seems to get loose from it’s collar. She was walking home from school minding her own business, this dog broke free, followed her through three yards and then attacked her for no reason. She was on the sidewalk just walking, actually nowhere near the house. The houses sit up on the hill about 30 yards from the sidewalk, so this dog essentially stalked her across three houses and attacked her… They’ve got three of them in total. Now she had to go to hospital, get shots, and still go get more shots for rabies now along with getting an anti-biotic prescription..

There’s something wrong with people in the world is they train their dogs to be mean like this, and especially if they can’t contain them properly. The dog is obviously dangerous, but yet it’s not secured to protect other people. All I can say is that they’re very lucky it wasn’t one of my kids that got attacked, there would be hell to pay I guarantee it…

anyway, here’s some of the latest news from sites I write for:

 

My Stuff:

OCZ Agility Series SATA II 2.5" 60GB SSD –Fast as fast can be!!

Wi-Fire Wi-Fi Adapter –It’s ok…

LG GSA-E50L 8x Slim Super Multi DVD±RW DL USB 2.0 External Drive –Small and portable!

Cocoon Innovations Travel Case Netbook Case –Awesome Netbook case!!

Extra DVD Ripper Professional Reviewed –Junk!

 

 

Other writers:

Pepcom 2009 Holiday Spectacular Recap

How Stuff Works: DVDs and DVD Players

MusicSkins for PSP