Concern

Instead of giving crappy, uninformed, one-star reviews of apps on the App Store like most people do, I will now instead give uninformed five-star reviews of apps, extolling all the great things the app doesn’t even do.

“Kellykago” has this gem of feedback about WOD on the Apple App Store:

No back up ★★

I loved this app until I had to restore my IPOD to factory settings due to some problems and then discovered that a years worth of workout logs was lost. I guess I was dumb enough to think my records somehow were backed up on my ITunes. I’ll stick to my ▉▉▉ ▉▉▉▉ for tracking workouts from ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉.com.

Sic, naturally. And partly censored, since it’s not clear if this is a spam advertisement or not. iTunes doesn’t provide any way to respond to these “reviews,” which are often uninformed, wrong, or misguided.

Hey Kellykago, fuck you. Fuck you and your idiot fucking ass. I don’t want your business, and you can go drop a fucking barbell on your head. You are:

1. A fucking coward, since you left this shitty note about my app without ever contacting me over the established channels that iTunes provides. I would gladly have tried to help you out, but you never even bothered.
2. A fucking idiot, because there are two ways provided to back up your logs, and you’re clearly too thick to have figured out either of them. For one, if you sync your device to iTunes, you have a backup of everything WOD logs, along with all the data from all of your other apps. Even if you did a factory restore, you could have restored that backup and had everything you had in the app, along with every other app you have. Two, even if that isn’t enough, I spent a lot of time putting together an online backup and restore service. So yeah, there are two ways of doing exactly what you said didn’t exist in the app. And even if either of them had failed, and you didn’t get your data back, how the hell is that a fault of mine?

So, please, go fuck yourself, you fucking idiot.

I was just watching The Godfather, from a digital copy that I torrented totally downloaded completely legally, and you know there are some parts of the movie that are in Italian. This digital copy doesn’t seem to have English subtitles.

So what was the thought that entered my head?

“I should learn Italian so I’ll understand this.”

I am, you know, special that way.

I ordered a new MacBook Air soon after it was released, and have been using it exclusively since it arrived, on the first of November. I took the plunge because it was, with a couple of upgrades, identical in spec to my previous laptop, one of the first unibody MacBook Pros. As far as RAM, screen resolution, CPU speed, and internal storage went, the MacBook Air was on par. It did away with ports I never used and an optical drive I rarely used, but added solid-state internal storage and legendary battery life.

Using it for nearly a month has largely confirmed for me: this is the best laptop I’ve ever owned, and laptops like this are where the portable computer market should go if it wants to succeed.

This is what I really like about the Air:

• As I mentioned, the legendary battery life. This wasn’t something I thought I’d ever care about, but working in coffee shops, where the nearest outlet might be in use or just too far away, really made me appreciate it. I mean, now, I can go an entire session at a coffee shop (usually, something like two to four hours, depending) and never have to plug in.

• It doesn’t get all that hot. My old laptop would, just in normal use, get very hot and it would be uncomfortable to work with on my lap. I almost didn’t notice this change, but there I am, reclined back and working and not even paying attention to the device I’ve got in my lap.

• It’s very light. This feeds doubly into the benefits of the previous point.

• It’s, well, intimate. The screen is significantly smaller than the one on the Pro, but has the same resolution. The result is that I can see everything I used to see, but it’s more compact. I think this smaller, more detailed screen makes the most sense when the screen is arm’s length away. Also, when I look at the screen on my Pro, it surprises me how comically large everything looks. Having an iPhone 4 hasn’t helped in this regard, since I more than ever don’t want to perceive a pixel ever again.

Overall this computer has surpassed my expectations, simply because of these tiny improvements that I didn’t know would be important when I ordered it. I doubt I’m measurably more productive when I’m using it, but honestly, with this I can work and start to not pay attention to the tools I’m using. This is significant.

Did you know that they made a sequel to Donnie Darko?

No? Well, they did, and you can’t unlearn this.

You also can’t unsee something, and this is a terrible, terrible movie. Do yourself a favor and don’t see it, and try to forget that you’ve learned that it exists.