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ClubFed Launches

My good friend Sparky Rose has just launched ClubFed, his live “call-in” Internet show and vlog. For those that don’t know, Sparky got busted by the DEA for running one of the largest medical marijuana operations in California. What he was doing was legal under state and local laws, but of course the feds have their own ideas about medical pot. Sparky’s currently awaiting sentencing and it’s looking likely he’ll do time in federal prison. Until then, he’s hosting a weekly live show on Ustream.tv where he will talk about his case, medical marijuana legal issues, and answer your questions. Tune in on Saturday and Sunday nights at 8PM (PST). Archives of previous shows are also on his Ustream page. Every Thursday, Sparky will publish an edited video combining highlights from the live show and his own opinions. Here’s his primer.

Sparky is one of my closest friends and it sucks to see him caught up in the government’s ridiculously hypocritical war against medical marijuana. The federal government is at odds with at least 12 states who have legalized marijuana for medical use in some form or another. Consider making a donation to the Marijuana Policy Project or Drug Policy Alliance to help bring the federal government in line with reality. Or consider donating to Sparky directly. He still has legal costs and has set up a fund for his dog Oscar’s care, in the event he does do time.

Stop freaking out over the TV-B-Gone prank at CES

TV B GoneIt’s bewildering watching everyone freak out about the TV-B-Gone prank at CES this year. A bunch of TVs got turned off and apparently someone forgot to dig the remote out of the couch. Have we become so accustomed to TV & screens being on that we don’t recognize when their not?

People are livid all over the net. Up in arms! This is absolutely horrible for CES! Business is denied! The A/V guy might get fired! Motorola is fucked! Bloggers will PAY!! The porn stars might leave! It was mean and not cool! Puhl-leeze. Put down the pitchforks, hit the saloon and keep those dollar bills ready. No one is losing their job, the billions of dollars invested in consumer electronics will not disappear, Motorola will do just fine. That A/V guy has more than enough work that he could care for. You will still get your lap dance.

Understand that this is a simple prank. It’s a one-off that will easily be remedied by small pieces of electrical tape next year. Or maybe TV manufacturers will finally wake up to the threat of open, unencrypted television remotes everywhere. Seriously, what if Al Qaeda got the TV Remote Control Bomb and managed to turn off every single television, plasma screen and theater projection system in America AT THE SAME TIME?

I know, heavy. We are so fucked.

Comcast, why do you hate your customers?

Comcast Hates Its Customers

Comcast, when I ordered service from you, you were there for me. When the big faceless phone company said it would take 2 weeks to get DSL, you were there for me with broadband Internet cable access the very next morning. I was very impressed.

A couple months later and we have a fairly nasty storm here in Northern California. My cable service went out immediately and it has now been 3 days. I understand nature is unpredictable and service is subject to whims of things beyond your control. But it has been 3 days and I live in a densely urban area in San Francisco. I know I’m not the only one that wants to know two basic things that your customer service reps can’t seem to give me.

1. What is the nature of the problem exactly, how widespread is it?

2. When will service be restored?

Pretty much any solid company that deals with customers will tell you that a little information goes along way. Just knowing the extent of a service problem and what’s needed to get it resolved is usually enough to keep most people from the storming the gates of your business.

So Comcast, why can’t you give me this information? Each time I have contacted you, all I get from you is: There is an outage in your area. Our technicians are aware of the problem and are working on it. We don’t know when it will be fixed.

In other words, piss off, we’re busy, don’t bother us. That’s the message I’m getting from you.

If your technicians know what the problem is, why can’t they tell you so you can tell me? When my phone service goes out, ATT will tell me if there is downed telephone line and will give me a rough estimate of when service is restored. When my power goes out, PG&E will tell me if a transformer blew up and how long it will take to replace. Comcast, you have smart technicians, they know what’s going on. Why can’t you get your act together internally so customers like me have a little more information? All I’m asking for is a little transparency. Give me the illusion that you care about me and my $70 a month.

UPDATE: Comcast, please tell me this isn’t really you. Now I find out that not only you hate me, but you’ve been lying to me too! Are you sleeping with someone else? I just spoke to one of your customer rep supervisors who tells me that this outage is bay area wide (her words) and that EVERYONE is affected (her words). I just polled my friends on Twitter and found this to be completely untrue. Come on Comcast, I know you can do much much better.

It all began with the Commodore VIC-20

Commodore VIC-20

Commodore ruled my world when I was snot nosed little dork with no life. At age 12, I got a Commodore VIC-20 for Christmas, my first home computer. With the awesome storage capacity of the datasette tape drive, I was in geek heaven. With 5k of RAM and 22 columns of text on a noisy RF connection to a crappy NTSC TV I headed down the road of geek curiosity. I remembered a couple amazing things about the VIC. One was writing and running a BBS using the 1200 VICModem. There was no auto-answer with this thing, I had to manually move the cord from the handset to the modem when the phone rang. The BBS was called Hacker’s Hideout and I programmed it using the VIC’s awesome built-in BASIC. I can’t remember what features I had or whether I had warez to trade. This was early XMODEM days, if I did, it probably took a year to download anything. My buddy Justin recalls transferring files over without CRC checks, though I’m thinking this was during our later C64 days. The other thing I remember programming on the VIC-20 was an animated intro sequence of Monty Python’s Flying Circus all in Commodore PETSCII. If I can ever pull that off tape, I will.

Commodore 1541 Floppy Disk Drive

This brings me to next Christmas when I got the Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive. This thing was bigger, heavier, ran hotter and was just as expensive as the C64 at the time, if I recall correctly. But it ruled! I was now in the world of random access storage and what massive storage it was at 170k! I soon learned the trick of cutting a notch in the floppy and flipping it over giving me twice the capacity! Only thing is there wasn’t a lot of storage needs with the VIC, so as it turned out, my pal Justin got a Commodore 64 that same Christmas. We immediately combined forces and embarked on the path of MWA (massive warez acquisition).

Commodore 64

The 64 was an order of magnitude better than the VIC-20. It had a whopping 64k of RAM, 40 columns of text, 16 colors, hardware sprites and the seriously awesome MOS 6581 SID sound chip. SID stood for Sound Interface Device which was quite an understatement. It used the MOS 6510 processor, a close relative to the popular MOS 6502 used in the VIC-20. The Apple I and II as well as Atari 400 and 800 computers also used the 6502 chip. Though it was Commodore that really made the 6510 shine in with the 64.

Back to MWA. With the firepower of the C64, the 1541 drive and a newly acquired 1200 baud auto-dial/auto-answer modem, we were set on our path to never leaving the house. Bulletin boards were popping up everywhere and they usually catered to the type of computer you had. So we called the Commodore ones and soon found we could download all kinds games and utilities. Transfer protocols were primitive at the time and I remember often having to try multiple times to get a file to download successfully. When we did, it was like winning the lottery. The excitement of getting a new game to run after spending hours or days downloading it was like shooting a load. Yes, it would be many years before girls would even look at us.

So fast forward 25 years to today and I find myself looking back on all this with a bit of nostalgia and dork glee. The Commodore 64 is 25 years old now and its birthday was recently celebrated at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Since I live in nearby San Francisco, it was a no brainer to go to the festivities. Commodore’s 80 year old bulldog founder and former CEO Jack Tramiel was there. So was Woz, who created the Apple I and II and co-founded Apple, and this guy Bill Lowe who apparently is known as the “father of the IBM PC”. I produce an online show called Geek Entertainment TV and this of course was a geek goldmine. I grabbed my friend Violet and we went down to Mountain View to capture the action. This video is the result. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed not having a life for the past 25 years. Damn you Tramiel! Merry Christmas. 🙂

Dinner at Freshtopia HQ

I had the pleasure of sitting down to dinner with my esteemed pals Oscar, Tanja and Barb who run the excellent food and sustainability vlog Freshtopia, along with videoblogging pals Ryanne & Jay. Tanja made a mean celery root soup that complimented Ryanne & Jay’s spiced squash soup made from organic veggies they picked from their garden. I had the easy job of bringing the organic chardonnay, so I could do my bad Gary Vaynerchuk impression. Good times!

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Two Great Benefits for Two Great People

amytodd.jpg

This weekend there are two fundraiser events for two amazing friends of mine who’ve each had their more than fair share of hard times the past few months. The first event is Friday evening for Amy Woloszyn, who was nearly killed by a drunk driver while riding home on her bicycle in San Francisco. She sustained a lot of injuries and has no health insurance which means insane medical bills. To make matters worse, this is the second time this has happened to her on San Francisco’s streets. She’s a safe rider, an amazing artist, a passionate beautiful human being and doesn’t deserve the ugliness that the mean streets have foisted on her. She has a blog chronicling her ordeal which she is able to update regularly. Amy’s event is at Balazo Gallery, Friday the 30th starting at 6pm.

Todd Blair is a friend whom I met in 1999 while working on an SRL show in Tokyo. He’s one of the nicest and most giving human beings in the world and it is utterly heartbreaking the trauma he’s going through. He sustained massive head injuries while loading out the most recent SRL show in Amsterdam (I wasn’t there for that one). He is still in an Amsterdam hospital two months later slowly recovering as he battle complications. His love Alex is there by his side and constantly updating his blog with the daily ups and downs he’s had two endure since the accident. Todd’s fundraiser will be an amazing show of love and support from friends and artists at Somarts Gallery on Saturday, November 1st beginning at 8pm. I’m really bummed that I’ll be out of town and not be able to make either of these.

Happy Buy Nothing Day!

The tryptophan’s keeping you lazy anyway, so why bother going out? You’ve got tons of turkey leftovers to chomp on and that pumpkin pie isn’t going to eat itself. Do yourself a favor, stay in and celebrate Buy Nothing Day today.