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I Love today's cartoons! Would you like another lead paint chip too kid?

On a totally different tangent from what I normally write about.... No.... Wait......

I write about EVERYTHING!

Nothing is off limits, so why should this be any different.. Well you won't be disappointed in this one either then!

As well as being the news junkie, And yes I dare say that over the many years of watching TV, and as many adults secretly enjoy still.....

CARTOONS!

Yes, the colorful animations made but people from all over where anything is possible!

As I still enjoy a well made animation with a good story line behind it (Yes folks there IS a story there) I have been a little to busy with my life to see what they have come up with for today's kids. And I must say I am so very thoroughly ...

Disappointed!

Disappointed, disappointed, disappointed.. Oh, did I say I was disappointed?

What has happened to cartoons today? I happened to catch the title of a few of them today, and these shows are so mind numbing is beyond belief!

Sushi Pac? I saw a few minutes of this and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. They have dulled and watered down a cartoon so badly that the ink was barely holding on to the cells they were painted on!

Horse world? Wow! you know there are boys watching TV too, are you trying to turn them in to girls? If you are, start dressing them that way because they will be after watching that!

This one sounded almost worth watching until I saw parts of it. Dino Hero's? Interesting concept except the whole save the planet aspect part of it, I thought this kind of brain washing went away with Captain Planet!

Then the little 3 -5 yr old mini cartoons with the commercials that look like Lego® blocks. just enough to sap the intelligence and creativity out of you!

Strawberry Shortcake? Ok.. Ladies that grew up with this, and I know that there are a lot of you out there that did, my nieces included in that, But THIS, THIS is NOT the same kind of stuff, it was dumb then, and it's even dumber now!

Care Bars? Someone please, please, please! Put them back in the toy chest of forgotten toys! These "feel good" things are just pain stupid! I know some one is making money on this, and it's not ME! and quite honestly, There is a "special place" for people that come up with the dialog for these things! No it's not a story of any kind it's more like "lets eat the sugar bowl!" type thing!

Ugh! People please, if you want your kid to grow up in the realm of being normal.. Don't, Don't let them watch this crap!

Some might argue that "oh violent cartoons create bad kids makes them violent too" Baloney!

A while back I happened to catch an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, and all the best parts of it they cut out and tossed on to the scrap heap! Why? You might ask? Because someone with more money than brains thinks that kids will see that and think that's how things work out!

People it's a cartoon! Watching Silvester get hit with a frying pan never wanted to make me go around and hit an actual cat to see if the same thing would happen! And you know why I didn't?? Because I had a BRAIN! And my parents were smart enough to know that I would know the difference between cartoon world and real world!

Frankly if you see your kid trying to do the things he saw in a cartoon like that, he or she isn't sane to begin with! Send them to the "special" group with the lead paint eaters!

The world around kids is hard enough without filling their heads with mindless stuff that will do nothing but make them in to cottage cheese for brains! Where is the spirit there? Is that what these are really trying to say that your kids are to stupid to handle or understand the difference between cartoons and real life?

Show them a classic cartoon, unedited and see the joy in their face as well as your own come alive. Not this drivel they pass off as entertainment today. Sit down and watch this stuff with them, and if you can't stand to sit though it, why make them do it.

The Young, The Helpless, and The Vista

Well today will make day seven of using Vista and after covering most of it's short comings of the UI and it's basic operations I have to I was thinking I was going to be hard pressed for last and final topic using this operating system. Then later in the day I was trying to help someone that I know that was having problems with their computer. I thought, I can do this type of thing in the Mac OS all the time over iChat and its relatively simple. Start iChat, request to see their screen and your all set. So how much harder could Microsoft's remote connect over internet be? Boy was I in for a SHOCK! I had to not only look online for the directions and the person at the other end was a very novice user that she said she likes her Vista, but the set up was not only confusing to myself on this but to them as well! I had had spent over half an hour with them over chat telling them what they needed to look for to help getting it set up and after going into the control panels and making sure her end was ready for a connect, they became lost and frustrated. I like to help people when I can and help friends when I can and made me feel even more helpless that here was something that I couldn't get across to them on what to do as they were unable to pull up a web page with the instructions on it so they could follow along.

Rachel may say I'm a Mac bigot, but with all the posts that I've outlined, it's not to hard to be a little bit in the face of such overwhelming problems this system has.

Blink.. Blink.. Blink.. Is that your turn signal? No it's Vista

While I am now in to day six of using Vista, I am really getting ready to get back to the normal operations of my Mac. While I know that programs need attention and will do what they can to get your attention, why does every one of them have to blink like a cop behind you at a traffic stop? I know this is such a small thing to worry about, but after awhile it can get to be a little bit much. If you are chatting with someone or a something has finished working, yes I would like to know about it but if you don't get back to it right away and you are trying to think about what your doing right at the moment sometimes a flashing light on the computer screen can get to be distracting. Some may argue that well yes I want to know when someone replies or the like, that's fine, but for me I don't really need to know every thing the computer is doing at every moment. With our busy lives do you have time to respond or clear out every blinking thing on the computer? And if you switch to it will it be something that really needed your attention in the first place right then and there or possible cause the system to slow down or crash while you wait for the flashing thing to switch to it? In the Mac OS X if an application needs your attention the application may jump a few times or something else to get your attention but it wont blink incessantly to get your attention.

Keep the flashing lights where they belong... Xmas trees, cop cars, tow trucks and disco balls..

But not in the task bar....

Ok, who slipped Vista the snails?

After running Vista without a restart, the week started out ok speed wise, considering that I am running this on a 1.6 Ghz Mac Mini, but as I get closer to the end of this experiment, which is now going into day five, I have been noticing a significant slowdown in the UI and the system overall. While I am not unfamiliar with system slow downs, but only after running the computer non-stop for a relatively short amount of time compared the amount of time of running the Mac OS continually with far more programs open will it slow down, and if I shut them down the computer recovers fairly quickly. I have not seen this happen with Vista. Currently, I have several applications running, four in all at this moment and with each more than two or more windows going. As the Windows OS treats each window as an application in to its own, the OS will slow down more and more with each new window it opens. When my computer is in Mac mode while the OS does dedicate some of the resources to each application that is open, I can run way more than one application with multiple windows open in the Mac OS without a major slow down. Even Little things like typing up this blog has become harder to do with out me nearly pulling my hair out in frustration!

Bloop.. Beep.. Pling.. Plang. Vista, what are you trying to say boy?

Since I started running Vista late last week and now into day four of my week long venture of this OS, something I have been noticing.. Well hearing really... While I do have several programs that are running online at the moment, and I'm sure I have quelled the noises that they generate or at least set them to noises i recognize, Vista is every now and again still pinging, dinging and just generally making itself known to me even when I am away from the computer and the screen saver has kicked in. Now I'm not unfamiliar with the sounds a computer makes, but it seems that with the Vista operating system, something beeps and I look around the screen to see what might have caused it. Perhaps an alert box someplace or the like. after searching numerous windows and applications I happen to be running at the time, they all appear to be dormant like a sleeping volcano just waiting for it time to spurt a sound at me when I'm looking at my keys or away from the c0mputer. In comparison on my Mac side of the computer, if something dings there is some sort of notice as to what it was that might have caused it. Usually.... Not saying that's never happened on the Mac side where something makes a noise and have no idea what it was but it is very rare. Its frustrating to have an application to sit there and ding at you and then shows no notification of what it was that apparently wanted your attention in the first place. Some might chalk that up to programing but when you don't have any programs running and it does that, well I chalk that up to a REALLY bad deployment of an OS.

Frustration is just a Vista keystroke away

Well now into day... What is this so far? Day Three? Can the week zoom by quicker please??

When it comes to using the key commands in Vista or Mac and no matter the keyboard, my typing is sometimes... Well less than stellar... Ok, I'm no keyboardist to the 10th level or anything lol, but I suspect neither are most computers out there. Like most users, my fingers have tendency to slip and press random keys that you may have not intended to hit or didn't know you had even hit in the first place. When I use my Mac and hit something random, it is usually hitting the expose, or the help key which is a pain, and have to wait for the computer to process opening the help so i can get back to what i was doing. Now this is is an inconvenient but not to bothersome. When I started doing this in the Windows Vista world however, I was in for a few very unpleasant surprises. When I have hit the random key element in Vista I get a dialog box to do some other commands and I am looking at my keyboard and not looking up in time to notice what I've done on the screen. Or worse yet I get typing faster as I can hunt and peck pretty well. Ok, not perfect, but pretty well.. and I like to talk online like most people and somehow i managed to hit a key of some sort and I'm not 100% sure if it was this key or not, but i think it was the Scroll Lock key. Have no idea how I even hit this key if it was in fact that key at all. But suddenly I was unable to type at all! When you are in the middle of a conversation this can get quite distressing to say the least! then while your trying to figure out what key to re-click to get this symptom to go away the other person is either getting annoyed or you missed a good place for a joke at a critical moment.

In any event, sometimes having to many commands at your fingertips can be just as bad as having to few and Vista has way more than is really necessary....