Renaissance festival; keyboards

I was not able to finish updating all of my existing pages with the fancy new SSI thing, but I got the majority of it all working properly. At least that all went well. One of the very first updates that I did on this site said that I was sure there was a way to update the navbar on a macro scale with a micro effort, and that is exactly what the SSI does. I am still able to continue to do all of the html in notepad, which makes me smile, but that navbar thing would have been death if I had to update every single page. That was the biggest factor in why I had always used frames in the past. I just did not know that there was such an easy solution available, now that I know I don’t think I will ever turn back.

Now for some personal news. I said yesterday that I was the jack-ass who didn’t have any candy or flowers for my love on Valentine’s day, and it went over about as you would expect…Not good. The agreed upon terms for my penance were a visit to the annual reneaissance festivel where My lady and I could take in the sites and sounds of the period (which is a bunch of crap since its all normal people watching actors, but still the point is there).

Last year my wife had to literally drag me to this event. This year I was a bit less reluctant, since we had acquired a really cool picture and a nice rubbing (of the symbol for a saint, in theory, but it just looked really cool) the previous year. I was a little bit more in the mood for that sort of thing this year, and it was actually quite a good time.

The same shop that we got the rubbing from the previous year was set up again, and I went ahead and got the guy going on another of the saints (how the picture of a bull with wings and horns can be the symbol for Saint Luke escapes me) and then went to look at the other wares. It is sort of like the state fair, with all of this cheesy crap that you would never buy if you saw it in Wal-Mart, but for some reason, in the heat of the moment maybe, you will go ahead and pay three times what it would cost you online to get the same damn thing. I guess there is a bit of sentiment involved with that as well, I mean if you were to buy some trinket online that will be just a trinket that you bought online. If you buy the same trinket at a festival such as this you will probably remember things that happened while you were there (good or bad) that make it seem more like a family heirloom than the shoddy piece of crap it is.

What we bought there, this year and last, could certainly not be considered shoddy crap, but as I do not have a digital camera that is worth using I will wait until I have photographic proof to go into any more detail. Suffice to say that most people give up on their whole “gothic” point of view in their late teens or early twenties, our house has no images on the walls that are not of dragons, or fantasy (with the exception of an engagement photo and a wedding photo). We have our walls adorned with wrought-iron candle sconces, even a gargoyle on a pedastol guarding the entrance to the room where we have the computer. It is certainly not like S&M bondage type of crap, just that both of us seem to love images by Boris Vallejo Those images always have dragons and wizards and that is sort of what our home adornments look like…Almost completely forgot, we also have a queen size bed that has wrought Iron posts(about seven feet tall, and very dark green(couldn’t find it in black or navy blue) lace hanging from it(held back much like an open curtain is, with ties around the middle).

Okay, now that I have proven that I am a freak I can calm down a bit and get back to what I do best. I must Bitch On.


Keyboards:

Keyboards are a lot like assholes in a lot of ways. 1)you only like your own, everyone else’s stinks. 2)No one really talks about the good and the bad of them. 3)Once you know your way around it you would not likely trade it in on a newer model. 4)Like everything else, Microsoft is the biggest, and most useless. (take it for what you want, I am working for free).

On the way to the festival which I went on about above, I wanted to buy a new keyboard. The escape key had not worked on my previous keyboard in, oh, about three years. I had (what I thought) some pretty reasonable goals with the new keyboard. 1)it must be the split-v style. 2)It really has to have a double-sized backspace key. 3)The left, down, right arrow must all be in a row, with absolutely no deviance in the heigth. 4)The ‘insert’, ‘home’ and ‘page up’ keys must be in a single row above the arrows(and single sized buttons). 5)The ‘Delete’, ‘end’ and ‘Page Down’ keys must be in the same format directly below them. That sounds like a standard keyboard to me, but guess what?
You can’t get one like that anymore. At least not at OfficeDepot, Staples or BestBuy(which are not linked because they pissed me off). I am going to throw in a break here, before I start killing children.

It took me a long time to come up with this analogy, so please take a few seconds to read it:

There are thousands of manufacturers who make guitars. None of those manufacturers try to move the frets around on the guitar, because it is impossible. The tone can not be acquired if the fret is not in the right place. It is thankful that they are not able to do it, since, can you imagine having to learn to play the guitar again because some asshole changed the neck around? Why are keyboards so different?

Microsoft has the least logical and most difficult to use keyboards in the entire world, yet they charge double for them. Perhaps some idiots assume that Microsoft will make a better keyboard? All I know is that we had to drive around the out-skirts of Phoenix for a while to find any store that was stocking a split-v keyboard that was not made by Microsoft. When I finally found it, I paid 29 dollars for it, and will get ten back on a mail in rebate. I am not required to install any software to use it, it was just plug and play. The Microsoft version of the same keyboard requires you to use your disk space to carry their drivers for their inferior crap, and was 79.96 (sure I could have gotten it cheaper, but the name Microsoft will make me back away from any purchase).

Since I now have a site where I do not have to fear repercussions for my actions, I am finally able to say what I have said all along: “Fuck you, Microsoft”.

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