The Elysian Fields

Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player

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Simple is often best. This was allegedly a simple product, which I purchased to perform a simple task: play DVDs.

It tends not to do that.

Although it frequently ignores discs, and has a special affinity at not being able to play Disney products, especially the Studio Ghibli flicks they released and the Pie Rats of the Carob Bean trilogy, that's not the most critical problem.

For a while I noticed this problem on the special features on children's films. Maybe a short film, maybe a fun activity for kids. You know, unrated material.

Please enter password.

The parental controls, however, are disabled.

Please enter password.

It doesn't accept the default.

You know, on account of the parental controls being disabled.

I'm the parent - I'm the parental control for my kids. I don't need a piece of poorly coded software determining what does or doesn't meet some programmer's - or disc creator's - idea of what is safe for my kids to watch. Especially when it is, you know, safe. Veggie Tales. Disney. Kids stuff.

So I can use the password to set the parental controls, but even then, at the lowest-but-not-off setting, it asks and refuses to acknowledge the password I set or the default password.

So why am I writing this, long after I gave it a quick one star, moaned and complained to Philips Customer Disservice, picked apart the software bugs in their website that prevented me from reporting it on the first try, ripped them apart in a survey because they wanted to know how my experience using their website went, and figured that was more than enough time spent on such a useless, non-functioning product?

I was just attempting to watch a brand new DVD on some nice, relaxing qigong. You know, an exercise video. Which is, conveniently, not rated G, PG, PG-13, R, or anything else. So... I get the STOP hand. And then I try to go around that, and I get the non-functioning password prompt. At least with most of the DVDs I can skip the opening few seconds of the movie and get them to play, but because this brings the password problem in for the entire DVD, not the features, it's useless.

And no, it's not the DVD. It's running right now, attempting to help me relax, played on the PS2. Philips, I promise you one thing: you may have invented the CD, and I will continue to buy things based on that technology, but never will I purchase another product with your name on it. You've made a lifelong anti-Philips consumer out of me. Great job!

Well, to be fair, it does play some DVDs some of the time. Curiously enough, most of the time it hangs up, it's on that FBI warning. Perhaps I could involve the FBI in this? Maybe I should give the field office a call each time it stops? It would probably be more productive than contacting the irresponsible, incompetent manufacturer.

And, hey, maybe if I was lucky, they'd raid Philips and convince them to update the code on the product so it, you know, plays DVDs.

When a certain bridge fell down quite recently, I mentioned that sort of thing is not in the category of complete surprise, as I think about that sort of thing happening on quite a few bridges.

There's one in particular that, over the last four years, I've spent many an hour sitting motionless between eighteen wheelers and other traffic, studying the road surface, and pondering exactly how I would get out of a situation should one end or the other of the particular slab I was on start to tilt.

That kind of stuff, of course, is considered silly nonsense, because bridges don't just fall down. After all, on a scale of 0 to 100 with 100 being the best, that particular bridge rated a whopping 29.1. The good news is, because it passed with flying colors, they don't have to look at it again for two years.

Ever notice how many zombies pop up whenever some careless operator of a truck carrying toxic waste or experimental biohazardous material drives carelessly? And you think to yourself, well, self, that could never happen, because no one would drive like that with that kind of cargo...

Well, I don't know about the exact zombification process - although I'm sure the zombies have their best technicians and scientists working on improving the process of going from point A to Z - but I do know that whole "driver entrusted with toxic stuff acting like a madman" thing is, sadly, not part of the fictional realm.

Witness - or, perhaps, in his case, witless - the driver for Stericycle, Inc this morning, as he left Lehigh Valley Hospital Muhlenberg.

Now, that truck bore labellings for infectious waste - 30 cubic yards of it - and was licensed in NJ and PA. I only noticed the truck because we had just crossed the main entrance intersection - myself and a whole herd of other drivers, including a box truck in the right hand lane - and this idiot comes flying towards the tipping point out of the hospital directly in front of the box truck (about three times his size).

That, boys and girls, was not a proper demonstration of how to act when you see a "Yield" sign and are merging into moving traffic. That is, however, how you force a truck three times your size to stop the acceleration process and switch immediately to "stop, fast" and initiate accident avoidance procedures.

I got lucky. If one or the other of the two trucks had varied in speed just a little, the infectious waste truck would have been hit, flipped, and, given the direction he was going in at the time, likely landed on top of me.

At which time, even if zombification due to infectious waste scattered about did not actually occur, I would stand a good chance of not being here to type this.

Ah! The first storm of the season! And here we see exactly how poorly evolved a large segment of the population is.

First off, we'll start with some of the drivers. On the ride home tonight, that would be 187 individuals. Sociopaths. Terrorists. Attempted Murderers. Lazy-ass motherfuckers.

They can take time to talk on their cellphone instead of doing better things, like coordinating the left blinker with the right turn, but they can't take time to clear the inch to two inches of ice - sometimes in chunks - off their car. Oh, some think roof rack-van-pickup-SUV grants them a special pass, and it does. It makes them even more dangerous than the lazy-ass sociopaths in the smaller cars. Newsflash, PSA, and so forth: if you can't clear the snow off your vehicle, put the key on a hook in the cupboard and don't touch it until everything melts on its own. Sit on the couch, click channels. If you're going to be lazy, might as well go all-out couch potato. And that's why I say sociopath.

Let's review - and not all of these apply, but many do (care of http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~mcafee/Bin/sb.html):
-- Glibness and Superficial Charm
-- Manipulative and Conning : What, you think you could do a better job?
-- Grandiose Sense of Self : Hey, I'm more important than you!
-- Pathological Lying : I cleared it as best as I could.
-- Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt : So, the ice smashed your windshield. So your family member(s) were hurt. Or died. I'm still not going to clear my damn car.
-- Shallow Emotions : How dare you tell me how I should take care of my car!
-- Incapacity for Love : Hey, you're nothing to me. So you swerve, crash, and burn. Big fucking deal.
-- Need for Stimulation : Heh. That piece made both lanes scatter behind me when it flew off.
-- Callousness/Lack of Empathy : Oh I am so sorry the ice smashed your windshield. That's why I didn't stop. Hell, I didn't even look back.
-- Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature : But I *must* leave now. I don't have time to clear the car.
-- Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
-- Irresponsibility/Unreliability : Like I said, I didn't even look back.
-- Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
-- Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle : You want my car clean? You going to clean it for me?
-- Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility : This is the best. See, in January the PA legislature made driving without clearing snow of your car illegal. So. Don't clear the car, you're a criminal. Now they just need to enforce it. 187 cars in 30 something miles, only ones I could clearly see without taking my eyes off the road, and only counting ones on the road and in use - parked cars buried under dozens of snowflakes not counted; ones with tiny little bits not counted even if I noticed them.

Not really a surprise at the lack of enforcement. The state authorities seem to have some difficulty with roads in general, leaving hundreds stranded on one stretch of road for hours and hours, and failing to properly handle snow removal on many/most of the others. They're just interstate highways, it's not like they get a lot of traffic, or are major roadways or anything. And still the state folks say: "We did an excellent job." Quite the FEMA school of disaster management, nice to see them taking their cues from a federal authority. Also quite the Gov school of disaster manufacture, as a little freaking plowing might actually have kept the roads clear in the first place. Or closing the roads in the first place. "The thing that made this stand out was the ice." As if the northeast has never seen ice. Sleet in or around snow hasn't happened since the woolly mammoths were the ones maintaining the right of way, right? Or are they so stupid that they forget that this kind of thing happens. Every. Year. And they just have better things to spend their money on. Like raising their salaries.

Pure incompetence.

Reporting on it has been great too. Hundreds stuck for, what, 20 hours or more? And it took nearly that long before they made a decision to close the road. And other folks stuck a half hour north by northwest from me, with restaurants running out of food, and stranded travellers sleeping on mats in hotel conference rooms. I didn't hear about the former until it was nearly over, I didn't hear about the latter until yuki_onna reported being unable to reach NYC/Boston appointments because she was stuck. One. Frickin'. Exit. Away.

And, although yuki_onna had a legitimate business reason to be on the road - as did all the truckers stuck on I78 - the pissed off people interviewed about the I78 incident were: bringing a carload of kids to visit family; trying to get from here to there while the airports were closed due to weather; and going to visit their girlfriend in NJ - and that guy works for the Dept of Homeland Security, so you can feel safe and secure that they, at least, have their heads screwed. Oh, I meant to say "on right" with that. Maybe.

(for the purposes of this announcement, "advertisers" are considered to be any company that pays someone or is paid to produce an ad, in other words both the advertiser and advertisee, herewith noted as "rat bastards")

If any of you rat bastards proceed to use Christmas or other $WINTERHOLIDAY related music, imagery, or other content in any of the material you publish or show or post or otherwise allow to appear before a public audience prior to the Thanksgiving weekend (at best; points may be awarded for those with good sense to ignore the whole commercialization of the holidays, despite the fact that such companies and individuals don't actually exist,) you will, for the duration of the holiday season or longer - depending on how much I need/want/hate your product/service/other to begin with - be boycotted, along with the horse you rode in on, because you are evil rat bastards and you annoy the hell out of me.

This, umm, CATastrophe just in, via gwynraven...