Just a quick update. We decided on the date. BarCampBay will be held the weekend of November 8th & 9th.

Also, I created the logo last night. Here it is:

Yeah, yeah, the GG bridge is a bit cliche, but I think it looks a kinda snappy.

Anyways, the BarCampBay wiki page can be found here: http://barcamp.org/BarCampBay

We’re still in need of sponsors, a venue, volunteers, and maybe an organizer or two, so if you can help, send an email to barcampbay@gmail.com

I’m not one to rave about retailers or services, but I feel like doing so because of the contempt  I’ve been accumulating for Amazon, eBay, and PayPal.

First, let’s talk about Google Checkout…  It’s fast as hell, saves my preferences, and whatnot.  Since it saves my addresses, I don’t need to individually register for each reseller.  It’s also a common interface for each reseller as well, so I know where to click and stuff.  I loathe using PayPal.  It’s slow as a sloth.  Just logging in takes forever.  Also, I don’t like transferring from my bank account with PayPal, and it won’t let you set a credit card to default.  I know it’s in their best interest, but not in mine or a general consumer.  If you’ve ever had to dispute with a seller, it’s a whole lot easier going through the credit card company than PayPal.  Also, checking out takes several clicks, and it’s not a very intuitive interface.  There’s times where I thought I was finished paying for something, but I didn’t click the one last confirm button.

Let’s move on to Buy.com.  Sure, it’s nothing special, but they do use google checkout and have some pretty good deals.  Also, they don’t mess around with shipping like Amazon does.  Sure, amazon has free super saver shipping, but what good is that if they hold your package for 5 days until they ship it.  They’re certainly not doing it because it would cost them more to ship it in the next day or two.  With Buy.com they ship it fast, and have fair or free shipping prices.  I ordered a package yesterday and got it today.  Also, there’s no misleading crap to trick me into purchasing Amazon Prime-like service with one click.  I know it’s gotten a lot of flack on resellerraitings.com, but the 3 or 4 purchases I’ve made from them had been quick and easy.

I’ve been thinking for a while about planning a general BarCamp for the bay.  I finally got around to contacting some people and it seems like there would be sufficient interest.

The date we have chosen is the last weekend in October.  We don’t have anything more than that, so I’ll update the blog/wiki/stuff when more stuff is decided.

For now if you want, follow BarCampBay on twitter.  Also, we’re still need in volunteers, so if you’re interested, drop me an email at mikelikespie [ at ] gmail.

Dear Apple,

You first thought you were tricky when you forced QuickTime down our throats, and screwed with firefox and made it nearly impossible to remove the plugin.  Also, no option to not allow the removal of QuickTime software.  Guess what?  Apple software isn’t the best.  ESPECIALLY for windows.  A computer with the exact same runs iTunes about 10 times slower (when doing  scrolling) in windows than in OS X.  It’s probably something very trivial or them optimizing a bitblt wrong.

Anyways, back to the point of this post… This is the default when Software Updater comes up.

Well, I added the wtf.  Safari is checked by default. Also, I don’t believe it’s faster than FF3 anymore.  I’m almost tempted to see if it made it the default browser. It probably does. Stop being shitty Apple. You’re just as bad as adware.  If you didn’t have your own browser, you’d probably pushing a firefox toolbar on us.

If I wasn’t tied to iTunes for the iPhone, I’d most definitely be using Windows Media Player when in Windows and have any Apple software on my Windows box.