Anyone else out there miss the 80’s, specifically TV and Movies from the 80’s. I just grabbed an old DVD off the shelf a remastered version of Iron Eagle a really far fetched flying movie from the 80’s. Fun music, hero tale and a really good watch.

While watching I can’t help but to reminisce about the late 80’s when movies where corny and unbelievable nothing was based on reality. We had shows like the A-Team, Airwolf, Blue Thunder, Magnum PI, the list is long. Movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day off, Iron Eagle, Lawnmower Man, Ski School, Ski Patrol, Adventures in Babysitting, The Labyrinth, The Last Starfighter and a HUGE assortment of  other great 80’s flicks not to mention all the horrors series like Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elf Street, the list is endless.
Modern movies are technologically advanced and getting better with some of the newer stories based off 80’s television/film. The  Transformers was a master piece using the greatest cartoon of the 80’s Era. Modern TV needs to take a page of the movie industry book and look to the 80’s for stories to immerse our selves into instead of living vicariously through the morons in so called reality TV programs.

Well thats my rant on Reality TV again. Feel free to give input there is nothing like a good old fashioned online debate.

Posted in Personal, Rants & Thoughts, Reviews | No Comments »

Ok well after a few months of hell with webserve.ca hosting I have had to bite the bullet and switch to a new hosting company for my business, clients and personal sites. Consider this post a review of the shoddy service provided by this filth that masquerades as a hosting company. Where do I start?

Customer Service:
This topic is unknown to webserve as they don’t actually provide any. Anyone you can actually get on the phone is actually an outsourced call center you are just glorified human answering machines that take a message and send it off to “someone” at webserve who if they actually exist will choose to ignore the message and not get back to you.

After months of hassles, a 7 day stint with no service I opened a Better Business Bureau complaint which webserve chose to ignore also. After a few months someone from the company finally contacted BBB to inform them that they had just credited my account 2 months. WOOHOOO two more months of crappy service and downtime.

Service:
Well were do we start? There were weekly downtimes where the server was down for 15mins to 4hours at random intervals. There was a 2 day downtime when a RAM module went. There was 1 week downtime when the OS got corrupted. Most recently there was a week of downtime when the server got hacked, when they finally got the server online again they disabled the ability for anyone to log into blogs, forums, CMS or anything with a submission field. Did I forget to mention that this was all within a 6 month period. Here is the best part my home IP address yes MY IP ADDRESS was put on a black list because I accessed multiple sites on the server via FTP, and HTTP, POP3 and logged in to my forums and blogs. Is there any web developers out there that can manage 9 websites on one server without showing you IP accessing the server multiple times. Oh and doing all this without checking email. On numerous occasions I was not able to upload files to the sites because the HDD was full however my allocated 12GB of space was 10% used so how could the HDD be full. I never used more than 2GB of the 1TB of allocated bandwidth, I never even came close to using the allocated 12GB of storage for the RESELLER ACCOUNT that I had with them. I did not even host all of the 10 allocated domains.

Tech Support:
OMG here is where it gets interesting, these incompetent outsourced glorified answering machines using scripted messages to send you when you open and ticket or god forbid actually get a rep on live chat. They don’t know anything either other than to tell you:

“We are Sorry for the inconvenience caused”

“The issue should resolve within few hours”

“We are aware of this situation. Unfortunately [SERVER OR SERVICE] is down but we are working to resolve this issue ASAP. As with any service we provide we realize it must meet the expectations of our clients. Rest assured that we do take the business of hosting people’s websites seriously and are constantly upgrading our systems and services to address any points of failure within our control. We also review all service interruptions and outages for ways to prevent such problems in the future. Again I do apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your business. Our technicians are working on the issue but at present we do not have an estimated time to repair. Your patience and understanding is greatly appreciated.” - This particular blithering ID10T did not even have the common decency to choose an option SERVER or SERVICE before pasting this script into the chat window.

The Worst part of all:
I opted to upgrade to a VPS account after finally talking to a director in the company. Yah I know stupid me why stay with them? Well I have 9 websites all with CSM and or complex MySQL Databases and settings/permissions. I figured a VPS would cure all. I asked to have my accounts transferred over and was told they would. The account comes with 5 IP addresses but they only alocated 1. I had a domain transfered over to webserve and asked that it be added to my billing account DUH not rocket science. Well 3 months later I still have 1 IP address. The only domains on the VPS are the 2 that I managed to make the time to transfer myself and the original server is spending more time out of commission that actually up. And I cant find the billing information for the domain transfer anywhere. I did remind them on a dozen occasions that these simple processes needed to be done.

Conclusion:
BEWARE OF HOSTING THROUGH WEBSERVE.CA FOR ANY REASON THIS COMPANY GUARANTEES 99.9% UPTIME BUT DELIVERS NOTHING CLOSE TO THIS. THEY HAVE NO CUSTOMER SERVICE OR TECH SUPPORT AND REALLY DONT CARE ABOUT THEIR CUSTOMERS AT ALL. OUT OF 10 I GIVE THIS COMPANY A RESOUNDING 0 A COMPLTE WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY DONT’T EVEN CONSIDER THEM FOR ANYTHING LARGER THAN A PLACE TO MAIL YOUR MOST TREASURED FINDS IN THE KITTY LITTER!

Posted in Business, Rants & Thoughts, Reviews | 7 Comments »

Ok I just finished watching yet another of a great series of television shows that got canceled. Quality television is being destroyed by the new crap list of reality show filth that is polluting out televisions.

The show that has gotten me so outraged again was the 2006 cancellation of Surface after 15 episodes and a cliff hanger ending that left us fans begging for more. I feel like screaming at the executives of NBC and wring their necks until they at least finish the series off. I have watched this series 3 times now and each time I have trouble conceiving what pencil pushing MORON made the decision to not continue the show. This series had quality acting, a GREAT story, intellectual stimulating content, phenomenal characters and even a lovable CG seas monster named “NIM(rod)” the show had it all. So why did it get canceled after only one season?

The answer is simple the onslaught of the reality crap such as Americas Next Top Model, Bachelor, Big Brother giving people a glimmer of hope that they too could be on television disgusts me to know end. Have we become such a pathetic and brainless group of television viewers that we can’t even enjoy a plot based story any more. We are reduced to escaping our dreary lives by living through the filth blatantly scripted so called reality TV.

I for one HATE “reality” television shows I miss the good old days of TV in the 80’s when we had shows that we could enjoy even though we know that they could never happen. Lately there have been so many great shows that have been canceled after only 1 or two seasons that I am losing all faith in television. Threshold, Special Unit 2, Surface, Traveler, Drive and many other shows that never got a chance because the majority of the population that make up the rating are two busy dreaming about being the next no talent singer on “American Idol”.

I have also made an open offer to donate MY and MY companies time to help with production of Surface Season 2 if need be to help get this show back on the air. I am capable of putting together CG animation and Editing/Compositing Teams to complete post production for the show if the filming of episodes was completed and raw tapes handed over to us. Well that is my rant about television if you want to help try and get Surface back on the air visit these sites to help drive traffic and signatures into the hand of the people that can make it happen.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Surface/

http://www.tv.com/surface/show/32412/surface-season-2/topic/14502-228705/msgs.html

http://www.savesurface.com/phpBB2/index.php

Posted in 3D Animation, Personal, Rants & Thoughts, Reviews | 2 Comments »

YES I am dragging this one up again. I think most of us have seen the Moon Hoax documentary on FOX (if not here is a site about it http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html) and have an opinion on the topic. Here is mine.

Did we land on the moon? Maybe really it doesn’t matter to me whether we did or not. I think that much of the billions of dollars spent on space exploration is a waste of tax payers money considering the state of finance of the USA, and the many people that could benefit from that money would make life on earth more pleasant instead of looking for the answers to irrelevant questions some of which I have asked and answered below.

Q: Are we alone in the universe?
A: No and anyone that thinks that in the infinite expanse of the universe we are the only sentient beings is a completely self indulged idiot.

Q: Should we try and inhabit another planet?
A: After what we have done to this one, give me a break before we should look for another planet to inhabit we should probably try and live in harmony on the one we inhabit now.

Q: What if we found other life in the universe?
A: Um look at our track record we would likely try to force our opinions and beliefs on this new society and end up at war. So why bother looking for a fight across the universe when we haven’t finished killing each other at home.

The evidence put forth stating that that the landing is a hoax is pretty powerful, and honestly faking the landing to win some space race is something that is in the nature of human beings. We supposedly landed on the moon in 1969 thats almost 40 years ago, there should be a colony or space station there by now don’t you think? At least a hotel to boost the travel economy.

If NASA was really interested in stomping out the hoax without all the poo flinging that is going on between conspiracy theorists and the PR at NASA, just point a space telescope at the moon and show the world the flag that we left there. That would be irrefutable evidence that it is just a conspiracy because how the hell did the flag get there if Armstrong was not on the moon.

Could someone please put this conspiracy to rest?
P.S. I am not against space exploration I believe the study of the universe is a great tool to learn and a reminder of just how small we really are. But much of the money is wasted on spying on each other instead of say building a science station on the moon and launching all space missions from there. Wow that would save a lot on rocket fuel if we launched missions into deep space from the moon wouldn’t we?

Posted in Rants & Thoughts | No Comments »