The other day I witnessed a commercial that shocked me..
“Circuit City Is Going Out Of Business”
Circuit City has been almost an epic place in my life. It was across the bridge and one of the first places I went once getting a driver’s licence. Before the rise of online stores and durring the times of the dot com boom I went to Circuit city and it’s neighbor “CompUSA” to buy everything from CD’s, Car Stereos, Computers, and Parts… When I needed a quick cable for something CC was the spot.
Seeing this giant leave in retreat boggles my mind and in a way makes me sad. It’s the end of an era. It’s speculation on my part, but I believe the box store was the product of the strip mall surge of the early 60′s.. In my era “Box Stores” dominated mass spots and culminated acres of Parking space like Kindoms unto themselves.
All box stores in one way or another shared common trates.. “1 Stop Shopping.” The theory was that by buying bulk products stores like these could amass big discounts that they passed on to the consumers. This model isn’t US centric either– Yamada Denki, Bic Camera, etc in Japan also followed this model. Alass however– no matter how big, Circuit City couldn’t weather this typhoon of spending stoppage. 
It leads to the next question as to what, then is the future. As one Circuit City Employee told me… “It’s all going online– Sales have dropped and even BestBuy (the apparent winner) is also feeling the pinch.” So indeed perhaps the in the wake of catastrophic economic failure the moral of the story was not that “Atmosphere of ‘Cool’” is what sold a product, but it’s price… For that was what Circuit city could get you… “Atmosphere”.
“FireDog” was their branding subsidiary that essentially did installation work of complex TV installs, Car Audio Installs, and Computer Setup (i.e. Personalization). I, in fact, used them once to install the wiring in a car I own because the previous user trashed the wiring in it or it didn’t exist. Regardless– the user experience mattered. It was an unique place where you could go to “touch” stuff.. That perhaps is the most thing I’ll miss about box stores. Half mall to window shop and half consumer playground to pick up stuff you had no hope of affording and using it (i.e. DSLRs, CONSOLES, Super Computers, Laptops).
Who is left in this game is uncertain… BestBuy might have survived, but at what cost? When newcomer “Netflix” came on board– it was scoffed by BlockBuster and Hollywood Video, but soon the concept turned into real competition and Blockbuster was forced to rethink it’s business model. Perhaps the future of Bestbuy must be a fusion of both the online world & tangible world.. Perhaps to transform stores from mega boutiques of gadgets and consumables to Full on show rooms with presentations and tutorials.
If it were me… (and it’s not) I would look to other “box-esk” stores like Home Depot, Staples, and Frys to see if I could secure a different cliental or offer different services.. Otherwise, BestBuy as it stands is doomed..or is it? My prediction is that BestBuy on this path will join the fate of CompUSA, Circuit City, and others by the end of this year or next. This calls for a major reorganization on how it does business..
As a part consumer and hobby-analyst my role in this remains to be a cautionous consumer and watchful observer… It’s not right to shame myself or guilt myself into buying at BestBuy for their sake– They must convince me that their drug is better then the one online..
In conclution.. I must say, I’m sure glad that for the years I spent going to Circuit City or CompUSA I never bought their “Protection Plan.”
~J out
This week it appears to be fair game for going ahead with the final summations of an administration pregnant with both trial and tribulations. For me I need to harken back to a time when I was 16, politically aware, but not a participant yet. To me the Clinton era was too riddled with trife– and at the time Mr. Gore was being slandered by some as being, perhaps (cough), more the same. However, he wasn’t.. Mr. Al Gore pursued much like AZ. Senator McCain last year to distance himself from his own administration chief in order to clear a solid path for himself.
Yet I believe for Mr. Bush a burgoning new class took the better half of the country, albeit by a slim majority, and at that point an era of “dubbya” was crisoned. Some enjoyed the charm of this man who was frank and not obsessed with image much like his predessor. Others began sewing seeds of discontent that bloomed into anger and then into hatred which is very common place now amoungst liberal communities.
As for legacy forecasting (which in realistic terms is what it is) by political forecasters it’s a tricky game to pin exactly what history will adjust it’s focus towards. Many of the commentators hold the views of the second half (the anti-Bush/Gore half) and there maybe concern that their slander might end up as the record. So if by any small measure I were to interject into the national dialog some measure by which we should ultimately judge both President G.W. Bush and President Elect Barack Obama… I would present two passages for consideration:
The first from one of Asia’s most influential philosophies and religions (Theravada Buddhism) and the other from China’s most famous philosopher Confucius…
. . .
In the Theravada sect of Buddhism there is a passage from the edict on the Way of Righteousness dealing with Hatred and Love I find useful for deturming hate and love of people– especially when we deal with someone like President Bush.
[From Dhammapada, 3-5, 201]
“He insulted me, he struck me,
He defeated me, he robbed me!”
Those who harbor such thought
Are never appeased in their hatred….
But those who do not harbor them
Are Quickly appeased.
Never in this world is hate
Appeased by hatred;
It is only appeased by love—
This is an eternal law (sanantana-dhamma). 30
Victory breeds hatred
For the defeated lie down in sorrow.
Above victory or defeat
The calm man dwells in peace.
It is not surprising or particularly unsettling that last year half of Americans, myself included, lost a race to the Democratic Nominee. However, for both sides we mustn’t harbor the by product of causality, but instead rise to the calm man who dwells in peace as the edict says. Why? because if we value honor, we must value humility so as to show the victors (and our deepest critics) that at all of our core we share a single solidarity as a nation– which [should] override all else.
Thus it is not in our place as active members of the present to critique a man or an administration at this very moment. Rather we should be convicted with a heavy heart to the success of our next Chief executive as it is the best way to balance harmony amongst all moral or political factions.
While that should be our creed, the platform by which Mr. Obama must rise to is of a very different standard. Confucius, while talking on many subjects, spoke on goverence. His pupal Mencius wrote of a lecture his master gave on Leading people much like Obama will have to do in the coming days:
From the Analects,
“The master (Confucius) said, “lead them by means of government policies and regulate them through punishments, and the people will be evasive and have no sense of shame. Lead them by means of virtue and regulate them through rituals and they will have a sense of shame and moreover have standards.”
To Mr. Obama, a choice will be offered for which style of government he will establish. Failure is not an option and we should not desire it– no matter how tempting the end result might be. The time of a neverending campaign should be retired with President Bush.
I hope that my little words of zen reflect upon the greater establishment as words of caution and confort. If not, it’s of equal importance that we try to incorporate these into our lives… so as to reflect what we want the next generation to model after.
And that’s my little words of Zen for you today.
~J out
Ok I’ll admit it– I haven’t blogged simply due to disappointment. No its true I did feel a bit down after it hit and I’ve been in silent meditation.
This has allowed me reflection time– Time that I use to work on my website.
As for the website I’m building.. I have a few more tweaks to do on it then I’m going to work on importing blog posts from here to there.
As of like right now– it’s all experimental. To tell the truth I’m completely new to CMS’s other then maybe wordpress. Already maybe 3 or 4 times I’ve seriously considered trashing drupal for wordpress– but I’m going to keep a little bit more at it. I’m banking on a few things, one of which is an explosion of new knowledge and my skill at tweaking css.
In any case… My big thought coming home was to perhaps incorporate a “photocast” idea. This is a simple java or flash based photo album blog-style post that runs on a pre-defined timer that’s set to a podcast mp3 running either within the photo album or underneith it.
Presentation wise, I believe it would be great to watch a story unfold through pictures like a book. I’ll have to work up an example, try it out, and see what happens.
Until then..
~J out
Ok maybe “sacrifice” is a bit too harsh here to say, but it’s more like a come to Jesus moment.
Fallout 3 is a great game– or atleast appears to be a great game if your computer doesn’t ‘zoink out’ all the time with old software bitching about upgrades and of course the occasional cough..WPA validation..cough pop ups. If this was any other time– id say so what, but crashing in the middle of wasting a ghoul just angered the friggen hell out of me that I rushed back over linux and qeued up a country western playlist I worked up a week ago (don’t ask).
It was only then the realization that when I bought the OS for the HTPC I got two disks– 1 32bit ed of Win XP and a 1 x64 bit ed. Well I already installed and authenticated the 32 bit licence, but not the other one. Now I know the problems with the 64 bit ed. and everyone says basically to stick with the 32 bit ed, but since my primary scoot around OS for daily use is linux and I’d only use winxp for games– what the heck. I’ll suffer.
So I backed up my XP Hard drive– tossed in the x64 disk with a virgin product key and killed off the old xp particition that I’ve used for nearly ever. All without even thinking twice.
Now, as I blog my job as with every windows install in history is to install drivers and programs– getting me all back to some sense of normality so I can play my dang copy of Fallout 3 (hopefully).
~J out
**edit 22:40- Just install nVidia drivers and now have my 1440 x 900 back whew! I felt like I was suffocating a little there
Nov. 1, wow a new month and so much stuff to get done.
On the priority list is:
Upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10
Working on JET app
working on my new website
Installing new server software on my server
playing Fallout 3
I put upgrading ubuntu at #1 only because that’s a start & forget thing. I started the upgrader and I’ll let that run occasionally checking for prompts..
On the JET app. the next thing is just really mass printing everything and then organizing it into a nice package. There’s still some things I need to bust my ass this week to do… The first is getting official transcripts from Clark Co., next is getting my 2 letters of rec., then finally getting a notice from Overseas I sent for. On the back burner maybe setting up a physical with a doc..
My timeline is to get it packaged and mailed by November 14th or 15th. As of today– I feel confident that I’m on track for that… Come the 13th, who knows ;P
Next on the big list is my website.. I’ve recently setup a site, but ironically have forgotten the credentials to log in.. lol. It’s likely since I haven’t done anything that I’ll scrap it and load a new one. Really I didn’t like the setup I made to begin with… it was hastily done, and this site I want to be good looking– incorporating all my talent and everything. I’ve decided to try and use drupal’s CMS software for my blog. I was going to use wordpress, but I feel that the way things are going– I’ll probably soon expand my site and I’ll need the extra configuabilty later. One of drupals very nice features is it’s “book” ability. I think it would be really fun to explore writing books. In college, of course, I found a nack for writing and in many ways I’d like to keep doing that.
Along with Ubuntu’s update is a server package I’m interested in installing on my server. Recently the old eserver horse has been used to mock up plenty of website CMS’s and attempts, but since now I’ve gone pro with a webhosted service for mysite… I’d be fine to let that old dog do another trick as a media host or backup file server. Now 8.10 server is a lot for just dinking, but dinking is what I do– I’ll learn a lot from it i’m sure.
Finally Fall out 3.. I picked up a copy after work at Best Buy and it’s fantastic! Absolutely grand.. It’s one of those huge world games with tons and tons of stuff to do. I’m dual booting pretty much for that reason alone otherwise linux is fine for me. The more I play Fo3, I’ll do my take on it.
OK.. so time to get cracking away.. feels like work on a Sat already…
More updates to come.. otherwise I’ll try to keep my blip’s or tweets updated through out the day with twitter.
~J out
My DNS finally switched over to my host’s DNS so now everyone is talking.
I’m in the deep process now of putting together a comprehensive website with lots of bells and whistles and pics and vids and whatnot. It’s sort of been a fantasy of mine for awhile.. but the goal is simply to have 1 spot– 1 website for everything.
1st is the design of the site.. Working out the theme prefs.. Font, banner, ect..
2nd is migrating data from here to there.
3rd testing everything
4th working on other content systems like coppermine for photos and stuff
when it’s done or close to done… I’ll redirect this over there and start using my website for updates.
More to come..
~J
Right now I’m pulling a midnight– balls out– don’t know if it’ll work or not move.
I’ve given up on trying to fix some major errors that reside in my new linux machine. If it wasn’t clear before… it is now. Ubuntu doesn’t like you switching up the home directories on it.
So where I’m at now is that when I rebooted after an package update my home directory vanished. That’s because the nice os did me a favor and unmounted my partition which my home directory resided. The device was detected in /dev, but it’s mount point in /media wasn’t.
What to do? Oh sure I could mess around in the command prompt trying to find it and mount it.. but it was a temp fix then and it’ll be a temp fix now. So to rescue myself… I’m reinstalling from disk my base system on the other partition and mounting my /home dir on the other partition that I created. What I’m hoping is that the first partition will still remain intact with all the settings and what not and that by reinstalling the base system by disk the config files will recognize my first partition’s /home directory by default…
There’s a risk that won’t happen and I’ll have to say bonviage to all the data and settings there (which for 1 week wasn’t much).
More to come as I go along.
Ubuntu 8.10 get’s released this friday.. If I’m lucky my /home directory was spared.. I can gzip a backup to my external HD and install 8.10 this weekend on my /root partition hopefully bypassing some beginner’s mistakes…
Funny how I’ve done over 8 or 9 Ubuntu installs with no problems (including this Asus Eee I’m blogging from), but when it’s the mother computer- my flag ship– my ‘big bertha’ I go and manage to f-it up.
Silly wabbit linux tricks are for dixs
~J out
***Update*** Wed Oct 29, 7:06
Well what happened was I installed a base system without the xserver which was exciting. So the last thing I did was to install xserver then the ubuntu desktop which took all night.
So this morning I rebooted under a new account name and it booted into the GUI login screen and accepted my new login credentials and put me into a home directory. At first I thought it created the /home into root, except there was a folder “home” next to my user folder. I clicked on it then on the user folder in it and boom.. There was my old profile with everything in it. So the next step is to basically carefully import all my settings from there to me new profile.
The final goal is to have a safe bootable & working /home dir that when I update my distro (or install another one) I can keep using my home dir with all the settings & files. Slowly by slowly I feel more confident that it’s going to work out ok…
Good… yawn.. Times!
~J out
J’s current snapshotAs you can see I’m rolling with a “#4″ 1/2 buzzcut up top. I’ve put on the hoody (zipdown) nearly permanently now. Finally my theme has often been ‘dark’ colors… (just because– it don’t mean anything)
Ok.. that’s all: Check out this great song sometime:
Benny More’s Locas Por El Mambo
~J out
So I was playing with a partition manager and found nearly 90Gbs of unused hd space. So I decided I should format it into ext3 (linux filing format) then move my home dir from where it is to the new partition.
The reason why is simply because having the /home dir set in a separate partition allows me to perhaps install other distributions in the other partition while keeping my home dir untouched.
Well suffice to say I’m still a beginner here, but with the power of Ubuntu’s forums even us beginning nerds can tackle the hardest of tasks…
Well so I thought.. I started the process going through the various lines of commands to transfer it all over.. then I got to the point where I thought I was done so I logged out and logged in.. ‘cept my home dir wasn’t reconized.
dang.. Luckily I self rescued by rushing into the cmd line in the gnome failsafe mode.. but I learned a lession.. A.) Make backups B.)Check all your permissions and make sure they are all set on every file. Finally C.) Make an admin account… like now.. A working account with full permissions in a working home dir for self rescue..
Anyway.. good times in linux learning ;-D
~J out