Too Much Info

Wanna know why I don’t use FedEx unless someone puts a gun to my head?

Because they’re loaded down with buckets full of FAIL!!1

Anyone who’s ever had a serious injury has probably undergone physical therapy, present party included.

The way I see it, physical therapy is both a blessing and a curse. It hurts like hell to go through, but the end results can be pretty amazing… as long as you’re willing to put the work in.

My own stint in PT hell was necessitated after I blew out my rotator cuff on the basketball court earlier this year.

Years of brutal contact sports and half-assed attempts at warming up had finally caught up with me.

After several consultations and the obligatory MRI, I had arthoroscopic surgery to re-attach the top tendons in my shoulder. They had completely torn away from the bone and  looked like an exploded sea anemome searching for a new home in my shoulder capsule.

Surgery to repair the damage went flawlessly. The recovery process, eh, not so much.

I was delusional with the idea that if I did a few weeks of intensive rehab, I’d be back on the basketball court in no time, jacking up threes and crashing the paint again.

My surgeon and physical therapists had different ideas. They wanted me to take the recovery process SLOW so I didn’t re-injure my shoulder.

Boo!

Of course they were right to be cautious. I obliterated my shoulder tendons on the basketball court, so there wouldn’t be much to work with if a re-injury occurred.

So I followed advice and slogged through a seemingly eternal rehab stint. It involved painful shoulder massages, arm  manipulations, endurance testing and nightly stretching exercises to help me regain the flexibility and arm strength I lost overnight.

Looking back, slow was definitely the way to go because my surgically repaired shoulder initially had as much flexibility as C3-PO’s lifeless limbs in Star Wars.

But PT helped my right arm go from a perpetual right-cross to a limber copy of my left within a few weeks.

Still, I HATED going to physical therapy, because (A) it was often painful (B) I’m obviously a lazy bum when it comes to stretching exercises, and (C) my wallet was taking a beat down from all the co-payments I had to make for each physical therapy session.

Ironically, my father had the exact same injury a year before and warned me what to expect from PT.

I looked at his fully recovered arm while he was preaching to me and wondered how hard could it be?

Six months later, I got my answer and then some.

I figure I’ll be able to preach the same precautionary tale to my own son one day…but only after he tears his rotator cuff from too much sports and half-asses his way through warm-ups.

So I got this new phone. It’s called an HTC EVO. Some of you may have heard of it.

If you haven’t, then let me describe it for you in the simplest of  terms: it’s the Bomb, yo! It does everything a smartphone, cellphone, and mini-tablet should – all in a sleek, sexy design.

And even more importantly, my new EVO will let me resume my blogging career because the screen is so ginormous and the virtual keypad so easy to type on.

The damm phone even makes even Apple iPhone-lovers cringe in fear.

So here’s to kickAss mobile technology! Balance will soon be restored to the blogosphere.

So I downloaded this new mobile wordpress app to blog from my Palm Pre, and it looks like its going to work. 

I guess I’m BACK in business!

I remember when I first started using Twitter back in 2007. It was just starting to catch on as the. internet’s “next big thing,” so I said “what the hey” and created an account, despite not knowing anyone else using the micro-blogging service.

Twitter was still pretty buggy at the time because of an inherent design flaw with its message delivery system (something about not enough gerbil power). But I didn’t care. I was happy just to have something to finally replace MySpace and Facebook as my main avenues for venting.

And replace them, it did.

I rarely go on Facebook anymore and wonder why MySpace is even part of the English lexicon, since the only people that frequent the place are pedophiles and trailer-park moms who prank suicidal kids, if you believe the news.

For me – and subsequently millions of others – 140 characters or less is more than enough to get my message across, even if it means using utterly ridiculous words or poorly structured sentences. Hey, it is the internets, is it not?

So I told all my tech-savvy friends about this promising new service with the funny name, only to be laughed at.

They said Twitter would never replace MySpace and Facebook because it was too simple looking and not user-friendly.

I’ll give you the simplistic interface argument, but not user-friendly!? You just type in a few words or sentences and hit the “send” button.

Then they said Twitter didn’t have enough games to keep them interested or a way to write on other people’s walls. I said “games are for gamers” and why should I write on someone else’s wall when they can just read mine instead? It is all about ME, is it not?

Finally, they resorted to the time-honored “nobody else uses it, so why should I?” argument.

Oh you sad, short-sighted fools. Technology waits for no man (or woman), so you better keep an open mind as to everything that comes down the pipeline. Because if you don’t, you’ll be left in the dust, just like all those pedophiles and trailer-park moms…

In a little more than a week, I’ll be one of the most wanted men in America. Seriously.

My current cellphone contract with Sprint will be up, meaning I’ll be floating from then on, month-to-month, on the network’s third-largest carrier, obligation-free. Let’s say that again: obligation-freeeeee.

That means I can continue to pay my crappy carrier for wireless service like I’ve been faithfully doing for the last two years. Or I can go to whatever other crappy network I choose and buy whatever IT-phone they’re offering at the moment for a somewhat-reasonable price (or not), and then be locked down for another two years under their contract instead. Ain’t life grand?

Sprint knows this, which is why they’ve already begun what I call the “second honeymoon” phase with me. Their records show my contract is nearing expiration, so they’ve begun bombarding my email, voicemail and mailbox with we-want-you-back promotions. A free ringer here, a discounted plan feature there. But ultimately nothing special beyond their crackhead-priced data plans that’s so attractive for smartphone buyers like me.

But other carriers, namely AT&T and Verizon (which I like to call SuckT&T and the Evil Red Empire, respectively), are more apt to try and woo me away. That’s because carriers make their money, not on phone sales, but rather the monthly phone plans suckers, er, subscribers like you and I pay to them each month. And getting suckers, er, subscribers to switch (called churning) is almost as important as keeping already-contracted subscribers on board. That’s because the larger your subscriber base, the larger your monthly revenue stream.

That’s why all those attractive phone prices you see in weekend newspaper ads are usually offered only to NEW subscribers, not existing ones. Don’t believe me? Try reading the fine print next time, Mr. Magoo.

That’s right. You get the pleasure of paying a HIGHER price for a phone upgrade to STAY on your existing network, while morons straight off the street pay next to nothing for the same phone. Hey, life sucks and then you pay an early termination fee.

Or, if you’re like me, you sign up on the dotted line, quietly do your time, and ultimately begin counting down the days until the next time you’ll be treated like a king…

Wanna know what kind of power a widescreen high-definition television can yield over a typical male? I’m sure you already know (especially if you’re a woman) but I’ll give you a great example anyway.

My father-in-law is a typical child of the south. Born and raised in Southeastern North Carolina, he’s a card-carrying member of the NASCAR set. If V8 engines and gigantic ovals arent involved, then he’s probably not gonna watch it.

But lo and behold, he comes up to me out of the blue today and asks: “You been keeping up with the Tour de France?”

Tour de France? Where the hell did that come from???

He said he’s been watching Lance Armstrong race up and down mountainsides on television and was impressed with his stamina. He then asked me if he had a shot against the other riders this year, since he just came out of retirement.

I was still trying to register how my father-in-law even knew what the Tour de France was. Then I put two and two together and remembered he just got a new widescreen 120 MGHz 1080p HDTV, which makes ALL sports look good on television. Lol.

My brain finally caught up with his question, which allowed me to answer: “Yes, I think Lance can win the tour again this year.”

Because if a certified-country boy can get caught up in the world’s greatest bicycle race, then surely a 37-year cancer survivor can win it…

I absolutely hate the people who shop at Walmart late at night (or during the day, for that matter) because most of them are absolutely TOO LAZY to return their shopping carts back to the return area. Instead, they just leave ‘em beside their gas-guzzling SUV or broke-down domestic sedan, light up their cancer sticks, strap in their kids in the backseat and then drive off like American Idol is on.

The shopping cart they leave behind almost always finds its way to my car door at about 100 mph, leaving a nasty door ding or clear-coat scratch. And what can I do about it? Absolutely nothing, because the Clampett gang has already bugged out of Dodge.

Thank you Walmart shoppers, for being the lazy nards that you are. I hope someone steals your hubcaps…

Wanna know why I love Sprint so much as a phone carrier? Because of bold moves like this.

If you’re too lazy to click the link, then you’re a certified clown, but I’ll give you the skinny anyway: Sprint is requiring all their future smartphones (including the upcoming Blackberry Tour to the left) to have built-in WiFi. That’s right built-in WiFi.

That means you can side-step using your phone’s relatively slow 3G data connection and surf for pr0n or that latest Facebook posting over the high-speed wireless network at your house, the nearest bigbox book store, or that overpriced neighborhood coffee shop you spend way too much money on coffee at.

Meanwhile, SuckT&T (the network with the least bars in the most places) and Verizon (the Evil Red Empire) actually cripple the hell out of their phones, to save network bandwidth and increase company profits at the cost of card-carrying suckers like you.

To make you feel even more worthless, know this: Sprint already has the cheapest data plans and most reliable 3G data network in the country. So it’s a win-win for us. And NO SOUP for you.

So the choice is clear. Jump on board the Sprint bandwagon now or continue to poo-poo Sprint’s so-called shortcomings, all the while being nickle-and-dimed to death by your existing carrier.

Sucker.

So my friend Chris asked me if I saw a recent post about the new Nissan Skline GT-R on the web. To make a long story short, the post said the all-wheel-drive japanese hyper-sports car was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I emailed my friend back and said “thanks, but not thanks” because I’m not interested in “sports cars” that only come with automatic transmissions, even if they do have paddle shifters.

Automatics are for old weminz and lazy drivers. If I’m buying a car, it BETTER have a manual shifter  in it, because I like to DRIVE my cars not RIDE in them.

And anyone who buys an “automatic” sports car is even lazier. Sports cars are for stomping on the gas pedal and squeeling around corners, not driving Miss Daisy.

I blame the automatic sports car phenomenon on the Chevy Corvette; America’s only true sports car. They’ve had automatics forever, because Americans are lazy and like to look cool, even if they’re not. Don’t believe me? Just go to any Barnes & Noble any Saturday night and look at all the posers in there with their widescreen laptops.

So what have we learned here today, kiddies? “Automatics suck! Especially in sports cars.”

And don’t let me catch you drag racing your broken-down, 13-year-old Honda Civic, with rusted out fenders, down main street with an automatic transmission either. Because I’ll just point at you and laugh, and probably blog about you, as well. Posers.