The Real Jeff Orr, won't give in to monopoly so easily

A little background info:

I recently moved into my new thoroughly radical house. This new house has one drawback...my xbox is now about 50 feet away from our router instead of the 3 feet it was in my old place. This is a problem because; a)there's some choice new songs to download for Rockband from the Pixies (the entire Doolittle album) and Weezer (the two decent songs and one awesome song from their new record) b)Microsoft, in all their wisdom, decided to build a console that doesn't have wifi support out of the box, and c)I don't want to run an ugly ass ethernet cable across our living room, dining room and half my bedroom.

Luckily the fine folks at Microsoft provided a solution with the "Xbox Wireless Network Adaptor". I thought that this thing would be about $20-$30, a little pricey for my tastes bu still worth it. Imagine my surprise when I went to Best Buy and discovered that my estimate was about $80 short. That's right, the only thing that will connect my $350 xbox wirelessly to the internet is a $100 piece of plastic and circuitry. "Man...fuck that shit," I mumbled as I walked out the door.

Well, unfortunately for Microsoft, this isn't the only way to connect your xbox to wireless router dozens of feet away. Turns out you can hook your computer up to your xbox with an ethernet cable, change a few network settings, and bam! you've just turned your computer into a "wireless network adaptor" for your xbox. Sure you have to turn you computer on every time you want to go online with your xbox, but it's definitely worth it.

This is a prime example that even though you have a monopoly, you can't just charge anything you want. If that adaptor had run $30 I would have bought it after a bit of hemming and/or hawing and I'm sure Microsoft would have made a bit of profit. Instead they drove me to look for alternate solutions and made zero profit.

So if anyone wants to come over and play some Rock Band my new place has a pretty sweet setup for it. I'll even let you try to sing Debaser if you want.


Post Script
Alternate titles for this post:
The Real Jeff Orr, is un un chien andalusia
The Real Jeff Orr, is the greatest man who ever lived

The Real Jeff Orr, laughs at change

Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds the Utah State Quarter to be incredibly phallic and therefor extremely hilarious.

The Real Jeff Orr,moves to a new place

Status update!

It's that time of the year again. I'm moving! So I've kept my streak of moving to a new place once a year alive. This year I had to move because my landlord decided that he wants to make some major renovations to the house, so he didn't offer to renew my lease. My new place is this huge 7 bedroom house on Hobart between 1st and 2nd ave. I'll post some pictures of my room soon because it's pretty much the most awesome room I've ever lived in. It's about 25' by 15', it's split level (you walk in on a smaller landing then walk down three stairs to the other part of the room) and it has it's own sink and shower...in the room! The house itself has a nice porch, huge bakyard with a treehouse, 2 kitchens, and around three living-roomish type rooms.

Now that I've got such a big room I'm in need of some stuff to fill up the space. I'm saving up some money for a trip to Ikea in the coming months...there's a bookcase named Billy that I'd like to take home. Also, one of these would really make the room complete.

In non-moving-related news, I'm coming down to Camarillo for a few days. I'll be flying down Friday (the 20th) morning. Then my aunt's having some big party Saturday with a steel drum band and margarita bar and all kinds of fun shit...hit me up if you want an invite to this very exclusive event. I'm flying back on Monday so I won't really have much time to hang out.

Weezer just came out with a new album and dispite a couple noteable songs it's more or less a major dissa...well...I guess it's not technically a dissapointment when you weren't really expecting much.

The Real Jeff Orr, does a favor for a friend

So my friend Katie is in Thailand. I guess she's having some trouble posting pictures, so she sent me a couple of pictures and captions and asked me to post them. I gladly oblige.

On last Sunday we got to play with some baby elephants...they were a lot smaller than I thought they would be...

After the elephants we went to a place that lets you play with baby tigers. They were delicious.

The real Jeff Orr, bitches about crappy design part 1

As I wander around this reality there are a lot of things that I see which are just...poorly thought out. Often times nobody's around to hear my comment on them, so I store them inside and wait until a lull in some conversation that I can assert my clever observation. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that this makes me sound like some sort of whiny weirdo. So I'm taking them to the one place where complaining about minute annoyances is acceptable and encouraged, the internet.

Week one:

At the Safeway on Mangrove is a contraption of such inane stupidity that it not only boggles the mind, it scrabbles and candy-lands it as well. Some half-retarded manatee at Safeway decided that they need to redesign the shopping cart corral. What was once two simple railings spaced slightly further apart than the width of the shopping cart itself has become...this...


Now at first glance this looks at least somewhat innocuous...that is until you notice that it's built on a slope...with the open end downhill. Everyday when I get off work I see a couple carts in the middle of the parking lot, having escaped their confines by cleverly rolling backwards. Old ladies, their bones weekend by osteoporosis and years of meth addiction, spend hours trying to convince their cart to stay in the corral...finally coming to the conclusion that the best solution is to wedge it in behind the trash can.

I'm pretty sure whoever came up with this design had a mom who sent him to school with a sign pinned to the front of his shirt reading, "Please don't tease my son, his father is a frozen neanderthal and I drank more than Andre the Giant while pregnant."

The solution to this problem is pretty simple. Either put another railing down the center of this shit...or...you know...move it to the other side of the row so the back is downhill...



On a completely unrelated note my friend Katie's in Thailand. If she decides to stop living in the real world and visit the virtual one you can read about her journey on her blog.