3 posts tagged “rant”

I've realized my frustration with society as a teen who works on the Internet.  As of now, I've attended two major expos, the Podcast Expo and Macworld.  At both the events, I'm probably one of the youngest people around save the inflated ego of Robbie Trencheny.  This is a story of a kid who wants to grow up.

At these expos, I never fail to meet awesome people that I already follow via the podcasting world and some that I haven't.  Some of these people have mundane day jobs, but others have incredibly awesome jobs.  Now, I've already decided what the hell I want to do in college which I think sets me ahead of the pack.  I'd like to major in something like broadcast or written journalism and minor in marketing.  No I do not know where to apply and stuff, but hey, I got about a year till I have to really worry about that.  Yes I know what I want to do with my life already from these experiences which I find fascinating.

However, let's take a step back for a moment again: I'm fifteen years old.  I have till July 2009 to legally be an adult, and July 2012 to truly be able to do whatever the hell I want.  At the San Francisco Apple Store Mac Podcasters' meetup, Merlin Mann and I talked for a while and he told me something that I believe to be true.  He said not to believe the bull that people tell me about high school being the best four years of my life; high school sucks beyond all belief and is by no way worthy of a "best four year" award.  He told me to just keep working through the grind and once high school is over I'm home free.  These pseudo-inspiration words touched me.  I'm not saying high school is terrible, it's just not a particularly enjoyable experience.  I want to be "free" so to speak.  I want to be able to get out and pursue my goals.  What sparked this?  It is probably an internal fear that I may be too late to the game.  Sure I'm already "on my way" to achieving what I want, but what if someone passes me up?  I don't want to fall behind that's all.  Moreover, it seems like there are so many opportunities available that are just moving on.  Who knows what's going to be on in 2009?  I guess technology's always going on and I should stop worrying.

Nevertheless, I always have this feeling that school is in the way of what I want to do.  But what the hell, nobody's going to hire a 15 year old for a full time job.  Sometimes I just want to be a part of something bigger.  There's so much going on in the world and school is just an incredibly small aspect of it, but people blow it up.  We need to take a step back and realize that it's not the only portion of life and we shouldn't let it consume us which it feels like it is doing to me right now.

Sorry for the long rant,
Shooby

Hi,

My name is Rishabh "Shooby" Kumar and I have a small story of annoyance to share with you that has become a minor side effect of being Mr. Laporte's intern.  It is true that I'm not entirely in the public eye, but here's the deal: ever since I became Leo's intern, I've been getting near constant IMs from preteen fanboys (no girls...big surprise).  Yes it's true.  These children think that once they have contacted you once or twice or have your contact information, it's alright to talk to you about anything, anytime, ever.  There are about four to five people that do this to me regularly, and this is directed to you.  Time to time, I'll get messages popping up on my screen saying, "Do you think I should get a Macbook or a Macbook Pro...what's better for me?"  You want my reply?  Do you really want my reply?  IF YOU DON'T HAVE THE MONEY DON'T EVEN WONDER ABOUT IT!  My God, I used to wonder the same thing to myself when I was your age, but I didn't pester other people about these "needs".  You don't need any of these, figure out a way to make money first.  I wanted a Mac since I was 11.  When did I get it?  When I was F-ing FIFTEEN years old; a full four years later!  Again, go find a job (or wait till you're old enough to be respected on the Internet or amongst general society), and then earn the damn money.  Stop fantasizing about products that you will never get till years later.

Here's another quirk about these "young-uns".  A lot of them think they're hot shit web designers, "Omg Shooby I want to start a web design company!"  I reply, "Do you have much experience?"  Going on through the conversation, I found out that he lacks much web design experience, and is apparently going to rely on a friend of a similar age who lives in the UK to do the design!  If you can't design professionally, don't make it a business...PLEASE!  I beg of you.  I can't design my own websites that well, and I would like to learn over the summer, but you don't see me taking the initiative for something I have little to no experience whatsoever.  Tip #2 for you: learn how to do something well, and once you can prove that you can make a decent product and other people share your views, THEN market it.

Third and final...for now.  Stop asking me for Leo's contact information.  Neither will you get it from me, nor will you likely get a reply from him even if you got the information.  Yes I know the contact information, but stop, PLEASE, begging me for his contact information.  All your attempts are futile, and honestly, the more you ask, the more I hate you.  You want to contact Leo to see if you can get on TWiT to present another viewpoint?  How about you go make your own podcast with a bunch of kids like you and then interview people older than you.  Would that satisfy your inflated ego?  Didn't think so.  So here is tip 3 summarized: stop asking me about Leo Laporte's contact information as you will not receive it no matter what.

Yes I'm being a bit mean here, but seriously, these kids anger me so much.  I have to agree that I was as excited about technology and the such at their age, but at least I found an outlet after looking around for something to do.  At 12, I was helping maintain an anime website that was getting thousands of hits monthly.  If you would like to talk to me, fantastic I don't mind.  But please, don't try to extend your e-penis by trying to get some form of pity or praise out of me.  You're not going to get it.  I'd love to talk, but not on a daily basis about random things that you know that you're not going to get anywhere...at least for now.  So please, realize that you're right now a preteen, and haven't even entered teenhood.

Thanks for reading my overzealous rant,
Shooby

That one day there will be a completely working, non-buggy, fully featured web browser other than Safari that is built from the ground up for OSX.  See, I have this problem with Firefox and Flock for the Mac.  They're simply ports from the PC versions.  Currently, I'm using Camino mainly because of its ability to keep passwords in the OSX keychain.  However, it's got a few quirks that absolutely frustrate me.  First and foremost, when you try to view most embedded Quicktime content, it'll mess around with the formatting of the page itself.  I've attached a screenshot for you all to view.

Camino also has various other bugs regarding page formatting when AJAX content comes into play.  The two main reasons why I use Camino is because it uses the Mozilla base, but is built specifically for OSX (meaning it looks decent and has a lot of other integration with the OS like Keychain support).  I also use Camino because freaking Vox doesn't support the Webkit engine (used in Safari and Shiira) yet.

Speaking of Shiira, that's a great other alternative.  However, I think the 1.5 version sucks, but the 2.0 version is way too buggy.  I looked at Flock (which I used back in the Windows days) for OSX, and it's just like Firefox for OSX.  The interface looks almost nothing like an OSX app, and it has little to no integration with the variety of tools available.  I used Flock because of all the blogging and social networking capabilities.  Man, this frustrates me so much!

Why can't there be a larger and more dedicated team on something like Camino or Flock specifically for OSX?  I want a browser that uses the Mozilla engine (I like it the best), has extensions support, but also was built from the ground up specifically for OSX so it's not a simple port.  Yes I probably sound like a stickler, but it seriously frustrates me.

Oh here's another gripe, can Vox open the freakin API so I can post from a blogging tool, Digg, or even Flock?  It'd be much appreciated...seriously.  Wordpress is awesome, but I love the community aspect of Vox.  Currently, I'm mirroring this blog on my personal site mistershooby.com using iWeb which is simply for lazy asses who don't want to click the link to this blog from the main page.

Anyways, can someone PLEASE answer my call.  I'd love it if there was a stronger team for Camino mainly.  It's an awesome browser, but IMO is not bug free enough to be called a 1.0.3 product.

Thanks!
Shooby