thevisualboy37

No, this isn't a baseball thing, before you ask. As I mentioned way back in "Why I Hate Fire Alarms", I have Asperger's syndrome. One of the symptoms, for me, is sensitive hearing. This can be a bad thing, like it is with fire alarms, but it can be a good thing as well. I have perfect pitch. I can tell what key a song is in when I hear it, I can sing most notes on cue, and it really bugs me when I hear someone singing off-key or when an instrument is off-key.

Now, I don't have absolute perfect pitch; often, an A that's slightly sharp or slightly flat still just sounds like an A to me (with some exceptions); but I can tell the difference between an A and an A-sharp (or B-flat, if you'd prefer). Of course, those are just examples.

I am also partial to some keys over others. Yeah, I'm weird. It's just one of the quirks of having Asperger's, I guess. For example, I love the keys of G Major, E Major (or Minor), E-flat Major (or Minor), C Major, and D Major, I don't really like the keys of F Major or G Minor, and I absolutely hate the key of F Minor. I have just now decided that all other keys are either "Eh Major" or "Eh Minor".

I'm also pretty good with voices, although the only voice I've been told was "absolutely perfect" was my impression of Steve Ballmer ("How much do YOU think this advanced operating environment is worth? WAIT just one minute before you answer!"). My other impressions always get a laugh out of friends and family.

Talking of voices, I have two stories from my grade school days. When I was in middle school, we read a play version of A Christmas Carol in my "Literacy" class (which was separate from the "Language Arts" class, for some reason). The way it worked was, everyone had a part to play, and every so often we would switch parts. Now, this was an average-sized class, so there would always be someone in the class who just read along without playing a part.

I started out as Ebeneezer Scrooge. When everyone heard my impression of an old British curmudgeon, they all loved it. And that's not just me tooting my own horn, either. When we got to the switch-off, the teacher said, "Okay, who wants to be Ebeneezer next?" and I swear the majority of the class said "Johnny!" And thus I played Ebeneezer while everyone else switched off.

My other story is from high school. This one's a bit shorter. When I was a freshman, we took turns reading parts from Of Mice and Men. When it was my turn to read, I did Lenny's voice like how I remembered hearing him from the film adaptation (my memory of how he talked in the movie was faulty, however). My teacher loved it. From then on, every time Lenny had a line, she had me read it in his voice.

One more story, not related to voices, but of all things, phone dialing. Way back in the early 2000s, my dad would bring his laptop from work home with him. He had to dial a number on the laptop to access his work stuff (we had dial-up Internet, but I think this number was not for Internet access, but for something else). Every morning, I would get up and hear him dial the number. One time, it sounded different.

I went into the kitchen (where he was set up), and I said, "Dad, did you dial a different number? Before it sounded like [impression of old number], but now it sounds like [impression of new number]!" I was right; the number he needed to dial changed for some reason. My dad has told that story many times as the moment he knew I had perfect pitch. As for why I saved this story for the end... I don't know. This is just random ramblings, after all.

Anyway, it's December, and with December comes snow and cold weather. Stay warm!

-Johnny

Nintendo has made a lot of stupid decisions in the past. Recently, these decisions included, but were not limited to:

* Taking down Let's Play videos of their games
* Taking down videos that contained any game footage whatsoever
* Taking down videos of ROM hacks of their games
* Taking down videos that contained music from their games
* Taking down a fan remake of Super Mario 64

So yeah, Nintendo likes to take things down. Their excuse is they want to protect their copyright and trademarks. Seems reasonable enough who am I kidding no it doesn't. The problem with all these takedowns was that they took down things that were clearly under fair use. I don't have time to explain what fair use really means, but everything I mentioned is, or at least should be, fair use.

Anyway, after all that bullcrap, they thankfully stopped.

Until now.

See, last week, the Internet Archive archived a bunch of issues of Nintendo Power. (Actually, they downloaded the magazines from another site, but that's for another time.) Nintendo didn't like that and took them all down. In other words, more bullcrap.

Now, to be fair, archiving doesn't technically fall under fair use. Still, they took down the only opportunity people had to read old issues of their magazine, which A) doesn't exist anymore, B) they didn't publish by the time it ended, and C) began in 1988. The issues archived were from 1988 to 2001. The excuse, once again, was "copyright infringement". Now, there's a gray area here, but again, these magazines were 15 to 28 years old. Shouldn't there be some way to read those that doesn't involve spending an arm and a leg on eBay, or getting lucky at a used book store?

But it doesn't end there. On Saturday, a fan remake of Metroid II: Return of Samus was released online, for free, to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary. It was a project that was in development for years--YEARS--and Nintendo hadn't taken notice. But now they certainly have, because that got taken down too.

Unlike the old issues of Nintendo Power, the Metroid II remake clearly fell under fair use. Yet the excuse was still "We need to protect our copyrights and trademarks". BULL. CRAP.

Nintendo, if you're going to keep doing this, I have a few suggestions for you. Do a sweep of Newgrounds for all the fan-based cartoons and games. Do a sweep of Fanfiction.net for all the Nintendo fanfiction. Do a sweep of DeviantART for all the Nintendo fan art and more fanfiction. I dare you. I DOUBLE DARE YOU, MOTHER--

Frustrating as this may be, I do not hate Nintendo. Call me a hypocrite, but I can't bring myself to hate them. It makes me livid, of course, but for some reason I can't bring myself to hate Nintendo as a company. For example, I am still very much looking forward to the NX. But seriously, this is the final straw. I won't boycott Nintendo, but I'm sure a lot of people will (I know people who already were, even before this). And if it keeps up, or they don't drop the copyright claims, that will be the end for them. I still won't hate them, but it will be their end.

It had better not happen again.

#WTFU

-Johnny

It's certainly been a while, hasn't it?

This is going to be kind of weird, but that's why these are called "random ramblings". I've had some very odd experiences on the phone before. And I mean even going back to when I was a kid. That's the first one I'll talk about.

I remember one time, my mom was trying to call my uncle. Somehow she ended up dialing into somebody's voicemail box (we didn't have voicemail at the time, so it wasn't ours, making it all the more weird). She handed the phone to me because I wanted to talk to him, too. Then the weird part happened. I don't remember what it welcomed me to, but I do remember hearing, "To play your messages, press one. To record a message, press two..." then I handed the phone back to my mom. Unfortunately, by that time, it had gone through all the options, so she didn't know why I handed it back. She said, "Hello? ...Hello?" then she handed it back to me and told me to say hi. "Hi, Uncle B--" "Are you still there? To play your messages, press one. To record a message, press two--" I handed it back more quickly, and my mom said "...What?" Then she hung up and re-dialed. When she got through to her brother, she described it as a "ghost call".

I still have no idea how that happened, but from that moment on, I became terrified of automated phone menus. Especially those that ask if you're still there. I'm not terrified anymore, but I still don't like them, especially the ones that ask if you're still there or the ones that say "I'm sorry..." (For some reason, "We're sorry" or even just "Sorry" is okay.) And don't even get me started on the ones that use voice recognition.

Error messages (or "intercept messages") on phones still scare me. No joke, I've actually had nightmares where I was on the phone and got an intercept message. From the caller. As in, the phone rings, I pick it up, and there's an intercept message. I had a nightmare about that a few months ago, in fact. But occasionally, intercept messages can be amusing. For example, one time my dad was trying to call a Wendy's. Why he had to call them I don't remember, but I do remember that the number was printed on our receipt that we got the last time we were there, which was only a few weeks prior, but they must have printed the wrong number. I know this because we got an intercept message... or at least, part of one.

This still cracks me up: my dad hung up, quite confused, and asked me if I would please dial it. He thought that he had dialed wrong. I put it on speaker (because I loved the speaker phone at the time) and we got to hear: "--this number. 2EL." I imagine the original message was "Please dial 1 plus the area code before dialing this number." or something, but it's the 2EL part that cracked me up. It was the way the recording said it. Plus the fact that we only got part of a message.

Most recently, I actually got an intercept message while I was on the phone. It was one of my nightmares come true. I was out and about, casually talking on the phone with my mom, when all of a sudden I hear, "The number or code you have dialed is incorrect. Please check the number or code and try again. El número o código que usted..." Then I hung up, called again, and basically told my mom, "Well, that was weird..." She didn't hear the intercept, she just heard my voice get cut off. (On a side note, "incorrect" is also scary. Don't ask me why, because I can't explain it myself.)

So what's the weirdest thing that happened to you while you were on the phone, or trying to make a phone call? Let me know in the comments. Also, for those who follow my World of Obscurity blog, sorry I haven't updated it in a while, but I've been busy. Hopefully I can get back to it by the time 2016 rolls around. Stay warm!

-Johnny

Couldn't think of a "Why I..." title this time.

This story begins way back in the late 90s. We had a roll-out dishwasher that was very noisy and kind of a piece of junk. I know we had it until 1996 or 1997; my earliest memory is from around that time, sitting on the dishwasher and eating a lollipop, and I was either 2 or 3. Anyway, we got rid of it and got a new one from KitchenAid. It was quiet and not a piece of junk. At all. It lasted us until probably around 2010 or so, maybe a little later than that, before it finally bit the dust and we had to get a new one.

The new one was quiet but, unfortunately, kind of a piece of junk. Because of a bad water connection, around 2013-2014 or so it had a leak, and we had to get rid of it. We decided that we were not going to get a new dishwasher because a) we already washed a lot of dishes by hand anyway (plastic especially), so we knew how to do that, and b) we were a family of three instead of four, so we didn't use as many dishes as we used to when we had a dishwasher.

This turned out to be a mistake.

Washing dishes by hand got very old very fast. So, in June or July of this year, my mom told me to do some research on dishwashers. My resource of choice was Consumer Reports, because they are unbiased and therefore completely awesome. After doing my research, I found a pretty nice Bosch dishwasher that was low-cost, quiet, and highly recommended. The next step was deciding where to buy it.

My initial choice was a small store nearby that is part of a local chain. I will not mention their name. Anyway, my dad and I went there in mid-August, and we made a deal with them that the installation guys would come and do an evaluation, and after that they would come and install it. We ended up choosing a higher-end model than the one I originally wanted (though Consumer Reports actually had it rated slightly lower), also from Bosch. Combined with the other fees, it was quite pricey, but we said to heck with it and went for it anyway.

So the guys came in to do their evaluation or whatever, and they said they wouldn't come until September 1st, which is the day I'm writing this, for the installation. Keep in mind, they had only just come for the evaluation, and it was only the middle of August, so we had to wait for quite a few weeks. But we figured, hey, it's all going to be worth it in the end. September 1st comes, and they're going to install the dishwasher. What could go wrong?

As you can probably guess by the fact that I asked that (and because this blog entry isn't over yet), a lot went wrong. On August 27, less than a week before they were supposed to come, we get a call from some lady at the store basically demanding that we give her our credit card information. She says the installation guys need 90 more dollars, and they need it now, and all my dad needs to do is give her his credit card number. NOTHING. DOING. So my dad tried to cancel the order, and of course she kept going on about why he shouldn't, and blah, blah, blah. Thankfully the order got cancelled, and we bid them good riddance.

Later in the day, my dad and I go over to hhgregg, and we find the same dishwasher we were going to get for a much more reasonable price, plus instant rebates, mail-in rebates, and gift cards galore. In addition, we were promised delivery and installation on August 31st, a day before we were going to get it originally. What a deal! What could go wrong?

I asked what could go wrong again, so you've probably guessed that something went wrong. And once again, you'd be correct. We were supposed to get a call from them on the 30th, the day before the install, letting us know when they would be there and when we were supposed to be home. We didn't. So my dad had to call them and ask them what the heck was going on. He was informed that there was some error on their part, they apologized (take note, anonymous local chain!) and said the delivery and installation would be the next day, which is the day we were originally going to get it. So, just great. My mom was very pessimistic about it, saying she would believe it when she saw it.

Notice I did not ask "What could go wrong?" here. Nothing went wrong this time. They came on the 1st, as promised, had to do a little bit extra work, told us how much it would cost, as promised, and got everything up and running. We're running a cycle right now, and man is it quiet. I can only hear the thing if I'm standing right next to it. How good it is at washing dishes (you know, what a dishwasher is supposed to do) is another matter altogether, but I'm very optimistic.

Go Bosch, and go hhgregg!

-Johnny