Should Spider-man 3 have been called Mary Jane Watson 1, instead?
I think so. It quickly became the epitome of everything that should not be done in a super hero movie. And it’s a long, long movie that spreads out the (few) action scenes in between long, drawn out emotional sequences that pretty much have no place in a super-hero movie. Really.

Tobey Maguire’s Spider-man
Spiderman bawls and cries his heart out, throughout the movie. I mean, c’mon! Spidey is a super-hero, not someone who keeps sniffling throughout the length of the movie. Tobey sucks as Spider-man, sucks even more as Venom, sucks worse when he bawls in the over-melodramatic emotional scenes in the movie, and worse of all goes running to Harry Osborn for help in the over-contrived climax, who (surprisingly!) true-to-character refuses him outright and then rescues him in the end, of course – what more could go wrong, in this movie?

Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson
Mary Jane Watson got way too much screen time. Kirsten Dunst is a total misfit for the role of MJ, I felt this in the first movie, the second only strengthened this belief, but Spiderman-3 left me feeling that the movie was mistitled! Kirsten is a walking talking contradiction: throughout the first movie she was her usual bubbly, freckled self, throughout the second she was mopey and kept bringing the pace of the movie down. In the third part of the series, Kirsten has outdone herself, at times drawing a collective yawn from the whole watching crowd, while the movie insists on revolving around her and what she feels.

The thing about MJ is that she’s everything that Kirsten is not and cannot portray – the original Mary Jane character is a feisty red-head with green eyes, and has a temper that has Spider-man constantly heckled. Kirsten is mopey, keeps her feelings to herself and looks nothing like MJ is supposed to.

The Super-Villains
The super villains in this third part of the series are a worse let down (hard as that may be) to both the previous movies’ villains. Venom’s screen time is paltry, all gone in favor of the long drawn out romantic and over-emotional scenes, and the interlude in between, when Peter Parker uses the symbiote’s agility, while not in costume. None of the evilness that is the Venom character really came out in the movie, probably because the movie hardly gives any time to Venom, and rather concentrates on MJ and Spiderman.

Sandman is a confused (but well-fitting, surprisingly) character who keeps tilting between being a good guy, then a not-so good guy, then a bad guy when he teams up with Venom, of all the things possible, in an attempt to defeat Spider-man. In the end, in a weird turn-around that looks wholly unplanned and last minute, Sandman actually apologizes to Spider-man for murdering his uncle, Ben Parker, that too, by mistake!

Miscellania

• MJ sings an entire song in the movie, and then promptly gets fired from her theater job for having an awful voice. Good for her!
• The wicked Peter Parker (under influence of the symbiote) is actually not that bad as a character, the dance sequence in the bar that MJ takes up a job, later is nice.
• J Jonah Jameson has some genuinely funny moments.
• Spider-man finally throws the web bullets that were present in all the Spider-man games that came out.
• The sequence in which Flint Marko is transformed to Sandman was well done, but ended up feeling contrived like the rest of the movie.
• The New Goblin character (Harry Osborn) dies, courtesy Venom.
• Sandman befriends Spider-man and goes away weeping, while Spider-man keeps up his usual sniffling bit.
• Spider-man exploits Venom’s weakness to sound waves to kill it using one of the New Goblin’s bombs.
• There’s so much forcefully stuffed into this movie, it feels like all the characters refused to commit to a part 4 and so were all stuffed together into one long, painful movie.

A Conclusion
Do you really need one? I’d say give it a pass. Die hard Spider-man fans beware! This movie can cause a temporary, alternating sensation of nausea, sleepyness, and might cause an urge to hurt someone / something in the most dedicated fan.

Time and again we’ve seen it happen. A site / online system gets popular. Really, really popular. Then the spammers move in and abuse the system to it’s utmost. Recently, I’ve been getting all sorts of spam messages originating from within the orkut social networking system.

I’ve gotten friend requests from unknown people, whose profile pages only have the standard go to such-and-such websites and please click the powered advertisement under my site name lamer pitch to steal advertiser dollars. Exploiting a pay-per-click system by getting random people to click on the said advertisements has, sadly, become quite a thriving industry over the years.

I’ve gotten spam messages that have been sent to entire orkut groups promoting some ridiculous get rich scheme that is surely a scam. Everything from schemes which give you $6000 just to signup to check some email messages (!?!) to the above mentioned “Click my ad, please?” messages to the click the email message schemes.

The distressing part of all this is that there seems to be a growing segment of orkut users who don’t even understand the way these falsified revenue systems work. Simply watching a neighbouring user do it, they pick up the nuances (or some half baked ideas of their own!) and go ahead and abuse the system. Why am I distressed? Think about the volume of users who would potentially fall into this “I don’t know how this works, but I saw my friend do it, and it appears to be a great way to earn side income and I want to try it out” segment. And then tell me you don’t get distressed with thoughts about what would happen if they all started to do this.

It’s rapidly degenerating into sufficient time-wasted on my personal email account that I’m contemplating setting up an Outlook Mail rule that filters all orkut mail into a separate folder than my Inbox. This will mean that all orkut emails will mostly be ignored until I figure out it’s time to mark-as-read all those emails which stack up in folders other than my Inbox.

Did the spammer’s win this battle?
I don’t know. Maybe if sufficient number of users try these kinds of stunts (aren’t there enough already?) orkut will be forced to review their message sending policies. Maybe I should just go to orkut and “tweak” the settings to not send me emails whenever someone sends me a message in orkut. I think that would defeat the whole purpose of having orkut around in the first place, though.

Never in my wildest dreams had I thought that in the real-life (read: physical) socially disconnected world that I live in, my buddies, my pals from school, college, etc. would somehow find me and communicate with me. I wouldn’t have a way to figure out who got married, who’s doing what, where they are. Nothing beats the reminiscent smile that lights up face when an old, old, buddy sends me an orkut message.

One of the most surprising things about orkut is the amount of users it has. A large number of users stumbling around in orkut space,  going from one profile to another, and one group to another, and so on.

My point?
With it’s closed off borders (you still require to have an invite-in, I believe) orkut is really beginning to harbor a haven for spammers, who are, currently at least, going away unpunished. I’d hate to see orkut become yet another social network that I am forced to disconnect from, because it went sour.

I had the misfortune today of trying out Microsoft Live Mail Desktop Beta (what a mouthfull). And I think this is one of the most disappointing things to roll out of Microsoft. Barring ActiveSync, of course, but that’s another story.

Windows Live Mail Desktop is just the next version of good ol’ Outlook Express. Anyone remember Outlook Express? The one that “used to” come with your Windows. The software that automagically disappeared from the face of the Earth when Microsoft decided to eliminate the it from the equation when the EU (and a lot of other people) said that bundling an email client along with Windows was not a good idea. For some weird reason which is beyond my comprehension, of course.

Well guess what people, good ole plain-and-ugly is back, now in a not so ugly avatar. And with a new name.

The new client (I refuse to use the name more than twice) supports RSS, and the Hotmail (and now Live mail) access functionality that was so brutally removed from all Microsoft email clients (Outlook, and Express). And most of the old features (Everyone who knows what NNTP is, raise their hand!) are back too.

What’s disturbing is the way that the new client has been done. It behaves like the old Outlook Express and looks like the new Windows Live things do, with some noteable exceptions, of course.

Key Points:

• The “Active Search” thing is just a politically correct way of saying, “Advertisements” or “My-search-engine-is-really-cool”.

• The Thing will not come on unless you sign up with The Thing’s webpage on ideas.live.com
• The Thing will also not come on unless you’re live on the Internet and can sign in to your Windows Live ID account. (Yes that’s just another name for ye good Ole’ Passport, but Live is the new way to go).
• No Toolbars. None. C’mon, it’s a rich client application made by Microsoft. No Toolbars makes me feel like I’m using something neanderthal.
• Oh, and the much touted RSS feature requires you to have IE7 installed to even access it.

      

Shabbiness
The client prominently shows and tells you that MS have just rebranded Outlook Express. And done it pretty shabbily too. Most Window icons show the Outlook Express icon, and seeing that icon really brings up some not-so-pleasant memories. The welcome mail that appears in my mailbox comes from an email address that should have been changed or at least aliased a long time ago. Yes, the Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta team is proud to receive its mail at msoe@microsoft.com. Anyone figured out what the msoe in that email address stands for, yet? Yes, it stands for MicroSoft Outlook Express.

Conclusion
I’d suggest giving the Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta a pass, this beta at least. Maybe they’ll learn and put up a better beta soon. If you still want it, go to ideas.live.com and sign up for the beta.

Music? Died?
Constant Readers by now know my propensity to make oblique references. The title for this post is my reference to the tragedy where 3 of the time’s greatest American Rock and Roll music idols (Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and JP Richardson) died together in a single plane crash.

The reference stems from my thinking that software creators should take the most pride in their creations. And the MSOE team should be pretty much dying of shame right now.

I think I’ll go and listen to Don McLean’s American Pie, for some time.

I keep ranting and raving that Google is primarily a search company. But nobody listens, Google least of all, it would seem.

I’ve been looking for an online aggregrator and comfort of reading and simplicity led me to use Google Reader. For quite some time, now. It’s quite a breeze to:

• Add new feeds

• Read them in one of the most Ajaxely done interfaces out there
• And it’s fast. Really, really, fast.

But when I wanted to refer a friend to an article I read recently, and I went to Google Reader to search it, I find this stupidly ironic interface staring back at me and I mumbled to myself,

“Google is a search company. I use Google’s Reader to subscribe to RSS feeds. Google lets me search for new feeds, search the entire web, even.

But it will not let me search the feeds I subscribed to for content that I know is there. I don’t remember what blog it was on, I don’t remember what date it came out (sometime last week) and I really want to tell this friend of mine about it, because it should prove to be quite useful to him.”

It looks like I now have several things I can do:

1. Give up stressing on the fact that Google is a search company.

   In any case, they only like to search for new content because content that is “read” and discarded in my Google Reader is of no consequence to Google, anyway.

2. Go manual

   Manually go through my read entries, one-by-one till I find it. And then “label” it something (Eureka! would be good) so that I can retrieve it later.

3. Give up using Google Reader.

   I’d lose the read status on my subscribed blogs, but hey, at least I’d be able to search, in some other online aggregator like Rojo. (I hope – they aren’t really a search engine company). I’ll take my .opml export, and I’ll move on.

4. Give up abusing Google Labs’ betas.

   Their betas suck. I shudder to think of my experience with Google Notebook. Google Labs keeps their betas in beta until forever anyway.

5. Give up on Google, altogether.

   Their search engine is the most gamed thing on the net, anyway, isn’t it? I think I’ll shift to Live search for a while.

   Gmail is pretty much of a POP3 thing for me. I hardly ever use/see the online interface.

   Google Talk: I gave up a long time ago, on that one. Slick and cool, it got close, but it didn’t work out. Don’t ask.

   Google Checkout: I wanted to have a look, but they wouldn’t let this Indian sign up, even. And it’s one of their few products which isn’t in beta. Maybe it has something to do with my being too much of a curmudgeon, or something like that, I guess.

   I think I’m going to try to be Google-free for some time now.

I just discovered Adobe’s new JamJar application, via Digg of course.

It’s a very interesting demo of the kind of user interface one can
build with Adobe’s Flex2 development platform. It’s also a shining
example of how a new interface can totally confuse a user when it comes
to figuring out how the thing works.

I have to still try out the rest of it but I did have a go at their
“Photo sharing” workspace and the interface seemed clunky, at best, to
me. And noisy.
Every button you hover on makes a uniquely disturbing sound. The
adjoining picture (click on it for a full size screenshot) is what
around 5 minutes with Jamjar resulted in.

With the kind of possibilities that are available when you’re making a
user interface in Flex, it’s kind of surprising that Adobe didn’t do
better. There’s a vertical Google Adsense advertisement strip on the right, which
takes up a lot of screen space in an application where it’s at a
premium. Using an ugly wide skyscraper strip in what is essentially a technology demo is quite disconcerting. I simply don’t get why Adobe has to sabotage it’s own early stage demo
like this. If I were in their Jamjar team I’d make sure to kept it free of advertisements, I’m sure Adobe can afford to.

Yes, I know that this will probably cause a flame war or something. Bring it on.

I just think that Adobe should have called it a demonstration showcase
or something for Flex2, instead of a “web2.0″ application that was for general
use. I don’t think that the general Internet populace, even the web 2.0
audience, is completely ready for it yet.

Oh, and don’t get me wrong. The underlying technology is nothing short of brilliant.
Think about multi-file, single action uploading with detailed progress
notification (via progress bars) and you know what the platform is
like. For Flex2 application developers, that is.

I do hope they remove the advertising. At least until they are in “Beta” phase. Or is that too much to ask?

I got a google web alert set titled YouTube killer and it piqued my attention enough, at least to go and check it out.

Turns out it’s a Slashdot post on the amazingly titled eefoof.com. This site is supposed to let people upload videos and has (currently) the unique distinction of being the only one to offer users advertisement revenue when (if?) their video gets popular.

Well, ideaworthy or not, I don’t know, but they sure didn’t anticipate the slashdot effect very well.

The site is, at the time of this post, throwing up a quite ugly error saying it could not connect to it’s mysql database:


My point?
Anticipate the requirement to scale up. Especially when you’re thinking of building a competitor to web applications like YouTube and Google Video.

Update: Looks like they’ve finally gone up again. Now with a notice saying “Notice: We’re currently being dugg and slashdotted (at the same time) — bear with us”

Update #2: Looks like I was wrong about eefoof.com being the only one to offer revenue. revver.com does this as well, that too by dynamically embedding an advertisement at the end of the video. And they say they’re the only one as well!

Here’s yet another Google Adwords Advertisor ranting against Google’s Click Fraud rules and policies.

He’s upset enough to have dedicated a blogger blog about it. And he’s posting screenshots straight from his Google Adwords interface detailing the click through rate reports that he’s getting. He says he’s even getting clicks from the same IP on the same advertisement of his, 2 seconds apart.

Makes one wonder how Google’s going to protect it’s squeaky clean, ethically correct image, especially in the long run. And whether it really is that clean anyway.

I think Google’s Notebook offering is just another confused attempt at market acquisition in one more idea that’s been abused heavily on the Internet – bookmarking and notes. This, along with their recent string of application releases has really brought my kettle to a boil.

“Google Notebook Labs” has just released a firefox extension (whatever happened to the just plain, good old, Google Labs is a mystery). This extension’s download page is where you get taken to when you signup on Notebook – if you do it with Firefox, that is. The perception that I got as an end-user when this happened to me is that the whole Google Notebook concept is a Firefox extension and just that! I don’t know if that is the intention that Google has, really, but that’s what it looks like to moi.

Anyways, on with my review of Google Notebook and why it sucks.

Read more…

The Extension
Let’s start with the Firefox extension. Here’s a list of things that I dislike about it:

1. Architecture: Google created a single sign-on architecture quite some time back. This, is what lets you sign in to all (well… most – Adwords is a notable exception) of google’s offerings using the same “Google account”. The architecture is based around storing of a central cookie that is used by all of Google’s services. This works well in most cases but is quite problematic when you take the same architecture and apply it to a rich interface, like the Notebook Firefox extension.

   The problem is the extension depends on this cookie for its functioning. The Google Notebook Firefox extension has no way for the user to specify their Google account username and password. So the only way you’re going to get this Firefox extension to work is by logging into your google account in your Firefox browser. Clicking on “Open Notebook” simply opens a small popup window which fetches the google single sign on web block when you’re not signed in. This is the first login-required Firefox extension from Google and I had expected better.

   This problem is especially compounded for users like me, who are forced to use more than one google account. Even more so, when you are not logged in and try to “Note This” and the login box pops up; even after logging in correctly, the extension doesn’t go ahead and complete the Noting operation. You’ve got to do it again.

2. Usability issues: Most functionality appears to be happening inside a web block, actual rich functionality is mostly absent in the extension. This makes the extension a bit slower in response compared to what one would expect. Yes, it’s web based, it’s cool, but what’s the point if it’s not really lightning fast; especially when I’m using it to take Notes.
3. Bugs / Problems

1. Installation: Upon install it asked me to restart Firefox (this is a bother that I’ve become used to), and on restart it emptied out my session. All my pages that were stored in my session by Session Manager came up saying (Untitled). This, I’m definitely not used to.

   Everytime I sign in to google notebook, it asks me download the Google Notebook firefox extension. I don’t think that’s a good thing to do to your users. I don’t know if this is caused by them or my Fasterfox has cached the Google Notebox first time signin process, your mileage may vary on this one.

2. “Note this” wipes out site formatting: Noting anything from a website by the advertised select and right-click operation works abysmally as per my expectation. It’s slow, and it wipes out all, yes all formatting, CSS styling, pictures that are not URLs and applies a standard googlish look to it. Not desirable, not expected and extremely tacky. My grabbed notes should look the exact same as they were when I took them.
3. “Note this” adds bookmarks: Right clicking on a page without selecting anything and saying “Note This” just creates a bookmark note. Content on the page is not copied. Makes me wonder what the point of it all was? I could have just added a bookmark on to Digg or Del.icio.us, right?
4. “Note this” doesn’t always work: So what does one do, if he wants to copy the entire page into a note? Ctrl + A, right click and say Note this? Nope, nada, zilch, not working either. I tried it on a NEO Binaries page, and all I got was an extremely innocent error saying, “Error creating note.”. I hate error messages that don’t have the courtesy of telling me what the actual error was. I suppose that goes along with the whole Google spiel of “It’s simple, and it just works!”. Well it doesn’t, not for me.
5. Clicking on maximize in the extension opens a new tab in Firefox. Clicking on Help opens a new window. They’ll probably say it’s by design. I think it sucks!

The Google Notebook Service

As for the the actual Google Notebook offering, it’s got it’s own set of problems as well:

1. Publishing: So I can publish my notes. And what’s the point of that when I get a URL that looks like this: http://www.google.com/notebook/public/06758462020617548695/BDRdQSwoQ6qDM6LMh. What? I’m supposed to remember that? Or send it to someone? Aside from the fact that it looks like the most lame page ever created, I think exposing pseudo blogging features without actually providing any, is just a waste of time, effort and marketing might.

2. Usability Issues:
1. It’s slow. That’s what it feels like when they don’t tell me what’s happening in the Ajax. Show me something, some sort of progress or activity.

2. It’s not attractive to look at, at all. The way it functions leaves a lot to be desired. Compare it with Google Reader for example.
3. The My notes and the other notebooks move up instead of the tab shifting down. Why create a tab bar effect in the first place?
3. Missing features

1. Search!: Google is a seach company. Whatever they do, whatever offering they launch, however much money they make, they must remember this: they are a search company. And when they show messages saying “Search will be available in a few days”, they’re asking for it.

2. Tagging / Categorization: So I’m supposed to search, and only search for my notes in my Google Notebook. I’m not supposed to label, tag or categorize them. No fair. I completely agree with Michael on this.
3. Blog this???: Shouldn’t I be able to create notes and then easily publish them to my blog on Blogger? Especially when they are services by the same company? Doesn’t it make sense? I mean, c’mon guys, get your act together. Fine, you already have that store, edit and publish interface in Blogger. But I’m creating notes here. I want to publish these notes on my blog (and not on your lame URL with weird numbers and symbols).

   Did nobody actually think of this at all?

4. Email Integration: In published Notebooks I can email a link to whomever I want to. How? By using my offline mail client. I don’t know how that makes sense to any person who uses GMail. I use Gmail. I have a Gmail account. I use the same account to login to Google Notebook. And yet, I must use (insert favorite rich email client here) to send a link from my Google Notebook as email. Sounds crazy to me.
4. Confusion?: First Google bought Blogger. Then they came out Google Bookmarks. Then to top it all of they released Google Pages. Now they release Google Notebook with functionality that has bits and pieces of everything. It totally confuses me as to where they’re going with all this. I only wonder how the casual user is supposed to comprehend all of this.
5. Competition is better: The competition is way ahead Google in almost all aspects as regards Google Notebook.

   Take a look at:

   Scrapbook: A top pick Firefox extension, it is something which beats eSnips, OnFolio and now Google Notebook at their own game. And it’s free, fast and respects the way my notes look.

   Del.icio.us: Yes, the true-blue original bookmark sharing service. I think it’s way ahead of Google’s attempts to enter the market.

   SyncNotes: Yup, our own SyncNotes is way ahead of them in the actual Note taking, publishing and sending departments as well.

My point?
Google Notebook is definitely not the robust and kick-ass kind of offering that we’ve become used to come out of the Google stable. Instead its a confused attempt to enter late into one of the most heavily crowded spaces on the Net. That too, Sideways.

Are we looking at the first chinks that are beginning to appear in Google’s shiny armour?

This one’s going to be a rant where I blast the heck out of this TV program called Bid2Win.

The Concept
You watch this TV program where TV stars come on and tell you about this latest object of desire – the latest gizmo, gadget, device or whatever that you really, really want. What you’ve got to do is bid for the lowest price on the gadget by sending them SMS messages. You can thus (allegedly) “win” this really expensive device for literally peanuts.

The hosts urge you to to SMS whatever price you think will “win”. They insist that the more you SMS, the more your chances of “winning”.

How all this is supposed to work is that a whole lot of people out of the viewership of the program SMS repeatedly into the program’s SMS number, the minimum price they think will bid for the particular product. The hosts suggest that you should SMS the coolest price – only the “coolest” price will win. This cannot factually be true; the actual winning bid is the minimum price that a single person bid. The on-screen graphics that run during the program display this story well enough; they repeatedly display what the number of prices that have not been SMSed below a certain minimum price by viewers.

The viewers try to guess what numbers have not been SMSed. The program lets you bid for a 24 hour period, the time difference between the two shows. Bid2Win then displays  yesterday’s winner in the program.

The program talks about you sending SMS messages repeatedly for each bid. Alternatively you can use your telephone to call the Bid2Win number where their IVR system will pick up and you can put your bids in.

What they don’t stress on, enough (and should):

• Each SMS you send them is going to cost your Rs. 10/-

• Each minute you spend trying to figure out how to use, and then actually end up putting your bids in is going to be charged at Rs.6/- per minute.

What they don’t tell you:

• Sending of SMS messages only works with Airtel mobile phones.

• I think the call-in number will also only work with Airtel mobile phones as well.
• The number of wins that are possible. From what they seem to say, I think there is only, I repeat, ONLY one such device to be one, because they’re visibly announcing only one winner.

How they make their money:

Size of viewership who actually send them SMS messages, cumulatively MULTIPLIED by the number of SMS messages MULTIPLIED by 10

Size of viewership who actually use their IVR system MULTIPLIED by the number of minutes they use the system, cumulatively MULTIPLIED by 6

And this is done, daily.

Now can anyone guess the approximate viewership that this kind of program has, daily? I’m sure it is in the scale of figures where the number of digits really look insane.

So you thought you were getting that yummy, scrunchy must-have, brand new gadget/device/gizmo for cheap? Easily?

Think again.

Cost of average device that is displayed? Under a lakh of Rupees? Typically under 50 thousand.

Considering every combination for under Rs. ten, then you have 10 + 10 * 99 combinations. That’s 1000 combinations for a sure shot “chance” to win. At Rs.10 per SMS, that’s Rs. 10,000/- to make it a very costly chance, I’d say.

Because you’re one person in millions watching. Which lowers the chance of you “winning” anything signifcantly.

I’d put up the concept right up there with gambling on a roulette table in a casino in Las Vegas. The house always wins. No matter what you do, remember this in any gambling scenario – the house always wins. All gambling games are designed that way, including Bid2Win.

The people behind Bid2Win: From some initial research it turns out that Bid2Win is one of the most successful programs in UK and has been repackaged to suit India.

The same company that started Bid2Win in the UK, continues to power monetization using mobile (and other new) media in all it’s forms. The company’s name is Cellcast and admittedly they do claim to be at this for a long time, 1998.

And I’ll be surprised if their offerings works well in India as well. They have the know how and the experience, they just need to adapt it to the Indian market, which they seem to be doing well.

My Point?
My whole point with writing all this is that looking at where we’re headed with all this on public television really upsets me. Looking at it from my viewpoint I feel they are actually fooling the audience into spending gigantic amounts of money on a particularly small service being offered. All with the detailed organization and power of an MNC who knows the game inside out. Getting the end consumer hooked into thinking that they are spending less while they’re actually “bidding” to get something that isn’t really worth the effort and the pain that viewers go through.

Above all it’s such a crass way of doing it. Look at another program that my family seems to be addicted to: Sa Re Ga Ma Pa: Ek duje ke liye. This particular program has it’s singing contestants come on to stage and literally plead with the audience to vote for them by sending SMS messages as detailed. And they have more network operators support than just Airtel, which means many more participating viewers, which means much more money for them.

And then companies like CellCast go ahead and coin new terms like Participation TV for something that’s been around for a very long time: How to make money selling something in a win-lose situation.

My simple advice to all the people who don’t understand any of this and are just curious about participating on these shows:

Don’t.

I went to visit my Dentist today. Why do all doctors have to have:a waiting area where there’s always dull, mindnumbing, slow, monotonous music playing? And magazines that are at least 6 months old, that too stuff that you never wanna read, like Outlook, Femina, etc?

Anyway, I hung around in the waiting area for like half an hour and then the doctor’s assistant had a look at my teeth. Having an X ray taken of your jaw is a really weird experience, let me tell you. The assistant then told me to wait some more while she had a look at the X ray. So I waited some more. Listened to some really bad music and had a look at a couple of issues of Outlook and got called in again.

Turns out that the main doctor finally had gotten a chance to check out my teeth and confirmed my belief that I would have to have a wisdom tooth removed. God I hate it when they poke around in your mouth and tap on your teeth with those weird metal hook shaped things.

So. I’m gonna have a tooth extraction tomorrow afternoon. Wish me luck!

Yes, I’ll write about how it went, tomorrow.