James Sapara’s Personal Blog

Literally out of no where this morning I was thinking about mowing lawns. Some may already know my particularly odd stance on this subject, but the more I thought about it; the more I needed to say something about it. I use a push reel mower. You can find them almost everywhere you can find gas mower. Let jump into why I use one of these “old school” mowers.
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I’m on my way back from the mall today replaying the “OK GO” video in my head. It’s not particularly great for any reason, just slightly entrancing to see 4 odd looking men dance like that. I was nearly ready to purchase their album on itunes/amazon whatever, until I noticed they used “Capitol” records. Unfortunately that an organization ruled under the iron fist of the RIAA; who, just happens to be one of my least favorite organizations (Right below United States Government (no offence guys, but damn there’s some silly policy going on there (yes I know Canada has silly policies as well)) and above MPAA). Back on topic…

I used to just not like the RIAA… holding the little man down and all that. Today it just came to me (may of been obvious to others…) that the reason I shouldn’t support the RIAA it’s because it has taken the power from the artists. Every starting band seems to have problems with money. They don’t get paid much apparently, which is understandable. Here’s my problem: I’ve never heard of a record company exec being broke. Or that the people who run the RIAA are underpaid, or anyone else involved in that process. It seems that the priority for distributing the money leaves the artist last in this whole scheme they have. What I think some artists don’t realize (or are scared to test) is that without them, “the artist”, these people would have no jobs. The artist is effectively employing all these people, but not so willingly paying themselves poorly.

The solution is cut the the middle man organizations out. Back to basics for production, marketing and distribution. All these things cost money, and possibly in some cases more than what an established organization would cost. The difference is it would promote competition in that industry to provide the services artists need to be successful. No longer would the artist be paying for some RIAA chump (aka Cary Sherman) to make money off suing children, dead people or old people for downloading music. Not that I support that practice, but I feel the market has been driven to that by the business model the RIAA forces on us.

Anyways, all I want to do is buy an album and know that the artist is getting fairly compensated before everyone else does, because without the artists there is not music. With no music there would be no RIAA… just think about that Chad…

It always seems that I encounter entertaining situations on a regular basis. Some would say the frequency of these situations is rather abnormal… that I must create them or make them up. Unfortunatly for me, I don’t; but, I do like to share them with all you guys out there.

I was planning on making some pizza this past Tuesday when I discovered that I didn’t have enough flower. So I hopped in my car and drove those 2 long blocks to the Extra Foods. Right around 6 oclock the place gets rather busy, so I was suprised to find some nearly prime parking on the far side of the parking lot. Pull through to boot!

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Dear Apple,

Could you please have quicktime remember the bloody volume I set it to? Nothing more entertaining that watching a set of short clips and you insist of setting the volume FULL BLAST for each one. It wakes the people in the next room, the people above me, and scares the shit out of the cats. Seriously, it’s not that hard to do the small things somethings… so whats the problem here? Need a case study? I’ll do one for free, all you have to do is ask.

Love,

James

I’ve been using the mail client that comes with OS X for about 4 years. For me it’s the perfect balance of simple and powerful. Built in spam filtering, useful normal filtering, simple interface for everyday stuff. It supports all the accounts I have as well. There is one thing that kinda irks me thou. It usually only happens with Yahoo POP mail, but has happened with my other accounts.
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Oky, so I’m driving down the man drag in Saskatoon, 8th street. It’s 5:30, so we have a bit of rush hour traffic, but not too bad (8th street is usually avoid for commutes because of all the lights). This guy is biking down the road in the right rut of the far right lane. Three lanes, not a big deal really. So a bunch of cars pass him and we hit a light (SURPRISE!!!) He bikes around us on the left and runs the intersection. Alright… well thats interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since I’ve gotten my new car I’ve been bitchy in matters relating to my car. It all started with the process of agreeing on an amount for the car. They were giving TV’s away for FREE with all car purchases. Simply amazing, but I didn’t really want a $200 TV… So I said, “Give me the value of the tv off the price. I don’t want it.” They whod and hawd about it and said they couldn’t. Again I said, “Look, I can drive to Alberta and buy this car for less or you can give me the value of TV off the price of this car.” Sales guy goes to the manager and comes back with great news… they took $250 off the price of the car. Yay!
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I’ve never been a fan of large automobiles on the road for anything but commercial use. I find that most people seem to buy them as some sort of personal tank. I guess they didn’t get the memo about large vehicles and their related problems: poor handling compared to cars, prone to flipping, eats way more gas, and costs you way more. Another problem is people who don’t know how to drive them. They seem to think that regular traffic laws don’t apply to them. Their size seems to grant them a large margin of poor driving; in their eyes only. With this in mind…
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Most of those close to me get the best of my rants. In the past I have ranted about the evil of banks and the credit system. While I understand the justifications for some of the factors they use in determining credit risk; some of them also confuse the hell out of me. In a search for some way of knowing how lenders look at me and say, “Oh God no, we won’t borrow you money,” I found FICO. If you don’t know what a FICO score is, I suggest going here. There are a few online self-marking fico score calculators as well.
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So today I have confirmed what I suspected happened all along with my mail. I am partly to blame for not looking into it myself earlier, but it’s still a bit disturbing. Turns out Canada Post “transcribed” my forward address incorrectly at some point at the forwarding depot in Winnipeg. That means, they typed it into a computer correctly, printed it off and then typed it back in… but the second time around they typed it wrong. I had actually assumed my handwriting was to blame, but as the representative told me over the phone, the billing record reflects my correct address.
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