Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

http://www.soulfringe.com/

Playing around on a webhost. I have imported my wordpress blog over there and will be playing around with it all for a few weeks, while making my blog posts there.

http://www.soulfringe.com/

AT&T stands for Awful Terrible & Treachery

So I ran into an issue with ATT where they had all of a sudden began charging me $70 for my 6m/608k dsl. This scenario, coincidentally, happened after I had them remove about $25 worth of additional phone services from my AT&T phone and internet plan. Here is how my customer care experience went…

ME: “Why am I being charged $69.99 for a DSL Service I had been recieving for $45 this past few years, also adding in the fact that this service is advertised as $35 ?”

AT&T: “AT&T records indicate the rate of $44.99 for AT&T High Speed Internet was a promotional rate. It appears you have successfully fulfilled this term and the DSL rate was automatically converted to a month to month price plan, which is currently $69.99.

If you would like to upgrade your DSL to a higher speed or review the available rate plans at your current speed tier, please visit the link below for more information and to submit your request.”

When I click on the link it shows my speeds at that advertised $35 I mentioned. I read the fine print, indeed promotional price for 2 years, and guess what, they make NO mention of the “regular” rate. None whatsoever !

Unfortunately for me, I had been paying this $70 rate for a few months without me noticing because I do auto payments. I only found out when I went to review how I could squeeze in a phone plan for the Iphone.

Well needless to say, I went and bought the google/tmobile G1 smartphone, and have now set up a sexy hot cable internet with a 10/1 bandwidth rate. This is $30 for 3 months promo rate and $50 afterwards. Now that I have that all set up, I am killing my AT&T service and beginning my quest at boycotting their shady dealings.

Hare Hare Yu… are under arrest.

Just posted this over at Dannychoo. I had seen many a hare hare yukai before, but this one left me with so much laughter, I cried rivers of tears.

The World of MMOCraft.

Talk about a rough market. A few months ago, Flagship Studios (A “up and coming” company devised of the original blizzard team) announced the company dissolving due to financial problems, taking their hyped up failure of a game, Hell Gate London, off the MMO map on January 31, 2009, just 15 months after it’s release. Now let’s fast forward to now

NcSoft just came out and gave notice that another one of their games, Tabula Rasa, is going to be getting axed from the wonderful world of MMO’s. This comes as no surprise, within a VERY short period of time into the game, many people were doom calling the games demise. For years Tabula Rasa was that fairly decently Hyped up game to come from the “Genius” developer, Richard Garriot, better known to people as “Lord British”, grand ruler of the Ultima Series.

It just leads me to wonder what is going to happen to the world of MMO’s. You hear so much hype about games, and they just totally end up bombing. Is it just the games over suckage, or is the “WoW factor” in play (10 million people playing WoW = 10 Million people not playing a MMO other than WoW). I just hope this growing trend dies out, I am still heart broken as it is with Auto Assault going down in summer of 2007 before I could enjoy it one last time. /sigh

G1 GET!

The UPS guy was kind enough to deliver me my new toy today. I almost didn’t think he was gonna make it. He arrived at 6:30pm. I was continually running out to the living room to look out the window every 5 minutes for him.

Anyways the new toy delivered was the newly released G1 phone by tmobile and google.
I had some difficulties getting it set up.

However after making a post that went unanswer after a few hours, I sucked it up and called the dreaded tech support. It was almost a night mare, it was that voice command bs. But after saying the magic word “troubleshooting” I got connected to a live operator who new his stuff. This guy had the screenshot memorized ! Problem was the data plan I was supposed to get, wasn’t applied to my sim card, and he hooked it up and I had my access within an hour.

Now I have got to play with to much, but I downloaded a mp4 player app, pacman, meebo IM, and downloaded the Dethklok album from amazonmp3.
So far it seems like its going to be a great toy to have around, waiting on some “military grade” shield wrap to protect from scratches and all, and for an 8gb microsd card, because 1gb is just not enough.

It also seems as if the battery is pretty wimpy. After a few hours it got into orange, ewww. However theres been a lot of complaints about the battery life, so maybe a recall in the future ? One could only hope. Hopefully they will at least have new batteries that last long that we can buy for a discounted and cheap price =D

But anyways, I hope to play with this thing some more and give a better review in the future when theres more apps and such.

Viz evolves

So I was just reading the news at my most visited source of anime news. Anime News Network Well according to this article it seems as if Viz as followed fellow American distributor, Funimation, into evolving into the world of streaming televised English subs of their licensed titles, just a week or so after it initially airs in Japan.

This is another big step for the anime business and fans. Hopefully this becomes a trend for more titles, bringing us more of our beloved anime in a free and legitimate format for American fans, and will hopefully help the companies revenue to keep things running.

It’s just too bad the anime Viz is bringing us weekly is Naruto Shitpooden. Bleh. =D
You can find other legitimate english subbed streams from Viz Here @ Joost

UPDATE Anime News Network has just rolled in news just 4 hours after the bit about Viz, that TV Tokyo, will also start streaming English subs of Naruto Shitpooden, just 1 hour after it airs in japan !! It seems the future is streaming along. HA! See what I did there ?

Japans Medical Care. Where exactly is the “Care”?

So I started reading a manga called “Team Medical Dragon” . This manga was written by Akira Nagai, a successful doctor and medical journalist, who died in 2004.

The story of the manga follows a genius surgeon who is in the business to save lives. However the Japanese Medical World is dominated by corrupt politics. Doctors don’t care about the patients, only success and recognition. This leads to things such as doctors turning away foreigners who can’t pay up, using experimental medicine with harsh side effects that haven’t been cleared to use, etc.

Now I just started reading this manga today and am now among chapter 40, and here I go taking a break between some chapters, and check out some news story, when I see an article linked on japanprobe about this 82 year old lady who passed away after being denied at 5 hospitals !!! As I read further into this article I also read about a pregnant lady who went into labor and was denied by 8 hospitals ! She died 3 days later after giving birth and undergoing surgery for a brain hemorrhage.

It’s pretty sad to read about real life examples of what I am reading in this manga of corrupt hospital care. It makes me sad to think that there are “professionals” who can’t accommodate people in such life and death situations. Where has the humanitarianism gone ?

Team Medical Dragon was also made into a J-Drama called “Iryu”. There are 2 seasons.

American Medical Care Followup - After speaking with a friend of mine who works at the local hospital, it is quite disheartening to hear that the hospital is considering turning away people on government supplied benefits such as “medicare” because they aren’t making money of them.

Whats even worse, is this is the only hospital within 20 miles or so that accepts medicare. Even the nearby sutter and kaiser do not accept medicare. This is quite terrible for those patients who have transportation issues, financial issues, etc. So it kind of stinks to know we are no better.

It’s a sad world when people will let sick and wounded people die over pennies.

Moyashimon End!

Started Moyashimon yesterday, since I started going to an anime club where they were viewing this, and I wanted to get caught up.

I got so into it, I ended finishing it up last night.  Last episode featured one of the hottest yuri kisses ever. It even sounded awesome.

HuH???

I really have no idea what the hell I am doing, but all the other cool kids got one fo these “blogging” things, and I wanna be cool too !!!