I seriously feel like I’m the last person who still pays for music, movies, books, software and games.

Everyone around me is ripping off one thing or another. One grabs game ISOs, one grabs AVIs of movies that just hit theaters, one’s got a key generator for pretty much any program out there and another has HDDs full of music from newsgroups.

This really gets under my skin, especially when they offer me the free stuff and I turn them down. I’m usually called a sucker for paying for this sort of thing, and that sometimes causes me to go off on them.

You see, as a web developer I deal exclusively in intellectual property and digital property. I don’t produce a tangible product. When a worker produces something that you can touch, then everyone understands that taking it without paying for it (assuming its creator charges for it) is considered stealing. Somehow, when the product in question is digital, then that common sense is lost.

“If I can rip it, if I can download it, if I can copy-and-paste it, then it is mine,” seems to be the mantra of the pirate.

I get paid to produce code, something that can be easily “copy-and-pasted” if you know where to find it. If I was charging for that code, and I found that someone had copied it and then went on to distribute it, I would feel just as violated as if someone took off in my car during the night.

This barely scratches the surface on how much it bothers me, but I should stop myself before I bore you. What do you think, do I take this too personally?

Listen Microsoft, I want to give you money for your products so that I may enjoy them, and then turn around and tell others, “hey, you might want to check this out, it’s pretty cool.” Then you get more money, which you can then use to improve those products and/or build newer and better ones. I will then buy those new and better ones - makes sense, right?

I’ve got to say, you are making it really hard for me to do that.

My new Zune is almost useless when compared to my Creative Vision:M. For the past week I’ve been carrying both devices, trying to figure out which of the two are better. While I prefer the Zune’s “Twist” interface, larger screen, and overall styling, the lack of podcast support is almost a deal breaker for me. By “podcast support,” I mean that I need a way for the Zune software to download, sync, and manage my subscriptions. I don’t want to use some third party solution, as they universally suck, with the exception of iTunes (hey, that gives me an idea… maybe I can find a way to use iTunes and the Zune together… I’ll report what I find).

My three-month-old 8525 frequently locks up on me, or refuses to turn on after going to sleep. That pretty much makes it worthless as a phone, since the thing needs to be running in order to receive calls and emails and the like. I have owned multiple Windows Mobile devices over the years, and all suffered from poor performance and slow reaction times (when I hit “Answer” to pick up a phone call, it would be nice if it actually worked).

My nineteen-month-old Xbox 360 took a dump on me for the second time. Gone are the days that a console would actually make it through an entire generation w/o need of repair (like the SNES and Genesis). Wouldn’t you know it, I am two months out of warranty. I paid MS $105 (after discount) to send me a coffin and get this console fixed. I think they are giving me a free month or year of LIVE Gold.

Luckily, my one-month-old Vista PC is still working just fine. I’m sure that won’t last long.

I’m not ready to proclaim that MS sucks or anything like that, but I think my diehard loyalty to this company is the only reason why. I just need to vent my frustration a little bit. Thanks for listening.

Oh, and Creative, you are not off the hook. Your Zencast software and Zen player are sucking pretty hard right now, but I’ll leave that for another post.

On Friday, Amanda and I attended the Great American Scrapbook Convention in Chantilly, VA. What could be better than shopping for scrapbook supplies with one of your friends?

There were lots of vendors to include some non-scrapbook ones like the lint roller booth, Tastefully Simple and Mary Kay. I guess scrapbookers need to clean, have a good meal and look good while preserving memories! I am happy to report that I exercised a lot of self control. I spent less than $200 whereas in years past I could spend close to $200 at just one booth! Most of my self control comes from the fact that I have a Wishblade (see this post) and that I have pretty much given up on stamping in my scrapbooks. I also have just too much stuff and not enough time to use it.

So what could ruin such a wonderful day? Other than the mobile pothole crew on 66 during the tail end of the morning rush hour, Friday rush hour traffic on 495 on the way back, there was this dummy:

It took all I had not to put my scrapbook supplies to work on this. With an arsenal that includes permanent black markers, scissors and adhesive, I truly could have gone to town on this car. I could barely open my hatch to get to my lunch! Since we still had some shopping to do and the fact that I didn’t want Amanda to see my bad side, I moved Hotaru to another spot…

When we got back to the apartment, Amanda and I swapped some excess supplies and did some layouts while watching one of the best movies of all time - GOONIES! She was quite surprised to see how much of the movie I could quote (inner nerd emerging…). I have to say that we had a very good time.