Big Dan’s Site

That’s quite a bold statement isn’t it? Some people would say all hip-hop sucks but as someone who’s been a fan of hip hop and a DJ who spun mostly hip hop this is hard to say.

The fact is over the past 3 or 4 years there have been very few memorable rap songs with staying power. There are more 1 hit wonders than ever in the hip hop world. While songs from nearly 10 years ago like Big Pimpin by Jay-Z and Party Up by DMX still get the crowd moving, rap songs that came out last year are now old news and the crowd stares at you like you’re some kind of idiot for playing it.

There have always been 1 hit wonders with a short shelf life for DJs but from where I sit lately the “expirary” on tracks is a lot faster than it’s ever been. None of the new songs seem to be a hit with the teens and 20-somethings for more than 6 months.

I also blame the big drop in BPM, no longer are the good hip hop songs in the 95-100+ BPM range, they’re in the 80 BPM range, you cannot really dance to that, that’s grinding music. Studies have shown the less beats per minute the more likely people, particularly males, will be aggressive. For Bar and Club jocks this is a cause for concern as music sets the mood for the entire club. Now the manager is breathing down their neck because people are going crazy but the new stuff is what’s requested.

There are no NRG (Energy) hip hop songs in recent memory, songs like Party up which people could really fast almost break dance too. Why is this? Part of it is I believe a lot of newer rap isn’t coming off the coasts, it’s coming from the south. It’s a slower lifestyle down there, perhaps it’s just a carry over. It so popular down there that it blow up in the big cities too.

Another aspect of it is the internet. No longer are teens only exposed to what the radio plays. There are thousands of internet radio stations, you can preview tracks on iTunes before you buy. Ring Tones allow songs to be played right on their phone and they hear that ring tone umpteen times a day. Hear a song enough and eventually you will like something about.

The past few days have been hectic for BigDan.us, first we moved to a hosting account given to us by Grim of WTF, Wordpress would slow to a crawl when doing anything with it. So, I decided to order a new VPS and throw it on there as I would be needing one for a new project anyhow. No luck there either, I’ve been pulling my hair out trying to figure out why. Finally with a suggestion from Grim, I changed the php on this account to use php4 and it works like a charm.

There must be an issue with either php 5.2.5 and wordpress or the cPanel’s latest rollout of it. Anyhow, I’m going to get back to working on this blog and building it back up.

-Dan

Normally I’m not one to knock what anyone does for a living as hey you gotta put food on the table. But these bill collectors are major pain in the asses.

Long story short I had a credit card from Applied Card Bank that I haven’t been paying since they hit me with an over limit for a charge they approved. I do not think it’s fair for a credit card company to deliberately approve a charge that puts you a few cents over the limit and then slam you with a $39 charge. This just isn’t good business, if anything they should have declined the charge. Seeing as how I’m considered a credit risk since I do not have a good rating, these are the kind of companies I get offers from. It’s my own stupid fault I should of read the fine print and not salivated at the thought of having another credit card to support my newly started online business.

Add to the fact that they charged me an over limit charge for something they approved, I’ve had some health issues which have cut into my earnings potential as of late, so I cannot afford to pay a bogus over limit fee.

Anyhow they’re collection agency calls at least 6 times per day. Always the same 1-800 number on the caller ID. One time I answered just in an attempt to get them to stop calling. First the guy goes on a spiel about how this is the last step before bring me to court. LOL Now you and I know a big company isn’t going to waste they time and resources bring me to court over a measly $800. Knowing that this is more than likely scare tactic, I ask “Are you a lawyer or a bill collector?” The answer was “I’m not a lawyer but I work for one.” Yeah he works for a lawyer like I work for Google by displaying Adsense.

I decided to try and talk to this guy who other than being a bull shit artist seems okay. I break down the charges to him explaining the card had an initial credit limit of only $200 out of that $200 I was charged a $69 account activation fee plus my first yearly free of $39 bring my starting credit limit to a whole $92. For nearly a whole year I paid more than the minimum payment every month on time without fail. Now because of a charge that put my literally $.03 over my credit limit your client decided to slam me with a $39 over limit charge, then when I didn’t pay the bill they slammed me with another $39 late fee and that in the four month I haven’t paid the bill they’ve slammed me with new over limit and late charges at $39 a pop every month. My total bill is now nearly $800. This is in just 4 months of not paying for a credit line that totaled $92!

I said to him Do you really think this is fair? He actually admitted that it wasn’t fair but all this was covered in the agreement I signed when I started the account. So, I ask what can we do to make this right? I can make a one time payment of $492. I explain to him that I haven’t been working as much as usual and cannot afford it. I start pissing and moaning; Hold it you want me to pay you nearly $500 for a $92 credit line? Loan sharks give better rates than this. He says well that’s all I can do for you. So I say thank you for your time, I cannot pay right now, please stop calling me 6 times a day.

Did it work, no? This company calls me at least 6 times a day they start at 7:30 AM. Most of the times, I let the machine  pick it up, they leave no message. On the weekends they call at 7:30 then 7:45, 8:00, and 8:30 in the morning. This is them trying to act as an alarm clock they call and call to wake you ass up out of bed. Then they call the rest of the day at intermittent times. They finally stop calling around 9 PM.

It amazes me that collection agencies can do this, If a regular person did this I could file harassment charges! I would change my number but that now costs $40. I have to get in contact with the phone company and see if there is a way I can block this number from ringing my phone. I suspect once they get wise that they’re number was blocked they will just call from another number.

I wholeheartly believe this is a big part of the reason why our economy is in the crapper. Companies pray on the weak with predatory lending practices by going after people with poor credit rating giving them a $200 credit limit which is reduced to $92 after the initial inflated charges then slamming them with inflated fees. When the bill piles up and the person cannot pay it they harass them to no end. Come on is it really a surprise to these companies that I didn’t pay my bill? I already had a poor credit rating. That’s they whole point of credit scoring to protect banks against giving loans to irresponsible people.

For me it’s a matter of principal, don’t deliberately approve a charge that will put me over the limit then hit me with an exuberant charge for going a few cents over the limit. If I won the mega millions tomorrow I still wouldn’t pay these animals with all the inflated charges and harassment.

BigDan.us has a great new home on the internet, from the folks at Web Talk Forums. We’re on a lightening fast server that I just moved us to a couple of hours ago. I’m again saying good bye to DreamHost, what a bunch of clowns. I’ll keep the account open for parking/forwarding purposes. Other than that, they’re good for nothing.

We also have a great new theme that I found from ReviewSaurus which I’ll be tweaking over the next few days. What do you think?

BigDan.us has a great new home on the internet, from the folks at Web Talk Forums. We’re on a lightening fast server that I just moved us to a couple of hours ago. I’m again saying good bye to DreamHost, what a bunch of clowns. I’ll keep the account open for parking/forwarding purposes. Other than that, they’re good for nothing.

We also have a great new theme that I found from ReviewSaurus which I’ll be tweaking over the next few days. What do you think?

In my house we’ve only had caller ID for the last two or so years and only because it’s part of our phone service package. The last time we bought a new cordless phone system, I of course selected a phone with Caller ID built in on the handset, I thought this was a good move BUT Mom has a hard time seeing so every time the phone rings she stares at the screen trying to make out the numbers, if I’m home she announces the numbers to me so I can tell her who it is. LOL It’s kind of cute but 9 times out 10 she minces up the numbers, says 6 instead of 8 and it’s annoying. If you don’t want to answer the phone just let the machine get it, then you can see who it is.

For those of you have older parents with bad eyesight you might want to look for a phone with a bigger caller ID screen.

Those of you who follow my blog knows that my family has a cat, Rosie. She is supposed to be my sisters cat but the cat has adopted my mother as her “main squeeze”. Now me, I’m not much of a cat person, I’d much rather a dog but Rosie has grown on me over the years. Normally she’s does her thing, I do mine. You see, Rosie pretty much ignores me and that’s cool but the few times a year when she goes into heat she’s on me like white on rice. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind but that freaking cooing drives me up a wall. If you’re ever heard a cat in heat you know what I’m talking about.. It so annoying that I cannot even read an email with her in my room cooing and rubbing up against my feet. I guess my feet look like a male cat.

I fixed her ass, I locked her in the bathroom with her food, water, and litter box. She simmers right down and doesn’t coo in there only when she’s around me. Annoying little pisser.

Saturday night into Sunday we had a fairly long power outage. The power went out at 7 PM and didn’t come back on until 5 AM the next day. It was strange looking out the window onto the little town of Eldred and seeing absolutely no lights. We’re a very small town but we do have a traffic light and 3 street lights!

Aside from the inconvenience of being without heat and lights it was pretty neat. The power outage was almost a flash back in time, this is how people lived 100 years ago. It was kind of fun trying to get used to reading by the flicker of candle light when in this day and age we’re used to back lit LCD screens.

From reading the news reports many customers were out of electicity for more than a day some for almost 3 days. Kudo’s to NYSEG who always seems to be on the ball, even out here in our little town.

Today’s the first day I’ve had my bedroom open in months. You know what that means? Spring is coming!!!

My new computer is great and while I love everything about it, the mouse cord kept getting tangled so I decided to purchase a new wireless mouse. As usual I surfed my favorite e-tailer for tech stuff, New Egg.

After comparing prices and features, I settled on the Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 2.0 . Reviews were decent and it had what I was looking for.. It’s wireless and optical. Previously I’ve had great experience with Microsoft hardware in fact it’d be great if their software was as good as the hardware end.

I’ve had it hooked up for a couple of houses. So far so good it works great. My only complaint it’s the scroll wheel button is very sensitive. If you’re like me and middle click in Firefox to open links a new tab it, the sensitivity gets annoying, I suspect I’ll adjust to the sensitivity after using it a few days.

Other than that my favorite feature is the scroll wheel isn’t “clicky” if you’ve used scroll wheels for a while, you’ll know what I’m talking about, a lot of cheaper mice have wheels that click on every revolution, this one doesn’t and it’s nice to have smooth scrolling.

The only other thing worth mentioning is the included software from New Egg doesn’t work on Vista, this is fixed with a simple download from Microsoft, which Vista actually gives you a link for.

I hope you’ve found this review helpful. I’ll update this review once I’ve had a longer period of use.

-Big Dan