The Mozmonkey Blog

Maybe it’s just me, but is anybody else annoyed that whenever a razor company wants to sell more razors they either add an extra blade or make it vibrate and call it a new idea? Now the leading company (I refuse to name it) has come out with a brand spanking new razor and has even given it a catchy name and a lot of hype. Their commercials tout it’s a “revolutionary technology” and a “unique idea”. Are you ready for this…. they’ve added a 5th blade! What?!? How is that unique or a revolutionary technology?

Myself, I’m holding out for the 10-blade model. I envision it’ll be a wheel of spinning blades that’ll give me the “closest shave a man can get”. Until, of course, the 11-blade razor makes that one obsolete.

I guess for me this is a more global issue. It seems some companies have gotten lazy and aren’t even trying anymore. They just make the handle flexible or add some batteries and make a 3D animation proving it works better and finally give it a really catchy name like “New patented Flexi-Grip Technology”. I know it’s a marketing thing, but come on let’s be a little more creative and give the public some credit (even if we don’t always deserve it).

At the end of the day I suppose it’s our own damn fault for shelling out the extra money to buy these devices because they’re shiny, new and mo-better.

Ok, so maybe that’s a bit strong. It’s not that I hate cellphones, I just hate how some people use them.
If you think about it, cellphones are an amazing technology. You used to call a place (Joe’s house) now you can call the person, wherever they may be. That’s pretty cool.

Back when cell phones were new, seeing somebody walk around with the ‘brick’ was cool (see picture); you knew that person was important. Nowadays everyone has a cellphone and it seems as if they still think it’s cool.

Let me clear up some myths for everyone:

• Your ring tone is not clever and nobody likes to hear it. If you paid for the Ringtone“>crazy frog ringtone, I’m sorry you got ripped off; it’s really not that fun to listen to the 15th time around.
• Wearing your bluetooth headset in your ear when your not using it does not look cool and nobody is impressed. It’s incredibly distracting to try to talk to somebody who has this cyborg-type device hanging from his head.

And for further information, here’s some cellphone advice. Never, ever, EVER:

• …leave your cell phone at your desk and walk away. It is unbearable to try and work when somebodies cellphone phone goes off every 2 minutes. To make matters worse, you have your ringer set on the loudest setting to the Mission Impossible or other ‘cute‘ ring tone (see 1st myth above).
• …talk on the cellphone when you’re waiting in line somewhere. (1) Nobody in line wants to hear your conversation and (2) when you get the the counter you have to put someone on hold, and it’s usually the poor person working at the register. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen somebody at Starbucks have the person at the register wait until they finish their phone call before ordering; it’s SICK! You’re really not that important.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Jeremy Gillick is a long time Web Developer, software hacker and foosball player. Throughout his career he has worked with many large, cutting edge companies like Yahoo, eBay and Adobe where he worked to drive innovation and define standards. He currently works at PayPal as the JavaScript specialist in their Web Development Platform team.

Parallel to his career work, he has also worked on many open source projects which have been featured in various tech sites and publications including Slashdot, Maximum PC and Wired.

When Jeremy is not working on one of his many programming projects, he can be found hiking or biking in the great outdoors or flying his model airplanes.