Sling, the right mix of content at a reasonable price so poorly executed a free Roku isn't worth a month.

Every now and then I decided to try Sling again for things like Food Network or the Olympics.  The playback experience though, is so abysmal you have to wonder if their network broadcasting contracts require them to to tank it on purpose and drive viewers back to a cable service. Not going to happen here, I like a few shows but not enough to ever purchase a cable service ever again. Netflix and Amazon have quirks to be sure that could be better implemented like multiple watch lists, one thing that just works on both however, is playback. Sling can't finish an episode on the Windows 10 or 7 app or even the free Roku app without bugging out and randomly stopping in the middle of an episode. Things happen, 70mbps down might not be enough to keep the cache full but hey you can restart and where you left off right? No! That's okay you can at least zoom forward to where you were right? No! What Sling wants you to do is re-watch the first 1/3 of the same episode till you have it memorized then maybe it will finish the rest of the episode. Mind you the free Roku they sent to get you back has a remote with a dedicated Netflix, Sling, Hulu, Google Play button and all but Sling playback without requiring the re-watching of the first 15 minutes except Sling so it's not a faulty device. Twitch who has every kid with a toaster trying to live stream has less problems with playback than Sling. If memory service previous versions of the app would at least let you zoom back, all be it with repeated commercial pauses so you might have ended up watching twenty commercials to get back to where you were. One would think that a company owned by DishNetwork the harbinger of DVR's and the marketer of high latency networks would have a solution for Slings woes, but if they do they are keeping it to themselves. So no matter what their direct mailers offer you to come back, whatever their other banners and ad's say they offer, consider how much you like watching only the first part of your favorite episodes over and over or maybe wait till they come out with the next version. Really they may need many more versions before it actually works.

The PS4 controllers are only safe in little hands.

We were given a PS4 about a year and a half ago. As far as game systems go it's been pretty good, with one major exception. The R2 trigger button has broken 5 times on different controllers. This never happened on the PS3. The PS4 hinge is all plastic where as the DS3 had a metal hinge pin. While searching for a metal replacement like the ones available for Xbox I found many many posts of folks with similar issues. Within those posts are the PS4 defenders telling the sorry saps with broken triggers they need to "take better care of their stuff" and theirs work flawlessly. Looking at how the five of us at home use our DS4 controllers I know how ours break. It's me, I have fairly good size mitts compared to the rest of the family, a full finger bone longer than the nearest teenage boy. No matter how I try to hold the controller my finger wraps around the inner part of the R2 button and pulls down and to the right when used. It's the pulling to the right that causes the button to break the left hinge pin. Sony needs to fix this or allow some third party to fix it. I keep hoping one of the Chinese machine shops that send me spam will decide to start making metal replacement R2 buttons but so far my searches haven't found anything. In that the systems are a rounding error difference in performance things like controller durability are a deciding factor. I'm very tempted to switch over to the Xbox One just because of this. Are you listening Sony?

49 pages of folks with the same problem on the playstation forums.
http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-Peripherals-Support/DS4-R2-Trigger-Issues/td-p/42633627/page/49

Socially challenged and a few cool things.

My first post was about a picture and it was easy enough that I thought the second one should be as well. I'm not the most socially skilled of folks and when I'm in those group settings looking for something to chat about I often will try to find some sort of common ground in my limited repertoire even if it's a stretch. The following image fits that bill and is brought up on my phone for any musician I find myself talking too, being musically challenged in all but the listening part of music.

If they say "Oh a Strat" then I know they will appreciate the adjoining story. Not that anyone else wouldn't, whole television series have been built around these types of stories, they will just have a slightly deeper appreciation. The reason is that this is not just another Strat. This Strat will hopefully one day be played by some amazing musician. Those who know Strats will look at this like my Father(n-law) in a text and say "'I'll give you $11,000 for it right now!" You see this Strat sat idle in a closet for over 40 years and is worth more than any vehicle I've ever owned. This Start is a shinning example of 1958 Fender Startocaster or so Norms Rare Guitars said, and I got to pretend to play with it. Not long after this photo was taken it was sold to a collector. Someday I hope to hear it played the way it was always meant to be played in some video and say that was the guitar I played with. I'll likely be wrong of course but it will be fun anyway.

What's in a cover photo?

Some people set out to start a blog as an outlet for their pent up thoughts and creativity, others to provide help on topics, maybe some do it strictly for potential revenue, but for me it's just exploring the benefits of my GMAIL account. If you stumbled on this page for wit or wisdom you will likely be disappointed. I'm anything but a word smith and not even sure there will be more posts but I enjoyed the distraction of setting it up in the moment. Speaking of setting it up, a Cover Photo seemed to me to be as important as the description so I plunged my image files and found this taxi photo. It was taken with an old Canon Rebel 35mm camera on my 1st or 2nd Anniversary in San Diego. The driver looks like he could be working a smart phone, but they didn't exist when the photo was taken. He is actually using that amazing technology of so long ago, a pager. To me the photo looks old and dated and yet somehow current.