Is Overclocked ReMix Infested with Hate?

That is the big question. I've been a member at those forums for five years. I have posted many song clips over the years, and have even posted about my ProSonic engine there. I have made a couple friends there. I have generally had a very positive attitude towards OCR... that is until I ran into some trouble.

What I'm linking to has some vulgar language just to warn you. In this thread, I set out to promote a video of mine on YouTube. The video of course is not serious, and most guys I know personally think it's great. It's a joke for guys is what it really amounts to. Yet, I have been smeared half to death by these 4chan-like fools who apparently don't know what it's like for a guy to get frustrated with the way women sometimes are (although we still love them!) You'd think these guys have never even known any women in their lives the way they talk.

I have never seen this at OCR. Ever. I have never posted in the Off-Topic forum that I can remember, so it was a learning experience for me. I guess the Off-Topic forum attracts people filled with this sort of stupid behaviour. OCR is a better site that what these people are showing, so why aren't the administrators there doing something about this? Had I known I was going to be ganged up on, I would have never posted. I expect this at a place like 4chan, not OCR.

I won't be recommending the site to anyone anytime soon. I have posted links to it in the past, but I won't be doing that after this episode. I won't be posting any songs there anymore either. The only way these sites change is if people punish this behaviour by leaving. That's absolutely the only way it will ever get better. I'm not calling for a boycott -- people are mature enough to make up their own minds, but I'm certainly never going to view it the same again.

UPDATE: The administration took action! I'm very surprised. I guess they do care about what goes on with the forums. Check this out:

Another train wreck thread. I'm going to start warning people, as some of you are beginning to resemble the idiots we had to deal with several years ago. I'll say the same thing I said in the Bluefox thread. Don't like something? Don't post. Trolling and spamming is against our rules.

What can I say? I judged too soon. Good job to Zircon for taking a stand against this garbage. An otherwise fine place like OCR doesn't need that.

Best Semester Ever

My college experience has been very mixed. The first two semesters were great, although I lacked the motivation to do better. With each semester, I got worse and worse, failing some classes here and there. My GPA fell to around 2.1. Last semester I picked up the pace and actually tried, and I passed two of my classes and failed one (because of my stupidity).

So this semester I wasn't going to make the mistake of failing a class because of not reading the syllabus carefully. I put in the effort, took five classes, and today I have gotten my grades. I earned four B's and one A. That's a 3.2 GPA for the semester, and it bumped my cumulative GPA to a 2.3. This is the best I have done. I have never gone through a semester not getting anything below a B. I made it my goal to get all A's and B's this time, and I was successful in that venture.

I know half the people who will read this don't really care, but I write this because it's important to me. I have said for a good while now that my 23rd birthday was a turning point for me, and I believe the proof is showing. I have the capability of becoming anything in the world, and the grades I have gotten today have really given me a boost in confidence I have needed for quite some time.

Eventful Day

My day was good and bad at the same time. I'm going to talk about the good part first so I can get it out of the way. Basically, I spent the entire day at my college with a friend of mine. We (along with several other people there) watched YouTube videos half the time. The other half I spent playing "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" on Nintendo Wii. I enjoyed the game, although I'm not as good as the people I was playing (they probably have played it a lot more than I have I'm sure). I got to show people some of my YouTube videos to which they found hilarious. It was a lot of fun.

Now the bad part -- I was working in a group I'm in for a project I'm doing in one of my classes. This one girl I have never had a very favorable opinion of, mainly by a distant first impression. I always like to give people a fair chance though and figured maybe I could form a friendly collaboration between us. After all, we have a paper we're all going to be graded on, so it's in our best interests to try and work nicely together. So when me and her collaborated a few weeks ago to try and share ideas for our portions of the paper, I gave her a lot of insight that I thought might help her. When it came to my portion of the paper, she threw out two basic ideas, didn't elaborate on them at all, and then got on her laptop and checked her e-mail the rest of the time. I was a little annoyed by that, but I let it slide. By the way, her part didn't arrive until today, the last chance we had to work together before turning it in Tuesday.

Today, we're debating my portion of the paper. There's an idea I had in my part that raised a few eyebrows, and understandably so. I formed an idea of how McDonald's could combat their troubles in the UK and elsewhere where governments have made it harder for McDonald's to advertise.

Once I explained it to others, they got where I was coming from and why it made sense. The other girl I mentioned above however wasn't satisfied. We ended up in a debate over it. Now I encourage any kind of debate if someone doesn't agree with me. My attitude is if someone doesn't agree with me, convince me that I need to change my opinion or see things differently. I stuck by my guns and provided an aggressive argument as to why I felt the plan could succeed. I listened to her, but I wasn't convinced. I can compromise, but not when the compromise means writing my part all over again. I wanted an alternative and she didn't have one.

Eventually, she told me that she felt like she was being attacked. I am an aggressive debater, but it's never personal. She didn't seem to get that, and proceeded to explain that she doesn't debate things with people because she gets very jumpy... and she was! She was very jumpy, and so as a natural reaction (and without thinking about it -- I wish I hadn't done it now), I put my hand on her shoulder and was basically going to try and tell her I wasn't attacking her. I wanted to defuse any tension that existed. She pulls away and tells me in a frustrated tone "don't touch me". I laughed and quickly backed away. It made me mad, but I tried to keep my cool.

It got worse. I did grammar corrections on everyone's parts, including this girl's part (apparently I'm good with grammar or something). Normally when I correct something, people are very active in seeing what I'm correcting and wanting to know the reasons behind it all. As I'm correcting this part though, the girl is talking to her friends the entire time, not even interested in any of the work I'm doing to her paper. I handed it to her when I finished. She thanked me, and I said "sure". I walked away and vented to a friend. I felt so used and treated like crap. I probably should have kept my hand to myself, but good God, she acted like I was a pervert or something. I'm still a little mad about it even now.

Auto Insurance Fraud

For the past two months, I have been getting calls on my cell phone about my warrenty getting ready to expire. It's an automated message. I don't know how they got my number, but it's very annoying at this stage. (502) 894-0098 is the number I last traced. People here have all been complaining about it. Interestingly, this number has the following listing on a website:

Weight Loss Plus 291 N Hubbards Ln #A33 Louisville, KY 40207-2295 502-894-0098

The problem is these scammers have yet to be caught. Obviously their business practices aren't very ethical if they constantly call a couple times a week. That's not the characteristic of someone wanting to do business, that's the characteristic of someone wanting to get your money unlawfully. This article on MSNBC claims their operations extend beyond cell phone calls. An interesting exchange one person had was as follows:

Rep: What is the make and model of your vehicle?
Me: Jeep, what is the name of your company?
Rep: I will tell you, what is your model?
Me: What is the name of your company?
Rep: F-you. (hangs up)

As if that wasn't bad enough, here's an even more interesting story from someone else:

I immediately went to the second option to talk to someone. Guy with the southern accent answered and asked for my info. I said I just want to be taken off the database, etc. He asked for my info again and just gave it to him because i wouldn't have gotten anywhere. Then I played this game with some a-hole who kept insisting to give me details about my car. I kept asking to just be taken off the list, at least 10 times, literally. Finally I said ok, a little suggestion. Give "customers" whether they're customers or not what they want. What I want is to be taken off and that I'd just hang up. "Well sir I'm just trying to see what I can do for you it's very easy to take your name out but let's see if I can get you a warranty. And God gave you the free will to hang up any time you want" I told him off and he said wow sir, I just had an epiphany, you're right, I went all those years to school but I should have just come to you. I'll take your name off the list right away"....Literally a 7 minute struggle.

I'll be dialing *57 from now on to report it directly to the police. If you have been getting this call, you should do the same. Also, here's a list of other numbers with the same message that have dialed my cell phone:

(240) 210-7101
(978) 570-2338
(800) 111-1114
(562) 289-8136
(973) 668-1868

QuickBooks POS Program Bug

Ever used QuickBooks Point of Sale and found that some of your inventory is wrong for some strange reason? Ever have to pay $50 for tech support only to be told it's all your fault, even though you can't possibly see how it can be? This is a common problem with QBPOS users that Intuit seems to be ignoring. Through investigating the matter, I have concluded the problem lies within the QBPOS program code itself.

The QBPOS holds two copies of every bit of information in the database. When you make changes to the database and save, a copy of the old data is created within the database. It works like a backup, and perhaps that's the purpose of having two copies. However, flaws in the program's code can cause this old data to overwrite the new data. Nobody can know for sure exactly what makes the program do this except for Intuit's programmers. Unfortunately, Intuit doesn't seem to be too connected to their customers. Nobody wants to pay a big tip to get tech support who, by the way, would know nothing about the problem. They're job is to assume it's something you're doing. It's not.

This bug is a serious problem for companies that want to maintain an accurate point of sale system, but continue to see their data being manipulated incorrectly by the program itself. The part that makes this worse is Intuit knows about this problem. It's been reported by dozens of people on their public forums. The problem has existed in their software for several years, but it has yet to be resolved. Proof of this is a print-out of inventory I have after saving and backing up the data. Days later after the print-out, some prices went back to their old values mysteriously. Try it yourself if you're having issues. It's the only way you can prove there's a problem. Intuit's program doesn't have a "feature" to do this. If you call their tech support, be sure to let them know about this blog post because they're not listening. In the meantime, there are other alternatives to QuickBooks Point of Sale.