Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the last couple of weeks, you must have come across the South African Rambo - spotted at H2O:
As ridiculous as his outfit for his age is (especially those nut-cracking pants), I feel sorry for the dude. By now he has a complete following on Facebook as well as his own fan-site (Not to mention that article in The Star the other day)
Amazing how easy it is to become famous (regardless if you like it or not) - I am sure Rambo guy enjoys the attention.
The Friday Picture will provide you with inspirational and (de)motiviational guidance to make the approaching weekend so much more appealing:
In my previous post I mentioned the Yamaha YSP-4000 soundbar. The Digital Experience phoned me the other day, and I have completed my sound-setup with the addition of the YST-FSW150 subwoofer from Yamaha:
The 130 watts subwoofer compliments the soundbar and produces rich sound (and fits perfectly into my TV-cabinet). Yamaha's Advanced Yamaha Active Servo Technology (Advanced YST) is a unique system in which the speaker and amplifier work together to cancel out impedance so as to achieve perfectly linear motion in the speaker unit. Advanced YST helps to ensure the highest levels of sound pressure and overall performance.
Yamaha engineers introduced two proprietary technologies (the Negative Impedance Converter and the Yamaha Air Woofer) which combine into one interdependent system in which speaker and amplifier are combined in a closed "Active Servo" loop.
The FSW150's imaging capabilities are incredible: Imagine sitting in the front row at the symphony. Close your eyes and visualize the placement of the members of the orchestra. The ability to reproduce this spacial quality of sound is known as imaging. Speaker size is one factor that can drastically contribute to imaging accuracy. Advanced YST speakers are small enough to have excellent imaging characteristics, yet still accurately reproduce tones from the very low bass of a pipe organ to the highs of a triangle and cymbals.
If you want to get all the technical details explained, read this article.
I generally refrain from mentioning names, id-numbers or even telephone numbers, but in a case where someone misrepresents the service offered, refuses to answer or return phone-calls in 3 weeks and then walks off with 800 Rand of my hard-earned cash, this is in my opinion more than justified.
About 8 weeks ago I engaged the services of Kya Sands Testing Station to have my car's license renewed and get a duplicate of my traffic register. This request was then handed over to Adrian Charles Maritz (ID: 7805285034083, Cell: 083 731 1986) and I transferred R803,00 to the testing station.
While the above should have been a trivial exercise not taking more than a few days, it took 3 weeks for Adrian to realize that he needs my passport. I gave him the passport on 8th February and two weeks later still nothing happened and by then he needed to have copies of my permanent residence and a number of other documents. While I had never been kept in the loop of the progress it was impossible to get hold of him and voice-mails/SMSs remained unanswered. I only received a returned phone call after two weeks once I threatened with a criminal charge.
So don't request his services because it is not worth the effort and to sum it up:
- It took all of 2 hours (including driving to the traffic department) to have the above done. Adrian was not able to do this in over 2 months
- The traffic department was more than satisfied with copies of the documents and did not require originals.
- He refused to return phone-calls or SMSs. Even my SMS to ask for the money back remained unanswered - eventually resulting in this post and a visit to the police station in a few days.
In defense of Kya Sands Testing station: Although Maritz stopped working for them a number of days after I engaged with them, they are partially to blame for this fuck-up, since I engaged with them and paid all money to them. Maritz however is to blame for his incompetence to fulfill a simple request.
REFUND OF THE MONEY? Can pretty much forget about this - would you think that a dishonest person would return the cash (and some of my original documents)?
My car's license expired (back in October) and I have never found time to get it renewed. My professional engagement did not allow me to spend hours waiting in a queue to have my license renewed. So I decided to go with the queue service of Kya Sands Testing Station which was completely incompetent in getting this sorted and after 4 weeks of waiting on them, I decided to do it myself.
Initially I made the mistake of driving through to Centurion where I was turned away since I do not live in Pretoria - how stupid is this and someone explain why I can drive anywhere in South Africa but can only renew my license where I live? So I went through to Marlboro (Sandton's) traffic department. The queues at 10am were bearable and I could literally walk up to a cashier and had my license renewed (with a R 500,00 penalty for a 6 month overdue renewal) within 2 minutes. While there I organised a duplicate of my traffic register which also only took 10 minutes.
The above begs the question why a queuing service was not able to do this in 4 weeks and charges a bundle for it?
Update (2009/12/29): A large amount of people keep on asking me for directions - why don't you look it up - here we go: S26 05.623 E28 05.395. For Google Maps, go here.
I would have thought that after the VHS/Betamax format war companies had learned. Clearly with HD-DVD vs. BlueRay Toshiba got majorily p0wned by Sony. Talk has it, that Toshiba's losses totaled in 2007 alone to a billion dollars - ouch.
It won't drive Toshiba under or anything, but you seriously have to ask yourself, was it really all worth it?
Sony has released the latest firmware without much information other than fixing some security holes. Get the firmware from here:
