dxpetti.com Random Bloggings of all things Cars, Tech and Japanese Culture

Adobe, Insurance Companies, Ace Combat 6, COD4 and more!

Wow, it has been a while since my last entry. Though I have my reasons. First of all look what they did to my poor car

While driving up my street a neighbour was reversing out of his driveway and hit me on the way out Now first of all, I don't blame the guy, for a start the shubbery around this particular driveway shields it till its too late, secondly its very steep, like more than a 45 degree angle kind of steep so he would not of even seen me till the last second. This issue isn't just present for his drive way, its a common problem throughout our whole street it just sucks it happened to me and right near Christmas.

Now to my insurance company, who are a bunch of cock munchers. I say that lightly too as my hatred for them is deep. When I made the claim they said my 3rd Party choice for repairer would be chosen if they were competitive. So as they asked me I got one quote from a AAMI (my insurance company) partner and one more quote from somewhere else other than my 3rd Party prefered. In the end my prefered repairer was in the middle in terms of price and still it wasn't deemed competitive. The difference was 600 dollars in the end, and car parts/labour isn't cheap so 600 dollars isn't all that much in the grand scheme of things. But the assessor (who shall from now on be known only as "Jerk Off") wouldn't have a bar of it. Jerk Off wouldn't even let me see the quote from the AAMI partner which of course got the work. Basically they did all they could to get their "friends" the work despite my best efforts. All the Jerk Offs excuses were lame; the money for the job will come from GIO whom insurance the person who reversed into me so why should they give a damn if its not the most expensive quote?

Come January I will be changing from AAMI to Allianz whom are similar priced and give me awesome options like choice of repairer, no need for quotes just point the way and they will get the money to them, for a small extra fee per annum windscreen only jobs can be repaired excess free and not to mention you can nominate another driver who can be covered for if the car is damaged in their care for no price difference (in terms of excess or annual charge). So yes, fsck you AAMI, your a bunch of knobs who wanted to save another rival company 600 dollars and consequently lose near 2000 dollars a year and any future customers I can prevent from signing up. Well done Jerk Off, have a raise for your brillance.

Now onto another rant. Adobe, those pricks have discontinued my belovered Imageready which has been bundled with Photoshop for a number of years now. It was primarly a animation and web image tool and Adobe have decided to scrap it. Though they have implemented some of Imageready's features into Photoshop CS3 like the animation and image slicing stuff minus one very import bit, the ability to open .GIF files and have each frame as a seperate frame and layer. Now this was very important to make GIFs I had found into signatures but oh no Adobe decided to be assholes and remove that feature. What do they say in response, "Use Adobe Fireworks". Adobe get with the fsckin program, Fireworks is shit, is was when it was by Macromedia and it still is with a Adobe label stuck on it and I am not the only one that thinks so!

Finally I managed to pick up Ace Combat 6 the other day and by golley its awesome. The graphics, the sound effects, the gameplay, all very awesome. I am still coming to terms with playing AC on a 360 controller but I'll get over it. One thing does detract from the game and thats the main female in the (side) storyline. Is utter trollop and makes me want to throw up in a bag. Apart from that the game is fantastic. Haven't touched MP yet but I will once I have cleared the SP campaign once

Call of Duty 4, another fantastic game. So fantastic I think its the best FPS game I have played in along time. The storyline is something out of a 5 star movie, so dramatic and emotional. Infinity Ward (the creators) even went as far as to add a special level after the credits that pays homage to every terrorist on a plane sitation in many Hollywood flicks. Its a game that everyone should pick up; its even half decent on a console (not a easy achievement for a FPS). The multiplayer is fantastic too, with the ability to customise your load out with a very wide range of weaponary and abilities called "perks" it makes for some interesting game play.

I have good news on the PS3 front (I told you I would get their). A 40GB Ceramic White JAP spec PS3 is on its way from Japan as we speak and should arrive at work on either Thurs or Friday. Picked it up for $600 bucks including a second controller which is a Dual Shock 3 (not available in Australia or America for that matter till Q1 next year). Cannot wait to test out my Blu Ray movies of which the list as expanded with the arrival of Pirates 2, Apocolypto, Underworld 2 & Black Hawk Down. Unfortunately though it looks like Warner fscked up and Blade Runner on Blu Ray is delayed and probably won't hit on Dec 24th like they estimated

I think that is enough for today, more from my life shortly
Stay tuned!