Mar 13, 2007

Dream Interpretation

I've heard many theories about "meaning" within dreams. Some will say "water stands for knowledge" and so on. That's somewhat like saying your subconscious mind is a like an author following a formal code to create a private screen-play you view in your mind at night.

Without thinking about it too much, for the longest time I have felt that there is really a more plausible explanation for it all. It's this: your subconscious is just creating imagery that is consistent with the emotions you are already dealing with.

So, say you feel threatened in a work situation -- you may dream of being robbed (both are threatening). A dream involves some physical limitation (running? talking?) -- but lately you've been thinking that some external factor is causing you to miss out on an opportunity (emotionally both are frustrating). Financial worries plus dreams of being chased (too obvious). It works just as well for happy dreams too.

I can't recall a dream in years (mine or one described to me) in which I could not fairly easily match up the action with a prominent day-time emotion.

Jan 18, 2007

Sony -- never again

Hmmm.... a blog is good as any place to relate ones experiences with consumer products. Especially complaints that might provide useful insight for others out there. So, here it goes.

Sony does not stand behind their products and they do it in a way that shows contempt for their customers when it comes to parts/repair service. Two cases in point:

1) Years ago I decided to take an extended road trip through out the West and South West of the USA, so I had a Sony 10 disc CD changer installed in my car and off I went. The unit worked well enough although it didn't do a great job in terms of fidelity. But the point is that a few years later it malfunctioned. Sony has a service drop-off point in my area and for each product category they have a fixed price for repair. In the case of CD players like mine the fixed price was $125 -- which I thought was high but the unit cost me $400 and they were selling their current line of similar products for about $250 so it seemed like a worthwhile repair considering that the mounting in the trunk and the wiring from the trunk to the car stereo wouldn't have to change.

Well, Sony decided that my unit was "too old" for the (promised) fixed price repair to be honored. They offered instead to repair it for $300! Remember that the new and improved units were now selling for $250? You have to wonder why a company would even make an offer like this? And who would ever accept an offer like that?

2) Again a CD player, but this time a super duper portable with radio and other nice features. Not something anyone would buy today (this was the pre-iPod era) but it was their top of the line model back then and was $125. The thing was meant for active use (shock and skip protection) but one short drop to the ground and it was toast. From my previous experience I knew that this unit's cost was right at the fixed price repair cost. They had cheapened their newer units so the current top-of-the-line unit was more like $89 and it looked cheap and lacked features I wanted, so that wasn't an option. I figured that I'm pretty handy and that if it was a mechanical problem I could get a replacement part. I opened it up and sure enough the broken piece was obvious. It was a sled that carried the optical unit of the device. The sled had a tab on each side that kept it firmly in a track as a lead-screw device moved it back and forth. One of the tabs was broken but it was too small to provide a good bearing surface for being glued back in place. No problem - what could a new sled cost from their parts department? Go ahead and guess. Now double it and double it again and again. They wanted $65 for this piece of plastic! Most of their CD Walkman models cost less than that. You have to wonder why they do things like that.

So Sony, if there are car or home stereos in my future, camcorders or laptops, flat panel TVs or DVD players I can assure you they won't be Sony's.