Is there anything more cowardly than the politician running for re-election? He’ll say anything, lie about anything, and not do anything in order to get re-elected. The challengers running against them are little better. I wish that just once, someone with scruples, principles, and morals would run for office.
Archive for the ‘Rants’ Category
Oh Boy… Election
Thursday, October 12th, 2006Missoula Sold Its Soul (For Adult Contemporary)
Friday, October 6th, 2006Well, the Rolling Stones are finally gone, having sucked the life out of our great city Wednesday night. They turned our quiet little campus into a madhouse of 40-somethings looking to recapture that ineffable feeling of youth and 18-somethings screaming “I can’t get no sa-tis-fac-shun!” out of their dorm rooms and reminding those 40-somethings that, hey, it’s okay to be old. Everybody was grabbing for a piece of the pie, and nobody’s hands were greedier than our very own University. It’s not enough to wash our credibility down the drain by signing an exclusive contract with ‘Killer’ Coke, they now sell our campus down the drain, too, just so some geriatric old fucks can waltz in here, play a few songs they penned 40 years ago, and make off with all our money and most of our pride, to boot.
From what I can tell from the reviews I’ve read, the Stones managed to do what everyone expected — they played a lot of hits, one or two new songs to remind us that yes, they’re still making records, and fire off a lot of fireworks to distract us. From what? From the maddening realization that the Stones hadn’t written a song that was actually relevent in two score years. It was all part of the show, the six story stage, the roaring spotlights, the old chestnuts, not new to anybody’s ears in decades, and we all suspended disbelief. Where the hell was the emotion? Somehow, these dangerous boys, who had the gall to declare their Sympathy for the Devil, were nothing short of… familiar. It’s hard to seem dangerous when half your audience is made up of people who have to be up at 7:30 A.M. so they can drop their kids off at school.
The emotion died a long time ago, along with the danger. It’s been replaced with glitz, with 70 tractor trailers and a six-story stage. It’s been replaced with 20,000 screaming fans, not screaming because they might share a moment with Mick or Keef, but screaming for the sake of… screaming. Real rock ‘n roll died a long time ago, certainly before I was born, and even the fringes — punk rock and death metal, for example — are gasping for air. It’s not rebellious anymore. It’s packaged. It’s merchandised. It’s $80 tickets. It’s 70 tractor trailers. It’s withered old farts, appealing to something they helped create, but not letting sleeping dogs lie, making a joke of the very thing they helped to create.
Why iTunes 7 (7.0.1, too) SUCKS
Sunday, October 1st, 2006When I heard that iTunes 7 was out, I was excited. Then I found a massive list of bugs that made it next to worthless. iTunes 7.0.1 came out, and I was hoping it would fix the following problems, but it didn’t. From what I read on the Series of Tubes, other people are having similar problems.
- I can’t listen to music on my PC while I play UT2004. I could with 6. If I try, the music starts stuttering more than Bob Newhart.
- When I listen to my shared playlist streamed from my PC to my laptop, it frequently stutters. Occasionally, when Song A ends, iTunes will say it’s playing Song B but I will hear Song A again.
- Randomly when I’m listening to a shared playlist, one song will end and, despite the fact that it’s not the last song on the playlist, playback will stop. Then, I will not be able to play anything from that playlist unless I eject it (eating one of my 5 per day connections, by the way) and reconnect.
- For no apparent reason, I’ll get this really washed-out, overdriven sound when listening to a shared playlist.
- Grats, iTunes: You now use 40% of my CPU all the time.
- I cannot view iTunes Store movies on my laptop anymore. I downloaded a few pre-7.0 Mythbusters episodes that ran fine, but I tried to watch the first episode of Heroes and all I could get was A) stuttering audio and B) my laptop locked up. Also, iTunes was eating 99% of my CPU.
I should point out that with the exception of the last one (maybe Apple’s using a fancier codec than my 2.4-gHz, 1GB RAM P4 can handle), all of these things were not a problem with iTunes 6.
It seems that the transition from iTunes 6 to 7 is going much worse than the transition from (Mac OS) System 6 to 7.
Not everything about 7 is bad. I like the CoverFlow feature, and gapless playback, but neither alone is worth the constant slowness, stuttering, distortion, and strange behavior that iTunes 7 brings to the game. I don’t want 6 back, I want 7.0.2, and I want it to work this time.
Why is OLGA down?
Saturday, August 19th, 2006Why is OLGA down? Because musicians want to A) find out how to play or B) share with others how to play their favorite songs. And apparently the musicians are upset, instead of flattered (which any other decent human being would be). What a way to say thanks to your fans, jerks.
By the way, if you ever needed another reason to hate KISS, here it is. (Read the ‘take-down letter’).
Microsoft’s ‘Evolve’ campaign
Wednesday, April 12th, 2006Does anyone else think that Microsoft’s ‘Evolve’ advertising campaign is way past due? The scenarios aren’t funny, the ads themselves (specifically, the ‘special effects’) look hideous, and the campaign boils down to Microsoft insulting its loyal customers who can’t afford to / don’t want to upgrade.
Still using Office 2000? You fuckin’ dinosuar! MS Office has evolved, and you’re still drinking your own piss. Get a life, upgrade, you loser. All the big IT departments are upgrading!
Irritating Metaphor of the Moment
Wednesday, April 12th, 2006“Worth the price of admission.” It was neat the first 4 of out 4,000 times I’d seen it in album reviews, but now it has officially died as a cliché/metaphor. Stop using it!
A Rant About iTunes for Windows
Thursday, March 30th, 2006Or, more specifically, a rant about Windows.
One of the nice things about the Mac OS is that files are not necessarily referenced by pathname. This has been true all the way back to System 7, when aliases debuted. I remember being but a tiny lad back then, and strewing aliases for everything all over the desktop of my dad’s Mac IIcx. The neat thing about aliases (which are the equivalent of Windows Shortcuts but better) is that if you moved the original file, the link would not ‘break’ (this was only true on the same disk).
This magic worked because of the way the Macintosh file system works (note that this is my understanding and not a canonical explanation). Each file on a disk had its own unique ID number (probably the primary key in the database). So when you created an alias, it pointed to the original file’s ID number in the database. As opposed to certain, less urbane file systems, where an alias (*cough, cough*, shortcut) would only hold the path the the original file. In these OSs, move the file and you break any links to it.
Which is where my rant about the Windows version of iTunes comes in. I often download audio files — like the Video Game Pianist’s repertoire — that go on my desktop. To make sure they sound good, I’ll open them in iTunes and give the files a listen. Then, I move them to my music directory, rename the files to my naming scheme, and add them all. The problem? iTunes’ library is permanent, so that one file that was on the desktop (and is now probably deleted) stays in my library, with one of those exclamation point icons next to it.
It would be so much easier if Windows used the scheme described above to reference files. Instead, I have to do stupid stuff when I’m not 100% on the ball. For example, if I download the Something Awful 8-Bit Christmas album and load it into iTunes from my desktop, all sorts of stupid stuff has to be done when I realize my mistake. First, I have to remove the files from my iTunes library. Then, I have to move them to my music folder. Finally, I can put them back into the library. God forbid I actually rated the files or made changes to the meta-data in iTunes’ database — that information disappeared when I moved the files.
So I have to be uber-cautious about my files, always putting them away right away. I even have to name the damn things correctly before I even load them into iTunes — if there’s a typo in one of the filenames and it’s been in iTunes for a while, collecting metadata, I’m SOL. Renaming the file, or moving the folder, renders the tracks unusable in iTunes.
There has to be a better way.
Oh, wait — there is. And it’s called Macintosh.
Overdue Notice
Friday, March 10th, 2006
3/9/2006
Mansfield Library Information Center
UM-Missoula
Dear David Michael Short:
The following item(s) must be returned to the location(s) indicated below as soon as possible.
Location: UM-Missoula
Notification Number: 1
Title: Mythical man-month : essays on software engineering / Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
Author: Brooks, Frederick P. (Frederick Phillips)
Item ID: 33342000497831
Call #: 001.6425 B873m
Due Date: 3/2/2006
Location: UM-Missoula
Notification Number: 1
Title: GUI bloopers : don’ts and dos for software developers and Web designers / Jeff Johnson.
Author: Johnson. Jeff, Ph.D.
Item ID: 33342014010828
Call #: 005.437 J67g
Due Date: 3/2/2006
If you are liable for overdue fines remember that the fine increases the longer you keep the item. You may also be charged for the replacement cost if the item is not returned.
If you have questions or need assistance contact us at:
Location: UM-Missoula
Phone: 406-243-6734
Notice how they’re due back on the 2nd, yet the message is dated 3/9/06. Thanks for sending the overdue notice a week late! But hey, it’s a quick way to make $14, right?
Gawd.
Ha… No Updatey
Monday, January 2nd, 2006I never update this thing. What can I say? I’m lazy.
Today was one of those days that make me question my direction in life. I’m a Computer Science major. Working with computers is my job, my path in education, my hobby, and eventually will be my career.
So why am I so easily pissed off by them?
The story: I was planning on going over to Chris Rose’s house to trade some local band CDs, check out his studio, etc. I have a punk CD I recorded last year, but I remixed some songs a few months ago. All I have that was ready to go on CD was the old mixes. I thought, hell, I can rebounce the unmixed files, remaster them, and be done in a few hours, right?
Wrong!
First, GarageBand apparently decided that it needed to fix the timing of the vocal tracks on some songs. Which is great, except they were already on time. So I listened to a song, heard it was off, and double-checked. The timeline showed that it was on time. “Whatever”, I said, and pushed the track forward by ear so the words were once again in time to the music.
It only got worse from there.
I use Pro Tools Free with free RTAS for mastering. But it’s only available with Mac OS 9. Luckily, my Dad has about 20 old Macs, and one’s a second-gen iMac. I started mastering, then realized that I was putting everything in mono. This was about 7:30pm, and my target time for getting over to Chris’s was about 5:00pm. It was only after another hour of mastering that I realized that I had no way to get the newly mastered songs off the computer. This particular iMac had broken FireWire. I had to burn a CD of the files just to get them on there in the first place. I tried two USB flash drives — no dice. They’re probably NTFS, while OS 9 demands FAT32. The thing didn’t see my iPod in disk mode, either. Blehhhh.
Then, as I was mastering the last song, the damn thing crashed. I rebooted, and got nothing on the screen. That was my ‘fuggit’ moment. I’d had enough. I burned CDs of the old stuff, and was off.
Chris’s studio setup was nice. The man got a Mac and some nice equipment. I’m jealous ;-). If I ever bought that much stuff, I think it would upset Carrie quite a bit. Right, too — I need to get a car, first.
Then I got on MySpace. I’ve hated it from the start, but finally got on there so I could keep up-to-date on Killing the Hare, the last of the ‘old skool’ Bitterroot Valley punk rock bands.
Hosed By Papa John’s and CampusFood.com
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005You know, I’ve used CampusFood a few times with varying degrees of success. They lured me in with a ‘free’ offer, where during a trial period you could have one item delivered to your room for free (less the tip for the driver).
And it’s convenient. I hate talking to people, because people can screw up. With CampusFood, all I needed to do was pick what I wanted. I could see my order in an itemized list, and even pay by credit card so I could get my food without any hassle whatsoever. Each delivery has been prompt and accurate — just the way I like it.
Until tonight. Tonight, I ordered a medium cheese pizza (on sale for $5.99) and two soda ($.99 each) for a grand total of $8.97 (there’s a one-dollar delivery charge). I have to confirmation e-mail to back this up; I didn’t just halucinate this price. I ordered this meal at 7:00. Having recently acquired a used PC, I figured I would clean my room and set up the PC while waiting. And that’s what I did. I cleared my card table, went downstairs and got a keyboard and monitor from the storage room, and hooked it all up. By the time things were clean and cables were connected, it was 8:00 and there was no sign from Papa John’s.
I gave it another half an hour and called them, perfectly reasonable. I hate confrontations (as you’ll see below). I asked where my pizza was, explaining that I ordered over the Internet. The young man (very polite) on the other end told me the printer jammed and my order would be here in half an hour.
It finally came an hour later, at 9:30. And apparently they charge me for extra time, because I was told the total was $13.22. Now, I could’ve caused a scene, explained to the delivery man that I ordered it for a certain price and that his price was about four dollars off. But of all the agents responsible, he is probably the lowest on the totem. So I had to go back to my room (in my naïvity I assumed that I could write a check for the amount the website told me and be ready) and write another check, this time for $15.50. I could have written it for exactly the amount, but it’s not the delivery guy’s fault. Delivery people rely a lot on income from tips, and I didn’t wanna punish him for what his highers-up are responsible for.
But that’s the last friggin’ time I order from either CampusFood or Papa John’s again. Between the two-and-a-half-hour delivery time and my fleecing, they’ve the both of them lost my financial support. The problem with automating something so complicated (eyes rolled fully into sockets) as the delivery of vittles is that the only person I directly deal with is least responsible for any screw-ups, and the other parties can each finger the each other for the blame.
Updates via 