Year: 2004

A day late, but I made my weekly Best Buy run last night. I always like to check what new releases and specials they run, because I just can’t bother to keep up with that info myself anymore. This week, for example, I was surprised to find out that a 2-disc special edition of Trainspotting had finally been released. Yay, I finally get to see the international version!

Musically speaking, I also tend to find some real gems with their push for CD’s to be $9.99. I picked up another 3 fairly recent releases, and can so far praise one of them (haven’t listened to the other two yet). Motown 1’s is simply a stellar release featuring 26 tracks from one of the best labels and the foundation for so much modern music. There are so many songs that I know and love, and plenty that I loved but didn’t even know it! Even if you don’t feel like shelling out the 10 bucks, look at the track listing and download away. Everybody should be schooled in the classics so that they can truly appreciate music.

The most important track on the compilation for me is SmokeyRobinson & The Miracles‘ “The Tears of a Clown”. If you don’t know this song, you should. It would easily make my top ten songs ever written. And this leads me to my next point – I’m thinking of compiling a list of the songs that I consider the greatest. And I don’t mean favorites. I mean those songs that are so perfect and so important that the world would be severely lacking without them. Obviously this is still a matter of opinion, but since it’s my blog, my opinion rules. Number one on that list (although I doubt it will actually be numbered) is an easy choice for me, and anyone who hears me play it constantly will know what I mean. Still, I’m more than willing to take any suggestions…

I also just realized that this was possibly the most boring post on an interesting subject ever written. I’ve got to get back into the swing of things.

I find it so ludicrous when people espouse the virtues of Macs over PCs with an almost religious zeal, often under the guise of being “fair and balanced”. At least The Fishbowl makes it obvious that he is biased, still his analogy of operating systems and women is silly at best. To act as though Apple and it’s products actually care about its users in any way is just naive – Mac as a lover indeed! Of course all the usual types will jump out and say, “How true, Windows truly is a whore, and I love my Mac as much as it loves me!” But that’s what you get when products have followings.

What’s even worse is his attempt to bring Linux into the foray. To call Linux (yes, even on the desktop) a psychotic girlfriend who you will eventually abandon when you come to your senses shows how little he understands about anything computer-related outside of the Mac world. His description might have flown about 7 years ago, but it sounds clueless today. Personally, I know far more people who use Linux than Macs – and even OS X is built on BSD. At least a couple commenters seemed to have the right idea:

Linix is that plain girl from down the hall who might be your soul mate, who would be good to you and make you happy, if only you could get over your shallowness and ignore how she looks.
– Simon Brunning

I think that Linux is like that psychotic girlfriend that just seemed psychotic because you didn’t really understand her and becomes a lifelong companion later on 😉
– Nimalan Mahendran

Mac is the rich, snotty girl who would never give me a second look because I wore old bluejeans and t-shirts and drove an old Ford that I had rebuilt from parts. She wore designer outfits, drove a Lexus, scoffed at my rustic, poverty-stricken life.

Linux was the hippy girl in swirling skirts and tie-dye that looked within, welcomed me with open arms, because she loves all beings, didn’t ask for the moon…
– tony

I also liked the comment about BeOS and even the comparison of Linux to masturbation. I use my PC as a tool. I enjoy a lot of the things it can do, and also see where it can be improved. It’s a centerpiece of my life because of who I am and how I grew up, but I won’t let it define me.

Mac users tend to act like Apple the company can do no wrong and is so wonderful it practically invented kittens. They worship the ground Steve Jobs walks on because certainly his shit does not stink. What they don’t realize is that it is still a corporation, and sees them the same way as Gates and MS does – with great big dollar signs in their eyes.

To go along with the great server upgrade of 2004, I started to reload my desktop PC last night. I’ve been having problems with the USB subsystem for sometime and decided that my computer is pretty useless if I can’t download my pictures from my camera – especially since I got you know what on Wednesday (sample pictures to be posted tonight). I have thoroughly beaten that computer thanks to constant downloading of crap. My evergrowing collection of stupid TV shows has had a negative effect on the performance of my hard drives, so a reload seemed like just the solution.

She’s back up by now, and most of the little things are installed already. Unfortunately I didn’t start until almost midnight, so I have to finish tonight. One thing I’m looking forward to is installing some games. I know Lisa won’t be happy, but I’d like to play some Civ3 again. And maybe install The Sims for both of us to play around with. There’s even been some talk of shooting amongst the roomies. The point is I want to have fun with my computer and again – and also finally update my gallery (sorry Patricia 😉 ).

I’m hoping this will also all lead to more significant improvements in my work on this website. Afterall, this is the 33rd post this month – easily breaking last month’s earth-shattering record. Then again, I have to start looking forward to the end of July, when Lisa and I will be moving and the status of my server is suddenly up in the air!

A great article on the (possible) death of e-mail. I miss the days of Pine – at least then I looked forward to checking my e-mail, even if I didn’t get anything.

(via Buzzing Bye)

Lisa and I spent most of the night at the OpenMic. Danya was fantastic, and a number of friends and unexpected performers dropped by to make a wonderful go of it. More importanly, Lisa actually took the stage for a pair of songs. It’s always a pleasure to hear her sing – it reminds me of how talented she is and her of how much everybody else loves to hear it.

I planned on writing a full review of the proceedings, however it turned out that Danya needed a place to stay for the night since she couldn’t get a hold of her friend in the city. Lisa was nice enough to offer my place 😛 . It’s not a big deal, and I’m more than happy to let her stay here. I’m just wondering what Brian’s reaction will be to finding an attractive, young stranger asleep on our couch 😉 ! Hopefully I’ll have time tomorrow (today) to go into more detail.

Sunday night I finally took out ye olde server and laid a great big upgrade on her. I got sick of the SCSI CD drive and crappy tape backup drive causing problems, so I just chucked them. In went the original IDE unit, and oh-so quickly was I booting the Fedora Core 2 discs. There are some bugs to iron out, but so far everything is pretty hunky-dory.

I also took advantage of my downtime to install the final release of WordPress 1.2 “Mingus”. I’m guessing Matt’s love of Jazz influenced that name 🙂 . After some really strange lack of content errors were cleared up (I honestly have no idea what happened) everything seems to be running fine over here, too.

This is my first “real” post since the upgrade, so I’m curious to see if switching over to Ping-o-Matic! really does speed up the posting process. I feel really lame not having written anything worthwhile lately, but I promise to have some real updates soon. There’s a number of movie and music reviews for me to slap you with, and I haven’t even talked about the Art and Music Fest from last week.

Also, don’t forget Danya River tonight at Rodeo-Ristra. And even more important – Bubba Ho-Tep is released on DVD today!

Looks like a new company is starting a service for listeners to download live shows immediately after the fact at small clubs. It’s a cheap and easy way for bands to promote themselves, and for fans to gain instant satisfaction without all that bulky bootlegging gear. Best of all, the first kiosk was just installed last Friday at none other than Maxwell’s.

I like the idea, although I’d rather them drop the price-per-show to somewhere around $5. Although I guess it needs to be at least $10 to make up for how much they’ll lose via sharing (if I go to a how with 6 people, only one of us will end up buying it). With a lot of good shows coming up this summer I’ll be sure to give it a spin and let you all know.

(via Thoughts from Eric)

For those who missed it (myself included) William & Mary have Jon Stewart’s fantastic commencement address online. Stewart is obviously a brilliant comedian; but more than that, he is a very real person. His commentary and advice on life touches on both the humor and tragedy of this world. His overtly sarcastic tone is one to be taken with a grain of salt (followed by a shot of tequila and maybe a squirt of lemon). Anywho, this is the kind of speech that college grads should get to hear at every graduation.

Seriously, it’s a simple two step process to make yourself look like a media-pandering flock of fools as opposed to a highly-touted critical judicial system.

Step one: Give the top prize to a controversial movie. In and of itself this step is perfectly legitimate. It is entirely conceivable that film with the most media hoopla over ill-begotten controversy is indeed the best film. Until I see Faranheit 911 I cannot say for certain. However, it’s the followup that does you in.

Step two: Come out publicly and defend your choice. The instant you jump on defense in a situation like this means you’ve lost. They made a questionable decision (at least in many people’s minds), but it was still their decision to make. The jury at Cannes has never spoken about its decisions, and doing so now merely lends credence to opinions that this was a political move.

All I can say is that everything about this film has been a total muckup, and I would be amazed to see it have any real impact at this point. Moore continually makes himself closer and closer to being the Left’s version of Ann Coulter.

I finally decided it was time to make the pruchase. Last night I finally swung on by Harmony Computers and placed an order for my next camera. It’s well past the time for me to graduate to digital SLR, and I just couldn’t put it off any longer. I really want to be able to expand my photography skills this summer. Lisa and I will probably do some hiking, or at least some walking, in the next month or so – and I’m sure we’ll stumble upon some beautiful scenery.

The real fear is that this comes shortly after the purchase of my new monitor. I’ll post some pictures of all my new toys as they start rolling in – after all, I’m also waiting for my new DivX-enabled DVD player to come in.