Category: McQ

It’s good. 

I’m closing in on my third night in Boston, and this is the first time I’ve had the combination of enough time and energy to post. I’m here for the annual managers meeting which was pretty much the same mix of sessions as last year. The company wide part of the program ended today at 3pm, so I went out for a bit of a walk.

The GPS definitely helps on the streets of Boston, which are not laid out in a grid. It’s a beautiful old city with lots of cool places to see like this…

That’s the only picture I took, but I couldn’t resist it — Deblits, that one’s for you. 🙂

I’ve got one more day of sessions, specifically with my organization, and then I’m heading home. See you tomorrow, Wilsons!

While waiting for the rest of my family to awaken this morning, I happened upon Star Wars episode 3 showing on one of the pay tv stations. I find it interesting that even though I wasn’t happy with the way episodes 1..3 went, I still find the strength of the myth to be extremely compelling.

Is it possible that the Star Wars mythos transcends the marketing that brought it into being? Outside of the mainstream religions, what stories are known by as many people, the world over, as Star Wars is? There have been literally hundreds of books written in and about the Star Wars universe. It’s touched every media that mankind has invented. I wonder if, when whatever species succeeds humanity on this planet searches the archeological record of this time period, they will assume that SW was a religion? Heck, maybe it is, I don’t know.

I do know that, whenever I watch a Star Wars movie, I get inspired. Sometimes I write music; sometimes I write more of my own fiction; whatever happens, I think about my place in the world, and whether I’m on the side of light or of dark.

Ya, I know, that’s pretty corny, but people get inspiration from some pretty strange places, and I bet even post-JarJar there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way.

“May the force…” (you know the rest (/em winks))

[Update: After Ken’s ever so subtle hint, I feel compelled to warn you that this article contains numerous spoilers. Sorry, Ken.]

Who thought it was a good idea to wreck every interesting character?

• Adama? — losing his grip
• Baltar? — getting a conscience(!)
• Apollo? — a fat slob
• Starbuck? — turning into a Cylon sympathizer
• Colonel Tigh? — an absolute raving psycho
• Laura Roslin? — shot. (ok, I’ll give you that one; I saw her in the trailer for next week’s episode, so…)

Man, I smell a Matrix sequel!

Even the g.d. cylons have gone nuts. Guys, I get it: Cylons are starting to behave like people. Did you think we wanted to see that? Ask yourself this: If you blur every distinction in the damn series, what are you left with? My guess: Another generic “rebels versus the empire” story.

And for the record, “stepping over the line” into suicide bombing as a fucking plot device is so absolutely unfeeling that I was speechless when I saw it. Who do these morons think they are?

Bah!

Did you know that you can only “deauthorize all” computers you have connected to the iTunes Store once per year? I didn’t.

I just found this out the hard way: For some reason, Deb’s laptop, which was authorized to play content from my iTS account, lost its authorization. When I went to re-authorize it, it claimed that I had already used all five authorizations. Of course, it was correct, I had used them all, but one of them should have been that laptop.

I then tried deauthorizing all, to get back to a clean state and it told me that I could not do this until April of next year.

Come on guys! First off, it doesn’t make sense to put any constriants on this: If you tell me I can play the music on five computers, then let me pick them. It should be about simultaneous use of the content, not associations with particular machines.

I can’t even figure out why you would do this. If I was smart, and just authorized whichever machine I was in front of when I wanted to play my content on it, and then remembered (*sigh*) to deauthorize it when I was done, couldn’t I play it on any machine I want? I wonder, do they prevent frequent repeated authorizations too? Given that I’m already in a screwed up state, I’m not going to test it.

Could it just be that their DRM is so lousy that if they leak too many keys too quickly, someone will be able to crack it?

Bah!

[Aside: Why do I have to deauthorize all anyway? When I sync my Macs with .Mac they give me a nice GUI that lists all machines that are currently sync’ing to that account, and let me pick ones to disconnect. That is what the iTS store should have too. Apple, you’re days of owning the monopoly on this stuff really are almost over. It’s time to start actually making your customers happy (and yes, you can add “re-downloading anything you have already purchased for the cost of the bandwidth” to the must-have list).]

I just finished reading the book “The Lies of Locke Lamora” by Scott Lynch. It’s a story of rogues and cutthroats, with a touch of magic — in other words, it’s just the kind of story I like.

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, since it has a few structural problems that I would put down to it being written by a “bright new voice” (said the promotional material (/em winks)).

Having said that, it’s definitely worth a read if you’re in the mood for a crime caper with some twists. If you do give it a go, let me know what you think.

Well, it had to happen eventually. 🙂 I finally got around to collating enough of my musical experiments to get another album’s worth of music together. Some of it is pretty random, but there are a few good bits. Take a listen and let me know what you think.

(hint: Clicking on the album title, on the page this links to, will get you a zip of all the songs.)

As you probably know, I bought a Viewsonic LCD monitor a month ago. Well, when I turned it on this morning, it had a column of pixels on the right side that was all green. Boo. What’s worse, when I packed it all up to take it back to the store for a repair, I couldn’t find my bill.

Luckily, the store had a record of the transaction, and simply swapped the broken one for a new one. I definitely appreciate that kind of customer service, particularly when they technically didn’t have to do so after the first 14 days.

Normally, I’m not one to randomly link to another blog without having something useful to say about it, but I thought this rebutal to Cory Doctorow’s latest anti-DRM rant was worth flagging. It’s proof that the internet can be used for more than flame wars.

Well, it’s taken a full week, but I’m finally starting to relax. Man, was I ever stressed before I left on vacation. So far, it’s been exactly the kind of vacation I like: lots of computer games, cello playing, cycling and reading. What more could a man want? 🙂