1. They do not bark. Not at odd hours of the night, not at guests, not at the mailman, NOT EVER

2. They do not jump on guests when they come in the door. When they do jump on guests (after they sit down), people think it’s cute

3. They poop in tiny boxes

4. They don’t want attention every minute of the day

5. You don’t need to walk them constantly, just play with them.

6. They are (mostly) self-cleaning.

I’m sure there are more, but that is all I can think of for now.

I found this in my bathroom today. Evidently, someone went to all the trouble of finding a new roll of toilet paper, but did not bother to put it in the dispenser. I really don’t get the logic in that one at all.

Somehow, this managed to escape my attention until now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_The_Fallen

Basically, THE REST of what was Evanescence + Carly Smithson from American Idol. Go check out the single on their MySpace page. I was little hesitant about it when I first heard of their little group, but the song sold me. This is what Ev SHOULD’VE been had it not disintegrated from….whatever it was.

Well, this morning the big event arrived! 3.0 finally went up for public release. (click the pics for bigger versions, which will open in a new window/tab)

All done!

Something funny I found when I pulled up Console.app to watch the play by play. This is the console, not the actual updater log (said log that you want is under ~/Library/Logs/iPod Updater Logs, if you have more than one in that section, it’s the one with the highest number. Note that the log file will not appear until iTunes begins to apply the update. Thought I’d share in case there some of my Mac-owning readers haven’t updated yet)

So far, I think I’m liking Note sync the best. It was a bit of a rocky start, as I’d never bothered to figure out notes in Mail before this. Also, I had to disconnect and reconnect the iPod after updating to get it working for some reason, just re-syncing didn’t do it for me. Haven’t used Copy and Paste yet, but I’ve had the need for it many times before, so it’s much too late arrival should come in handy before long. System-wide Spotlight is fun too, although it does not seem to index within contact cards….hrmph. Should be handy as an app launcher as well since Apple didn’t actually add support for app folders and Stacks on the Dock like the rumors said

Oh, and nothing broken so far!

It’s a short Roswell re-enactment I made for my PowerPoint (er, Keynote) presentation for my Astronomy class. Re-enacted with Lego, because I couldn’t whip up an actual cast that quick:

Whose idea WERE those little blue lights on the 3D Dock anyhow? Did the black triangles just not do the trick anymore?

The shell script to get the 2D one on the bottom, if you were wondering, is as follows:


defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -bool 'TRUE'
killall Dock

To get rid of it, either delete the “no-glass” key from the Dock’s plist file, or just change it’s value to something else.

Does metal make me angry and chaotic? Or do I listen to metal because I am angry and chaotic?

We’ll get to the answer in a minute.

In the meantime, let’s get a little backstory. As some of you know, I am in the process of upgrading my AV receiver. The first unit I got, while sounding amazing, developed a bad remote sensor after 5 days. The exchange is still in progress, as detailed in an earlier post. The replacement unit is scheduled to arrive on Thursday.

In the meantime, I am left without something I have had constantly for over six and a half years – a sound system in my bedroom. I’ve been left with my car stereo and my iPod. Neither are as accessible of substitutes, which has led to me listening to music a lot less over the last several days. This, I have just realized, resulted in an interesting self-experiment being inadvertently performed: Does mostly going without my raging, crazy music while continuing to do everything else as normal make me calmer, kinder, and more sane? Is my frequent frustration and bitterness as result of this sort of music? Could it really be?

No. I spent most of this evening ALONE with my iPod, listening to most of the catalog of the metalcore band As I Lay Dying. Music which is in general fast, almost incomprehensible, and insane. For the first time in nearly a week, I feel calm and collected. Like I can sleep in peace, and survive the next day. This weekend has seen from me some very strange behavior from myself that has honestly frightened me. Sunday night after work I stopped at AM/PM for a substantial junk food binge. On the way home, I was literally screaming in my car at the other drivers, even though I knew they couldn’t hear me.

I have been getting worse and worse with junk food. I know it’s unhealthy, I have foolishly come to rely on it. I buy sugary espresso drinks when I get coffee, I buy too much stuff from my job (ice cream shop) I buy fried food and pastries at Clark, like they will somehow help me get through my day. Strangely, the one thing proven to help is my tasty, black, french-pressed Stumptown coffee. The healthy thing. Hmmph. Starting today, I am cutting out the junk food. Tasty drinks will be knocked back to one a week, probably from River Maiden, since theirs are full of win, and somewhat cheaper. When I buy food, I will keep it to healthy fair like sandwiches and salads.

But, I now have answered the question that has always been in the back of my head. No, “The Metal” does not make me this way. I AM this way. Music like this merely finds a resonance in my soul, and helps provide an outlet. The fury of it all…the double bass, the distorted guitars, the screaming and growling….the pressure in my chest from growling along with it…..it lets me dump the rage that is about to find its way out somewhere far, far worse. I cannot afford to dump this into the people around me. Junk food binges will quite literally be the death of me. It all ends here.

“You cannot kill the metal. The metal will live on!”

Thank you LORD, for giving me music from people like me, and for giving me the gear to enjoy it on.
Thank you.

……..my God…..I am actually smiling as I write this. What a concept.

Last week I ordered my Denon AVR 1609 from Crutchfield ($100 off! Closeout! Whoo!)

This week, the remote just quit working. Well, actually, it just stopped controlling the AVR. It still works with other stuff it’s programmed for. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get it working again.

So, this morning, sad me called Crutchfield support about it. After the (competent and American) support agent walked me through the troubleshooting, he put me on hold to “See what we could do”. His first offer on coming back? Exchange it. Oh, and the new one would be cross-shipped, and go out today. Oh yes, they will be paying the shipping both ways, and emailing a prepaid label for the return.

This, kids, is why Crutchfield charges MSRP for most things. It’s so they can afford to do stuff like this. Pay it, it’s worth it to have bought from them when stuff breaks or you don’t know how to use it (Yes, they can give useful setup help too).

Btw, they still have these AVRs up at the $250 price (Normally they go for $350), it sounds amazing. Sure, it doesn’t have all the fancy HDMI junk, but it DOES have Audyssey and a REAL 75w amp. And it weighs well over 20lbs. Unheard of for a $300-tier model.

I’m thinking I may get a new one. My current desk+chair combo is well over a decade old, it dates back to when i was a kid storing my (cheesy) watercolor work in the drawers. This desk is just plain not wide enough anymore. There is almost no space left between my laptop, monitor, HDD, keyboard, and mouse. You can go back to my post on dual displays for a pic of my desk, it looks the same still. I need more space to move my mouse as well. And maybe some room for some studio monitors. And I’m thinking a more comfortable chair should be in order while I am at it. I really have no idea how much this stuff costs though. Is $100 a good amount for a chair? Why are most desks only around 4ft wide? Certainly they make longer ones?

Also, while I am it, has anyone used a Razer DeathAdder before? Are they any decent? Or anybody have some impressions on how well the Razer Lachesis works with OS X? (It has no official driver, unlike the DeathAdder)

Today…as I was leaving the Clark Cafeteria:

“These cheese sticks are good, but kind of greasy. I wonder why they gave so much sauce with these? This is a huge amount of marinera for 4 cheese sticks. Hmm, ASCC debate. I wonder if the new round is actually going to have a noticeable effect on anything. Heh I highy doubt i-

OMG SHE HAS A TWELVE INCH POWERBOOK!”

Why did they discontinue the twelve inch PowerBook? Seriously, a 12″ MacBook Pro would be far more useful than that stupid 13.3″ anorexic MacBook Air thing.

My 4GB RAM upgrade kit arrived from OWC today! A pair of 2GB DDR3 SO-DIMMs to replace the include pair of 1GB sticks, taking the total RAM from 2GB to 4GB.

To start with, the machine had to be disassembled partly. You need to remove the battery and it’s cover from the lower part of the case. This is pretty simple, there is just a single lever that works locking bar with latches and magnets along it’s length that hold the cover and battery in place. Much like the lever on the Mac Pro that locks/unlocks the side panel, drive sleds, and optical drive carrier. After that, there are 8 screws around the perimeter of the baseplate, 4 small ones, 3 long ones, and 1 medium sized one. They are very small, and easy to lose, but fortunately they are also pretty hard to mix up. Once they are all out, the main baseplate pries off. It actually requires some bit of force. Clouds of dust popped out as I removed each latch. Here’s the cover, with it’s dusty inside facing up:

Once that is free, the bottom of the motherboard is exposed, as are the RAM slots, fans, heatsink fins, and the optical drive. The whole thing is very pretty looking inside. Everything is very neat and tidy, and well laid out:

Yes, that is dust caked around the fan. The fans are tiny, looks like 45mm by my measurement. Can’t tell the height too easily.

A closeup of the cooler:

After taking a can of air to the fans and heatsink fins (they are covered by tape at the side facing you, so you have to blast them from the top)…I….well, marvled at the amount of dust. There seemed to be an especially high amount inside the fan shroud against the side of the heatsink, and blowing in the heatsink with the can made huge clumps fly out from around the fan blades. Ok, with the dust clear, I unlatched the RAM and pulled it out:

New is at the top, with the extra chips on it.

Finally, job done. Fans are clean, new RAM seated and installed.

A slightly more detailed version…

Even more detail…

Today I had a white chocolate frappe at River Maiden.

Yes, it was amazing. As if you couldn’t tell from the name and where it comes from.

Evidently, meeting for casual sex through craigslist is dangerous. Who knew?

Tonight I went for a walk around dusk. It was cloudy and wet out, kind of misting. I just went walking along the roads outside my neighborhood. It’s mostly wooded, you really can’t see too much of housing. I was listening to Nightwish as I walked. It was one of those moments that was just so perfectly melancholy you don’t know whether to break down and cry, or start grinning at how peaceful it is.

Ahh….it was a good night off from work.

My life has just been changed! After doing my little page on RSS^, I decided to looking for a better way to alert myself to Live Bookmark updates, instead of checking the menus every few minutes. I came across a little add-on called LiveClick. It can send you Growl alerts when your feeds update, and bold/change the color of a feed when it has new items. Now, I can surf without obseesive checking!

Also, I figured out IRC yesterday. Yes, it has taken me this long. Shut up.