So I started putting the assorted debris of my life into boxes the other night; starting with the office upstairs I took all the stuff off my shelves and arranged it neatly into two boxes which each weigh about as much as an import car. Moving is fun because you start to enforce the 5-second rule—when you hold some piece of crap over the open box and decide within five seconds whether you care enough about it to carry it down a flight of stairs, into a box truck, across town, and back up a flight of stairs, or to chuck it. Chances are, you’ll say no. Which means you gather a pile of stuff in front of your door which either waits for a trip to the dump or Goodwill. And then you get to where you’ve moved to and can’t find that thing you need because you 5-seconded it and now you have to go out to get a new one. (Can you tell I’ve done this before?)
I got my collection of tube radios packed tonight, along with antique cameras, pictures, and pretty much anything else not bolted to the floor in the living room. (Note to my friends who have agreed to help move: I’ve kept the boxes light. Really.) Next up are the assorted loose items in the basement, and then I’ll work upstairs to the bedrooms.
In other news, it looks like AppleScript, which I was able to learn and use in 15 minutes on OS9, is crippled in OSX. All I want to do is build a small script to update a file remotely. From all I can find so far (and from the Finder Dictionary), Copy isn’t even supported in OSX. And the Finder isn’t scriptable using drag-and-drop. Dammit. I don’t have three weeks to devote to learning the stupid language in the first place.
- No, assholes, games do not sell movies. Your last movie sucked. People don’t want to get burned twice, especially when you charge $9 a ticket for this crap. Make a better movie, and people will come.
- OSX seems to be slowing down every three or four days as I put it to sleep and wake it up each day. Photoshop lags, Eudora takes up cycles to think, and all the apps seem sleepy. Anybody else noticed a problem with X and PowerBooks?
- Buymusic is doomed to fail if their music service is anything like their customer service. Oh, and all those songs might not be legally available anyway.
- Come on, people, vote this guy out of office. What is it going to take (or what are we going to have to lose?)
</grump mode off.>
Hmm. I’m working on modifying a script to automatically update my local log file to my webserver, so I don’t have to manually copy and paste the file each time I update it. There are a few things I’d like to change (this script was initially written as a directory backup too, not a single-file updater) but I need to have more knowledge of AppleScript to do it. I wish the Finder was script-recordable like iTunes or other OSX applications. Oh, and Apple: three of your scripts for iTunes crash the application.
Last night I spent about 45 minutes at the Lowe’s looking at the various and sundry refrigerators for sale. Life is not a simple choice of almond, white or yellow anymore; These days there’s brushed metal (a pain in the ass if you have kids; metal picks up fingerprints like sprinkles on ice cream) and black (who in their right mind buys a black fridge? you might as well just start pissing on the floor, because that’s not gonna help resell your house.) There’s also the added complication of the side-by-side vs. the over-under (or, to really complicate things, the top fridge and chest freezer underneath, a la my Grandma.) If we get the side-by-side, we can have the ice/water dispenser, negating our Brita and Pur pitchers. But Jen’s an over-under woman, which means we’ll be spending less (seems like the side-by-sides are $200 more, on average.)
In other news, this does not mean good things for our current project. After our team busted asses to develop a beautiful demo, the whole project was cancelled. Dammit.
myself, stas, jeff, and jon 7.26.03
We’re back from our trip northward to New York to attend the wedding; my fears were unfounded and we had a great time. I was able to connect back up with some old friends, catch up with people, and help celebrate Stas’ wedding. (When was the last time you heard “Enter Sandman” at a wedding? No, really. Played by a great cover band called The Nerds. It was better than you’re imagining.) I’ve posted a few pictures here. It was great to see everybody, and please stay in touch!
Looks like the house stuff is on track (when all this is over with, and the papers are signed, I may write about the process, but for right now I’m going to hold my tongue) and DSL is available at that address, which means we’re getting broadband hooked up immediately. Cable will most likely wait until later; the other major issue is wireless service. I’m doing some preliminary investigation into which service offers the most for a two-phone shared plan. More info to follow, and any input is welcome…
A very PBS night. Not ony did I get swept up into the Seabiscuit episode of American Experience, but after that I got sucked into Blues Story. I am now fighting the urge to buy hundreds of dollars worth of music from the iTunes store. The best part of the whole thing was watching Teller, who had nestled comfortably between my legs for a nap, jump four feet in the air when Big Mama Thornton suddenly belted out a verse about her low-down cheating man.
I bought the album Best of Bowie, thinking that I would own this collection of the songs I do like as opposed to purchasing the entire back collection of his work to get the eight songs I want. I put it on this afternoon to groove out to some tracks and while listening to “Under Pressure” I realized that there’s a verse missing at the climax of the chorus. Hunh. So I continued listening to the album, and when “Young Americans” came on, I was shocked to find that they clipped a bunch of stuff out of this song as well. Big deal, you’re saying. So what. Well, that’s what I bought the album for in the first place. I wanted to hear the whole song like it was on the LP I used to own in 1986, not an edited version. I understand that they wanted to jam as many songs on this CD as possible, and while I applaud that effort, couldn’t we have done without “This Is Not America” (arguably one of the weaker songs in his discography) to get the full long-playing version of each song?
Listening, RIAA? This is a great excuse for file-sharing. I feel like I bought a copy of the new Harry Potter and found out that it’s missing the entire middle chapter.
This weekend, I’m driving north to the old homestead, deep in the Land Of Classic Rock, to attend the wedding of my best friend from High School. There’s a reason I live down here in Baltimore, five hours, $6 and three bridges away from the town I graduated High School in; my experience in that town was sort of a grab-bag of good and bad. It wasn’t until I was about 25 that I figured out the art of re-inventing myself, so my entrance into that town at eighth grade was a rocky one. One of the things that got me through was the group of friends I made my sophomore year, including the guy who’s getting married. It should be a bittersweet experience, and one I’m only partially looking forward to—I’m not sure who’s going to be there, how they’re doing, or what they’ll say. I missed my 10-year reunion (no great loss—I doubt I would have gone anyway) so I’m not up to date on what’s been happening, but I’m wondering if some people have grown up. I’m also wondering if I should take Jen up to my old house to take a look; it’s not often you get to see an impound lot in the middle of the woods. (My dad bought a repossession business in 1984, prompting our move to New York. To answer your questions, no, it’s nothing like the movie, yes, I got pretty handy at picking locks, and yes, Harry Dean Stanton is the mack daddy.)
Queer Eye For The Straight Guy could convince me to hook up basic cable again when we move. Todd taped an episode for me, and it is hilarious. And holy Mother of God, did I want to smash this dude’s girlfriend in the head with a brick.
After crawling back out of a black hole with Jen’s help last week, I’ve been wanting to take some pictures and think creatively again. Unfortunately, two of the places I wanted to shoot at did not lend themselves to photography this morning. A few days ago I walked through the southern section of Canton, over by Brewer’s Hill, and found some streets I’ve never seen before. I also drove up Broadway north of Fell’s Point, with the goal of parking and shooting some of the storefronts and people I saw there. What I found didn’t excite or inspire me, however—the Canton area had some interesting subjects, but the Broadway area was not speaking to me. Perhaps I’ve worn out my particular area of town; perhaps I wasn’t awake enough to see some of the natural character present this morning. Whatever the cause, I haven’t used my camera in a week and I’m beginning to worry about that.
I got a nice email from a guy in Texas this afternoon who is considering buying a Scout that almost exactly resembles mine- same color, style, and interior appointments. His Scout doesn’t have any visible rust, however. Sigh.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Jen sent me this link from CNN this morning with the comment “for the love of god man, what was the question?”
Looks like we’re not going to hear about the new house until the 25th or so. I think I may have to be medicated until that time.
unintended (or intended?) Amazon humor, 7.21.03
Todd sent me a section of the transcript of Frank Zappa testifying before the PMRC back in the ’80’s. He makes a great point.
Senator HAWKINS. Mr. Zappa, you say you have four children?
Mr. ZAPPA. Yes, four children.
Senator HAWKINS. Have you ever purchased toys for those children?
Mr. ZAPPA. No; my wife does.
Senator HAWKINS. Well, I might tell you that if you were to go in a toy store — which is very educational for fathers, by the way; it is not a maternal responsibility to buy toys for children — that you may look on the box and the box says, this is suitable for 5 to 7 years of age, or 8 to 15, or 15 and above, to give you some guidance for a toy for a child.
Do you object to that?
Mr. ZAPPA. In a way I do, because that means that somebody in an office someplace is making a decision about how smart my child is.
Friday night, I was about as depressed as you can get. I got back to the house and Jen greeted me with a beautiful bouquet of gladiolas, a thick spicy steak, a glass of red wine and a plate of dark, choclatey brownies. I ate a full meal for the first time in a week, helped finish the bottle, and was asleep from 11pm to 10 the next morning.
Saturday we threw together a small party with a bunch of different friends; With a few exceptions, everybody was able to make it, and we were up until four in the morning talking, laughing, and enjoying the company. Thanks, everybody!
And, stupid me, I was having such a great time, I didn’t take a single picture.
Today I’m at work, wondering how the inspection is going/went on my house. There are other things going on that I’d rather not write about here, but let’s say that I’m averaging 5 hours of sleep each night and I’m as jumpy as a cat. I don’t know if any of this is going to go through, and I’m worried and nervous. Isn’t life swell?
I’m about as low as a brother gets here.