Computerjargon : Rebooted
12/20/2005
09:58 AM : Ricky Gervais Podcast
Even if you are adamantly opposed to podcasting I highly recoomend you give a listen to
Ricky Gervais' podcast. He is the original creator of the British comedy
The Office . Its worth the listen just to hear Brits say things like "cheeky" and "bollocks" and "utter rubbish".
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12/19/2005
09:24 AM : The Holiday Party Venue
This past Friday came the annual company holiday celebration. I have a tendency to switch jobs in the later part of the year, which creates for a somewhat awkward holiday party. I have met many people but I can't say they completely grasp the full jason experience. The party was fun, food was great, the wine flowed like water.
The party was held at the recently rennovated Walker Art Center. The new building, added last year, looks a little odd. I've heard it referred to as the metal fish tail in Minneapolis. I think it looks like an angry man.
I was a little nostalgic heading down there again. We used to live directly next to the Walker in an apartment complex. I used to walk through the sculpture gardens every morning on my way to work.
The inside of the Walker is beautiful and much like walking through Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. When we exited the evalator from the parking ramp there were no signs to indicate where we were supposed to go. We weren't in the main lobby of the Walker. We were in a wing of an exhibit. The only people available for questions were ticket agents. The ticket ladies kindly directed towards the main lobby by suggesting we follow the brick pathway. So we followed it directly into an exhibit on flight, not exactly the main lobby. We stumbled around, but eventually found the main lobby.
We took the elevator to the 8th floor for the reception. Suspciously we noted the elevator had no 5th floor stop. It went from 4th floor to 6th without a stop. Very John Malkovich if you ask me. We drank and drank until we were ushered out for dinner. At that point we were instructed to take the elavator to the 5th floor for dinner. But the elevator we were piling into had no 5th floor. So 20 individuals crammed into an elevator going nowhere began to hypothesize on just how to get to the 5th floor.
"Go to the 4th and walk up a flight!"
"Go to the lobby and take the other elevator!"
On and on they went while the elevator went nowhere. We ended up heading back down to the lobby, walking back through the Walker, to the original set of elevators, the set that brought us from the parking lot.
I saw much more of the Walker that night than I thought I would. If they wanted me to see everything they had to show off then the layout worked. I felt worse for the ladies wearing high heels. I know Courtney would have wore better shoes if she knew she'd be walking around on a brick road for a good portion of the night.
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12/16/2005
08:04 AM : The Calm Before the Cold
I mentioned to Courtney earlier this week that I was surprised my allergies hadn't acted up yet. Typically by this time of the year I'm popping pills every morning and run the humidifier constantly. But this year I haven't had to do any of that. Well, that was until yesterday.
I woke up with a scratchy throat and my sinuses were running ramptant. My allergies have arrived.
If you ask Courtney, she will tell you that it's all in my head, which is sort of true. Did I cause the onset of sinus congestion? Maybe. Was I ignoring the early signs a month ago? Maybe. In any event, this year I have my trusty Allegra by my side, left over from a nasty sinus infection/brain tumor this summer.
I really question if any of this is real anyhow. I'm sure if you told me that a magical gray pill would clear my sinuses, grow hair, and make me socially adept I would pop it in a second and all would be right. I can't really tell if the Allegra is working or not. I'm used to popping decongestants which dry me out and make me pee a lot. The Allegra doesn't have any of those side effects. Not to mention it's a 12-hour solution. What happens if it starts to wear off? Should I take more? From my estimates it lasts only 8. But then again, it's all in my head anyways.
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12/15/2005
08:47 AM : El Loro for President
Courtney and I ate at the El Loro last night. As Court pointed out, El Loro will be "that place" we drag our kids to. The food and staff are great.
We were the first seated in an area near the front of the restaurant. We ordered our food and were enjoying our chips when two women were seated in the booth next to us. "We don't want to sit by them," one of the ladies said. I glanced her way to make sure she wasn't talking about us. I looked over my shoulder. No one else was in the area. I concluded that, yes, she was talking about us.
"I hate sitting next to people. We're going to be loud," she told the waiter. They sat two booths away. I found her comments odd and a tad rude. After sitting down the two young women discussed, loudly, the appropriate size of margaritas to order. They determined the 60oz was too large and settled for the smaller 36oz mugs. The girl was right, they were going to be loud.
For the rest of our time there I couldn't hear them much. As the restauant started to fill up other couples and families were seated around them. I considered it pennance for their demands.
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12/14/2005
07:50 AM : Advertainment : Coming to a Station Near You
Gannett, owner of KARE 11 here in the cities, is pursuing another avenue for cash by introducing Advertainment specials. This new type of television talkshow will feature paid-for product highlights. Gannett assures the line between news and advertising will be kept distinct. Product spots will be identified as sponsored. Consider advertainment the new form of infomercials. The only difference is these spots will be masquarading around as real news shows.
Sleezy if you ask me. If Gannett hopes to battle devices like Tivo with faux-news spots I hope they realize that I will just choose not to record these.
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12/13/2005
16:55 PM : Best Buy: Target Marketing or Gender Bias?
A City Pages' columnist recently ranted about Best Buy's holiday gift guide being more male focused. The editorial rags on the company for the lack of content for women in the audience. The article concludes that Best Buy thinks less of women because their fliers included very little content for women. And because of this Best Buy must believe that women are only good for buyin gadgets for men.
I quote, "The lesson here? According to Best Buy, women love shopping for and pleasing their man."
I'm all for equality between genders. I think there are major issues society needs to address when it comes to gender-bias (equal pay, anyone?) But please people, this is ridiculous. The truth of the matter is the majority of shoppers at an electronics store will be male. Just like the majority of shoppers at a make-up store will be female.
The columnist's rant focuses on the point that these fliers were not sent to a subset of existing Best Buy customers, but to the "CURRENT RESIDENT" that lives at every house. When I check my mail today I can almost gurantee that there will be something in it that I'm not interested in. Do you know what I'm going to do with it? I'm going to throw it away.
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08:07 AM : Subscription-based Addiction
One more minute. One more click. One more kill.
Just one more minute. That's all. Then I'm done. Then I can sleep.
I can't sleep, I'll play for one more minute, one more click, one more kill.
I picked up World of Warcraft about three weeks ago. It's a massive multi-player online role playing game. I like to think of myself as being on the edge of nerdism. I have the capability, and choose to be, to interact with actual people outside of the computer. I try to stay away from video games like this because, well, they start to consume my life. Addiction to a game like World of Warcraft is too easy. But, after both Frank and Kyle started playing, I didn't want to be left out.
So now I'm in, addicted, just like everyone else.
Courtney has been kind about it. I try to limit my online time to an hour or two and when we have schedule conflicts. I'm waiting for the time she has to pull me away after a 10 hour stint that included 18 Mountain Dews. I'm hoping I give up before then.
To make matters worse, Chad and I started using Skype to communicate while playing. Courtney drew the line with me when I started insisting that we only communicate with Chad through the computer. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the VOIP service. Last time I attempted to call someone over the internet was circa 1998, when my brother was living in the dorms at Madison and I had a one way cable modem. The service was subpar. Any internet surfing done during our conversation caused the voice communication to breakdown. Chad and I are able to chat away with very little, if any, interruptions. Still, Court will not have anything to do with it.
I started reading A Million Little Pieces to keep me away from the computer as much as possible. It's a first-hand account of a drug addict's recovery at Hazelden. I picked it up after 3 separate people all suggested it to me within one week. The only catch, it had just been added to Oprah's book club. I was assured that I would still enjoy it, even if Oprah enjoyed it too. I'm half way through it, at my typical breaking point. I have a horrible tendency to leave a book half way in if it doesn't keep my attention. I'm having to fight my way through the rest of this one. The first 100 pages were stunning, almost breathtaking. Frey recounts every minor detail of every situation which allows the reader to become emotionally involved. He shares his addiction with you. His writing style is more of a stream-of-conciousness. He uses no quotation marks and repeats himself, repeatedly. To me it feels like how my brain processes things over and over and over again.
So why am I stuck? I've hit a dry spot. Eventually he is bound to turn the corner right? Rehab sucks, treatment sucks, everyone sucks, right? That's the gist of the book. It's a 400+ page novel. Around page 140 he flips. Life is no longer hard. Sure, he's getting rehabilitated which is making his life that much easier. But it also makes it monotonous. That's part of rehab though. Give people a pattern, a rut they can follow. Give them a path to walk down so they don't have to think about it. It just makes for some repetitive reading at some point.
Now I'm assured that it picks up again soon. So I'm fighting through the dryspell. I'll let you know what I think when I finally finish it. Hopefully soon.
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12/12/2005
14:15 PM : Infosnack Definition
Infosnack - The time spent on the computer at work doing things that aren't work-related.
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12/05/2005
08:14 AM : My Weekend in (Almost) Vegas
This weekend was pretty chill. Courtney and I spent some quality time together doing what we do best: getting into trouble and hanging out.
After a long and cheap night of drinking at Lyle's Court, Chad, Tina and I tried to hop on a plane for Vegas. At 1 AM we thought it would be a good idea to call the airport, get on a plane, and go. Needless to say, it didn't work out like that at all. Did you know there's no redeye from Minneapolis to Vegas? Go figure. After regaining sanity we've decided to go in January.
Saturday we intended to do some Christmas shopping. It didn't go so hot. We ended up parking ourselves at Barnes and Noble for an hour or so. We sat in the knitting section for awhile.
Side note: if you still don't know what to get me,
Stupid Sock Creatures has been added to my list. Anyways, a very friendly youngerish lady wandered into the section where we were parked on the floor. She greeted us and made some friendly banter. As we grew more comfortable with her she mentioned she was looking for a good starter knitting book as a gift for her niece. Courtney offered her 2 cents about
Stitch 'n' Bitch being a very useful reference for beginners. To our surprise the lady was taken aback by the title of the book alone. She would not say the title and began to question the instructions contained within. It was an uncomfortable moment. We realised we had accidently hit a nerve with her. Courtney asked if her reluctance to purchase the book was because her niece was young. "No, she's 22." Her friend, or mother, or somebody she knew, walked up in the middle of the conversation. Her friend began a rant about what a poor choice of title the book was. We somehow became surrounded by uptight right-wing-anglo-christian-bible-bangers out to dominate the world one knitting book at a time! The indignities continued. The younger woman proclaimed that there was absolutely no way she could possibly give a book of that type in a family setting like Christmas. I didn't have the balls to tell her we gave it to Court's mom for last year's Christmas. We dropped the conversation and they moved on to the christian knitting section. Sometimes I forget that there's another 49% of the world who actually voted for George Bush.
The rest of the weekend was spent just coolin' out, running errands, and just enjoying the moment. There's a laundry list of things we should have done, or could have done, but we didn't do. I'm fine with that though. I wouldn't have wanted to spend the weekend any other way.
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12/02/2005
13:40 PM : Slow on the Up Swing
I'll admit I've been a little slow lately grabbing on to new technology. If I can't find an immediate benefit to it then I complete forget about it. In the last few days I've run across two things that I can't believe I've lived this long without:
Podcasting - Holy cow, it's talk radio whenever I want it! I can listen to people debate the merits of browser versions all day long. The only downside I discovered was that any tom, dick, or harry can have a podcast. I found very few quality podcasts that I actually would want to hear on a regular basis. The few that I liked:
MPR: Musicheads - The elitist music nuts from The Current give their opinion even when off the air. It's typically only 10 minutes long and airs once a week.
This Week in Tech - Highly nerdy nerds talk and debate. Their arguments typically end up dwindling down to "Yeah, well, shut up." At least they talk about technology.
NPR Story of the Day - People always talk about having "driveway" moments when listening to NPR. You get so engrossed in a story that you can't leave your car until it's complete. Now I can listen to it later.
I tried to listen to
Adam Curry, the self-proclaimed father of podcasting, but I couldn't tolerate his ego. Maybe he's a little jaded because he doesn't feel he got the mad props he should have for being an innovator in the podcasting world. I listened to one show and decided it wasn't entertaining. A side note - his podcast is called "The Daily Source Code." Does Curry know how to actually right any code?
Del.icio.us - It's online bookmarking. That's it. Plain and simple.
Kyle had shown me
Del.icio.us a while go but I just couldn't find a real use for it. Then I was shown how it can be used to categorize and store useful
links. w00t! It allows me to label any URL which helps organize and store all the random corners of the web
I visit.
Call me slow, call me a technophobe, but I've finally found a use for these two things. I'm off to play a bit.
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08:33 AM : Neil Diamond - 12 Songs
I picked up Neil Diamond's new album
12 Songs a few days ago. I picked it up after hearing that
Rick Rubin produced it. Rubin has the magic touch not only with rap stars but also aging musicians on the brink of extinction. Johnny Cash found a whole new audience with the American recordings with Rubin's help.
12 Songs doesn't go out on a limb as much as the Cash albums, but it's pretty damn good. It's Neil with an accoustic guitar and very simple backing music. Most songs are slow with a simple and small sound. Topics don't stretech too far from love and women. The song
Hell Yeah is a reflection on his career and past. He makes no apologies for enjoying his life.
Delirious Love is very radio friendly and has a catchy beat. Although its Diamond's first new music in 20-some years it still feels like him and his music. The album has the feeling of an older, wiser musician, much like Cash's American albums.
Nerd Note: 12 Songs is one of the albums
recalled by Sony over the whole XCP rootkit debacle. I was a little fearful to stick the disc into my computer. After doing a little research I discovered that users were presented with a message box prior to installation of XCP. Luckily mine had zero remenants of the botched DRM. I had no problems with the disc and my computer.
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