itunes music store

I bought my first couple of tracks on the itunes music store tonight. I figured I would give it a shot since some are now DRM free.

Performance of the music store sucks though. I'm trying to download my second album and I'm getting about 2kbps through the store. After years, I'm finally willing to give this a try, and the performance issues are stopping me from finding and buying more music. Honestly, I bet the pirate music networks are faster and easier. Maybe that's what I should do tonight instead... buy the music on itunes, and then just download pirated mp3s so I can actually listen to them.

starcraft 2

I just got done watching the gameplay demo for starcraft 2. Which could also be titled, "how we unbalanced the protoss".

I'm looking forward to seeing how they have buffed the other races to even out the gameplay.

macbook revisited

I got OS X reinstalled on Gwen's Macbook Pro last night. The good news is that reinstalling OS X is easier than reinstalling windows. The only rub was that I had to manually reinstall the fonts that Finale uses. Oh and I bet I'll have to reinstall the printer drivers.

I'll find out after today whether it was really that simple.

Gwen's Macbook

Gwen's Macbook pro wont boot into OS X. Funny enough I can boot it into windows XP. Gwen installed some updates from Apple's Software Update, which prompted her to reboot the machine, and now it's hosed. I'm currently copying everything off the HD to another external hard drive before I try reinstalling OS X. Maybe those "geniuses" down at the Apple Store will be required.

I hate software.

Wordpress

Brian has inspired me to get wordpress setup on a new domain. This may pave the way for a blog shift. I'll keep y'all posted.

Apple Rebuttal

Disclaimer: I like apple. I like them a lot. Most of my new hardware these days is apple. That said, I think Apple can do much better in it's criticisms of Microsoft, and in the efforts of its marketing campaign in general. So I'm going to catalog a few rebuttals to their ads.

http://www.apple.com/getamac/

Choose a Vista: Microsoft is doing something called anytime upgrade to handle upgrading. This is to answer the "get stuck with one that doesn't do very much at all" part of the apple commercial. I do appreciate the simplicity of purchasing OS X.

Party is Over: Yeah ok, there's a lot of truth in this one. Microsoft dropped the ball on the vista schedule. And older hardware is supposedly much harder to get working. I could point out the System 9 -> OS X platform switch and what it did to apple hardware. Or perhaps the PPC -> Intel transition and what it did to apple software support. That doesn't really reduce the validity of the criticism though. I would wager however that windows is more friendly to old software than OS X. A lot of the cruft in windows comes from the effort they expend supporting old software.

Genius: Perhaps I should take my mac to the apple genius bar so they can tell me why aperture keeps crashing with this error all the time.

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00000000

Thread 0 Crashed:
0 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90810125 CFRetain + 56
1 com.apple.Foundation 0x92893a9d _NSKeyValueObservationInfoCreateByRemoving + 444
2 com.apple.Foundation 0x92893888 -[NSObject(NSKeyValueObserverRegistration) _removeObserver:forProperty:] + 56
3 com.apple.Foundation 0x92893800 -[NSObject(NSKeyValueObserverRegistration) removeObserver:forKeyPath:] + 554
4 com.apple.Aperture 0x002279e2 0x1000 + 2255330
5 com.apple.Aperture 0x00229888 0x1000 + 2263176
6 com.apple.AppKit 0x9335ad88 -[NSApplication sendAction:to:from:] + 107

first 10k race

I just finished my first organized run. It was loosely organized, and a lot of fun. Here is what my Garmin forerunner recorded:

Distance: 6.3 miles
Elapsed Time: 1:06:53
Avg Pace: 10:37/mile
Avg Speed: 5.7 mph
Max Speed: 12.0 mph
Calories: 832

writing

I don't think I'm a good writer. I can write technical specifications pretty well, and I can contribute to marketing messaging and brainstorming, but I don't feel particularly skilled at crafting a blog post that is interesting.

Maybe I should switch to twitter...

Also....

Vista is the new hotness and OS X is old and busted. Hurry up with Leopard, or whichever cat comes next.

Apple hubris

"No other operating system, Vista included, offers the rich features and simplicity of Mac OS X. And just as Vista tries to get closer (emphasis on “tries”), Mac OS X Leopard is right around the corner — ready to leap even farther ahead."

*sigh* I love apple. I have 2 mac book pros. You could officially call me a switcher. But stuff like this makes me want to switch back.

Shared items

I added a shared items widget to my blog so y'all can see some of the stuff I'm finding via google reader.

Motorbike

I got my yamaha 650 running today. All it took was some new spark plugs. $5.58 later and it's time to go for a ride.

I'm going to have to find time for a ride this week. I wonder what the weather will be like.

Vista on the Macbook Pro

I loaded up vista yesterday. So far it's working pretty well. Aero is nice. And the macbook pro can handle all the bells and whistles. I haven't done any serious work on it, but so far it's pretty. I could see switching my work computer to be vista in the next month or two. Once I can verify that all my apps will work.

I still have a slight preference for OS X at this point, although I'm more anxious waiting for Leopard. OS X is old and grey... Vista is new and shiny.

Blizzard update

Turns out it was my internet connection that was broken. I called up speakeasy and they fixed it right away. That is why I'm their customer. When I call up and tell them I have a problem, they say, "you sure do, let me fix that for you". 9 minutes later we're off the phone and everything is running great. No escalation paths, just fixed problems.

Blizzard and Bittorrent

So it's interesting that Blizzard is distributing World of Warcraft via bittorrent. Interesting in a "it doesn't really work" sort of way. After waiting half an hour to download 13 megs of 3.6 gigs I thought... hmm, maybe this isn't working so well.

I guess I'll just get a physical copy instead of waiting for the massive download.

If they have given me some tweakability I could've setup the bittorrent client to some known good settings. As is I was uploading more than I was downloading, which is fine and all, except I don't really feel like paying for Blizzard's distribution costs.

casting

Colin and I are considering starting a podcast.

How long should it be?
What topics should we discuss?
Would anybody listen?

the park pub

Gwen and I have adopted the park pub.

I'm thinking of recommending 2 things to the park pub.

1) Let Matt dj at least one saturday per month so I can put together a dance following.
2) Institute "Clinton's Pick" which is whatever new beer is on tap that Clinton thinks people should try and why. He knows a lot about beer, and always has good recommendations.

apple iphone

boring

more comcast woes

"Your cable box cannot tune to On Demand right now. Please try again in a few minutes"
"Your cable box cannot tune to On Demand right now. Please try again in a few minutes"
"Your cable box cannot tune to On Demand right now. Please try again in a few minutes"

comcast dvr

So far my favorite feature is when the unit stops responding to input and fast forwards through half of the TV show you were trying to watch.

My second favorite feature is when it stutters during HD playback.