Standards and Grudges

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I was skimming several websites for record labels I like and I found something very interesting. Tom Waits is with Epitaph Records. Yes, Tom “I’m big in Japan” Waits is on the same record label as Bad Religion, Pennywise and Tim Armstrong. Anyone else find that at least curious? Technically Tom is with ANTI- Records, but that label is a subordinate of Epitaph aimed to diversify their artist lineup.

The girl I’m seeing right now, Emma, is a huge Tom Waits fan. That fact happened to popup in conversation multiple times one weekend some months back. Tom Waits doesn’t get me excited, but I do like the canceled TV show Sports Night. Emma likes Sports Night as well. Dan Rydell, a character on the show, loves Tom Waits. That was all very interesting, wasn’t it?

Emma’s birthday is coming up in March. I already know one of the things I’m going to get her. To the left is a t-shirt I’m ordering for her. It works well for three reasons. She enjoys comical t-shirts, loves Tom Waits and loves Japan. In case you don’t know, I’m Big in Japan is a Tom Waits song. It’s one of his fairly popular songs and I know she really likes it. Emma went on vacation to Japan when she was younger and harbors fond memories of that adventure. That works in my favor. I lived in Japan for a time and once I got used to the differences I really enjoyed it. I’m hoping that my temporary residency in Japan will compensate for my many serious shortcomings.

Hopefully she’ll learn to accept my punk streak, because that won’t be going anywhere. She’s flat out told me that my music “sucks”. She also said my face “sucks”. I don’t really have a counter argument for the face quip, but my music does not suck.

I’ve been using Vista for a couple months now and overall I’m impressed. There are some annoyances, such as certain settings are more difficult to find or change, but I doubt most users would notice those things. One annoying thing is when exploring folders it will by default attempt to display a thumbnail of video files. That can cause the computer to slow down for a moment while it generates thumbnails in folders with a lot of video files. It can also cause one of the explorer drivers to crash if the system doesn’t have the proper codec for a file. It took me awhile to figure out that trick.

By far the best feature of Vista is the sidebar. If you have Vista and you don’t have a large screen, you need one. I have program windows sized so the sidebar is always visible. The following is a list of my favorite gadgets.

Outlook info
If you use Office for your email, you’ll want this gadget. I leave Outlook running at all times and I have it set to minimize to my system tray. This gadget will at a glance show you the number of unread email, upcoming calendar events and tasks.

Multi Meter
This is the best system usage gadget I’ve found. It shows dual core processor usage and memory usage. What it doesn’t show is drive usage, but I don’t think that is necessary. If your hard drive is almost full, then you’re probably aware of that and have been delaying transferring files to backup or clearing old, unused files. This gadget is useful to see how different programs impact your system usage. I’ve ditched several programs because they tax the system too heavily. The only program I still use that is a memory hog is iTunes, but only because I need that for updating my iPod.

DC Wireless Network Monitor
Vista makes it less than simple to find your network IP address quickly. You can do it, but it should be easier like it was in XP. This gadget displays your current IP address, the signal strength and if the network is secure. Why would you need to know your IP address? Well, for many games and internet applications you need to set your router to “port forward” specific ports to your computer to allow your programs to properly communicate over the internet. Granted most people won’t need this or know how even how to do this. But if you do need this and you’re on a wireless network that has a several computers on it, your IP address changes periodically. That means you’ll need to change the router settings to point to your current IP address when you want to use certain programs.

iTunes Accessory
Since I’m stuck with iTunes to update my iPod, I might as well use it. The library already has all of my playlists and podcasts. There are a lot of iTunes gadgets available and the truth is, most of them are garbage. This is the only one that I’ve found that makes it worthwhile having in your sidebar. All you have to do to use this gadget is to have iTunes running. You can either select a playlist from the iTunes window or the gadget. With this gadget you can skip to the next or previous track, seek within the current track, adjust volume, mute, pause, set the song rating and turn shuffle off. You can only select playlists from the gadget window, not artists, genre or album. It has several skins available so you should be able to make it match your desktop theme. One shortcoming is that it doesn’t scroll the song title, album or artist info, so you can’t see the full titles sometimes.

WChannel
There are many weather gadgets and more than one for The Weather Channel, but this one wins for several reasons. First of all, I can tolerate this sitting on my desktop. It’s not too ugly or obnoxious unlike most weather gadgets. Most importantly, it is stable. The other Weather Channel gadget is pretty cool, but it is not stable. Out of nowhere it would cause the sidebar to jitter and consume an extra 130K of system memory. My sidebar normally consumes 30K, suddenly consuming 160K is not acceptable. At a glance this gadget shows current conditions and the projected conditions for today. With a click it shows the five day forecast, the current radar and details of current conditions. That pretty much tells you what you need to know. If you want more details, you should be looking at a weather website.

Full Moon
This is a simple and somewhat useless gadget. It just shows a graphic for the current moon phase. It comforts me somehow to know what the moon cycle is though. Working retail I’ve noticed a trend that more stupid people shop during a full moon or that people are more apt to ask stupid questions during a full moon. I find it best to be mentally prepared.

They say you can’t go back. I’m not entirely sure who “they” are or where “back” is, but I’m going back. Back to high school that is. I’m going to the community Thanksgiving dinner back in my hometown which is held at the high school. You gotta love the small towns in Wisconsin. With a population of around 7,000 people in town, I’m sure I’ll run into people I know. This should be interesting.

I haven’t been back to the high school in six years and that was just for a short time. I’ve driven by it a few times. They’ve made a lot of changes. There’s a new theatre and it looks like they’ve added a dozen classrooms or so. They also put in a greenhouse in back for the FFA. I wonder if Pedro had anything to do with that. Maybe I should bring my camera. Or better yet I could assemble some devious looking devices and plant them around the building. That’s probably not the best idea I suppose. At least not if I write about it on the internet first.

I have the habit of carrying my mp3 player everywhere. If it’s not plugged into my head, it’s in my bag and I’m wishing it was plugged it. This is especially true at work. Of course at home I’m civilized and I plug it into speakers. I have about 51 GB of music. That represents fifteen years of collecting digital music going all the way back to the first CD I ever bought, Pork Soda by Primus. It was an accident that motivated me to start converting my collection to mp3 files. I used to live in the desert in California and a lot of dust got into my CD binder. Then end result of excessive California heat and the dust was an entire collection of discs that wouldn’t play. I went out and bought one of those disc doctor resurfacing things to clean the discs and it actually worked. I had to buy a second one because I wore the first one out. I never wanted to go through that again, so I started ripping my collection to mp3’s on my computer. That was back in 2000. I found myself ahead of the curve because the following year Apple released the first generation Ipod and the competition to make the best mp3 player was on. I didn’t buy one until 2004 though. The prices were ridiculous and playing burned discs in my car was enough to get me by.

Then I went overseas to the war. I brought my laptop and an external drive loaded with my collection, but I felt the need to be able to carry my music everywhere, not just the barracks. War is not all fun and games. There’s a lot of sitting around and waiting. Luckily I was able to send an email to my sister and she picked up the just released fourth generation Ipod and sent it to me. Once it arrived I loaded it up and I’ve never been without my music again. Until of course that Ipod took a dive. That didn’t happen until this year. It lasted three years and one month. I’m happy enough with that. I certainly had better luck than other Ipod owners. Now the old one is a paperweight on my desk and I carry around a shiny new black Ipod. It’s pretty sweet, but if the new one doesn’t last at least three years I’m going to remove the pancreas of a certain Steve Jobs and I’ll feed it to his children. You’re on notice Jobs. This is not a threat. This is an honorable warning of the result should your product fail me.

Anyways, back on topic. Podcasts.

I’m really getting into podcasts lately. Some of them anyway. Even I need a break from my music, but let’s face it, the sounds of our surrounding world are not the most entertaining. In fact, it’s often mind numbing or irritating. So I plug in and listen to something better. Here are my current podcast picks in no particular order.

Savage Love
Now you can get twice the Love. Read his column in The Onion and listen to his podcast. Some of the questions are simply amazing. I’m glad any problems I’ve had between the sheets are fairly insignificant compared to things on his show.

Episodes are about 40 minutes long.

Mr. Wizards’s Fun Science Facts
The premise of the show is simple. People send in their science questions and he answers them. Pretty straight forward. Some of the questions will make you shake your head (Why is the sky blue?), while others make you wonder (Is nitrogen inflation better for my car tires?). He’s certainly not divulging the secrets of the universe, but they are well presented and easy to digest tidbits of science.

Episodes are between 5-10 minutes long.

That’s Idiomatic!
Finally someone is explaining the origins of various phrases common in America. “Cut the mustard”, “face the music”, “the whole nine yards”. You get the point.

Episodes are between 4-8 minutes long.

The Onion Radio News
I do not want to live in a world which I can’t have the sweet voice of Doyle Redland caressing my ears every morning with todays top story.

Episodes are about a minute long.

Now we break away from the simple entertainment and get into what I find entertaining and you probably won’t.

60-Second Science
This is science news on the light side produced by Scientific American magazine. Every weekday they report an interesting or funny science story. Amaze your friends, embarrass the Mailman with your superior knowledge, impress girls.

Like the title suggests, episodes are about 1 minute long.

The Wandering Economist
This is by no means a down and dirty discussion about economics. People write in questions such as, what is fiat currancy?, and he answers and explains how it relates to the big picture. Most of it is pretty basic economics and even though I’ve studied much of this, I think he explains things in an interesting way that reinforces what I know.

Episodes are 5-12 minutes long.

EconTalk
Russ Roberts interviews guests on a wide variety of topics that relate to economics. Some of the episodes aren’t great, but most of the time the topic and the person he’s interviewing are interesting.

Episodes vary in length, but usually an hour long.

The Economist
This joint venture between The Economist magazine and The Council on Foreign Relations discusses a variety of issues. This is not the kind of news you’re used to. They don’t have a team of writers pumping out witty phrases or news anchors scaring you with exaggerated reports. They talk about what’s going on in the world. They know what they’re talking about. They’re educated, well informed and smart enough to know that most issues can’t be explained between commercial breaks.

Episodes vary widely in length, between 8-40 minutes.

Lastly is a rising star which may graduate to permanent placement on my mp3 player.

The Bugle
In this global world it’s important to get news from another perspective. Across The Pond, the Times newspaper in the United Kingdom produces an amazing and slightly inaccurate look at world news. Co-hosts John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman exaggerate real news, report fake news, insult each other and insults anything that made the news.

Episodes are about 30 minutes long.

I’m going to break my moratorium on discussing national politics for a moment.

Am I alone in feeling that the focus of Hillary’s campaign is based upon her being a woman? Is that the best she can do? Perhaps so. Her healthcare plan is an economic nightmare that isn’t supported by her fellow Democrats, let alone Republicans. Her executive experience is nonexistent. How about legislative experience? Not a lot going on there either. Since she’s been in the Senate what has she done? Shouldn’t her campaign be clarifying her position on various issues and her voting record?

Outside of healthcare, none of her positions are clear. Her stance on the war in Iraq flips around periodically to varying degrees. She’s claims to be against it, but backs away from any real effort. She is a skilled politician though. By that I mean she knows what people want to hear, how to distract them, how to avoid difficult character defining decisions and most importantly, how to manipulate the media. I believe she learned much of that from Bill.

I’m glad to see her campaign is starting to meltdown. She has no business being in this race. Not because she’s a woman. That never was an issue. That was a distraction and a tool to tear down her detractors. The general public are sheep. They don’t believe everything they’re told, but they also don’t make much effort to verify a claim. To get a large general population to believe something all you need to do is keep repeating it and have it reported by multiple sources over a period of time. People don’t understand that the media is reporting what she claims, not proven fact. Then later down the road when that population hears or reads an opinion against her, they will question if the source is sexist. She’s planted that doubt into the population and created a swell of sympathy in her favor. That is poor politics and disgusting behavior. I wish the era of voting for someone based solely on their race, religion or sex was over. If you haven’t figured it out by now, even if a politician is exactly the same skin color, religion and sex as you, it doesn’t mean they reflect your values and interests. Too often politicians are allowed to hide behind their race, religion or sex to avoid discussing their positions and voting record.

I’m so burned out on this election already and we’re not even close. We’re going to have to call off the election due to lack of interest if this goes on much longer. Can we get a Constitutional Amendment to forbid campaigning no sooner than three months prior to the primary?