Thoughts

Software Schedule Estimation

2011-08-11T15:23:00.000-07:00

Kirby's Law

Software schedule estimation is impossible.

Proof

To know how long writing software will take you have to have written it before. If you have written it before, then there is no need to being writing it now. Therefore any software that you are writing now hasn't been written before. Therefore it is impossible to estimate how long it will take.

Four Thieves?

2010-04-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

It just dawned to me that the Avett Brothers' Pretend Love from their 2006 album Four Thieves Gone sounds an awful lot like Weird Al's I Was Only Kidding from his 1992 album Off The Deep End.

Has anyone else noticed this?

I guess it seems a lot like the minor difference between Garth Brooks's Beer Run and Todd Snider's Beer Run which was determined to be different enough to not warrant giving Snider credit for.

While we're at it: doesn't Ska favorite Skankin' Pickle's I Missed the Bus sound a lot like Kriss Kross's I Missed the Bus?

Unearthed Spring Mix

2010-04-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

I've played this playlist repeatedly for the last week. Thought I'd share it

Hard To Concentrate, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stadium Arcadium
Just Breathe, Pearl Jam, Backspacer
Solitary Man, Johnny Cash, American III: Solitary Man
Fearless, Pink Floyd, Meddle
Redemption Song, Johnny Cash, Unearthed: Redemption Songs
Hold On, Tom Waits, Mountain Fresh Tracks
Driftin Through, Lindisfarne, Here Comes the Neighborhood
Fotunate Son, Todd Snider, Peace Queer
Devil's Right Hand, Johnny Cash, Unearthed: Trouble On My Mind
Do Ya Love, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Stay Human
Out Loud, Dispatch, Gut the Van
We Don't Stop, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Everyone Deserves Music
New Year's Day (Ferry Corsten Extended Radio Mix), U2 and Ferry Corsten, War (Deluxe Edition)
Glory of True Love, John Prine, Fair and Square
Working Class Hero, John Lennon, Plastic Ono Band
If God Will Send His Angels, U2, City of Angels
I Won't Back Down, Johnny Cash and Tom Petty, American III: Solitary Man
Heart of Gold, Johnny Cash, Unearthed: Trouble on My Mind
We Shall Be Reunited, Patty Griffin and Emmylou Harris, Downtown Church
Prairie Wedding, Mark Knopfler, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Sailing to Philadelphia
One, Johnny Cash, American III: Solitary Man
Golden, My Morning Jacket, KMTT New Music Sampler 2004
High Cost of Low Living, The Allman Brothers Band, Hittin The Note
Subdivisions, Rush, Chronicles
Solitary Man, Johnny Cash and Tom Petty, American III: Solitary Man

I tried to do this on imeem which became MySpace but I couldn't find all the songs.

Slightly Stoopid Blog

2010-04-18T19:37:00.000-07:00

Thursday night, over a couple of beers, Marcos says to me, "I love every single song on Gomez's first three albums."

That's a bold statement, I replied. I couldn't think of any three studio albums by one artists where I loved every song on the album. My first thought was Van Morrison. But looking over my library he only makes the cut if I consider live albums. Then I wagered that Ozomatli had at least three albums where I loved every song. Again, turns out only if I consider live albums. If Marcos had said four I wouldn't be writing this.

Luckily I'm a fanatic about the statistics in my music library (play count, skip count, rating). And, apparently beer doesn't give me clairvoyance. Considering only studio albums, it turns out there are artists--four--who have three albums where I love every song on the album. The results surprised me. I'd hoped for some Talking Heads or something chic. Alas.

Looking at the list now, how could I forget the masters? Looks like I'm a die hard 'classic' rock fan still.

I should've realized Rusted Root would make the list though they disappointed me when I last saw them at the Fillmore. The fact that they sampled Neil Young's guitar when they covered his song left a bad taste in my mouth despite the rest of the well-performed set. Yet obviously I love their stuff.

The biggest surprise: Slightly Stoopid. Digging back through their earlier releases has really been a joy.

The List

Bruce Springsteen

Born in the USA

Born to Run

We Shall Overcome

Led Zeppelin

III

Rusted Root

Cruel Sun

Welcome to My Village

When I Woke

Slightly Stoopid

Closer to the Sun

Everything You Need

Slightly Not Stoned Enough To Eat Breakfast Yet Stoopid

Awesome Skynyrd Cover Album

2009-08-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

I picked up the album Under The Influence: A Jam Band Tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd on a whim last month. It's been in my CD changer ever since. New purchases have entered the changer and left and Under the Influence remains.

D Vlad Hippy's negative review on Amazon.com stunned me. I agree that Les Claypool's "They Call Me The Breeze" sounds less than stellar. It's the only track on the album I dislike. Vlad's correct that JJ Cale wrote the song. In defense of the album, though, most would associate it with Skynyrd, which justifies it's existence on a Skynyrd tribute album.

Galactic's "Saturday Night Special" has a great groove. Of course, Gov't Mule's "Simple Man" really jams. How could it not. Hiatt's "The Ballad of Curtis Loewe" and Drive By Trucker's "Every Mother's Son", rival or outdo Skynyrd themselves. "The Ballad of Curtis Lowe" has become my newest favorite Hiatt song.

I also dig the North Mississippi Allstars rendition of "Whiskey Rock a Roller" and the Yonder Mountain String Band's "Four Walls of Raiford". I find myself skipping through to listen to "Every Mother's Son," "Simple Man" and "Four Walls of Raiford".

In total contrast to Vlad, I find the Blues Traveler's version of "Freebird" to be a perfect sounding Blues Traveler song. When I hear it I forget that it's not even their song. Popper kicks ass on the mouth harp. There's no way to deny that greatness.

I could do without Big Head Todd's "Sweet Home Alabama". On the other hand, The Disco Biscuits bring a fresh, original funkiness to "Gimme Three Steps". Likewise, Particle jams out keeps a true Skynyrd feel with a fresh sound for their rendition of "Workin for MCA".

Buy the album. Heck, buy 2. Give one to a friend.

The Fillmore

2009-08-22T21:15:00.001-07:00

I had the good fortune to see Tracy Chapman at The Fillmore in San Francisco last night. Tracy and her three band mates delivered a soulful, nostalgic show that had the audience screaming and dancing with pleasure. Her funkified ending to "Give Me One Reason" brought the house down, as did her punk paced cover of "Proud Mary." Her cover of Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" inspired awe. She delivered a barrel-full helping of her greatest hits like "Change" and "Talkin About a Revolution."

I have to say that no other venue compares to The Fillmore. Here are 10 reasons why

Free apples.
Artists want to be there. Chapman mentioned several times how relieved she was to be back in San Francisco and how comforting it was to be back home, playing at such a historic venue.
So many great live albums have been recorded there. From my collection, Ozomatli and Lucinda Williams come to mind first. The Grateful Dead's Live-Dead compilation of 4 nights at The Fillmore in 1969 goes down as one of the greatest live rock albums of all time. Artists feel inspired there by the souls of Jerry Garcia, Bill Graham, John Lee Hooker and Janis Joplin still living there.
It's so easy to get there from the South Bay. Just get on the 101 , turn left on Geary, and park when you get to Fillmore.
There's always parking on Geary. On the street. For free.
It's across the street from John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room.
There's tons of delictable food on Fillmore and the food in the Fillmore bar is great and affordable. Plus you get to eat under all those historic, priceless psychedelic concert posters. Last night we stumbled into Kati's Kitchen around the corner. I highly recommend it. Sure it's theme is that trite word--fusion--that I hear way too much in SF, but, hey, generalities are true in general for a reason, right?
Everyone dances all the time at The Fillmore because there's no seats. And this makes the artists play better because they look out and see an audience digging their music.
Free concert posters handed out after selected sold out shows.
And the guy who says, "Welcome to The Fillmore," when you walk in always makes me smile. Especially right before I grab a free apple.

Joy Cones

2009-08-18T21:17:00.001-07:00

This is the back of a box Joy ice cream cones I picked up at the grocery store.
What's wrong with this picture?

Check out the kid in the front right straddling his long cone across his crotch.
Check out the kid in the front left saying, oh yeah? Mine's THIS big.
This is child labor
What's on the kid in the middle of the back thinking about? He's totally checking out the red head.

More Great Shows

2009-07-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

In the last two weeks I caught both Ozomatli and the Indigo Girls shows again. Many of my friends know and love Ozomatli. They are out of this world good.

The same friends giggle and give me a quizzical look when I tell them I also went to see Indigo Girls. I don't understand--the Indigo Girls have such incredible talent. Very few performers sound better than their studio album when they perform. The Indigo Girls always do, even songs they first recorded 20 years ago. They harmonize perfectly and consistently. They both are master guitar players. They write their own material, songs that have become hits over the course of two decades. They are in a league that very few musicians reach. As Kim Ruehl wrote on About.com, "They still have a hauntingly impressive grasp on their mad skills as polyphonic harmonizers."

So I remain confused why my friends deride them. Give me insight between black and white.

Recession Thoughts

2009-07-21T20:23:00.001-07:00

All over the Silicon Valley sit miles and miles of empty office buildings.
Half of the buildings near my work in the map below have sat vacant since I moved to Silicon Valley in 2005. And yet all around I see construction of even more and even larger office buildings which once they're finished also sit vacant. Am I crazy or does this also partly explain why we're in a recession? Or is everyone else crazy?

View Larger Map

View Larger Map

Update: San Jose Mercury News just reported on this:
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_13172315

Greatest Going Home Song Ever

2009-07-21T20:08:00.000-07:00

All evening I've pondered: What is the greatest Going Home song of all time? After hours and hours of thought (equivalent to microseconds of thought for the average person) and a bit of ipodding, I think I have an answer.

Here's the top four, in no particular order

"Sloop John B" by the Beach Boys
"Homeward Bound" by Simon & Garfunkel
Aimee Mann and Michael Penn's cover of The Beatles' "Two of Us"
"Comin' Home" by Lynyrd Skynyrd
"Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel

What do you think?

High Sierra Music Festival

2009-07-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

We went to check out the High Sierra Music Festival over Fourth of July weekend. I had never been--never even heard of it--but do hope to return again in the future. It's a pretty low-key festival with big name artists. Plus we escaped Sunday morning for awhile and had a beautiful and perfect hike along the Pacific Crest Trail from Bucks Summit to Spanish Peak.

A Banghra-House-Celtic fusion group from Vancouver called Delhi 2 Dublin brought down the house on Friday morning. To get a bunch of hippies moshing before noon on a Friday takes supreme talent. These guys are the real deal. We loved them. Check them out if you can.

We arrived almost too late on Thursday to catch any of John Butler. Luckily we caught the last song of the main set and the entire encore. He was incredible, too. For the few songs we heard he played solo or just had a drummer but no matter. I was blown away by how one man can create such a sound. I hear a lot of singer-songwriters with just an acoustic guitar and a lot of times after a song or two all their material starts to sound the same. Not the case with Butler. I argue that no solo artist can match Butler's dynamic performance.

The other surprise of the weekend was Paper Bird from Colorado. These guys play Folk/Americana and just had fantastic energy. I loved their ode to Colorado. They have 3 women lead singing whose harmonies harken to a past era and put a smile on your face.

I hadn't seen Ani DiFranco in years. She had a great performance and the crowd loved her.

So what's with the coconut craze? Everything at the festival involved coconuts. There was a dread-locked overall wearing hippie wandering around selling them with rum. There was a vendor in the food court selling them and the ice cream vendor had replaced cow's cream with coconut milk in their ice cream. I don't recommend the coconut ice cream. Plus, at $3 for about an ounce of ice cream, it's way out of my hippie budget. Did I miss something? Are coconuts the next Big Thing?

A lot of folks camp right in the fairgrounds. Some even sleep right in the horse stalls. No thanks. We chose to take the less cramped free camping about a mile east of the fairgrounds. They had a free shuttle running between the festival and the campground but honestly we never took it. Even though it was pretty hot we still enjoyed the walk...except when I dropped the car key in the middle of the festival and we had to walk back and look for it and then back to the car again. Luckily someone turned it in to Lost and Found! Thank you, whoever you are!

Next time, and there will be a next time, I aim to try and camp in the trees just to the left and just outside of the main entrance.

Mobile Snapshots

2008-12-06T11:53:00.000-08:00

Go to the full slide show to see the comments

Ubuntu NVidia

2008-12-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

About once a month my NVIDIA drivers deconfigure themselves. After much frustration and forgetfulness I've finally written down the steps that I take to restore it.

sudo update-rc.d -f gdm remove
(reboot)
sudo su
cd ~/software/nvidia
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.12-pkg1.run
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.THIS-IS-THE-ONE-THAT-WORKS /etc/X11/xorg.conf
update-rc.d gdm defaults
(reboot)

This requires that you have the appropriate NVIDIA-Linux-xxx-pkg1.run file already which seems to come and go from the NVIDIA website. I'm sure you can find it on the Internet somewhere. And this requires that you can figure out the last xorg.conf file that worked on your machine.

What I'd really like to know, though, is, why does this happen?

Speaking of Ubuntu, I spent a couple hours last night looking for a driver for the Canon i250 printer that my sister gave me. I could find no 64-bit driver. I ended up installing Turbo Print, which worked flawlessly. Now I'm wondering though if the printer's worth the $30 price tag of Turbo Print.

I Hate OpenSymphony WebWork

2008-11-24T09:38:00.000-08:00

If I'm referencing a Boolean variable, say called myBoolean, it makes no sense that I have to write an if statement which says "myBoolean == true". It's a Boolean! In an if statement! What does == true return? True right? How does it understand that ("myBoolean == true" == true) but not myBoolean == true? I guess I should be thankful that it's not if(((myBoolean == true) == true) == true).

What was so wrong with escaping to Java, anyway? Since when are strong type casting and easily understood variable references evil?

Currently I'm trying to figure out how to retrieve what in Java would be a 1 second line of code to type.

com.atlassian.jira.ComponentManager.getInstance().getCustomFieldManager().getCustomFieldObjectByName("Impact");

I can't get it. I'm trying

<webwork:property value="@com.atlassian.jira.ComponentManager/instance/customFieldManager/customFieldObjectByName('Impact')">
<webwork:property value="@com.atlassian.jira.ComponentManager@instance@customFieldManager/customFieldObjectByName('Impact')">

etc. and to figure it out I keep having to try new combinations in a JSP and print them out to HTML, see that it doesn't work, swear, start over. Fucking sucks. I never did figure this out.

All I know is that everytime I google something to try and understand what's going on, I end up at this page http://www.opensymphony.com/webwork/wikidocs/Tag%20Syntax.html whose first paragraph infuriates me to the point that I want to stand up, flip everyone off, and yell, "Damn your eyes".

Beautiful American Cars

2008-11-20T09:33:00.000-08:00

Over the summer I quipped that since 1970, the only truly beautiful American cars made for the average consumer are the Corvette and the Lincoln LS. I've thought about it since then and I still can't think of anything else. What do you think?

Yet More Things That I Don't Understand

2008-11-20T09:17:00.000-08:00

5. Toilet Seat Covers. Unless you have an open wound on the back of your leg, you're not going to catch a disease by sitting on a toilet seat. You're more likely to catch a disease from that nasty sponge you use to wash your dishes. And, to whomever was taking a crap before me just now, at least have the decency to dispose of the damn thing before you leave the stall.

6. Empty Coffee Pots. There's a great scene in season 4 of The Wire when the mayor Carcetti gets caught by Greggs putting back an empty coffee pot at the police station. When I was at Lockheed, I learned that the higher your pay, the less likely you are to bother making a new pot. Why is this?

More Hard To Find Album Covers

2008-11-01T17:14:00.000-07:00

Some of these aren't necessarily hard to find albums, rather high-resolution art work for them eludes me. Also see http://picasaweb.google.com/jeff.d.kirby/AlbumCovers

'nothin purty boutda blues' by The Red Mercury Blues Band

The Essential Jimi Hendrix

Mountain Fresh Tracks

Rebecca Riots

Neither an album nor hard to find. I just love it.

The Very Best of Bobby Womack

KMTT Summer Sampler 2003

KMTT Summer Sampler 2002

Live From The Mountain Volume 9

On The Mountain 8

KFOG's CD Sampler #2

Always Never Enough by the Kenny & Amanda Smith Band

Good Morning, Vietnam Soundtrack

1973 Vintage Blood by Cold Blood

The Same Pocket, Vol. 1 by The BlueBrass Project

12 & Shorty by James and Troy Andrews

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2006 Festival Art Work

Amazing Grace

Buzzin Fly Volume 2 by Ben Watt

The Best Of Cafe del Mar by Jose Padilla

This Is Jazz by The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

KFOG Live The Archives 14

An Impeccable Shine by J.R. Shore

The Johnny Cash Children's Album

Homicide by Awakening

I Walk The Line by Johnny Cash

Ring Of Fire by Johnny Cash (Laserlight)

Happy Mardi Gras from Artopia.com

Willie Nelson's Greatest Hits
Ok, not hard to find, but I photoshopped it a little

Bridge School 22

2008-10-26T23:49:00.000-07:00

I just had a wonderful weekend full of concerts. I started Friday night with incredibly intimate performance by The Bittersweets and ended tonight with the marathon 22nd Annual Bridge School Benefit Concert. This afternoon/tonight's show just rocked. Neil Young proved that he is still a living legend and was by far my favorite. My favorite take of the night, though, was Norah Jones singing his When God Made Me with Neil on organ and backing vocals. I had no idea that Norah was singing Bluegrass! All my friends were blown away by her. She definitely stole the show in terms of who most surprised the audience. Wilco also put in a great set and Death Cab For Cutie and Jack Johnson performed well and kept the audience on their feet for most their set, which was a feat considering that the day was over 8 hours long. Cat Power with the Dirty Delta Blues sang a gripping cover of The House of the Rising Sun and I enjoyed when Neil came out and sang Fortunate Son with her. Neil's cover of A Day In The Life just absolutely brought the house down.

And call me crazy, but I swear that Neil passed me on the way to the event headed down Shoreline about 40 minutes before the show in 1950s Plymouth with perfect chrome and interior and green paint fading to surface rust but appearing original. According to this, http://www.jambase.com/Articles/14655/Neil-Young-Chaos-Is-Good, Neil owns an off color 1950 Plymouth Super Deluxe. Sounds exactly right. Can anyone out there confirm?

The Bittersweets and Hard to Find Album Covers

2008-10-25T13:27:00.000-07:00

I went and saw The Bittersweets last night and I was blow away by their performance. They played in the intimate Swedish American Hall above Cafe du Nord in the Castro district in San Francisco. In addition to an incredible, energetic performance of their hit, Long Day, they also blew me me away with their covers of Gillian Welch's Orhpan Girl and Unchained Melody by The Righteous Brothers. I've heard Gillian Welch sing Orphan Girl herself live and heard Emmylou sing it live as well at least once. Neither compared to the Bittersweet's performance. They also sang one song both a capella and without amplification. Impressive. Plus the venue was just perfect for them. So intimate. Catch a show there if you can.

Photos of the show from my colleague: http://darryl.smugmug.com/gallery/6359695_FLxh8

Goodnight, San Francisco by The Bittersweets
(purchased and autographed last night in San Francisco)

As I was uploading the picture above, because I like to have quality and correct album art work on my iPod, I realized that I have quite a bit of hard to find album art work. So I thought I'd share some it for you all out there in Internet land. Enjoy.

Long Way From Home: The Bittersweets Live

VALE (Japanese street band)

Love Live From Point Depot by U2

Throwback by Kermit Ruffins with the Rebirth Brass Band

The Wire "...and all the pieces matter." Five Years of Music From The Wire

Super Fly The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Written & Performed by Curtis Mayfield Deluxe 25th Anniversary Edition

Pseudopod

New Orleans Second Line! by New Birth Brass Band

KMTT New Music Sampler 2006

KMTT New Music Sampler 2005

KMTT New Music Sampler 2004

Live From The Mountain Music Lounge Volume 14

Live From The Mountain Music Lounge Volume 13

KFOG's Local Scene 4

KFOG'S Local Scene

KFOG's Local Scene 5

KFOG CD Sampler

KFOG Live From The Archives 10

KFOG Live From The Archives 5

KFOG Live From The Archives 9

KFOG Live From The Archives 15

KFOG Live From The Archives 13

KFOG Live From The Archives 8

"The Above Ground Sound" of Jake Holmes

Inspirational Country & Bluegrass

Hurricane on the Bayou Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Honey Slides by The Bluerunners"They Call Me The Fat Man..." The Legendary Imperial Recordings by Antoine "Fats" Domino

The New Orleans Album by The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

My Feet Can't Fail Me Now by The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

Funeral for a Friend by The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

Seeger Sessions Tour by Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band

If 60's Were 90's by Beautiful People

Co-ed Naked Singing by Awaken A Capella

The Wire, David Simon

2008-10-18T10:18:00.001-07:00

"Most smart people cannot watch most TV, because it has generally been a condescending medium, explaining everything immediately, offering no ambiguities, and using dialogue that simplifies and mitigates against the idiosyncratic ways in which people in different worlds actually communicate. It eventually requires that characters from different places talk the same way as the viewer. This of course, sucks.

There are two ways of traveling. One is with a tour guide, who takes you to the crap everyone sees. You take a snapshot and move on, experiencing nothing beyond a crude visual and the retention of a few facts. The other way to travel requires more time... but if you stay in one place, say, if you put up your bag and go down to the local pub or shebeen and you play the fool a bit and make some friends and open yourself up to a new place and new time and new people, soon you have a sense of another world entirely."

E-mail excerpt by David Simon, writer/producer, The Wire, from the booklet of the CD 'The Wire: ...and all the pieces matter. Five Years of Music From The Wire'.

I don't watch TV. I don't even own one. But I admit that I became addicted to The Wire after my housemate in 2004 showed it to me. And here David Simon perfectly sums up both how and why I love traveling in an analogy for one of the reasons why The Wire is such a great show.

Palin

2008-10-02T18:35:00.000-07:00

"It's time that normal Joe Six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency," Governor Palin told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Um, yeah, Sarah, I don't want Joe Six-pack American running the country, thanks. 8-years was enough.

Don't Make Me Kill You

2008-09-30T16:29:00.000-07:00

Because He's Thoughtful, Dave Lettermen

2008-09-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

Palin Stumbling With Katie Couric

2008-09-27T12:18:00.000-07:00

This is how I imagine my interview sounded at Google. Governor Palin, on foreign policy:

iTunes Genius? Please

2008-09-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

iTunes Genius? Please.

I fell for it. I downloaded iTunes 8 last night and immediately agreed to upload all my personal music data to Apple in the hopes that I would discover new music through their 'Genius' application. Dumb idea.

Not only did I unnecessarily share my private information with a giant corporation, but I also was highly disappointed with the result. The only 'genius' part of this application is that it was a genius idea for someone in Apple's marketing department to try and boost iTunes Store sales. It's just a slick way to suggest music you should buy from iTunes. It's no more 'genius' than Amazon.com has been for years. It's certainly far less 'genius' than Pandora.com.

If Apple really wants to do something genius, here are some suggestions:

How come the iPod Sync button is the only button in the history of graphical user interfaces that doesn't register a click until after you scroll the mouse off the button after clicking? Am I the only one who notices these things? It drives me crazy because I often download music overnight and then sync my iPod before I go to work. So I power on my computer, log in to Ubuntu, start up VirtualBox, start up Windows in VirtualBox, wait for iTunes to load, plug in my iPod, wait for the "pre-sync" to finish, then click the Sync button at which point I often walk away to go take a shower or start some coffee, only to walk back 20 minutes later and realize that no synchronizing has started because the Sync button click doesn't register until I scroll the mouse off the button, which I often forget to do when the sleep fog is still in my brain and hasn't been cut by any coffee or a shower. No other buttons, not even in iTunes, have this problem. Why this one?
On the same note, why does the iPod eject button take FOREVER to dismount your iPod? What is it doing? It already wasted 5 minutes of my life "pre-syncing" or whatever it does when I first plug it in and then another 15 minutes with the actual sync. What does it spend so much time doing on dismount?
All the new artists that I've added to my iPod in the last 3 months don't appear in alphabetical order. Instead they're listed in chronological order between Zap Mama and 4 Non Blondes. This started happening at the same time that I returned from overseas and bought a new laptop and transferred my music library to it. At that point I also noticed that the artists that start with numbers or characters have jumped to the end of the alphabet, which is better, I think. But why does alphabetization no longer work for artists that didn't exist on my iPod 3 months ago?
Make Smart Playlists smarter. On my iPod smart playlists no longer respond to changes made on the iPod. For example, I have a playlist called 'Johnny Cash, 5' which is, can you believe it, all my Johnny Cash songs rated with 5 stars. But if I upgrade a song from a 4 to a 5, it doesn't appear on the list until I resync. Why? Why can't the iPod figure this out? It used to--sort of--although it would reboot when I played any given 'smart' playlist twice--and then it would forget about the updated list again until I rated one more song at which point it would suddenly remember. Now my iPod no longer reboots but it also no longer updates. Genius. Smart.
Still no iTunes for Linux. Sigh. Sniff.
Stop using adjectives like Genius and Smart. What's next? iTunes Brilliant?

From one iTunes Genius to another.

6-Pack

2008-09-12T14:08:00.001-07:00

Van Morrison

2008-09-12T12:47:00.001-07:00

I'm currently having a musical orgasm. I just bought Van Morrison's 1994 'A Night In San Francisco' with John Lee Hooker, Junior Wells, Jimmy Witherspoon, his daughter Shana Morrison, James Hunter, Brian Kennedy, and Georgie Fame. Just an incredible album. First I just bought his duet with John Lee Hooker on Gloria. Then I had to have the whole album. I'll be listening to this one over and over until I wear out the bits. Van Morrison really is the greatest white singer ever.

Just Another Night in San Francisco

2008-09-10T19:06:00.001-07:00

Some photos taken with my cell phone in the City last night. One problem of living in the South Bay is that I don't get to see Frank Chu as much as I'd like

Advice in CalTrain

Political Party

2008-09-05T11:56:00.001-07:00

John McCain: No, You Can't

2008-09-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

John McCain

Ms. Alaska

2008-08-29T12:51:00.001-07:00

Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. Not matter what, we get a candidate from Hawaii or Alaska. That's pretty cool. On the hand, Governor Palin is staunchly anti-choice and recently said, "What does the Vice President do, anyway?" Hmmm, I'm still with Obama-Biden.

(Note: as 'Kaylee' brilliantly pointed out, I, like many people, mistook this picture below as Governor Sarah Palin. How did this happen? Well, I admit, until McCain announced his running mate the day before I wrote this, I did not know who Sarah Palin was. That's right...nobody knew who she was. Anyway, I apologize Kaylee. I've posted a new pick right below. I hope you like it better. That's how I feel about her after she calls Obama a terrorist for having a party once at a guy's house without any regard to the fact that McCain and G. Gordon Liddy are friends. Anyway, thanks Kaylee. You rock, babe. No worries about you calling me an idiot. I am an idiot, though not because I'm a Democrat. Nice try. Not really.)

The UnConvention

2008-08-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

Poignant and hilarious Yard Signs from theunconvention.com for Twin Cities residents who are about to host the 2008 Republican National Convention

How to be Cool in Silicon Valley

2008-08-27T10:36:00.001-07:00

Work for Google. Drive a Prius. Own an iPhone. Tell everyone about it.

Free Ubuntu Stickers

2008-08-26T18:36:00.000-07:00

Things that make me happy. Free Ubuntu stickers from System76.com

Yesterday

Today

Breakfast of Champions

2008-08-25T21:25:00.001-07:00

Thank the lord that there is more than one person out there scouring the net for decent bacon products. This just in: Krispy Kreme bacon breakfast sandwiches. For three years I have professed love for what I call the Breakfast of Champions: go to Roger's Deli and Donuts in Mountain View, order a bacon, cheddar cheese, and egg sandwich on a poppy seed bagel with a French cruller and a 24 oz. coffee on the side. This guy, though, has found the ultimate manifestation of this. It's genius. It skips a step. The Krispy Kreme doughnut bacon sandwich.

Hey, It's Not Just Stuff White People Like

2008-08-23T00:27:00.000-07:00

Ever since my friend Scott's wife, Michelle, pointed out that she is the ultimate manifestation of Stuff White People Like item number 60, "The Toyota Prius", especially with liberal stickers, say Obama For President, I have become obsessed with photographing them, as my 2 faithful readers already know.

Well, today I learned it's not just white people who like Prius's with Obama stickers. Here's a shot of my friend Camille and her Prius. This has got me to thinking what the 2012 elections will be like. What car will be the rage in 4 years? Who will be running for President?

The Bacon Never Ends

2008-08-19T22:22:00.000-07:00

A greeting card that I was sad not to be the recipient of. Moments later the giver of card ordered double bacon at Denny's.
And this just in: Bacon Muffins. See recipe at http://southernfood.about.com/od/muffinrecipes/r/bl00921e.htm

Dear Bank, Fix Your Lousy Website

2008-08-14T22:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Star One Credit Union,

I've slowly been building up frustration over the layout your website. Let's start with the first screen I see when I log in.

There's about 3/4" of header at the top that's just static art. Complete waste of space. Get rid of it.
The button names don't make any sense. You have one called 'Online Services'. Isn't this whole website "online"? Aren't these all services? Wouldn't that button therefore include the entire website? There's one called "User Options" but every time I want to do something like change my address, I always end up having to go to "Online Forms" (another name that doesn't make any sense), and scroll about 2 pages down to find an addres submit form. "Online Forms" sounds like where I'd go to print out forms like a Voter Registration Card or something. Bad name. There's a button for "Help" and one for "Secure Support". Isn't support help? Isn't help support?
Why is there this gigantic blank spot in the middle of the home page? Was this a class project for second graders?
What a great idea! Let's REPEAT all the inane button names in a text list with hyperlinks. Good job second grade class

So at this point I'm already fairly pissed off and I'll I've done is log in. 19 times out of 20 I click on 'Bill Pay', which is the fourth button, after 'Online Services' and 'User Options', two options that I have ever found a use for. Then the real kicker comes. I get this screen:

What the fuck?! An entire screen with one hyperlink that I must click again that says 'View and Pay Bills'. What is the point of this screen? Why not skip it? Do you know how many minutes it takes to load an HTTPS page over a dial up from Mongolia? (This is a letter to my bank: if they don't believe that I was in Mongolia, they can check their ATM withdrawals from June 2007).

And then I finally get the screen I want, only to discover that the 3/4" useless piece of art at the top, the 3/8" row buttons, the 1" of blank space, another new 1/2" of links, a new 1" of text that I don't need to read after my first time paying bills, and another 1" of column headers, and I'm only left with an 1 1/2" of space in which to pay bills. Arggggh.

Number Six Hundred Thirteen

2008-08-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

612 The number of futons currently for sale in the Bay Area on Craig's List.

I'm trying to get rid of mine. Interested?

Beer Company Reverse Culture Shock

2008-08-14T21:53:00.000-07:00

More reverse culture shock for me: I was blown away at Wal-Mart to see that you can now buy advertising from the major beer companies. You know you've made it when people pay to have your advertisement sign in their house.

This reminds me of this picture from a related reverse culture shock moment I had at a gas station somewhere in the Rockies in June, a couple weeks after I stepped off the plane.

Garbled Vanity

2008-08-14T21:50:00.000-07:00

More evidence that people are left to just write jibber jabber on their vanity license plates because all meaningful phrases are gone. See my plee to the DMV.

Things That Make Jesus Sick

2008-08-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday on my daily ride past the Sunnyvale Crosswalk Community Church, I noticed that the church's marquee had last Sunday's sermon announced. "Things That Make Jesus Sick," it read. Today I rode past and noticed that the very same church has cell phone antennas attached to the base of its crucifix. Now, I don't know for sure, and I doubt anyone does, but I bet seeing cell phone antennas attached to the device which Jesus hung from as he died would make Jesus sick.

Bacon Bonbons

2008-08-12T22:08:00.000-07:00

Happily, my friends continue to stream into my inbox news of bizarre pork products. This just in: Pork Bonbons. My friend wrote and said that she tried it and was upset that the taste has averted her from chocolate for possibly months to come (I doubt that). She's confused. What she should really worry about is loosing interest in bacon.

Cheers,

Kirby
from Sunnyvale, India

By the way, in a Google image search of bonbons, the fifth image was pornographic, more evidence to fuel my lack of understanding of why anyone would pay to subscribe to a porn site. See More Things I Don't Understand.

Here's Your Sign

2008-08-12T00:59:00.001-07:00

Bill Engvall, often confused for Jeff Foxworthy, has a whole comedy career centered around his belief that those of us who act stupid from time to time should just wear a sign that says, "Stupid," so as to warn others. I've certainly needed such a sign on nearly a daily basis. I've also had two classic run-ins with others who needed a sign:

July 20, 2006
First of all I should have been wearing a Stupid Sign for two reasons on this occasion. 1, I bought a 1975 Jeep Cherokee site unseen off eBay. In Oregon. And I live in California. 2, Despite the previous owner's warning that the oil pressure gauge was broken, I drove it straight back to California without ever once checking the oil. And, about 15 miles from home, the engine blew a rod.
But it gets better. When the AAA tow truck driver pulled up, he leans his head out the window, takes a quick look at my Jeep, and asks, "What's wrong?"

"Engine's blown," I say.
"Hmmph," he says. Pause. Pause. Then he asks,"So... does it run?"
"Yup. Now that you mention it, it runs great, hadn't thought of that. Thanks for clearing that up. And here's your sign."

July 22, 2008
2 hours after UHaul promised it would be ready, I finally went out to look over the moving van and trailer I had rented to move my stuff from Escondido to Sunnyvale. I was dismayed that the van looked pretty dirty, like it had just been dropped off minutes earlier. I was also dismayed that the trailer still hadn't been hooked up yet and that there's was no one around offering assistance, even though I was the only customer. And, the guy who did my paperwork had already told the outside crew, twice, to get my equipment ready before I went outside.

Finally this fellow strolls up with his tobacco pipe in his right hand and asks, "Can I help ya?".

"Uh, yeah, I need that van and trailer that was supposed to be ready 2 hours ago."
"Oh... Ok... Say, you want us to hook the trailer to the van?"
"Fuck, no. I thought it was a self-driving model. And here's your sign."

More Obama Prius's

2008-08-12T00:54:00.001-07:00

Spotted in (Gasp!) Berkeley.

For more on this, see my entry, Obamarketing

Pork Bizarre

2008-08-12T00:25:00.001-07:00

It all started innocently enough on a road trip in Montana in June when a good friend and his wife screamed and laughed in joy, which I could hear from across the grocery store, as they encountered Bacon Salt and read its logo, "Everything should taste like bacon."

Then a week later I noticed that a friend had become a fan of bacon on Facebook. And so of course so did I.
And then, for roughly a week last month, my inbox suddenly became the nexus of all things pork and bizarre. Pretty soon I knew about pancake sausage corn dogs, WurstFest, Fraboni's Sausages, and the all time best, all the bizarre pork and bacon images on FoundShit.com, including the heavenly bacon bra. I even had friend's telling me that they've been to WurstFest. I didn't want to know.
The pinnacle of the madness came when a friend called me from the Phoenix airport to report that she had just walked past a place called Jody Maroni's Sausage Kingdom. Who doesn't want to be in the Sausage Kingdom? I know that I, at least, used to work at one.

Things I Don't Understand, Part 3

2008-08-12T00:09:00.000-07:00

I was out of the country for a bit (a year) and have found a few things odd upon my return.

5. Doors On Cars That Automatically Open and Close. Did this suddenly become a really difficult task? I can see justification if you're wheel chair bound. Otherwise people have been opening and closing car doors just fine for nearly a 100 years and now all the sudden people can't do it anymore? This is just yet another feature that's going to break on your car. Come to think of it, I have 4 cars and none of them even have automatic windows. Who needs it? Not alone automatic doors. It only takes me 2 seconds to roll the windows down, the mechanisms never break, or haven't yet, which is saying a lot since the combined age of my 4 cars is 125 years (no kidding). (except on the 75 Jeep Cherokee. The back window only has an automatic switch. And it's broken).

6. Bluetooth Wireless Devices in People's Ears All the Time. This trend had started before I left but I'd hoped it would die out by the time I returned. It hasn't. It's only gotten worse. Far worse. People: you look foolish, take the damn ear piece out if you're at a restaurant or in a meeting or hanging out at a bar. I find it rude, to be honest. The ear pieces are perfectly great for driving or sitting at your desk or for maybe the grocery store, but for godsake, put the thing away otherwise. It just screams Loser.

Strange Day

2008-08-11T23:56:00.001-07:00

I did a strange thing today: I went to work. It's the first hour I've worked since March 2007.

Ubuntu Grumblings

2008-08-11T23:55:00.001-07:00

From a friend: I got a new laptop last weekend, hoping it would be as easy as yours to put Ubuntu on. It was not. The wireless card didn't work (had to install ndiswrapper and the windows driver). The video driver still doesn't work, so I'm stuck at 800x600. For some reason, Vista would only give up 80 GB of the hard drive, even though it's currently only using like 20 (it's a 200 GB drive). And I haven't even tried Flash or Java or anything, which will probably be a pain since it's a 64-bit processor (although at least I can learn from you).

But Vista has been annoying from the beginning. The most annoying parts are the little things -- why did they have to rename "Add/Remove Programs" to "Programs something-or-other"? Where did they put the tools->settings menu in all of the Microsoft applications? Why, when I click the universally-known "power-off" symbol in the start menu does it not power off, and instead I have to click a couple of more times to actually power off? Why does it always ask me at least twice if I want to do anything? Why does it not come with an installation CD, and when I try to make a recovery disk it tells me (after 30 minutes of thinking about it) that I had better find 15 CDs? Why the first time I turned it on did it take 20 minutes for me to get to a usable desktop?

Although I guess I must give it credit for letting my monitor run at full resolution.

My reply: for 64 bit Java applets and JNLP in Ubuntu, I have essentially resorted to running Internet Explorer in VirtualBox. 64 bit Flash wasn't a big deal...it just wasn't perfectly straightforward. I resort to VirtualBox too much, actually. Having Windows available anytime I need is like ice cream in the freezer: I know I shouldn't, but I just can't resist. I use Windows not only for iTunes, but also to run the software to talk to the OBDII connection on my car and to read the Outlook attachments my dad keeps sending me.

Turns out I have Ubuntu on my "development" machine at work and I have a Windows laptop. So I took your advice and used Remote Desktop for Ubuntu today. You're right, it is quite nice.

But I can't figure out how to get the two monitors to work. You'd think that would be simple, but it's not. After an hour and a half of tinkering with xorg.conf, a half hour of which I painfully had to do stuck with two duplicate 640x480 monitors, I ended up with my original monitor back in the state it was before I started and my second monitor doing psychedelic color arrangements.

Also the menus are a mess and so now I have to try--again--to try and figure out how the Ubuntu menus work. Menus and "launchers" in Ubuntu have really disappointed me. One feature of Windows that I really like is that you can right click-and-drag on any icon and thus make a menu or quick launch entry. It doesn't seem like Ubuntu offers this. Instead there's this undecipherable mess of seemingly meaningless xml files, none of which ever seem to contain the menu item that I want to fix.

If you figure out how to get64 bit Java applets to work in Firefox, please let me know. Good luck. I thought you were going to order a Dell pre-installed with Ubuntu?

As much as I have ranted about little Ubuntu things, it still pales in comparison to the annoyance and the hot red bothered feeling I get every time I see security alert balloon that pops up when I fire up my Windows virtualizer.

Environmental Doublethink?

2008-08-07T20:28:00.000-07:00

I drove past the NUMMI plant in Fremont on 880 just an hour ago and for the first time focused on the fact that there's a giant leaf in the shape of a car pasted on the side of the building. There's no explanation as to the meaning of this leaf. I went to their website to see if there'd be an explanation there but found nothing. For those of you who don't know, NUMMI is a joint venture plant between GM and Toyota where they assemble Toyota Tacomas, Toyota Corollas, and Pontiac Vibes.
I don't understand. Is this some type of attempt at doublethink where now I'm supposed to associate cars and pickup trucks as environmentally friendly? A Tacoma gets about 20 mpg and a Vibe and a Corolla get about 30. That's not exactly shocking the fuel efficiency world. Please explain.

Kirby
from Northern California, where the fast lane is the slow lane

(picture of leaf from someone named Greg Woodhouse on flickr. Greg, I hope that you don't mind)

Best 15 Albums Ever

2008-07-23T00:32:00.000-07:00

I like that iTunes has an automatic album rating feature now. Of my 9300 tracks, I have rated over 7000 of them while riding buses in Asia and driving through the Outback. This has given me some fairly accurate data about my music tastes. The result surprised me and so I thought I would share it. I only considered LP albums and excluded compilations and greatest hits album. For example, I excluded Bob Marley's 'Legend' and James Brown's 'Mother Lode' since in a loose definition they're both greatest hits album.
My Top 15 Favorite Albums

Hasta La Vista Baby! by U2
We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions (American Land Edition) by Bruce Springsteen
The Revolution Starts...Now by Steve Earle
Blood Sugar Sex Magik by The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Listener Supported by The Dave Matthews Band
Under the Table & Dreaming by The Dave Matthews Band
Shake Your Money Maker by the Black Crowes
Stop Making Sense by The Talking Heads
Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix
True Love by Toots & The Maytals
MTV Unplugged by 10,000 Maniacs
When I Woke by Rusted Root
The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend
Vintage Blood: Live! 1973 by Cold Blood
Some Great Reward by Depeche Mode

Ubuntu + VirtualBox + Windows + iTunes + lots of configuration troubles = Only Way to Correctly Synchronize an iPod on Ubuntu

2008-07-17T22:16:00.001-07:00

There does not yet exist a decent iPod manager and media player for Linux. I've settled on running iTunes from VirtualBox through a Windows XP guest operating system. I do really like Amarok, but it just doesn't give me what I want for managing my iPod.

A couple weeks ago I boldly wiped away Windows Vista on my brand new laptop and replaced it with Ubuntu Linux. I'm really happy with everything except trying to manage my iPod. I've now spent at least a week researching, testing, and hacking in an attempt to find a good media player and a decent way to manage my iPod.

My goals were to find one application:

To transfer my entire music collection intact, complete with iTunes ratings, tags and album artwork, from my folk's desktop machine to my new laptop.
Where I can manage my iPod's smart playlists
Where I can rate songs and have those ratings transfer to the iPod.
Where I can update album art work and have the updates go to the iPod.
So that when I rate a song on the iPod, the rating of the matching song on my laptop is updated when I synchronize with the iPod.
To transfer back to my laptop new playlists that I make on-the-go on the iPod.
Where I can listen to my iPod's smart playlists without the iPod connected.
To burn and rip CDs.
Where I can synchronize instead of just copying files.

I have just under 10,000 tracks, so I was in no mood to start from scratch with rebuilding my collection.

In my quest to find one application, I checked out

gtkpod
Floola
RhythmBox
Amarok
Banshee
Exaile
iTunes through Wine

None of them met all 6 goals. I spent over a week straight doing this. I'm like Don Quixote de Ubuntu fighting media player windmills with an iPod sword out on a quest to find One Ring to Bind Them All.

Here's what I found:

All of Them
Cons
None of them synchronize statistics like play count and rating for the music on the hard drive with what's on the iPod

BansheeCon
After several hours of trying and reading suggestions online, I still could not get it to recognize my iPod. Fuck it. End of review. Uninstall.

ExaileCon
Was really whacky and flaky about reading my iPod. The names of folders and the iPod itself kept changing randomly to various artists names like 4 Non Blondes and ABBA and Ace of Base or whatever else was near the top of my artist list Scared me. Forget this. End of review. Uninstall. Exhale.

gtkpodPros

Can set and transfer cover art
Can easily edit iPod smart playlists
Reads the iPod play count and rating stats for songs that are on the iPod while the iPod's connected
Converts OGG to MP4 (but I had to install additional packages. Seems like I shouldn't have to.)
Sees the album artwork exactly as it is set on my iPod

Pro and Con

Does a nice job copying tracks off the iPod but it took some internet searching and finagling to get it to copy MP3's and MP4's and to get it to make a folder for the artist name rather than just throwing everything into whatever folder I'd currently selected. (To do this, right click on the iPod icon, choose 'Copy Tracks to the Filesystem', choose your Music folder, change Filename Format under 'gtkpod options' to “%a/%A/%T - %t.mp3;%a/%A/%T - %t.m4a” )

Cons

Can't play music
No automatic cover art fetching
Enabling the Album Art pane really slows down the application. I don't need the fancy jukebox flip-through look. Just show me the current album art.
After I pushed some music to my iPod, I now have the letter 'T' popping up all throughout the alphabet whenever I scroll quickly on the iPod through something that starts with 'The'. (I did have this problem initially back in the Windows and iTunes days, but some update from iTunes repaired it. Now, thanks to gtkpod, it's back).
When you load a new album, it just gets appended to the end of the list in the sort tabs rather than getting added in alphabetic order.
Having to 'Save Changes' just irritates me

RhythmboxPros

Plays music
Painlessly rips CDs in OGG, MP3, or MP4
Reads the iPod play count and rating stats for songs on the iPod while the iPod's connected

Pro and Con

The property editor can edit multiple tracks and easily accessible by typing Alt+Enter. But Alt-T and Alt-A are keyboard shortcuts for two different tags. And it can't set the album artist tag and Alt-T is the shortcut for both Title and Track. Annoying. Same with Alt-A: Album and Artist.

Cons

Can't edit MP4 tags
It always turns itself on whenever I insert a CD or plug in my iPod. I can't get it to stop. I've changed the System | Preferences | Preferred Applications | Multimedia entry using both the pull down and by entering a custom command and Rhythmbox is always the default no matter what I put in there. Ok, I figured this out: There's another setting in Nautilus | Edit | Preferences | Media.
Automatically loads album artwork sometimes. But if it doesn't load it then I can't figure out how to set it.

AmarokPro

Will reorganize music folders for you on the hard drive like iTunes, which I like
I really like the sexy display and controls when it plays music
I love the global shortcuts that work no matter what application I'm using, like Win+B for next track, Win+P to unhide Amarok, but Win+C never seems to work for Play/Pause
Straightforward for adding and removing music from iPod.
Burns cds but that required installing yet another package.
Rescans the collection in the background and finds new tracks. This makes me like it better than iTunes if it weren't for it's lack of meeting my iPod goals.

Pro & Con

Fetches cover art from Amazon but this cover setting is flaky. It doesn't always work right. About 20 of my Albums are set to Viva La Vida because it's the best selling album on Amazon today. I can't set cover art for MP4 files. It doesn't always get the cover art for files that I've already set using iTunes on Windows but does sometimes. Cover art is really messed up for any album called 'Greatest Hits'. For a lot of my tracks, it has the cover art correct for the individual song, but it has it messed up for the album handle and I can't see a way to remedy it.

Con

Drives me nuts that I have to load tracks into the playlist if I want to see more than just their name in the collection tree. Why can't there be a viewing window and a separate playlist window like all the other media players?
I constantly swore out loud when I'd right click on an album and choose 'Load' to suddenly discover that I'd just blown away my meticuously crafted playlist with the contents of the album that I just loaded. There's no absolutely no warning or option to save the old playlist when some action of mine obliterates it and loads a new one or clears it.
Even if I update the MP4 tags in gtkpod, Amarok doesn't recognize them.
There doesn't seem to be anyway to remove tracks from the collection without deleting them from the hard drive
There's no way to get to the Track Information editor without using the mouse
I find the 'Group by' to be a cumbersome way to switch between looking through my collection. I much prefer just being able to have the list of everything and sort it by album or genre or album artist, etc.
If I have the Group By set to Album, how come I can't type in the name of an artist and see all that artist's albums?
Can't read the iPod play count and rating stats for songs on the iPod
No way to set a custom album cover for multiple tracks. I have to repeat it for each track. Argh. And I can fix the album art for each track by setting a custom cover but I can never fix the album entry if it's art gets screwed up. And if all the tracks have picture X set as a its album cover, why would Amarok still display picture Y for the album entry?
I can't figure out how to rip a CD. Something about needing kio-slave and kdebase and kdemultimedia all of which I think I have installed but it still doesn't work...maybe there's just not a way to do it in Ubuntu?
Album Artist. It can display a tag called Album Artist but there's no way to update it. I update the tag using gtkpod, but it doesn't appear in Amarok. I would also like my tree in the Collection pane to be sorted by Album Artist, not Artist. For example, an album like Toots & the Maytals 'True Love' has dual credit for every song. So this album shows up under 10 different artists like Toots and the Maytals/Eric Clapton. I remedy it by putting it under 'Various Artists' but I would prefer it just show up as 'Toots and the Maytals' which I have tagged as Album Artist and which works in Windows Media Player and iTunes.

iTunes + Wine
Pro

Was able to import my iTunes library from my old computer
Can play music and use my old iPod playlists and statistics which I synchronized with the iTunes database in Windows and then transferred to Linux.

Con

Can read my old iTunes database synchronized from Windows but can't do anything with it in Ubuntu because it can't see my iPod in Ubuntu
Installation was not fun. I thought it was not installing properly because it was hung on 'Registering with Automation Server' (funny that an automation server would be the automatic failure point for an automatic install). Eventually, after several re-installations, I realized that it was in fact installed all along.
Takes forever to load
If I switch to another application when a dialog box is open in iTunes then I can never get back to the dialog box, iTunes is effectively locked, and I have to use xkill to close it and then wait forever for iTunes to open again.
I've never liked in iTunes because it's a memory hog
I can't see the file path except in the information window's summary tab
Lethargic. Often Unresponsive.
It makes my screen go black until I switch to another application and then come back. (I think I read that this is a Wine problem). Whatever, I just want to w(h)ine.

ITunes + VirtualBox
Pro

Meets all 6 of my goals above, except for burning CDs
Performs better than iTunes + Wine

Con

Installation was straightforward but time-consuming. It took a lot of little settings and uninstalls of the wrong versions of different software and reinstalls of the right version and service packs and guest additions, etc., and sleuthing to get everything working right.
I can't see the file path except in the information window's summary tab
Can't burn CDs. And, I thought ripping CDs worked, but it doesn't. It looks like it's working but then when I go to play the music there's nothing there. The tracks are all listed as 798 minutes long.
Still messed up my album art. About 60 albums just lost their album art for no known reason even though they were all set on my old computer. Fuck album art.

Ubuntu

2008-07-17T21:58:00.000-07:00

For the first time in 10 years I bought a computer, a laptop. When I turned it on Windows Vista looked real pretty, but it prompted me with all kinds of error messages about virus databases and protection software and some problem about a program called, I kid you not, BigFix. To paraphrase a great K's Choice song, if an operating system requires that it have a utility called BigFix and it doesn't work, then something's wrong. I had a good chuckle that a program called BigFix was the first program that was Broken.

So on my second day of laptop ownership, I wiped Vista away and loaded up Ubuntu. I pretty much knew I was going to do this because a good friend and a person much wiser than me had already advised me to and he is generally—always—right (damn him).

And I love Ubuntu. It's free, it worked right away, it installed in about 10 minutes, and there's something special about being in the Linux Club now. It's like I'm constantly flipping a big fat middle finger to The Man the whole time my computer's on.

But it's not all roses and sunsets. There seems to be scant documentation and what documentation you do find seems to come from user forums that are peppered with shell commands like 'psuedo apt2get lost installing this' or suggestions of downloading and recompiling the entire Linux kernel for a 10 kb package that you need. It seems like 3 out of 4 times that I embark on an adventure of installing packages it doesn't actually solve my original problem. And, as is the problem with all online forums, almost every entry always digresses immediately into a pissing match about what application is better rather than solving the original poster's problem.

And the one issue Ubuntu lovers seem to love to fight about is media players. There's a reason for this. (Oh crap, here comes the hate mail). There doesn't seem to be a great one, yet. Or I haven't found it. Or if I did, I didn't recognize it when I installed it. Which means it wasn't great.

I spent (wasted) so much time exploring this, banging my head against the wall and slamming my iPod on the concrete in frustration, that I've decided to tell you all about it in hopes that I can save someone else a few minutes or days, as my case turned out to be.

Get Rid of Vanity License Plates

2008-07-15T21:49:00.000-07:00

I don't want no jibber-jabber, Mr. T

Dear State of California Department of Motor Vehicles,

Please stop issuing Vanity License Plates. There are no more decipherable 7 letter phrases left for personalized license plates. And the heart, hand and star thingys didn't help. No one uses them creatively. People have resorted to just writing gibberish on their license plates. And it's driving me nuts.

Why My Money's on Obama

2008-07-15T20:01:00.001-07:00

9 Simple Reasons Why Obama's Going to Win

1. He's Hawaiian. Everyone loves Hawaiians. Come on, who doesn't want a President from the land of Mai Tais, leis, surfing, SPAM, and gorgeous beaches? Oh, you didn't know Obama was Hawaiian? Yup. He is.

2. He's Hot. And the sexiest candidate always wins. You know this. And Freconomics proves it. So vote for him. You know you want to. You know you at least want to sleep with him.

3. His Wife's Hot. 4 more years of seeing her on TV? Hell yes. (Ok, McCain's wife ain't bad, either)

4. He's Taller than McCain. And the tallest candidate always wins. And he's hot.

5. He's Half White, Half Black, and His Sister's Half Asian. That covers 91% of the US population.* Not bad.

6. He Unashamedly Admits that He Smoked Pot (and inhaled, gasp). "The point was to inhale. That was the point," he said.*

7. He's Got Game. A President who can slam dunk? Hell yes. Ok, so Obama hasn't done a slam dunk in 3 decades, but still...

More seriously,

8. Obama's Mom Helped Pioneer Micro-finance while McCain is the child of a 4 star admiral. At this juncture of world events I want the child of a woman who single-handedly lifted hundreds of thousands of peasants out of poverty rather than the child of a military institution.

9. He Spent Five Pre-pubescent Years Indonesia. For me a lot of my incredible distaste for GW and his administration stems from how out of touch he is with the rest of the world. Obama on the other hand lived in Indonesia for five years and recounts in his first book, Dreams from My Father, his humbling experiences there. This will make him a great statesman and world diplomat. GW's pre-presidential foreign travels, on the other hand, "have been limited to three visits to Mexico, two trips to Israel, a three-day Thanksgiving visit in Rome with one of his daughters in 1998 and a six-week excursion to China with his parents in 1975 when his father was the U.S. envoy to Beijing."*

(I really wanted to think of 10, but, it just didn't happen and now I have to go move my clothes from the washer to the dryer)

Washing and Drying Machine

2008-07-15T19:50:00.000-07:00

Why in this day in age do I have to take my clothes out of the washer and put them in a dryer? We can make a device that's smaller than a pack of cigarettes which records and plays movies, takes and shows pictures, plays 1500 songs, surfs the Internet and on which I can talk to my grandmother but we can't make a machine that both washes and dries clothes?

This is probably yet another great idea that I've had that someone else is going to make a fortune off of, like when I was ten and
penciled out plans for a truck that could convert to an SUV. Yeah, it's called the Cadillac Escalade now. I should've cashed that one in. Instead I sit unemployed on a futon in Oakland.

Never mind. 22 seconds of googling reveal that the washer/dryer combination already exists. How come I've never seen one, though?

Beijing 2008

2008-07-12T11:48:00.001-07:00

From The Irrawaddy

Shot I took in Pelling, Sikkim, India

Obamarketing

2008-07-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of hope for Barack Obama. I just returned from a year abroad and I'm telling you the rest of the world hopes we put him in office. I came back to the U.S. a few weeks ago to happily find the Bay Area in the midst of a love affair with the man. In the Bay Area they don't hand out Obama bumper stickers and merchandise--they sell them. Can you believe that? The man is so popular here that his campaign merchandise has become a fashion trend. I'm sure this is all due to the travel blog entry I wrote about him back in March.

In Sacramento last month Michelle, the wife of one of my best friend's, poked fun of herself in her Obama T-shirt and her Obama sticker on her Prius by pointing out that Prius's with Obama stickers ranks #60 on the hilarious blog, Stuff White People Like. Since taking her picture next to her Prius, I've noticed quite a few more and have to say it seems to be somewhat true.

Of course, the collection of pictures wouldn't be complete without a shot of Michelle's husband, Scott, and his incredible 2008 Fourth of July fireworks stand, the USS Gobama.

And while we're at, here's a pic of Michelle and I from the Fourth in our patriotic shirts.

I also got a nice kick out of this woman's Obama 2008 sticker over the top of her previous Hillary 2008 new VW Bug at the Mountain View Post Office this morning. That's the spirit.

More Things That I Don't Understand

2008-07-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

3. Paying for Porn Online. I cannot understand why anyone would pay for porn online? Every male old enough to move a mouse knows that you can find oodles of free porn on the Internet, most of the time without even trying. For my last entry, I did a search on Google Images for "bathrobes" and got porn in the first 5 images. I even got porn on a Google Image search for "jesus" (and here). I just don't understand.

4. If an elevator only goes between 2 floors, why does it even need buttons? Are there people who get on an elevator on the 1st floor and then decide, what the hell, let's get back out at the 1st floor? The second floor is so yesterday.

Kirby
from Oakland, where Cadillacs come to die

New iPhone Release in Palo Alto

2008-07-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

Last night an acquaintance at a party was contemplating going out first thing this morning and getting one of the new Apple iPhones to which a friend of hers quipped, "Oh, great. There's going to be a line of Prius's around the block." Well, 15 minutes after they opened their doors on the first day of the new iPhone's release, I just happened to drive by Apple's flagship store in Palo Alto. I didn't realize it until later, but check out the blurry car that blocked my shot of the store front as I drove by. Yup, you guessed it. It's a Toyota Prius.

Here's a shot of the crowd wrapped around the block.

The best part, though, was this dude I spotted checking out the scene with his spaceship bike, his Great Dane, and his other doggy in a sidecar.

Things I don't understand

2008-07-08T19:51:00.000-07:00

1. Bath Robes Why take your clothes off only to put on another item of clothing that you're then just going to take off again in 60 seconds when you get to the bathroom? I don't find them particularly sexy on men or women. I just don't get it. When I worked at Sears in the men's department way back in high school, there was a crazy guy who wore nothing but bathrobes and came in every night for a week to try on the same one before he finally bought it.

2. The Spork. The worst invention, ever. Especially the plastic ones that they have at Taco Bell. It's good neither as a spoon nor a fork. You go to stab something with the fork part but the big fat spoon part prevents it. You go to scoop some soup up and, one, the spoon can't fill up because there's holes at the end to create fork tines, and, two the fork tines poke you as you pull the spoon out. And why isn't it called a foon? Why a spork? How hard would it be for Taco Bell to have forks AND spoons? Why do you need a spoon at Taco Bell anyway? Wouldn't the happiness derived by having proper utensils outweigh the minuscule amount of money they save by saving on 1 utensil on the rare customer who would have grabbed both a fork AND a spoon to eat a taco? The only one that I would ever consider using is this red one that I saw at REI where there's spoon at one end and a fork at the other. But then on further inspection I see that they couldn't restrain themselves: they had to go and make the fork part a combination knife (so is it a sporife?) which means you're going to cut yourself when you eat with that fork. Fuck. Sporks just suck.

Introduction

2008-07-07T21:14:00.000-07:00

I just returned to the United States of America after 14 months abroad, mostly in Asia and Australia. While away I wrote a travel blog and sort of got addicted to having a public forum to express whatever drivel popped into my head and so I've blessed the entire world with this blog so that you can occasionally read whatever boring or cynical thought has popped into my mind lately.

Enjoy.

Jeff Kirby