Month: March 2003

New job position!

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I’ve got a new position at work! My first full day was yesterday — I hadn’t written about it yet, both because it all happened fairly quickly, and because I don’t like to jinx things too much before they happen.

Last Friday, my boss came up to me and told me that one of the guys in the EDS area (where customer submitted files are tweaked, adjusted, set up, and sent to the printers) was leaving, and asked if I’d be interested in taking a shot at the spot in there. Hm. Was I interested? You bet’cha.

So starting this week, I’m now a member of the EDS team at MSCopy, Xerox’s print shop on the Microsoft campus. I’m finally away from the Big Green Button! I’ll now be spending my days bouncing among Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, Pagemaker — and probably more, those were just the ones I got to play with yesterday — making sure everything we’re sent is ready to go flying out of the machines. Fun stuff!

Happy Space Alien Day!

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Dad sent me a link to an amusing story today about how New Mexico Representative Dan Foley has proposed legislation to create Space Alien Day — to “enhance relationships among all the citizens of the cosmos, known and unknown.”

Amusing enough on its own, but the kicker for me was the final quote from Rep. Foley, which goes down in my book as one of my favorite political quotes ever…

If we can capitalize on something that did or did not happen in 1947 then it can help the entire state.

Oh, the number of times in my life — past, present, and future — when it’d be so nice to capitalize on something that did or did not happen!

Quiet time

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I’m around, I just haven’t been feeling overly talkative lately. Not sure why, really, but figured a couple days away from the weblog wouldn’t really hurt anyone.

I’ll surface a bit more later on tonight, after I’m home from work, but I wanted to get a quick note of this up — the Seattle Times is starting a weblog tracking the Iraq conflict called Battle Lines. No clue where it’ll go, as they’re still on their first post, but it might be worth keeping an eye on.

Oh, and while they’re not linked from the main page, you can find RSS feeds here (RDF) and here (XML).

Update:

There are also two associated weblogs as part of the site — one by a family against the war, and one by a family in support of the war.

Interesting approach, this. Could it be one of the first signs of corporate media “getting” blogs? Dunno yet, too early to tell.

Nice to see they’re using MovableType, though! Now the just need to turn on comments, trackback, and all the other associated goodies!

Soundtrack for a Century

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A couple weeks ago, on the way back from Ellensburg, Prairie and I stopped off at a Fred Meyer’s so that she could pick up the Chicago soundtrack. While we were there, I browsed through the racks, and stumbled across a two-disc set of Broadway tunes, from 1932 to 1997. It looked interesting, so I picked it up, and we listened to it on the way back to Seattle.

As it turns out, that set was just one of twelve in the series Sony Music 100 Years: Soundtrack for a Century. Sony has dug into their vaults to compile an absolutley astounding collection of music — ranging from an 1890 recording on wax cylinder of John Philip Sousa conducting the United States Marine Band in “The Washington Post March” up to Lauryn Hill’s 1998 pop hit “Doo Wop (That Thing)” — across all genres, and encompassing a ton of songs, both popular hits and little-known gems.

I’m slowly working on collecting the entire collection, and so far have picked up four of the sets (Broadway: The Great Original Cast Recordings, Pop Music: The Early Years 1890-1950, Pop Music: The Golden Era 1951-1975, and Pop Music: The Modern Era 1976-1999), have two more held for me at Barnes and Noble (Rock: The Train Kept A-Rollin’ and Folk, Gospel and Blues: Will the Circle Be Unbroken), and will be picking up the rest of the series as I can and where I can. Great collections, and I’ve really been enjoying going through these.

Love me, love my country

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I found this post from Dave Winer today, which definitely raised my eyebrows.

Our European allies say we don’t need to go to war. But what do they say to the families whose kids are going there to die? They say that they love the American people but hate our government. They don’t understand the US. Read the Constitution. Check out the first three words. It’s our government. You can’t like us and not like our government, and vice versa.

This seems to me to be completely off base. In fact, the first thing to pop into my head after reading this was, “Sorry — but Bush is not my President.”

Not My President

Yes, the Constitution of the United States begins with “We the people….” The thing is, not only did I not vote for Bush, but “we the people” didn’t vote for Bush either. It’s well known at this point that though he got the Electoral College votes to put him in office, the popular vote was not for Bush.

But — even if that were not the case (and it is a moot point, not to mention one that’s been beat to death many times over) — why must an appreciation of a people equate to appreciation and condoning of that people’s government? That doesn’t make any sense to me, for many reasons.

One of the great things about being an American is the right to disagree with our government. I can look at the decisions my government is making, decide for myself whether or not I agree with them, and voice my approval or dissent without fear of reprisal or retribution (at least that’s the theory, though some recent events have called that into question — just another reason why I am dissatisfied with the current government — but I digress…). I can do things like state that Bush is “not my President,” a technically false statement that does a good job of indicating my displeasure with Bush’s tactics, without having to hide behind a false identity, or worry about secret police knocking on my door. Given that that is the case here in America, and one of the things that we pride ourselves on — why in the world would we deny that right to others?

This “love me, love my country” attitude is, in all honesty, kind of frightening to me. If we’re really so fired up about how great our country is, and how everyone really should be just like us (whether or not they want that…), shouldn’t we allow others the same rights we allow ourselves? Such as the ability to appreciate America and Americans while having difficulties with where the present administration is taking us?

A question for Dave — you state that “you can’t like us and not like our government, and vice versa”. Turning that around, does that mean that because you dislike the decisions of France, Germany, and Russia, that you now dislike the French, Germans, and Russians en masse? Or that because you dislike what Saddam is doing, that you dislike all Iraquis? I don’t really think that that is the case, but it’s the same attitude, and it’s one that worries me.

iPod troubles

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Well, this bites. I’m having problems with my iPod. Normally I’m pretty good with getting things fixed, but I think this is beyond my abilities. Bleah.

Problem one: every so often, when plugging in the remote to the jack on the iPod, or just bumping the connector, the iPod will “short out” and reset. It’s more or less a minor annoyance — the iPod will reboot and start right up again, and the only real lasting effect is that the date and time need to be set — but an annoyance nothenless.

Problem two: iTunes doesn’t know that my iPod exists anymore. As far as I can tell, this behavior started after I applied the Security Update 2003-03-03 system patch. The iPod mounts to the Finder just fine, but nothing I can do seems to clue iTunes into the existence of the iPod.

I’ve tried applying the 10.2.4 Combo Update (even though I’d already updated to 10.2.4 using incremental upgrades, rumor has it that using the combo updater will fix a number of issues), completely deleting and then reinstalling iTunes, and completely resetting the iPod as outlined in Apple’s iPod troubleshooting pages. Nothing’s worked.

Luckily, my iPod is still under warranty, so I went ahead and placed a service request through Apple. I’ve never had to do this before, but I’ve read good reports on Apple’s turnaround time for service, but for the moment I’m without music when I’m not at home.

For some people, this might not be that big of a deal. For me? This bites. Hard.

Especially when some of the people at work insist on listening to “smooth jazz” — one of the few genres of music that I would gladly wipe from the face of the planet. Ugh. I want my iPod back!