iPod troubles

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!

Star Trek personality test

Wil pointed to a Star Trek Personality Test based on the Myers-Briggs system. I wasn’t sure what to expect for an answer, but apparently the author did a surprisingly good job of translating the Myers-Briggs questions to a Star Trek format, as I ended up scoring as an ISFP — the same result as when I took an online version of the actual Myers-Briggs test!

Anyway, here’s what the Star Trek test said about me…

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Just Hang Up

Hang up when I’m talking to you. Get off your cell phone. In fact, turn off your cell phone. Just turn it off, put it down somewhere out of reach, and pay attention to the conversation that you’re already invovled in.

I’m sick of cell phones — or rather, I’m sick of what we put up with when cell phones are involved.

Personal calls at work on company time? Forbidden, of course — unless that call comes in on the cell phone at someone’s hip. Having a conversation with someone? Sorry, hold on, I’ve got a call. Out at dinner at a nice restaurant? Hope you don’t mind sitting there while I chat on the phone. Driving down the highway at 60 miles an hour in that gas-guzzling SUV that’s never left the pavement? Perfect time to distract yourself with the phone!

Why, for so many people, is everything put aside when the ringer goes off? You’ve got voicemail on that thing, right? Good. Then use it when I’m talking to you. I’m standing in front of you, looking you in the face — that should take precedence.

Expecting an important call? Fine, I can accept that — use the caller ID to check before answering if you can. If you can’t do that, then if an incoming call is not “the call,” make your apologies, offer to call back, and hang up.

This is simple stuff. To me, at least. Why doesn’t it seem to be for anyone else?

If you are using a cell phone, think about your behaviour while you’re on the phone. It’s basically a given that the people around you are going to be able to hear your side of the conversation — often whether they want to or not. Put some small amount of thought into what those around you are hearing. I’ve seen businessmen in expensive three-piece suits take a call and immediately turn into a foul-mouthed frat boy talking to whichever friend called, then hang up and turn back to the business conversation as if nothing had happened.

In a noisy environment? Maybe you should find a quiet place for that oh-so-important call then. I don’t know how many conversations I’ve been able to “sit in” on because one or the other party couldn’t hear well, so voices were raised, shouting into the phone, apparently under the bizarre assumption that there was some sort of “cone of silence” surrounding them. Here’s a hint, folks — we can hear you. Especially when you’re yelling.

Oh, and just because a cell phone is on your hip and you have the ability to call someone every time some little thing crosses your brain — don’t. Please don’t. Chances are, it’s not that important. If it’s really important, you’ll know it — if it can wait, let it wait. I’ve already lost too many hours to calls that had no real purpose or need, made only because there was no inhibition stopping it. I don’t need to lose any more.

I’m starting to feel like some sort of freak in today’s society. I don’t have a cell phone, nor do I want a cell phone. The only time I’ve owned one it was required by my job — and paid for by my job, too. I’m just sick to death of seeing people so engrossed in their phones that they neglect everything else.

Sorry about the rant. But please — put down the phone. Pay attention to the world.

Everything's broken

Four months ago, workmen started on a two-month project to renovate the apartment building I live in. We’re still waiting for them to finish.

We’ve had to put up with interruptions to every normal service. Electricity, heat, hot water, laundry — all of it has been cut off at one point or another. The laundry, of course, was one of the first things to go, so for the past four months, we’ve had to pay more money to go to a laundromat a few blocks away.

This week, I found out that the laundry facilities had finally reopened. So today, I started trying to do my laundry.

  • One of the washers has its coin slot jammed. Okay, I can cope with that, there’s still two more washers.
  • One of the other two washers occasionally decides to eat your quarters, but not start the wash cycle.
  • One of the dryers won’t even take quarters — the slider doohickey is jammed. Again, there’s two more dryers to work with.
  • The final straw? The original plans called for new electric washers and dryers. Plans changed at some point, so they put back in the old dryers. Gas dryers. In a ‘renovated’ laundry room with no gas hookups. End result? All the dryers are now ‘Air Dry’ only. Any guesses just how dry jeans get with ‘Air Dry’ only? Not at all. So now I’ve got jeans hung on the heater, over doors, over my shower curtain, and I’m just hoping that I’ve got at least one pair that’s actually wearable tomorrow morning.

I’m sick of this.

We’ve lost a good quarter of the tenants because of all the problems with this project. The only thing that’s really kept me here is that I don’t really have the spare cash to just pick up and find a new place. God, I wish I did, though….

Sleep – from the painting by Salvadore Dali

Salvadore Dali - Sleep

A bit of historical archiving here. This is a piece I wrote in 11th grade, which would put it at around 1989 or 1990. We were given an assignment to write an essay exploring any painting we chose, and the teacher was kind enough to leave the exact nature of the requested essay very open for interpretation. Salvadore Dali has long been one of my favorite artists, so I chose his painting “Sleep” to work with.

Were I writing it now, there are definitely some things I’d do differently. However, I’m not writing it now, merely resurrecting it — and presenting it for the world to see. Enjoy!

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Who gave them the loudspeakers?

Her: “So what? The majority of people don’t even leave comments, they just read. Those are the normal, intelligent people.”

Me: “Wait a minute. This is interesting: You’re saying that the majority of people who visit my site don’t leave any comments at all, which is true. And by not leaving any comments at all, that signals that they are normal?”

Her: “Exactly. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Me: “Yeah, that makes sense. I don’t usually leave comments on people’s sites. And I’m relatively normal. Do you leave comments?”

Her: “Rarely.”

Me: “Wow. Let’s take this a step further. If we apply this model to the greater world, it seems to me that the ramifications are staggering.”

Her: “Go on.”

Me: “Okay, this might sound a little crazy, but, can we conclude, based on this, that maybe, and hear me out on this, but just maybe, most…people, people in the world, are…normal?”

Her: “Wow. I guess we could. My God, I never thought of it that way before. But it actually makes sense.”

Me: “Yeah, wow. But if most people in the world are in fact normal, how have I been left with the distinctly opposite impression for most of my life?”

Her: “I dunno. Maybe because the crazy people are the ones with the loudspeakers and they won’t shut up.”

Me: “I guess. But how did the crazy people get the loudspeakers?”

Her: “Hmm. That doesn’t make sense. How could the normal, intelligent people allow the nutcases to dominate the power of communication that way?”

Me: “I dunno. That’s pretty sad.”

Her: “Yeah, pretty fucking sad.”

— Found on Hipsters are Annoying

Yawn!

It’s 8:30 in the morning, and I’m at work. Ugh.

On the bright side, there aren’t too many other people here, so I’ve been able to snag the stereo, drag it over to my area, and attach my iPod to it, so I’ve got good tunes without having to have my headphones on all day.

Gotta take life’s pleasures where you can, right?

Especially at 8:30am.

By the infinite dick of God

I first found this on the ‘net ages ago, and used to have a copy somewhere on my hard drive. I’d forgotten about it for a long time, then the phrase “by the infinite dick of God” popped into my head tonight, and I decided to search this out and preserve it for posterity. Enjoy.

I am forever astonished by how many mistakes could be avoided if people would just think about what they are saying. This is especially the case in religion. An example of this is the assumption that God is male. Obviously God is a woman, because God doesn’t have a penis. The proof of this is by omission: nowhere in the Bible is there a reference to the “Divine Penis,” and I am sure that if God were a man He would talk about it somewhere. No real man could go on for hundreds of pages about himself without mentioning that thing once or twice.

Upon remarking on the above observation, I was notified by someone that he heard the oath “by the infinite dick of God” around Caltech, though “semi-infinite” would be more precise. Unfortunately, this further muddles the issue. I am thankful that the ancient theologians did not realize this point, otherwise they would have wasted much time in debating this actually nonexistent part of God. I can see it all now…

During the fall of Rome, St. Augustine referred to “God’s mighty male member, wider than the Coliseum, more powerful than Zeus’s tool, able to take Athena in a single bound.” Then in the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas, in an attempt to reconcile St. Augustine’s remark with the rediscovered writings of Zeno, declared that the length of God’s immense organ must be semi-infinite. But then Rene Descartes, after spending a lifetime in philosophical thought, stated that since God is greater than that which can be conceived, God’s measureless masculinity must be truly infinite, because an infinite length is much longer (in fact, infinitely longer) than a semi-infinite length.

However, the followers of Aquinas immediatedly countered with a simple argument: “If God’s tree is infinite, then what holds it up? Certainly one end of God’s tremendous tree must be firmly rooted in his loins.” Also, a minor philosopher (whose name I forget, but who liked perfect islands) argued “If God’s monument to life were infinite then there must be a fig leaf whose extent is also infinite. But then there is something infinite that is not part of God, which contradicts the assumption that God is the greatest. The only solution is that God’s rod must be semi-infinite, so that He can hide it by turning His back to the world and looking over His shoulder.”

Since both sides had such valid points, for a while the discussion reached a stalemate.

Then the great German philosopher Hegel attempted to reconcile the issue with his sword-plowshare theory, where he proposed that the infinite and semi-infinite are actually two manifestations of the same thing. Though it seemed impossible, Hegel claimed that God does occasionally beat His infinite sword into a semi-infinite plowshare. This theory gained great popularity, but it didn’t really solve anything primarily because no one could understand it.

Some time afterwards, the rise of non-Euclidian geometry seemed to favor the Cartesians when it showed that God’s wondrous worm could be infinite in this dimension, yet be attached to Him in a higher dimension. However this solution was not totally satisfactory either, because then there isn’t a preferred direction to God’s protrusion in this dimension.

The answer to the debate had to wait till the beginning of the 20th century, when Georg Cantor, attempting to cope with his strict religious upbringing, proved that a semi-infinite member is just as long as an infinite member; therefore God’s member may be semi-infinite and yet be no shorter than an infinite member. Cantor’s colleagues ridiculed him by showing that his theorems also proved that a finite real dimension is commensurable with an infinite one, suggesting that anyone’s piddling plow is just as long as God’s prodigious pecker.

This paradox was solved only with the advent of quantum theory, which demonstrated that the real world corresponds to the set of integers rather than the set of reals. In that case Cantor’s theory showed that the finite phallus was infact infinitely shorter than the infinite one, though the theory still retained the property of the commensurability between the infinite and the semi-infinite. So today mathematicians agree that Cantor was correct, finally and conclusively demolishing the central argument of the Cartesian theory.

Thus we see that if St. Augustine had thought about the nature of God’s member, only after several centuries of the application of logic and mathematics and physics would a definite answer be reached. And even then the answer would be wrong, because the very basis of the argument is nonexistent. For the reason described at the beginning of this treatise, we the faithful know that by simply examining the Word of God it is obvious that any discussion in this area is meaningless, since God hath no member.

— Robert Mokry

He's got a point

If anyone in [My Fair Lady] was gay, it had to be Higgins and Pickering — you’re telling me two single men in their late fifties who live together and enjoy speaking properly and dressing Audrey Hepburn in fabulous outfits aren’t?

— from ‘Will and Grace’ (Thanks to Prairie for sending this to me!)