Updates, updates, updates

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As it’s been having issues for a while, I started the process of nuking and rebuilding my PC last night. I just managed to get it online (after having to search out the drivers for the motherboard’s on-board ethernet port, since it wasn’t auto-detected), and Windows Update has just notified me that I have 33 “critical updates” to install to my copy of Windows 2000 SP 2.

Oh, joy. I’m so glad I have broadband — but even so, there are enough of them that have to be installed on their own so that they can trigger restarts that this is still likely to take all night.

Update:

After the first update was installed and the computer restarted, the next trip to Windows Update actually increased the count to 34. If this keeps up, I’ll have the computer up to date round about the time Longhorn is released to the public in…oh, 2007 or so.

Pinocchio

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Something else to add to my ever-growing reading list, thanks to Cory Doctorow: a beautiful new edition of the original Pinocchio fairy tale. Here’s what Cory had to say about it…

Pinnochio is one of my favorite children’s books. Like many of the great children’s stories that have survived history, it is a lot darker than most people realize. In fact, it’s a vicious little bastard of a book, and screamingly funny in places. […] Now, Tor Books has brought out a beautiful new edition of the public-domain text of the novel, deisgned by Chesley-Award-winning art director Irene Gallo (who is astonishingly good at her job, and who has a special fondness for this book, I’m told), and lavishly (and I do mean lavishly) illustrated by Gris Grimly, in sepia-toned macabre ink drawings that are as angular and jocularly grim as the text itself.

Dean Seattle flashmob

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Last week I mentioned the Doonesbury-inspired flashmob at the Space Needle. I didn’t go (to be honest, I remembered it exactly when it was scheduled to happen), but pictures and a quick account have been posted by Harvey Wallbanger. If I’d remembered earlier, I’d have been there — but failing that, I can at least live vicariously through the power of the Web.

Namedropper ;)

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Some people. I mean, come on…

My first exposure to the Pixies was when i was in Europe with the also now reuinited Skinny Puppy on their Mind TPI tour. Must have been 1987….

The Skinny Puppy guys were driving me crazy. Cevin was fight with the tour manager on a daily basis. It was just not an environment that i was particularly enjoying. I was helping to set up the stage and sell merchandise for Puppy. It meant i had a fair amount of down time during the day. So i wrote long notes to the Throwing Muses and the Pixies begging them to get me off the Skinny Puppy tour. I would write them on the back of the posters for our shows and then leave them a kind soul from the club to hand off to someone from the Pixies and the Throwing Muses the next night.

And if that weren’t enough…

Did i mention that i once had dinner with Michael Stipe? But by now, who hasn’t? He liked my shirt. I was tour managing the left wing of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, Consolidated, when we were playing in Athens. The drummer for Consolidated (Phil) was putting together a compilation album for In Defense of Animals and Michael was contributing a song. He came and joined us for dinner.

As someone who, having listened to the Pixies, the Throwing Muses, Skinny Puppy, R.E.M., and Consolidated for more years than I can think of, but because of living in Anchorage — who nobody cool goes to when they’re touring — never having had even the chance of seeing these artists in concert, let alone having dinner with them, I want you to know that I say this from the deepest, darkest depths of my heart:

You lucky bastard.

;)

Sorry. Just had to get that out of my system.

(And yeah, R.E.M. does still rock — their Bumbershoot show was excellent.)

Twenty Questions

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Why don’t we have answers to these 9/11 questions?

  1. What did National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tell President Bush about al Qaeda threats against the United States in a still-secret briefing on Aug. 6, 2001?
  2. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?
  3. Who made a small fortune “shorting” airline and insurance stocks before Sept. 11?
  4. Are all 19 people identified by the government as participants in the Sept. 11 attacks really the hijackers?
  5. Did any of the hijackers smuggle guns on board as reported in calls from both Flight 11 and Flight 93?
  6. Why did the NORAD air defense network fail to intercept the four hijacked jets?
  7. Why did President Bush continue reading a story to Florida grade-schoolers for nearly a half-hour during the worst attack on America in its history?
  8. How did Flight 93 crash in western Pennsylvania?
  9. Was Zacarias Moussaoui really “the 20th hijacker”?
  10. Where are the planes’ “black boxes”?
  11. Why were Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials so quick to link Saddam Hussein to the attacks?
  12. Why did 7 World Trade Center collapse?
  13. Why did the Bush administration lie about dangerously high levels of toxins and hazardous particles after the WTC collapse?
  14. Where is Dick Cheney’s undisclosed location?
  15. What happened to the more than \$1 billion that Americans donated after the attack?
  16. What was the role of Pakistan’s spy agency in the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl?
  17. Who killed five Americans with anthrax?
  18. What happened to the probe into C-4 explosives found in a Philadelphia bus terminal in fall 2001?
  19. What is in the 28 blacked-out pages of the congressional Sept. 11 report?
  20. Where is Osama bin Laden?

(via MeFi)

Persistance of Mouse

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Dalí, whose previous film experience included two short films with the Spanish master Luis Buñuel, approached Disney at a dinner party at the house of Warner Brothers head Jack Warner. Dalí, then working on Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, believed he and Disney could create what he called “the first motion picture of the Never Seen Before.”

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Disney agreed, and assigned director John Hench to help Dalí turn the Mexican ballad “Destino,” by Armando Dominguez, into a kind of prototypical music video. (Hench, now 95, continues to come to work every day at the Disney lot, and consulted on the new Destino.)

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Dalí spent his time at the Disney studio painting, drawing and discussing with Hench the challenges of adding motion to what he described as his “hand-colored photographs.” The project continued for eight months, and was abandoned in 1947 when the Disney studio ran into financial problems. Dalí died in 1989.

Thanks to some of today’s Disney animators, Destino has been completed, and will likely be shown in theaters next year before a Disney film, and eventually end up on DVD. I’m really looking forward to seeing this.

Can't it wait?

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Why in God’s name do people find it acceptable to stand at the urinal and talk on their cell phone at the same time?

Just wait. For one thing or the other, wait. But if I’m ever on the other end of the line during one of those calls, I’m hanging up.