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by George Ziemann
2009
January 3, 2009
-- Warped News -- My wife was
watching news coverage of the Gaza Strip activity. As I walked
through the room, I hear a reporter ask a military guy, "How
is the ground phase going to differ from the air attacks?"
I was laughing too hard to hear the answer,
but I'm guessing fewer airplanes are involved. More things that
are on the ground.
January 9, 2009
-- Mac Repair -- Against my better
judgement, I took a shot at trying to fix my wife's 15"
Aluminum Powerbook G4, which was having basically the only problem
we've had with any of them -- a power input malfunction. The
primary symptom of this is that the power input cable stops lighting
up properly and it'll generally stop charging the battery.
My wife's response was, "I guess
I have to buy another one." It would be refurbished, probably
$700-$800 to replace it, but whatever data had not been backed
up (there was not much, though) would be lost forever. And she's
kind of attached to it. She teaches online college courses. It's
got all her stuff, right where she wants it.
Fixing this requires replacing the DC
and Sound board, which I found for less than $100, making it
worth a shot. I'm actually an electronics tech, so how hard can
it be?
Replacing the DC and Sound board conveniently
requires completely gutting the laptop and putting it all back
together again, which gave me a feeling of dread at first. It
would have been easier to replace, oh, anything else at all --
the monitor, hard drive, RAM, speakers, keyboard -- and I hadn't
looked inside it before.
Fortunately, I had step-by-step instructions,
which I found at iFixit,
and was where I figured out exactly what it was I needed to replace.
I went through the steps (46 of them, I think, with helpful photos),
which required only two trips to Lowe's for a couple of very
small tools that I thought I already had, and one trip to Radio
Shack for thermal paste (for the heat sinks).
When you get to the end, then you go
backwards and put it back together, which always turns out to
be just a teensy bit trickier than it sounds. The step
to remove the BlueTooth connector said something like, "You
may have to get aggressive..." Well, it went back on like
that, too.
I only had two screws left over after
it was all put together, which is below my usual ratio. Plugged
it in anyway, bingo, right as rain, Bob's yer uncle. My wife
was impressed. To be honest, I was more than a little surprised
(and relieved) to see it fire up myself. But it did.
No real point or comment to make other
than to recommend iFixit
if you're trying to fix your Mac or iPod. This is not a sales
pitch, just my honest opinion after using it as a reference source
for emergency PowerBook surgery.
January 25, 2009
-- A quote I stumbled on from
"Rack
Jite," that really works best taken out of context:
"[T]here is one reason I have
been noticing that seems to drive not only religious and political
dogma, but all aspects of life. It is not left versus right or
urban versus rural or rich versus poor, it's really about how
much stupid people hate smart people."
January 30, 2009
-- The
Hokey Pokey -- Parody of
the Catholic Church, and an endorsement for cocaine. That's what
it's all about.
Clear Channel Lays Off 1500 --
Management hopes "they can
slip in the layoffs while the press is preoccupied with Inauguration
Day festivities."
Breathalyzer Test for Bar
Bands -- While
you're playing. Well, probably between sets, not while you're
actually playing. But this is being considered in Iowa, and the
whole state is like a Stephen King novel, so they might
stop you in the middle of a song for a breath test.
Playing in clubs is bad enough as a way
to make a living. Sometimes the perk of free food or drinks is
the only thing that makes a particular club or event worth playing,
especially in Iowa.
February 7, 2009
-- 10
Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know -- Worth reading. I personally don't worry a
lot about about what's on my Facebook page or what anyone thinks
of it. But for normal people, and parents, this is good information
to have.
June 1, 2009 -- Widely
repeated across the Internet today is the story that Jimi
Hendrix was murdered by his manager. If true, this is going
to screw up a lot of conspiracy theorists who have been saying
for years that the CIA did
it.
Susan Boyle
-- A perfect example of how the record business has destroyed
music by insisting that female artists be little more than lip-syncing
strippers. Every time Boyle comes up in conversation and people
try to find a nice way to say they thought she was too unattractive
to have such a beautiful voice, I think, Hello? Has everyone
forgotten Janis Joplin? Patti Smith? Mama Cass? Compared
to Janis, Susan Boyle is a looker.
When image, sex and Autotune is everything,
the creativity and content have already joined talent in the
back seat.
July 10, 2009
-- Wow, it's kinda dusty in here.
Word is that all the PCs infected by North Korea this week are
going to do the Mission: Impossible thing and self-destruct.
If I read the article right, this includes portions of the US
government, like the Pentagon.
Those in charge of our nation's security
have still not figured out that Windows is a security problem.
Either that, or Windows is a security problem because the government
asked for it to be designed that way, which is why they continue
to use it.
July 12, 2009
-- I'm seeing a pattern wherein every new revelation about what
the Bush administration (mostly Cheney, it seems) did is countered
first with a denial, then the switch to the "I'm stupid"
defense. Torture was something we would never do, then we saw
pictures, which were first covered up, then denied as "torture,"
reclassified as "extended interrogation techniques"
(or something like that), then Bush is out of office and the
documents appear, pointing directly at Cheney, who immediately
says, "But it worked!" This causes Bush to show up
in support and give the "Yes, we did, but it worked!"
stamp of approval on war crimes.
Currently, we have information about
the depth and breadth of the wiretapping of citizens. The counter-story
-- "But
it didn't work very well." And there's another, better
story about a secret CIA project that began in 2003, which the
current head of the CIA was unaware of until this past week.
Rumors have surfaced that this project was to be used to assassinate
undesireable leaders. Whatever it turns out to be, we've already
been told that it wasn't that all successful.
The prisons are full of people who did
illegal things that just didn't work out that well, and some
whose scheme worked out just as planned, but was still quite
illegal.
July 24, 2009
-- I've got most of the tasks associated with the Hurricane Alley
album finished, which makes now the perfect time to beg you to
BUY
A COPY!!. Or just one song.
Surely there's one track on this record that you'll like
if you give it a chance, which is what the 128k downloads are
for.
July 26, 2009
-- With our low production costs
for the Hurricane Alley album, we're not seriously concerned
about sales, even though I did just beg you to buy a copy a few
days ago. However, I'm really perplexed as to why no one is even
listening to the songs from the new album. Maybe it's
a summertime thing. Things always slow down this time of year,
but geez...
My readership hasn't dropped and a simple
Facebook post kicked it up 250-300 sessions in one day. We've
had 2500 downloads in the last six days, but almost none of them
for the new material. I downloaded a couple today myself just
to verify that the links worked.
Carl's dad and Tim's mom are pretty darned
popular right now, though.
I'm already busy on the next record,
which will bring some of Cara's songs into the spotlight. Four
songs are already completely finished (down to the final mix),
but this no listeners or downloaders thing has kind of taken
the wind out of my sails.
Not that it matters. We've got 60 more
songs waiting, plus whatever Carl, Tim or I write in the meantime.
Cara's songs have been the most popular, and the ones that I've
worked on so far sound significantly better than what is on the
music page right now. Sooner or later, the right people will
start finding it and it will spread.
I'd try P2P, but it has the inherent
problem that you can't find something that you're not looking
for.
July 28, 2009 -- Serious Brain Strain -- Saw a link somewhere (Fark? Reddit?) that
sent me to a YouTube video of Carl
Sagan explaining the fourth dimension. I don't know how old
the video is (it looks like the 70s), but Sagan leaves out time
and goes right to what is called the fifth dimension in another
(two-part) video, Imagining
the 10th Dimension. From what I gather from the comments,
it's an extremely simplified explanation of string
theory from quantum physics.
The Sagan video annoyed me because he
said we could see the shadow of the dimension he was talking
about, but he didn't show it on the clip, like he did with the
cube. But his becomes a perfectly logical explanation once you
go through the 10th dimension idea, which actually seems incompatible
with Sagan's explanation. The 10-dimension thing involves bending
things. Like Moebus strips, time, and potential choices.
If that's not enough to screw with your
head, there's an EU film called Nano,
the Next Dimension. It takes the dot that the 10 dimensions
start with (and doesn't even count) and goes the other direction,
which ends up making the other 10 a lot more plausible and probably
pushes the total of true dimensions to about 15.
I watched them in the order I mentioned
them, and the first scene of Nano, when they go from the
outside of a car down to the atomic level, they didn't even get
to the electrons and nucleus part - just rows of atoms (it reminded
me of Tron for some reason), and it made the string theory
thing make so much more sense. No bending was involved, but you
could imagine that if all the atoms suddenly no longer bonded
to each other, the car would disintegrate.
July 30, 2009
-- RIAA
Says "Don't Expect DRMed Music To Work Forever"
I must confess that I did not RTFA. This
actually belongs on Fark, because it is definitely not news.
The "Obvious" tag would be appropriate.
In related news (also at slashdot), EMI
Only Selling CDs To Mega-Chains From Now On. My instant response
to this was a sarcastic, "Excellent. WalMart is the new
arbiter of American music." My second thought was the sad
realization that the handful of remaining record stores are doomed
if the other labels follow suit.
Isn't refusing these other retailers
some kind of antitrust concern? Seems anti-competitive to exclude
the independent stores. Oh wait, the RIAA runs the DOJ. I keep
forgetting...
August 3, 2009 -- From Reddit -- Once
upon a time (1995ish), Seagram's bought Universal Studios. They
wouldn't keep it for very long, but while they did, Seagram's
CEO Edgar Bronfman (who now runs Warner Music), decided that
Universal needed a new employee orientation movie.
He hired Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators
of South Park) to make the
film. For some reason, Bronfman decided not to use it. It's
very, very funny, especially part 2.
August 6, 2009 -- This was (probably still is) on the
front
page of Wired.com.  I
seriously thought it was a story about how prisons are going
to have to jam more prisoners into prison cells, probably because
all the states are bankrupt but they really hate to let
those evil, non-violent pot smokers out of jail.
Later that day... So I see a small headline at the Washington
Post that says Steven Tyler fell on stage or fell off the
stage or something. I clicked on the link, but I never found
the part about Steven Tyler because Celebritology writer Liz
Kelly introduced me to the most WTF character that DC Comics
ever came up with.
The set-up --The economy was
better back then and the Justice League of America was hiring.
I must have missed that issue when I was a kid because we would
have turned Arm-Fall-Off-Boy
into a local meme, even though we didn't know what a meme was.
August 13, 2009 -- Les Paul died today. He was 94 years
old. In addition to inventing the electric guitar, Les Paul was
an accomplished player (unlike Leo Fender, who never learned
to play guitar). Wikipedia's
entry adds that, "His many recording innovations include overdubbing,
delay effects such as 'sound on sound' and tape delay, phasing
effects, and multitrack recording. He is often credited as being
the 'father of modern music'."
I've got one of his guitars and
it is pure pleasure to play.
 September 2, 2009 -- The Heart
Attack Grill has received national attention for both its
menu and its team of nurse/hooker-attired waitresses.
Real nurses protested the uniforms
as sexist and the menu as unhealthy. The owner responded that
sex sells and so do burgers and fries. Real doctors pointed out
that if you eat this shit all the time, it'll kill you (especially
if you already top the 350 mark). But they didn't see anything
wrong the uniforms.
Okay, that's the background,
most of which was to make this as long as the cartoon nurse.
Saw this on Craigslist.
The HEART ATTACK GRILL in Chandler
is now casting male models between 35 and 45 years of age currently
weighing between 250 and 300 pounds. For an 11-week reality show
which focuses upon how much weight (muscle and fat) the male
model can gain over the 11-week period. The male shall be teamed
with a sexy nurse partner who is trying to lose weight at the
same time. Apply IN PERSON at the restaurant. Filming and contest
begins October 1st. Only five male/nurse teams shall be chosen
to compete. $10,000 cash prize for the winning team gets paid
in December!
* Location: CHANDLER
* Compensation: $10,000 first prize out of only 5 contestants
Sounds like a contest where winning
could kill you, although you do get to hang out with a hot babe
who is starving herself for 11 weeks, while you stuff your face
and ogle her as she exercises or something.
For 11 weeks. This will not end
well. Some of the girls are going to snap. So if the food doesn't
kill their male companion...
September 6, 2009 -- There is a current meme on Reddit
that I thought was entirely fictional but turns out to be real
-- the narwhal, a whale with a unicorn-type horn. But the picture
below appeared at the Boston
Globe. Found it while looking through the archives of
The Big Picture,
which I think is one of the most awesome photography sites on
the net. Anyway, I'm checking out this fabulous shots (December
2008, I believe), scrolling down the page, and there they were
-- narwhals (click for bigger image).
My initial response was No way. It's
PhotoShop. But there was another, more recent Big Picture
about food around the world, and narwhal was on the menu for
at least a section of the far north. I'm still not convinced
they're real, but the Boston Globe doesn't seem like practical
jokers. If the narwhal are real, they're fascinating and I'm
truly surprised that I have lived more than a half century and
never heard of them before. I'm guessing the horns serve as icebreakers.
September 12, 2009 -- So I'm looking through a set of pictures
from Mars and stumble upon this one:
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It might just be me, but this
looks like a fish with an x through its eye, the universal cartoon
symbol for dead fish. Perhaps the equivalent of a "No services
at this exit" sign.
For the dolphins, of course.
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September 13, 2009 -- An
interesting analysis of the crowd size of the Teabaggers'
Convention this weekend. Some people can't tell the truth about
anything. A visual aid is
included (in the comments).
September 15, 2009 -- Kayne West continued his tradition
of acting ignorant in service of his own ego at the MTV's Video
Music Awards recently. This time, however, there's a
little backlash, and it's funny as hell..
 September
19, 2009 -- For those
that somehow haven't already heard this, a mental hospital in
the state of Washington decided that it was a good idea to take
31 mental patients on a field trip to the state fair, one of
which, Phillip Arnold Paul, was a murderer (in addition to being
insane). Surprise of surprises, while the staff was off riding
the Tilt-a-Whirl or something, Paul, who had conveniently packed
clothes for the trip, scooted out and no one has been able to
find him since.
While I'm sure this is certainly
not funny if you're in Washington, from the safety of about 1500
miles away, there is the basis of a great comedy movie here,
inspired by the staff at this hospital, which seems to be lucky
not to be patients themselves.
How irrational do you have to
be in the first place to think you can take 30 crazy people to
the fair? Even if you think that you could handle the logistics,
maybe with a high staff-to-patient ratio, at what point do you
say, "...and let's let the insane killer go with us this
time"?
And they let him pack some clothes.
To go to the fair.
The Washington Post reports
that, "After Paul's escape, the Department of Social and
Health Services ordered an immediate end to trips like the one
taken Thursday and launched an investigation into the practice."
Ya think? What ever possessed
them to think it was a good idea in the first place?
The good news is that the sheriff's
office said that his medication should keep him "stable"
for two weeks. So he might not kill you unless you piss him off.
Follow-up Sept. 29 -- Well, they
caught up with Mr. Paul after about 3 days, so that's a good
thing. In case you were worried about it.
September 29, 2009 -- I'm thinking about dumping the Talkback
blog. For one thing, it doesn't live with the rest of my site,
so I can't archive the stories without duplicating effort. For
another, sometimes the front page hangs up while it's waiting
for the rss feed. But mostly because there's not a lot of talking
back happening, although a few of my friends took the effort
to make a post or two.
I used to write in a style that
was much more hyperbolic and sarcastic. The result was that people
would write to tell me I was a moron. I once wrote what I thought
was a very funny
story about the jaguar roaming around in southern Arizona
(there was only one) and got an e-mail from someone scolding
me about the plight of the jaguars because they could not detect
sarcasm.
Maybe I'm just picking the wrong
topics to write about.
October 20, 2009 -- Banking services have sure gotten
mercenary this year, and it's
going to get worse, especially if you are a Bank of America credit
card holder. Some kind of new rules go into effect in February,
I think, so the banks are trying to offset it by finding any
excuse to raise your rates right now. I just got hit with an
11 percent interest increase for being two days late with a payment.
But that's my own fault. Coming
up next is an annual fee, but not for everyone, just the ones
who, unlike me, pay their bill in full and on time every month.
Or don't use it enough. In other words, those who are financially
prudent and are not living beyond their means are going to get
punished for it. It is no longer the wisest course of action.
I'm already getting charged a
service fee on my business checking account simply because I
don't have a credit card (with a balance) from them, too.
A savings account is pretty useless
right now. We have a savings account for our daughter with $100
for each Christmas she's been alive. It was up to almost 50 cents
every fiscal quarter in interest earned. Not a lot, but that
whole compound interest philosophy that we learned in grade school
was still in effect.
This year, she's been getting
one cent every quarter. She is failing to see the benefit, other
than that she can't spend it if it's in the bank.
On the other hand, it's seeming
like a good time to refinance a mortgage, if for no other reason
than to get rid of Bank of America before they start charging
to cancel your account, too (yes, it's on their list of things
to do).
October 29, 2009 -- I hear that Ford is going to start
putting their vehicles into the "cloud." Am I the only
one that really has no idea at all what this means? Stuff you
can only buy from an in-flight airline?
A quick
check at wikipedia offers this:
"The term cloud is used as a metaphor
for the Internet, based on how the Internet is depicted in computer
network diagrams and is an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure
it conceals. Typical cloud computing services provide common
business applications online that are accessed from a web browser,
while the software and data are stored on the servers."
Well, that explains it. It's
just hipster lingo for the internet, probably designed to oust
"pipes."
In 1,000 years, someone will
find printouts of articles mentioning the things that come out
of the cloud and start a new religion based upon it.
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