TAM6: After first presentations
I’m here in Vegas for TAM6, which is rolling along now. The first day was just a few cocktails and paid sessions (which I skipped), but now we’re into the swing of the normal sessions and presentation. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, billed as the keynote speaker, was fantastic. Speaking in a much more informal fashion than his usual presentations, he provided a lot of comedy and commentary on viewing the world as a scientist, especially in the presence of conspiratorial (UFOs and the like) and plain bad thought processes. He, being a publicly known scientist, gets to hear a lot of the same dumb questions over and over again. He punctuated his talk with a cosmologist’s view of our place in the universe.
It really is a stunning place that we take in this huge expanse, isn’t it?
Penn & Teller, now starting their presentation…
Update: I forgot to mention that I spent this session sitting next to a quiet young man that, after a little conversation, I discovered was none other than Captain Disillusion!
Helicopter madness
I can’t even comprehend the reflexes and skill it takes to fly an RC helicopter like this.
Honor your father and mother
On Father’s Day I want to take a moment to do something a little odd on my blog. Most of the time I talk only of myself and my experiences. I tend to restrict myself in this way since I don’t want to assume that other people, particularly my friends, want to have a play-by-play of their life recorded by me publicly on the Internet. I don’t mention a lot of names.
But I have to call some people out on this special day: John and Bev, my dad and mom. These two people, who came together in matrimony nearly 41 years ago, chose to begin the family unit of which I am proud to be a part. Together, though thick and thin (sometimes extremely so), they raised 3 kids who have become adults and started to repeat the cycle by founding their own families. In this way they have created one of the most lasting and amazing things in his world: they have created a living legacy. The reverberations of their genetic code and, far more importantly, their personal influence will echo far into the future. When I stop to think of this and its potential, I’m awe-struck. The great men and women of history have their humble beginnings, and their myriad inspirations. My parents have touched so many people, myself included, that their scope of influence in incalculable. There is no doubt in my mind that their impact has made the world better.
So today I honor my parents. They nurtured, taught, praised, corrected, comforted, and encouraged me. They mended cuts, built tree houses, prepared meals, and helped with homework. My list could go on for pages, but the important conclusion is this: they gave me everything, and continue to affect me.
Thank you both. You’re amazing.
Dethklok concert canceled due to fire. Brutal.
Mitch and I headed over to the Fillmore tonight to catch Dethklok, the most brutal band in (animated) metal. When we got there, I saw people getting pushed out of the door instead of going in, and the line wasn’t moving. Only a few minutes later, about six fire trucks showed up, including two ladder trucks! Apparently there was a small fire in an upper room during the first few songs of the opening band.
Not long later Mitch noticed that an upstairs light previously visible through a window had gone out. I looked, and the outdoor signs were also off: they’d cut power to the building. The two ladder trucks raised their booms up to the roof and sent a few firemen up to check things about. It was about then that I figured the night was doomed. Once the power was killed, it seemed unlikely that we would be seeing a performance.
The crowd huddled on the sidewalks and passed information about who had seen what. We speculated regarding our chances. Overall, the crowd was in a decent mood and comedic relief came when someone started waving at us from the roof of an adjacent building. With characteristic brutality the chant arose, “Jump! Jump! Jump!”
After about forty minutes, as the cold wind whipped through largely t-shirt-clad mob, word started filtering back: the bouncers had announced that the concert was off. For the most part, the crowd reacted by being a little upset and bummed, but rolling with it as most people do when there’s nothing that can be done. There was a fire! The concert wasn’t going to happen unless the owners were sure it could be done safely. A couple metal-heads started getting pissed off and yelling at the staff, but were met with scores of rolling eyes that said en masse, “Dude, chill. You were here to see a cartoon band.”
The crowd got their parting comedic shot in by joining in a futile chorus of “Free shit! Free shit!”, hoping in vain for schwag.
Oh well, time to check TicketMaster and get my money back. I’m bummed I didn’t get to rock out tonight; it would’ve been fun.
Rhapsody Redux
Support is frustrating. On-line chat support goes beyond that into the realm of “infuriating” by using even less equipped employees who are given little or no training and a click driven interface for providing robotic responses that are at their best ingenuous or, at their worst, simply insulting. Rhapsody, which I love but am frequently frustrated with, uses this means of support for their web service (the only way I can use their service on my work Mac). I was feeling punchy after their player plugin, which seems to suffer frequent problems, was keeping me from repeatedly playing the songs I need to learn in order to further my Rock Band career.
After my first session was interrupted by the instructions of the support person (clearing cookies, of course, destroys the cookie the chat application depends on), I was in a poor mood. As is my tendency, I drifted toward sarcastic and cynical. So, I present to you the following complete chat log with only three minor modifications. First, I removed the email account information I use to log in. Second, I changed the named of the support engineer to “Eliza” to protect the innocent. And third, I reordered two lines so that it reads more easily (Eliza was very quick with the automated platitudes).
Eliza: Hello. Welcome to Real’s Live Chat. How can I help you?
Kyle: First: make a note to your colleagues that “Clear Private Data” isn’t a very good answer for troubleshooting browser problems, since it disconnects the chat
Kyle: Second, I still cannot log into Rhapsody online
Eliza: I’m listening. Please go ahead.
Eliza: Am I correct in understanding that you are having problem in sign in to the Rhapsody.com?
Kyle: Correct
Kyle: email/password combo works fine to log into my account details via “My Account” on real.com
Eliza: Sure I can help you in providing the information regarding this issue.
Eliza: Please give me a couple of minutes while I check your account.
Kyle: And thank you for the dehumanizing and demoralizing use of canned, pasted responses identical to the last support person. It makes me feel like a unique and beautiful flower.
Eliza: Thanks for your time and patience.
Eliza: I could see an active Rhapsody Unlimited subscription under this email address: REDACTED
Kyle: Correct
Kyle: … though “Unlimited” seems to be a misnomer given the frequency of authentication problems.
Eliza: Now can you please let me know what is the error message you get when you try to sign in Rhapsody.com?
Kyle: “There was a problem logging you in. Please check your username and password and try again.”
Eliza: Now can you please let me know the what is the web browser you are using to sign to the Rhapsody com?
Kyle: Firefox 3 on a Mac, RhapsodyPlayerEngine 1.1.0
Eliza: May I know the version of Windows (98, ME, XP, 2000) that you are using?
Kyle: No. Because I don’t run Windows on my Mac.
Kyle: It runs Mac OSX 10.5.3
Eliza: Thanks for the information.
Eliza: Now in order to resolve this problem I suggest you to perform this below listed steps.
Eliza: Please follow the steps for uninstalling & installing Rhapsody online in Mac operating system:
- Open up your Main HDD (Where OSX is Installed)
- Find and open up the “Library” folder
- Then open the folder “Internet Plug-Ins”
- In this folder, locate the file “RhapsodyPlayerEngine.plugin” and drag this file to the trash
- Once this file is deleted, please visit http://www.rhapsody.com again and click on sign in to download the plug-in again.
Eliza: Are we in progress?
Kyle: Yes. And it’s working as well as my last experiences installing the plugin.
Eliza: Great! I’m glad it worked.
Kyle: Don’t get too excited there, Eliza.
Kyle: My last experience were not “good”.
Eliza: I see.
Kyle: I shall now restart Firefox, since your guys’ plugin seem to the the only .xpi packaged plugin that silently fails during install
Eliza: Yes.
Kyle: But restarting things several times will often do the trick. It’s a very sad user experience, and great motivation for me to cancel my account.
Kyle: I shall leave you now, to solve the problems of other people.
Eliza: Now can you please try to sign the account and check.
Kyle: And hope that someone in Rhapsody operations finally notices the giant blinking red light that says “authentication is hosed”.
Kyle: Thank you Eliza, it has been robotic and unfruitful. Have a great day!
Eliza: You are welcome.
Eliza: Is there anything else that I can help you with today?
Kyle: Certainly not.
You have disconnected.
Thanks, Eliza. I know you tried. It’s your boss’s fault for providing you with bad tools and no information. Having reinstalled, restarted, rebooted and sacrificed a chicken I am again listening to music. There’s no way for me to tell if I solved a problem or if the time I wasted allowed them to fix a problem on their side. But, if history teaches me anything, I’ll get more data in a few weeks when this happens again.
Goodbye, Bill
I’m horribly saddened at the passing of Bill McCauley. I count him among my friends, and am very sad to see that he took his own life.
That really sucks, Bill. I’ll miss you.
Pylons on Fedora 8
I’ve started playing with Pylons and like it so far. It has the rails-ish routing system, but doesn’t have some of the nonsense. Additionally, it’s designed to be open and adaptable, letting you plug in your own ORM or eschew using one entirely (unlike Django which seems to really want you to use their badly crippled ORM).
To make things easier for people running Fedora 8 or other RPM-based Linux distros, I’ve created some spec files and F8 RPMs to let you install Pylons in an RPM-friendly way. The other dependencies (like python-simplejson) can be found already via yum. Try them, and let me know what you think; I may submit these for F9.
Update: These have been submitted for review.
BYOBW 2008
The Bring Your Own Big Wheel race was right in front of my house yesterday! It’s a uniquely SF sort of event, and was a lot of fun to watch. I had friends over for beers and laughs. My raw video footage is after the jump…
Stick a fork in hip-hop
I have XM, and I love it. I listen to Charlie Steiner go on and on about baseball, I get my alt-rock fix when I need it, and find out what the world is up to via the BBC. But I, like the masses, enjoy a little pop music here and there. It’s popular because it’s simple and appealing, and I certainly can enjoy a little mindless pop now and again. Lately, though, I’ve been forced to change channels frequently, and not just because of those no-talent ass-clowns in Nickelback. No, the once-enjoyable and catchy world of hook-heavy, beat-driven hip-hop has degraded to a point below even the simple-minded world of pop. Take, for example, the chorus of the Top 20 hit by the self-referentially named “Will I Am”.
Baby where’d you get your body from?
Tell me where’d you get your body from.
Baby where’d you get your body from?
Tell me where’d you get your body from.
I got it from my mama.
I got it from my mama.
I got it from my mama.
I got it got it got got it…
Repeat 2x
Two lines, repeated a 16 times, for each chorus. Hip-hop artists have stopped even being artists: they are merely sample banks for their producers. The only requirements for being a one-hit wonder are 6-pack abs, the willingness to wear “grills” without an hint of irony, and the ability to repeat a catch phrase. That’s it.
So, I bid you adieu, hip-hop. It’s a shame your death throes may come in the form of multiple hit songs whose core message are “Let me buy you a drink” (or possibly “a drank”). May your pristine baseball cap forever be perfectly tilted. Now get off my airwaves, please.
Small victories, on paper
I’ve succeeded! I previously wrote about making an effort to reduce the amount of junk on my lawn. I put my name in a couple of registries and have a noticeable drop of in junk mail (particularly credit card applications, thank goodness). Additionally, I escalated my problem with The Examiner again and again. After four calls and emails, nothing had happened. Then I decided to go “old school”: for some reason, it seems to be the sort of thing my parents would do, but I called the Better Business Bereau. Sure enough, that got their attention and now I don’t have to throw away a soggy newspaper every day.
It’s the little victories that make one’s day a little happier.