Music continues to overcome
It’s been a good month for music. No, not music companies: music. EMI released their catalog on iTunes minus crippling and consumer-hostile DRM schemes. The RIAA has lost more cases, including one that was dismissed with prejudice (meaning the defendant may be able to recover their attorney’s fees). Plus, a home-made album is topping the charts.
My favorite part, though? General Fuzz released another album, this one called “Cool Aberrations”. And again, he’s doing it for free (as in beer). I’ve had his stuff on long-term-loop before (”Messy’s Pace” is still a favorite of mine), and it looks like I’ll be listening to this new stuff for a while too. Go Fuzz!
Update: I went to the CD release part for my friends’ band The New Up and ran into General Fuzz again. I bought him a beer to say thank you for the music. Karma++.
Less junk on my lawn
I just made finished my third contact with the wanks at The Examiner. It’s been 2 phone calls and and email trying to get them to stop delivering their crap little free paper to my house. Maybe it is because I’ve spent too much time in the anti-spam battle, but I’m just getting sick of all the clutter in my life. This one is especially annoying since I have to make extra effort to pick up, dry out (it always gets wet from sprinklers), and then recycle something every day that I have never, ever gotten value from.
It’s time to reduce my junk mail, too. When I think about it I am amazed at how much time I spend shredding credit card applications and recycling coupon mailers. What a waste of resources and my time.
Best Buy’s bait and switch
I find this reprehensible. Best Buy has gotten caught publishing prices on their web site, and having a duplicate, look-alike site that employees access from inside the store. So, if you see a deal on line and want to go pick one up in the store, it is quite possible that an employee will show you a site from one of their in-store browsers that shows a different price on what appears to be the Best Buy site. Silly consumer, you must’ve mis-read the price at home!
First, let’s call this what it is: it’s a grift. It’s a bait and switch. It’s illegal. It’s a scam to get you in the store and sell you goods at higher prices or try to get you to buy other goods. Second, let’s watch Best Buy’s executive team ‘fess up and admit what they did. From the article:
“It’s unfortunate, some of the situations being described,” Bryant said. “What we’ve learned very quickly is we have not been clear enough in communicating to our employees the policy, and how to execute it in our stores.”
Woah. That’s not an admission. That’s throwing every one of your retail employees under the bus. You’re blaming 17 year old kids for not being convincing con-artists. Just think about the level of sophistication required to pull this off. It wasn’t by accident that an entire second web site and database went up and that machines deployed to the stores were configured to access it instead of the public site. The infrastructure required to make this happen isn’t accidental; it is the result of a massive, concerted effort by people very high up in the organization.
You lied. You’re crappy con-artists that got caught. And I hope you pay.
Update March 19, 2007: According to a report by The Consumerist, Best Buy is still doing this, even after an investigation was launched!
Anthony’s Tacos
I’ve come to embrace the Anthony Bourdain school of restaurant selection. Several times in his show “No Reservations” he has pointed out that the best way to find good local food is to watch where the locals are eating. No matter how “divey” the place looks, if it’s full of people, you are bound to have a good (and safe/sanitary) meal. The locals won’t keep coming back if the food was gross and gave them the runs.
In California (and elsewhere) there is what I will call the “Taco Truck Corollary” that should be fairly obvious. I like to keep an eye out for where taco trucks park near work and home. When I see that a particular truck parks in the same place repeatedly and is consistently surrounded by dirty-handed, hard-working, blue-collar Latinos grabbing a meal, I add it to my list of places to get food.
I have yet to be disappointed with the results of this technique. I’ve had many good $5 meals, and not once have I gotten food poisoning or even an upset stomach. In fact, I’ve had far more sickness after eating at chains than any rolling “roach coach”. It’s simple, tasty food made by people who are truly invested in its quality (it’s their livelihood).
Hooray for taco trucks!
Just an update
There are so many things going on. My friend KX gives me a semi-monthly reminder of the form “Did you realize it has been x months since you blogged?!”. And, yes, I totally realize that. There is so much I want to comment on, but I haven’t. The US is in a silly war. My company is being acquired by Cisco. I visited my family (including a new nephew) over Christmas. I got professional portraits taken by Loic Nicolas. I quit smoking. So much is going on that I really don’t know what to write.
I want to express outrage, joy, fear, frustration, and simple, giddy glee. The question is, though: Is a blog the right place? I really don’t know.
My Beloved Robot Arm
In the second episode of the first season of “Invader Zim” entitled “Parent Teacher Night”, we are given a glimpse into the birthing process for Irkin invaders. A flashback by Zim shows him being extracted from a pod, cleaned, and equipped by a series of machines. Finally a recorded voice booms, “Welcome to life, Irkin child. Report for duty.” In a moment of infantile naiveté, the young Zim leaps up to hug the mechanical arm that has given him life and exclaims, “I love you cold, unfeeling robot arm!”
It seems like a simple joke, but I recently realized that it is an apt metaphor for a disturbing element of my life. I am (in the general case) a caring and giving person, concerned about the well-being of others and giving of myself (as my friend Tim observed) “until there is no more to give.” This works fine for my relationships and friendships, though it tires me out at times and I need to remember to periodically take care of myself before giving to others.
This is no Mr. Smith
I’m in favor of Net Neutrality, the concept that the Internet should be free and clear of special “deals” where network owners could charge people to carry their traffic to customers or even block access. Such deals would have crushed things like the blog explosion (a revolution in first ammendment rights) and the advent of streaming audio/video (like YouTube) and social networking (like Friendster) since the giant companies with the big coffers would be able to buy up chunks of last-mile bandwidth. Why would you read an alternative news blog if CNN.com comes through 10 times faster? Why would you try out that new video service, if AOL can pay to get your attention with more money and worse technology? It’s just stupid.
And who are the people making the laws? Well, in one very prominent case: a fool. A 10 minute rambling by Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is truly something worth hearing. This guy can’t even explain how Netflix gets to your house, and he’s supposed to understand the technologies being developed on the Internet enough to legistlate them? Good lord. If this doesn’t shatter your visions of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”-type elloquence, nothing will. The brightest and best are not the ones we’ve sent to Washington.
Update: Via “Throw Away Your TV”, Jon Stewart took on Net Neutrality with hilarious results, having specifically taken on Ted Stevens previously.
Update: Thank goodness someone made a Ted Stevens techno remix. Woo!
Tray-shy
I’ve written here a few times about DRM (specifically the Sony “root kit”) and now I realize that, as a result, I don’t quite trust my computers with music anymore. I’ve been a consumer of CD music for a long time now, with several hundred discs overflowing my current storage solution (yes, I still like having jewel cases and liner notes around). When I buy a CD, it usually makes a quick trip to my Linux box that runs custom software I wrote to rip everything to MP3s for my convenience. After that, it usually gets dropped into one of my higher-end home stereo systems for thorough CD-quality listening.
Today I got the new Tool album and was surprised to find that I was afraid to drop it in the CD tray of my Windows laptop at work. Might I be installing software unknowingly? Could listening to this new music damage my computer? What if it installs software that allows my machine to be compromised next time I fire up wireless at a coffee shop? Could that cost my company money or intellectual property?
I’m a huge music consumer, and I feel betrayed by the business that has thousands of my hard earned dollars. I feel like they’re likely to screw me, the customer, at any moment to “protect” themselves against the imagined threat of mass-piracy. Sure, music is being stolen. But does that justify what they’ve done and how that has affected me, the straight-arrow consumer?
What’s my name?
I like my names, both first and last. People seem to choke on both of them, and I don’t really understand why. Maybe I don’t speak clearly enough, but I often end up getting called “Cal” or “Karl”. One sandwich place in the city even managed to consistently write down “Todd” on my order ticket. I suppose that was better than having the immigrant fellow behind the counter puzzle at the pronunciation for a bit and then holler out, “Kill! Kill!” when trying to alert me that my meal was ready.
My last name is a whole other ball of wax. As long as I can remember, it has been mangled. VanderBeek is as phonetic and simple as can be, but people seem to panic due to the extra capitalized letter and number of letters. I’ve long since stopped using the space that should be before the “B”: too many people decided “Vander” must be my middle name. Granted, a certain no-talent ass clown has made life a little easier with respect to recognition (though I find his use of capitals and spaces gluttonous). Sadly, that comes at the cost of being asked if I’m related to dear James every time a teen-aged checker at Safeway notices the name that comes up when I swipe my card. Such is my lot.
The most puzzling thing, though, is the world’s seeming inability to believe that I can correctly spell my name on a form. I have decent print handwriting, and am especially careful on forms that will be read by scanners. Still, I get all manner of variations coming out the other end. I’ve had to correct the DMV, my bank and broker, insurance companies, and employers. Mostly they seem to think it impossible that two consecutive e’s would be in there. Almost uniformly they seem to think, “Surely he must mean ‘VanderBeck’.” And, of course, they are very wrong.
Finally, there is the category of truly random mistakes. I get email and junk mail to a variety of bizarre permutations, some more hilarious than others. However, I recently got a refund check to a name that is useful. I’d like to thank the people at Epson for making reasonably good printers with enticing rebates, and for supplying me with what I must eventually use as my stage name: VanderRock!
A Wealthy Man
I’m as wealthy as I’ve ever been. Yes, I make good money, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m in a place where I have the richest set of friends I’ve ever had. I have people to laugh with, buddies to veg out with on the couch, shoulders to cry on, and backs to slap at a party.
I’ve had a few little strange freak-outs and anxiety attacks. This is a strange, new, and vivid world of emotion for me. It’s fine, though painful, because it is real. I choose to experience life like this, in all its colors. And I choose to not be overly strong, but to instead rely on the wonderful people around me. This is the right thing to do as it is part a true human experience. And my friend Jeff says, “If your don’t allow people to help you, you are robbing them of something.”
I had a wonderful time last night and this morning (post crash-out) with two of my favorite friends, and I can’t help but feel blessed despite my current exhaustion. I’m a very wealthy man.