QuickTime and iTunes

I love QuickTime. I hate iTunes. Every PC I get I install QuickTime and all the browser plugins I need in order to watch videos both offline and online. I’ve got some really cool videos I enjoy watching once in a while, so I have to do it.

However, my most recent installation, on my Windows Vista PC, is annoying the crap out of me. I want it to automatically check for updates, but basically every couple days a window pops up and tells me there is a new version out… but it is NOT a new version of QuickTime. It is the exact same version of QuickTime that I have installed, but it is popping up a window to kindly let me know that I can download QuickTime+iTunes.

I don’t want f***ing iTunes. Go away.

Anyway… if anyone knows how I can keep automatic updates on but have it ignore the QuickTime+iTunes, please let me know.

Blade: The Series – Revisited

I have never been someone unwilling to admit mistakes. Over a month ago, closing in on two, I put up a little review for Blade: The Series.

From the perspective of the two hour pilot, I stand behind my review. It was crap. However… as the show has progressed, the creators of the show did something interesting and unexpected: they pushed Blade into the background. Now, the show is still about him fighting vampires, trying to foil their nefarious plans, but they realized, as most people have, that telling that story from Blade’s point of view is boring. He finds vampires, he kills them. Dull as dirt. Instead, the show introduced a young woman who was turned, but Blade got to her and has put her on his serum. She’s not a daywalker like him, but the serum keeps her mind clear of the hunger for blood. Blade then sets her the task of infiltrating the vampires to get him information, to destroy them from the inside. And she’s got good reason, the vampires killed her brother.

At this point, the show becomes more about the vampires, interactions among the clans, the divide between then infected and the pure bloods (born as vampires)… in other words, it actually becomes watchable, even enjoyable, and in some episodes it is down right good TV. It harkens back to Kindred: The Embraced in some ways, and I’m certainly getting a kick out of it.

And thankfully, Randy Quaid hasn’t returned as of yet… Let’s hope it stays that way.

Why can`t I use the elevator?

“You can’t use the elevator.”
“My friend here is blind.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t use the elevator.”
“Why can’t I use the elevator?”
“Because someone defecated in it.”
“What?”
“Someone defecated in the elevator.”
“When?”
“Two days ago.”

This was the exchange I heard while waiting for the MARTA train to leave the Doraville station this morning. Shortly after that, inside the car was this:

“What did she say?”
“Someone defecated in the elevator.”
“No shit?”
“Just the opposite.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly.”

It put a smile on my face, the second conversation not the first. However, the initial exchange bothered me. Not because someone had appearantly defecated in the elevator, because, well, with homeless people around Atlanta things like that tend to happen (like that one time a guy actually took a crap on the bus…), but the fact that the woman from MARTA knew that it had happened two days ago and was only now being cleaned up.

I understand that everyone deserves a weekend off every now and then, and many businesses don’t operate at all. But I think feces in an elevator might be one of those “emergency, pay the extra $100 to have them come out on the weekend” kind of situations. Instead, appearantly they decided to put up some “Wet Floor” signs and police tape to block off the elevator (the only one at this particular station) for two days so it could be cleaned up sometime today without having to spend any extra cash. I’m sure any people in wheel chairs appreciated it.

Veronica Mars

If you don’t watch this show, you should.

It has been a couple days since I watched the second season finale and I’m still just amazed. The final episode, just like the season before, takes all the clues that you’ve been getting all season long, the ones that you know are related but they don’t all fit into one puzzle, and gives you one last bit that makes everything snap together and the rush for the resolution is on! Holy crap! No wait.. they didn’t just.. oh my.. wait… what… I don’t… jeez… wow… holy fu… NO, THAT DID NOT JUST… YES!!

Seriously… season one is on DVD, buy it. Season two will likely come out soon, buy it also. And season three? Well, we will find out this week if Veronica and company make it on to the CW Network’s fall schedule. And they better, because I want to know what … nah, I won’t ruin it for ya.

Programming Consistency

Sometimes I just feel like if I could get my hands on certain programmers I would slap them silly. Or perhaps kick the living crap out of them.

I’m working with this legacy application. In one table there is a column that is a string. Its an ID number stored with leading zeroes, like: 005, 016, 548. In another table, the same ID is stored as an integer, no leading zeroes. And they are key values in both tables. I am not allowed to correct the tables due to the effect it would have on existing applications.

Its so irritating to have to constantly convert back and forth due to some long ago idiot’s lack of planning. But what really irks me is that these tables were created about six years ago. The guy who did it hasn’t worked here for five years. In all that time, all the expansions and upgrades and applications, no one has been allowed to fix it. This mismatch of data, over five years, has probably resulted in hundreds, thousands of lines of additional code, to the point where fixing it will now cost the company a small fortune to fix. So they don’t fix it.

So, here I am, writing a couple extra lines of code per function, every page of code, probably three or four hours per week of my time, because one guy six years ago made a stupid error.

Ugh.

State of Fear

This book, State of Fear by Michael Crichton, scares the crap out of me, and its not even a horror novel. The topic of the book? Global Warming. Now, it is a fiction novel, detailing a fictitous lawsuit against the EPA and a tangled web of espionage and adventure as the lawyer of a billionaire environmentalist gets pulled into a crazy plot to engineer difinative proof that global warming is a dire threat to all of humanity.

But why does it scare me? There is a point in most people’s lives when they finally come to an understanding of just how little we, the human race, really know about how our world works. And I am not talking about just a personal realization, because I had that many years ago when I discovered that I did not know everything. I am talking about how much science is going on and how little actual certainty there is about what they are studying, especially when it comes to complex systems like global climate.

The book reads like any other thriller type novel, but right at the beginning there is an author’s note that states “references to real people, institutions, and organizations that are documented in footnotes are accurate.” And the paperback copy of the book contains a 32 page bibliography. So while reading the book, I didn’t take everything Michael Crichton chose to spoon feed me. I looked up the books and articles and read some of them myself, and I read others not used in the book, and in doing this research I ultimately came to the same conclusions about the material as he did when it came to writing his book: the media and politicians exaggerate the hell out of conjecture and dish it up as solid fact. When you read a bunch of the data, you come to realize that it is very possible that we might one day have another ice age, or that we might have a global drought with searing heat, but that we cannot conclusively say which or what is going to happen because these is alot of data out there and it points in every conceivable direction and we do not know all the variables yet. Global warming could be very real, but right now we have evidence that supports it and refutes it, in fact if you restrict your view to the data that global warming supporters throw out you would be lead to believe that the planet is actually cooling. And what really gets to the core of why this book scares me is that the world is making policies based on conclusions that are not fully realized, that cannot be fully realized.

I highly recommend this book, and I also recommend reading up on what is really going on in the world. Do not settle for what the TV tells you.

The Music of My Youth

Okay, so this is going in the Gaming category, but only because it didn’t really fit into Random Thoughts, and it does actually have something to do with games. I’m not normally one to post about crap I see on the internet, but this I just had to put up.

Nintendo Choir.

Its only not safe for work if your PC is loud, but even then most people under 40 should laugh when they hear this. Its a choir singing songs from popular Nintendo (and other) games… Mario, Zelda, Mortal Combat. And they do a pretty good job of it too…

Enjoy!

Veronica Mars

Every time I watch this show I ask myself, “What the heck is it doing on UPN?” Back when the UPN network started up, they put on some of my favorite shows… ‘Nowhere Man’ is one of those shows that I will definately buy if they ever put it out on DVD, and ‘Marker’ was like an updated Magnum P.I. But as time went on, they cancelled those shows and went with lots of 30 minute sitcoms, most of which were crap.

‘Veronica Mars’ is about a girl, Veronica, who is the daughter of a private investigator. Her dad used to be the sheriff, but got drummed out of the job after he accused the richest man in town of murdering his own daughter, who was Veronica’s best friend. Veronica is on the outside now, all her friends from the rich side of town have turned on her and what she wants most in the world is to know who killed her friend. The show has high school, mystery, and smarts. Its well written and well acted.

I just finished watching the finale for season one that aired last night, and it was awesome. I definately recommend this show to anyone, and I can’t wait until next season.

An Aching in my Sole.

That’s not a misspelling. I meant “sole” not “soul”. Spiritually, emotionally, and all that other crap, I’m fine. Life is good.

However…

I have an aching in my sole. After 5 years of working jobs that were primarily focused in sitting on my ass behind a desk talking to people on the phone, I now have a job harkening back to my years spent toiling under the slave masters at Kroger (not really, I actually liked Kroger… at the time… when I was 10 YEARS YOUNGER!!!!!!), I work for Toys “R” Us as a stock / pick-up clerk. I am on my feet for 8 hours a day, give or take. I do get 2 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch. And true to form I find any excuse to sit on my ass (for example, today I rode over 25 bikes out to display on the floor.. yes, they are 16 and 20 inch bikes for little kids, and YES, I did say I rode them out). But Holy-Mary-mother-of-Jesus-H.-Fucking-Christ-on-a-stick do my feet hurt!

My blisters have blisters. The marrow in the middle of my bones hurts. I have pain from my toes to mid-shin, and then it just stops. All the other pain has faded, either because in 2 days of working my body has gotten used to the upper body lifting already, or perhaps my feet just hurt so much that my brain won’t allow me to feel the rest of it for fear it will kill me. And yes, I did just say 2 days. 2 DAYS!!

(insert massive amount of swearing here)

And somehow… but some miracle or sheer force of will, I still manage to smile at each and every single customer.

Of course, I get home and collapse crying like some pansy little sissy manling wussy. But that’s a private shame.