Bitch

“Hello, I’m a PC. I haven’t got much to add here because it’s Apple’s software and policies that are making my users disgruntled.”

“Hey, I’m a Mac and I’m a bitch.”

But seriously, I’ve got an issue with the iTunes store provided by Apple. The gift certificates provided by and for the iTunes Music Store are nation specific and the store will not let users shop in the foreign stores.

Let’s back up some more. I recently received a gift certificate for the iTunes Music Store (which I am very greatful for) from a resident of the United States of America. I, however, am a resident of Canada.

I followed the steps to redeem this gift certificate. The iTunes Music Store told me that the GC was only valid in the US store. Okay then, I casually strolled down to the bottom of the store page and clicked the country button. I was easily switched over to the US store. Once in the US store, I was told that my account was a Canadian account, so the program automatically switched me back to the Canadian store. Then why give me the option to change stores in the first place?

I did some reading up on the subject of iTunes Gift Certificates. They are only valid in the stores in which they are purchased. So US GCs only work in the US and Canadian GCs only work in Canada.

Meanwhile, Amazon has it all figured out. As a Canadian, Amazon encourages me to shop at Amazon.ca but does not restrict me from shopping elsewhere. Amazon.com and Amazon.ca have different products and selection. When I visit the .com, I am often confronted with a question by the website, “Would you like to shop at Amazon.ca, yes or no?” I always select “No” because if I wanted to shop at the .ca, I would have typed .ca into my address bar. But Amazon doesn’t restrict me after that point. I am free to shop to my heart’s content at the .com and I will continue to shop at Amazon. I know they like me, they keep sending me emails recommending products I should buy.

I guess, the biggest issue I have is with the ability to change stores with the click of a button even though I am not allowed to do anything in the other stores. Why give me the temptation if iTunes won’t let me act on that temptation? Who does Apple think it is? A woman.

“Hi, I’m Mac. I’m a woman. You can look all you want, but I won’t let you touch me.”

Why…

Why can’t I be your baby
Why can’t I be your man
I … it’s driving me crazy
Why I don’t understand - Wide Mouth Mason

For some reason, some of you people want to know why I was reading a bridal magazine. Well, I can’t think of anything to write about this morning, so I’ll answer that question.

I was at my Mother’s house fixing her computer. She had clicked some popup window or malicious ad or something and had been hit with some trojan virus. Being her computer tech guy, it was my job to fix her mistakes.

While the computer was scanning or loading or restoring or installing or whatever it was doing while I was rolling it back and reinstalling software, I needed something to do. I noticed an issue of Today’s Bride magazine on her desk. What the heck, I started flipping through it. I was bored, it was something to do.

Back to the topic of bridal gowns themselves. I am right in thinking that the gown is designed to make the the bride look like the princess she wanted to be when she was seven years old, but with a big rack, right? Meanwhile the men in their tuxedos, are meant to look like the mindless penguin automotons all women want them to be.

My Old Computer

After cleaning out the furnace and storage room in my basement. I found an old computer of mine. This thing was a beast. Originally it was a 486 with 4MB of RAM. The hard drive was pretty tiny. I’m thinking it topped out at 80MB. The video card, geez, I dunno, super VGA. The thing had lotsa colours, okay. Floppy drive was 3 1/2″ and the CD-ROM was a 2x.

Over time and use, the thing needed certain upgrades and fixes to keep running. Out went the 486 processor. In came the mighty Pentium running at a whopping 100 MHz. The RAM was doubled to 8MB. After a nasty hard disk crash, I put in a 1GB drive. One friggin’ Gigabyte. I remember thinking, I’ll never fill that sucker up.

Seven years ago I retired that machine when I bought my Pentium III machine. But seven hours ago, I took that old machine and dusted it off. The keyboard is so old, it plugs in through at AT keyboard jack. In fact, as I look at the grime living on the keyboard, this is my keyboard from my 286 I got in 1989. After I plugged everything in, I pressed that big power button on the front of the machine.

Its ALIVE!

After a couple of minutes of loading, I took a peek around the hard drive to see what I actually had stored on this machine. Lots of emulation programs and tons of ROMs. I even had my homework from high school still on this thing.

The data that’s stored on this machine is pretty much there for good. I can’t get it off. The only way I can output data from this machine is through the floppy drive. The computer has no networking card or modem. It predates USB.

Its just sort of nostalgic to take a look back at this machine. Its not even that it was my first machine (it was my third after my 8088 and 286), but it was the first machine I had Doom running on. It was my first Windows machine.

Recommended Listening: Start Me Up by The Rolling Stones.

Keep the Faith

When things are getting you down, remember, you’ve gotta keep the faith. You’ve gotta remember that things are always darkest before the dawn. Things do get better, you just have to keep plugging away and hoping and waiting; then poof. Things seem to find their way back to where you want them to be.

I have been railing against the state of contemporary music for quite some time. I would go into a record store and find nothing worth listening to.

But just when I thought music was dead as an art, my spirits became lifted up again. I found some more music to listen to.

I had been keeping my listening habits buoyed by some old school funk by an artist named Betty Davis. She made three albums in the mid-seventies. I’d only heard of her a few months back, but I’ve been listening to her almost everyday since.

Last week, I asked for recommendations for something to listen to. Dan recommended a handful of acts. One of which was the latest Wes Borland project, Black Light Burns. I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t Wes Borland the guitarist from Limp Bizkit. Yes, but that Fred Durst guy is the douchebag who did it all for the nookie. Borland had to just sit back and be a musician. Now, this Black Light Burns stuff, its not the best stuff I’ve ever heard, but its pretty good. Definetely worth listening to a second time. I feel the 9.99 I spent on iTunes for the album was worth it.

Last night, I went hunting for some more music. What I found was a guy named Roky Erickson and two of his albums. From the listening I’ve given so far, I’ve come to conclusion that Roky Erickson is a singer-songwriter stuck in a heavy, southern rock band. And that’s just right by me.

Both albums were released n the mid-eighties and are victims of bad production. Don’t Slander Me is a studio album recorded to sound like every other album released in the mid-eighties. The songs are good, but the way they were recorded does not the give them a long shelf life. They sound very of-their-time and that eighties time didn’t age well.

The second album I tried is called Gremlins Have Pictures. It is an odds and sods collection. Unlike the over-production of Don’t Slander Me, this has got under-production. Some songs sound like mixing board recordings from live shows (and probably are) while others sound like basement demos (and those probably are as well). But if you can get past the poor recordings and inconsistent musicianship, the songs themselves are really good.

Later last night, I learned something about Windows Vista that has finally made that product worth putting on my computer. The original sounds for the environment were written and recorded by Robert Fripp.

I can just see the TV commercial now.

Mac: Hi, I’m Mac.
PC: Hi, I am a PC.
Mac: I come with iTunes.
PC: I come with Robert Fripp.
Mac: Damn!

Chances are, if you’re still reading, you’re wondering, “Who’s Robert Fripp?” He’s the guitarist and mellotron-ist from King Crimson and has made some memorable tunes with David Bowie and worked with the likes of Brian Eno.

Recommended Listening: Shut Off The Light by Betty Davis, Anthem by Roky Erickson, “Heroes” by David Bowie.

Weekend Recap: Running Around Like A Chicken With Its Balls Cut Off

Friday

See Ya Later

I spent most of the day running around. Running around for work. Running around for Carmine. You see, Carmine had returned from Italy with some DVDs.

The guy who sold Carmine the DVDs had told him the DVDs would work in North America. That is sort of true. The discs are not region coded or more specifically, coded for Region 0 which is supposed to work in all DVD players. Now, there is a catch with DVDs in terms of compatibility. Not only does the region code of the disc have to be compatible with the player, but so does the format of the video files. European DVD video files are stored in the PAL format. North America uses the NTSC format. Here lies the real problem. Breaking the region code of a dvd is a simple process I can do with a small program on my laptop with the DVD burner. Recoding a PAL video to NTSC is a real pain in the ass. So much of a pain that I’ve never done it for my own DVDs in PAL. But what Carmine wants, Carmine gets.

My goal was to allow Carmine to watch these DVDs he bought.

Off to the local electronics store. Me, I know what I’m doing, I go straight for the store manager.

“I hope you can help me. I am looking for a DVD player that has a built-in PAL to NTSC converter.”

“The new Yamaha DVD player is supposed to convert it, but I’ve never tried.”

“If I brought in a disc, could I try it out on a floor model?”

“Sure.”

“See ya later.”

A couple hours later, I return to the store with one of the discs Carmine brought from Italy. It worked. Perfect. I called Carmine but I couldn’t get a hold of him, so I went back to work.

Later when I saw him, I gave him the results of my search.

“The 2001 Audio/Video has a Yamaha model that plays your discs.”

“Go buy it.”

“Don’t you want to know how much it costs?

“Here’s my credit card.”

“See ya later.”

See Ya Later, Yeah Right

During all my runnings around I took five minutes to check out the local Value Village. Normally I don’t like shopping for other people’s throwaways, but once in a while some good vinyls could be found for dirt cheap. Want proof of that, ask Juice. That guy found a good condition Chicago. Today, all I could find was a decent Catch Bull At Four. Oh well, maybe in a couple of months, some good stuff might appear.

(The following in italics are my thoughts, much like a cloud bubble in a comic.)

Well, back to work. Now how do I get outta here.

I passed by the section that had the little ballerina dresses.

Who makes their kids wear that shit? Oh well, there’s the exit. Shit, that girl over there looks familiar. Just keep your head down and maybe she won’t notice you. Just two more strides and I’m gone. One…

“Hey WIGSF!”

FUCK! “Hey, look who it is! What’s up?”

She’s gonna wanta hug isn’t she. Yup, there’s the arm stretch. She wants a hug.

“What’s the matter? You’re so tense.”

If I wanted to spend time with you, I wouldn’t have broken up with you. “I’ve been running around all day, my head’s not there right now. I’m sorry.”

So me and my ex-girlfriend caught up with what we’ve been up to and the mutual acquaintences and stuff like that.

I don’t like running into exes. It’s not a common thing due to the lack of opportunity and sheer lack of quantity of exes to run into, but I still don’t like it.

After a couple of minutes of useless chit-chat, “I gotta get back to work. It was great running in to you. See ya later.” Yeah right.

See Ya Later CB4

I watched the Raptors game at Bob’s place. Poor Raptors, they couldn’t eek out a victory in New Jersey this year and it cost them their first playoff series in years.

Chris, Andrea, TJ, Joey; see ya later.

Saturday

Usually at work, I enjoy listening to talk radio. But, being Saturday, talk radio is very, very lame. So work went real sloooooooow. I flipped and flipped and flipped through the dial and got fed up. I pressed play on the tape deck. You never know what someone may have left in the tape deck. Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 I must have listened to that album two or three times before trying the radio again. When the second round of flipping grew tiresome, I said screw this and went home. I wasn’t getting any work done anyway.

Me and Bob tried out this newish sports bar called Hoops. Small and cramped but it was well planned in terms of the video screens. There was a great deal of screens in this little place. Many of the screens hanging from the ceiling were hanging in pairs. This allowed each seat to face two different broadcasts simultaneously. What a great change of pace from all the other places that plaster the hockey game on every screen. Heaven forbid somebody actually want to watch another sport for a change.

And the draft beer, perfect temperature for me, colder than the average draft. I like my beer a bit colder than the next guy. It was very refreshing.

Sunday

Recently, I have seen this jar of honey in my Mother’s kitchen. Apparently there is such a thing as alfalfa honey. I don’t know how one can get honey from an alfalfa but I don’t let that bother me too much. I leave that to the bees. Then, on Sunday while at a health food store, I saw a jar of buckwheat honey. I checked for darla and spanky honey, but I couldn’t find any.

…

Yeah, that was probably the worst joke you’ve ever read.

Oh well, Sunday was a rather uneventful day. I spent much of the day with my Mother doing mamma’s-boy stuff.

Recommended Listening: What’s She Doing Now by Garth Brooks, Working for the Weekend by Loverboy.

Complaining

Ian, if you’re gonna be in this family, I get you some earplugs because the Portokalos women, if they’re not nagging someone… THEY DIE! - My Big Fat Greek Wedding

You know those people who are always complaining. Anything, they’ll complain about anything. And not just in that humourous, need something to write in my blog way. Actual nagging to the point where dollars need to be spent in order to appease the complainer.

So there’s this person who owns a laptop. At first she was complaining that she needed a proper size keyboard for the laptop. At that point, she began stealing the keyboard from my desktop. That’s fine with me. I don’t mind sharing my keyboard. As long as she puts it back when she’s done. She, of course, never put it back. Her birthday came around so, happy birthday, here’s a keyboard. I bought the women a new keyboard. A standard Logitech USB keyboard, nothing too fancy, but it’s got all the keys and is rather comfortable. That was about eight or nine months ago. I took a look at that keyboard this past weekend. I couldn’t find it under the inch of dust. I don’t think this keyboard has ever been used.

Recently, this person has been complaining that her laptop is too slow and she needs a new computer. Presto, for Christmas, a new laptop. I don’t like it. I need a desktop computer. Exchange it for a desktop. So I asked her, “If you have the space for a desktop machine, which you don’t, what’s wrong with the laptop?” Her answer, “The keyboard is too small.” This person is well aware that you can plug full sized keyboards into laptops and this new laptop is pretty well equipped for standard stuff like that. This new laptop has 3 USB ports, so she can plug in her keyboard, printer and one other thing.

I am convinced that this woman would rather complain than have the thing, whatever it may be, done right at all. She wanted a keyboard, so she got a keyboard. As soon as she got the keyboard, she didn’t want it anymore. She just wanted to complain. Then the computer was too slow, so she could a new computer that is much faster. Guess which one is on the floor collecting dust while she plays computer solitaire.

Before anybody comments that this woman is a [insert negative word here], she is my mother and I do love her as any son should love his mother. I just need to vent my rage a bit.

How Did I Get Here

A week before Christmas in 2004 I completed college. I got my diploma in Computer Programming or something. I made a solumn vow then: computers are evil and I must rid the world of them. How the Dell did I get here then?

This is a photo of the den in my home taken on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007*, a little over two years since I made my vow.

Anybody remember that episode of South Park where Cartman is absorbed by his Dawson’s Creek Trapper Keeper. Humourous cartooon or startling vision of the future: you decide.

Alternate titles for this post:

• Life In Dell
• Hell Hath No Fury Like A Laptop Scorned
• Now, Where’s My Abacus?
• Yes, That Is An Ikea Mousepad
• I Really Need To Get A Life
• Dave Chalk, Eat Your Heart Out

* I actually wrote 2007 the first time, I didn’t have to backspace over a 6. I just feel really proud of myself for getting the date right the first time writing it this year.