In order to get a workstation for my job at MP3.com, I had to go down and build it myself. Basically they had a G4 lying around with no RAM and no hard drive, so I scavenged 256MB RAM and got a 20GB hard drive from the tech people, and got to install Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 and some software.

And here is the fun part – I’m currently downloading at 1.5 megabytes/second from Macromedia over the MP3.com internet connection. See, I can still be amazed by little things in life. 1.5 Megs, thats like five T-1 lines! Neat.

Webalina in this FARK.com story says:

You shouldn’t feel GOOD when you do something nice. You should feel BAD when you don’t.

I just read an interesting article on News.com about MS’s new hiding features and other stuff to appear is Service Pack 1 to Windows XP. Basically MS is not doing any of the stuff talked about in the current remedy hearings, but they are basically renaming and centralizing the box that always pops up urging people to “make this my default.”

The new control panel lets you basically “hide” other installed programs and make certain programs default, overriding the annoying prompting. This is somewhat useful but not very. You aren’t allowed to delete Internet Explorer, only “hide” it, so it still takes up all the memory and is used in other apps, but it doesn’t appear on your desktop. Big woop. And you can hide other programs you’ve installed.

WHY???? If I installed the program, why would I want to hide it? Why not just uninstall it? I mean, if you don’t want to normally use it (say, only use RealPlayer for the occasional RealAudio stream) you can remove it from the Start Menu or the desktop already, just drag them to the Trash Recycle Bin. So what does this add? Not much.

But in one important respect Microsoft is being really nice, and I’m not really sure why. For people who are running stolen versions of XP using codes obtained from a big company, their systems will be frozen in that state, meaning no upgrades unless they pay, but will not be disabled:

“Basically we’re freezing their computer where it is,” Cullinan said. “We’re not preventing them from using it, but obviously one of the benefits of having a license is keeping your PC updated.”

If they’re ripping you off, MS, why not just completely disable their computer. Its their own darn fault for pirating your wares. Of course, I say this not being a user of XP, as I don’t buy ANY MS software, as I despise them, but I still understand that if they’re selling a product and someone is stealing it from them, they can do whatever they want to stop the people. Just as long as Adobe Photoshop doesn’t institute similar restrictions. 🙂

Oh yeah, Fox. Not the broadcasting company. Michael (J.) Fox was on Charlie Rose, and I caught a bit of it, and I found it very refreshing that he stated outright, without even being asked, that the reason he came forward with his disease was not because he cared about a cause, wanted to save the world, wanted to enlighten everyone to the evil of the disease, etc., but simply for himself, because it was becoming harder to keep lying to people, and to act, and whatever.

I really appreciate him telling the truth and not retroactively making his “coming out” about caring for the world. He cared for himself. He hid the disease for, like, seven years. Eventually it got bad, so he told people, because it was impacting his relations and his career. Makes sense to me. Really its not the public’s business except because he is a public figure, and of course he helped “shine the spotlight” on another disease, put a celebrity behind it, etc., which I guess actually is Good For the World ™. So it all worked out Mr. Fox. And by the way, I”m really sorry about your disease and am glad you’ve been so open about it. Maybe I’ll buy your new book. 🙂

UPDATED (2:07AM) Addendum at end
I have lots of thoughts about stuff, and I have to comment on the OCHSA season finale, but I’ll do that in the morning. While what can be said about 24 generally has been said on various sites, what I really hated about the ending was how many wonderful plot threads they just left hanging, and which I doubt they’ll clean up next season.

Let us count:

• What’s up with Kim’s boyfriend, Rick?
  
• When will Jack find out about Teri’s doctor friend? Does he have family? He is kinda dead. And what is up with her stupid memory loss thingy just appearing and disappearing with no explanation?
  
• Why did Nina have an affair with Jack? How did it further her goals? Why did she then start dating Tony?
  
• What happened with the, oh, I dunno massive plane explosion in the pilot? That seemed somewhat important. Why the hell did they do that? And don’t tell me its because that is the only way to get that ID card.
  
• Why did they have Gaines and Co. do the thing in the first place, if they already had half of their family in the country and they were already planning the breakout and all?
  
• Keith and Palmer’s evil financers and the Dr. Ferragamo thing. We forgot about it in three hours?
  
• Fallout for the not-revealing-he’s-dead and then afterwards not telling the truth at the press junket.
  
• The woman at the beginning who blew up the plane, where did she go? We saw Kevin die, we saw Gaines die, she stuck around…what happened to her?
  
• That lady took over CTU for a bit, then disappeared. Why?
  
• George Mason disobeyed Chappell’s direct order. And? I’m sure Chappell found out, why is George still in command at CTU?

And of course they left a bunch of important things unresolved, like who Nina works for, whether Teri is dead, and how Lady Mac is going to react to Palmer’s little divorce thingy. But those were intentional.

So, yeah. I’m annoyed. It’s like the writers decided it was much to complex and just started dropping plot threads left and right about the fifth episode, and then kept doing that throughout the show. Grr. Bad writers! Bad! But the show was still very well written with regard to dialogue and much of the plot, so it wasn’t terrible. And I’m glad it’s coming back next year — I still find the whole 24 hour gimmick incredibly appealing.

ADDENDUM
Yet another great article about 24 on Flak magazine. Seth brings up a lot of the things I was angry with, plus several more very interesting and insightful points. Even if you didn’t read my whole entry, if you’ve watched 24 you should give his article a read.

Chance encounters are so cool! So I pick up my parents from the airport after their wonderful week in Hawaii, and I suggest dinner. Claim Jumper being closed, we just happen to realize a Denny’s is right next door. So we go in, order, and not six minutes later (meaning, about five minutes later) who appears but my old school chum (heh) Franny. The UCSD girl happens to be up here for the weekend, happens to have been at a dance show, happens to have gotten hungry at midnight, happens to show up at the SAME EXACT PLACE WE ARE.

Well, it was really cool to meet up with her and talk and such. And as a Discordian I can not believe that this had anything to do with “fate.” Strange things happen all the time, thats just the way of the world.

We discovered that college kids across the country are obsessed with poker and Counter Strike, not just in my dorm. And she gets to live in an on-campus apartment next year, so lucky her! And, of course, do homework at the beach…

Despite the heavy campaigning I noticed when I was at SD the last time, voting in their AS (Associated Students) election was still only something like 20% of the student body. Go figure. We get more votes and we have “clean” elections.

What else? Got home, started watching the finale of 24, which I missed the first and second times around, but which my TiVo caught for me, yay TiVo. So I’m gonna watch that, and then maybe post my thoughts.

The entries that I mentioned before to be up? They weren’t up. But now they’re up. So check out farther down this page for six delicious never-before-seen entries, rescued from the hard drive of the AgBook.

For the past three days or so that I’ve had my computer, I’ve been happy to have it back online. Only, very quickly I realized that it was not on the internet. I could FTP, I could SSH, I could ping, but I could not get to web. So I thought, okay, try an alternate port…but port 8080 also did not work.

Finally I got an idea and typed “cox port blocking” into Google. Lo and behold, my wonderful ISP by default blocks port 80 and 8080. Why? Because of their stupid “no servers” rule, as if this web site is going to get more traffic than my rampant downloading if ISOs anyway! I mean, please!

So, long story longer, AgBlog is back, up, and actionable, at least until my next cable outage. I HEART Brandeis networking people, and the wonderful restriction-free network they maintain so well.

Yeah, FedEx pergatory was a bit grueling, but our precious AgBox is finally returned and serving again. Yay!!! I wrote a few entries in the interim, they are posted below.

UPDATED (5/27/02) addendum at bottom.
UPDATED (5/29/02) addendum at bottom.
Want a look at Harvard life? Then by jove check out this site! Just ignore the t-shirt clad background common folk. Ah, I feel like crumpets. And I think this is so incredibly cool!

ADDENDUM
The link was bad, pointing to Jim’s normal site, implying that I find him annoying and/or pretentious, which I don’t. I was trying to link to a picture gallery, his frameset threw me off. Now the commentary should make some sense.

ADDENDUM
Well, maybe it shouldn’t make sense, as the NEW link had two typos in it. NOW the real link is up. So there.

Haven’t actually seen it yet, but while waiting for Spider-Man to start I was able to see the last 30 minutes of Star Wars again, and it was just as exciting, and the audience reaction was exactly the same to almost all of the lines – groands to 3P0’s “I’m beside myself,” chuckles when they saw Yoda in kung fu stance to awe at the swordplay. So I’ll say it again – not a bad movie. What is the goal of a movie? To entertain? Star Wars sure does it. The love story, like I said before, is quite childish, but it is effective, more so compared to some of the Disney attempts. And gosh is that scenery beautiful. First thing I do when I make my first billion: build a space ship and blast to Naboo. Or, perhaps buy a small country and make a Naboo of my own. Because the utopia I see in my dreams is the same as I see on the screen in that planet.

Something else just hit me – the talk between Padme and Anakin about sand, and their different perceptions of it, was actually fairly sophisticated imagery for Lucas, and not half bad. Know what Steve Jobs said when he introducted the colored iMacs, that they were so cool you just wanted to lick them? That is the only way I can describe my reaction to Naboo.

Anyway, four minutes to Spider-Man. Might as well do a bit of revising on what I have of my Jerry Cohen essay while I wait for the second movie in two nights, perhaps a record for me.

Twenty minutes into my stay at Corner Bakery and I’ve finished my chili and the first paragraph of my paper. And I wonder, whatever happened to my sandwich? So I do what I usually do, I take my number and I go stand in an inconvenient spot until someone asks whats up. I tell the nice man that I’m waiting for my chicken panini. He goes to check.

Well, the panini made it into the oven all right…it was the whole taking it out part that was screwed up. He smiled at me as I saw him dump a heap of blackened bread into the trash. “Just a few more minutes, sir,” he said politely. So I broke out laughing and slowly walked back to my table. I LOVE this place! 🙂

I’ve decided that I’m a vegetarian. Cause I know people who are vegetarians who just eat fish, right? *cough*Sally*cough*. So how about me? No fish, rarely turkey, no pork, very little beef, just a lot of chicken. So if I wanted to go with this I could totally say that I’m a vegetarian who eats chicken. I mean, giving up the beef would be quite easy, and the only pork I eat is the sausage pizza and that’s cause its the only Aramark pizza I like besides their occasional chicken. So there ya go. I can start today. I’m a vegetarian, I just eat chicken.

How’s that? (Okay, so maybe its not free-range chicken, but then lots of fish are grown in tanks too). Its not like I’m saying I’m a vegan. So, whatever. If I was doing it for health reasons, fine. If it was because I cared about the poor animals, I better make damn sure I don’t buy any leather products or glue or dog food or bone china. If I were to do it it would just be to say that I was, and only because I don’t paticularily care for the other meats anyway. And, of course, I want to take a stand against the incredible American overconsumption of beef and whatever. But I’m already doing that by keeping it down to the occasional In-N-Out hamburger. So, I dunno, why be a vegetarian unless you either don’t really like meat or can’t eat it for health reasons? Cause if its because you care about the poor animals, I have a lot of other fun arguments to make. Like, that cheese over there? Why do you have that? Better be a crazy vegan or else the caring about the animals thing doesn’t fly for me, and I can’t see any other reason besides simple personal preference. Cause if we’re not eating cheese, why are we eating the poor carrots? 😛

Here is what I imagine would be really hard: being a Kosher vegan. Ouch.

Secondary, irrelevent thought, just struck me. Wonder if NP was at the Refusnik thing? Doubt it, but lots of fun Brandeis events at which she might make an appearance. And then, like any other time I’ve seen a celebrity or someone I know or have read or have read about or whatever, I’ll just glance over, give a little silent internal “hooray” and then proceed to ignore said person, going with the whole let them live their life philosophy. Unless, of course, I have a camera. But then I’m usually taking pictures of all the random people so I don’t feel very bad pointing it once or twice in the poor abused star’s general direction. I know, I’m terrible.

Oh, good grief, I’m finding myself having the urge to clarify again. And it’s 3am, so I should not be coherant. My idea of on-screen crush is so different than the general perception…its not a sex-symbol thing, its not a stalker thing (as I’ve said previously), and its not necessarily someone that I think I would paticularily get along with. Just someone who I’m drawn to because they’re good at their job (acting) and have a certain wit/intelligence such that they recognize that acting, while possibly the hardest profession, is not something one can let consume them. Oh, and for some reason the last two at least have been vegetarians. Weird.

Of course Star Wars the 2nd is getting reviewed to death, and I’m no seasoned film critic, but here are some interesting tidbits I discovered from watching the movie and (unlike most people) staying for the credits (yes, I’m writing this in the car after having just seen the movie and prior to driving home):

1. Yes, Mace Windu’s lightsaber is larger than everyone else’s.
2. Jabba the Hutt is apparently in this movie. Can’t say I saw him anywhere, but some guy is credited as playing him during the Australia shoot. Maybe they cut the Hutt…he is a big big anda ll.
3. If you think that humor is bad, you’ll hate the movie – it is written for an eight year old. When C3P0 gets dragged along by R2 he remarks, “this is really a drag.” Yeah, he actually says that.
4. What Paul told me is completely true – you can walk in half-way through the movie and the only interesting bit you’ve missed is the city chase. Nothing else in the first half matters. In the slightest.
5. Lucasfilm and ILM use super high end computers for all of their effects. Only the best for the job, right? So for this incredibly complex movie, I wonder what they used to do their pre-visualization? Well look here, in the credits, near the end! It’s not an Avid, or a higher end system. They’re using Power Macs with Final Cut Pro. Imagine that.
6. Yoda rocks. He does an action sequence. And it is just cool. That dude can kick some serious ass. Yoda vs. Spiderman would be quite a battle indeed. 😛
7. Dialogue is terrible. So plug your ears. Again, its written for an eight year old. The love story is like what you’d find in a Disney cartoon – kissing is the ultimate ecstasy. Deal. This isn’t an adult movie.
8. For those of you (like me) who have a passing interest in politics, again, it’ll be hard to stifle a laugh. I couldn’t. But I didn’t get any popcorn thrown at me, so I guess it is all okay. This is your eight year old’s first civics lesson, and today we’re going to learn about democracy equals good, dictatorship equals bad. Actually, we don’t quite learn that yet. That is for the third movie. But I think Lucas is doing a good job of keeping it at the level he wants it to be at. And the moral will be there, just not yet. And yeah, it’ll be shoved right down your throat, don’t you worry. With Lucas it is always a very simple good and evil.
9. Addendum: simple, but not simplistic. He shows controversy. He shows deceit in the Jedi Council. There is enough paper here for a thesis or two. The good and the evil are clearly defined and yet there is a bit of fuzziness that one hopes he will talk about in the next movie – cloning: good or bad? And, of course, why were they made in the first place. Another thing that bugs me: if that guy is really evil and of the dark side, why not cut off his access to your damn archives already?!
10. It is a bit graphic at times for a kids movie. A few times it reminded me of Starship Troopers. But it wasn’t too bad. And no swearing. And no sex. And no drugs. So I guess we’re good. There was even a don’t smoke PSA: “Would you like to buy a death stick?” the guy at the bar asks Obi-Wan. And our buddy Ben uses the Force to reform that cancer man right then and there!

All right, what do I think then? I think it succeeded brilliantly at what it was trying to succeed at. The effects were incredible, the sets were amazing, the action sequences rocked. And the story wasn’t unbearable. Just the dialogue.

Do I wish they had put so many great actors to better use? Of course. Did I expect them to? No way. I got a lot more than I expected, so it’s all good in my book. Oh, and did I mention that I got to see Natalie Portman? That, in and of itself, was enough. 🙂 Now that Amber Benson has been killed off of Buffy, college girl Natalie is my only on-screen crush. But obviously not in a stalker-y way. Although during the school year she is only 12 miles away. Hah.

I’m sure I could say a lot about last night’s Buffy, but I won’t, except on my previous (non-)spoiler posting, which seems to be becoming something of a thread.

Everything is wrapping up way too quickly. I have to start packing. PACKING!!! I still have three papers and two finals, but I leave on Sunday! Amazing…

This site, therefore, goes down sometime Thursday so I can pack up the computer.

Why did I have to meet such cool people so late in the year? Ah, well. There is next year.

The tradeoff I make is taking three hours out of my really hectic schedule to see the big musical going on at Spingold. Boy was that the wrong move.

Where does one start? The script – its a play about a guy writing a movie. He talks to his characters. They “rewind” when he doesn’t like something he just wrote. This gimmick has some great potential for self-discovery and whatnot. Added bonus: everyone he knows in life is represented in the script as a character, and the same actors play both parts. Brilliant!

Except the story is just terrible. I admit I left at the end of the first act, so its possible that as I write it is concluding beautifully, but I somehow really doubt it. Maybe it was the music. I hated it. Maybe it was the sets – ugly yellows, no personality, hard to tell which set is which. It could have been the sound – typical detective story voice overs badly recorded and playing way too loud on crappy speakers. Or the backdrops, which, going with the movie theme, were projected onto the set, but by a sub-par projector that made them hard to distinguish.

The dancing was cute. The story had potential. What it basically came down to was this: we, as an audience, make a deal with the writer. We will suspend disbelief for three hours and pretend like its perfectly normal for people to burst into song about their deepest feelings. In exchange, you give us songs that have a meaning, not just filler. I want a deep insight into each person’s character. I want something explained that I couldn’t have otherwise grasped. I want to learn something. That is the compramise. But the only song that came remotely close to actually revealing anything about these characters was the last one before intermission. I mean, sure, the sex innuendos with the tennis song are all well and good, but why???. Half way through and I still don’t know what the play is about.

So, anyway, I left City of Angels disappointed. Next time I want to look at seedy old LA I’ll rent Hollywood Confidential. It does a much better job.

It is a sign that I’m sick and high on Robitussin that I keep throwing in these terrible obscure references. The title is from a character in Trainspotting.

Hey, at least be happy you didn’t have to hear my explanation of how Reese’s Pieces become Peanut Butter M&Ms (hint – it involved a swimming pool).

Anyway, the last few days I’ve been pretty out of it, but that hasn’t diminished the amount of work to do, so I’ve tried to do a bit of it. Basically finished with the COSI project, which is implementing a classified ads system for books and housing and such.

Eating – this being sick thing has really put me on a good schedule. Breakfast at 9am, a first for me probably this whole semester, consisted of a egg and cheese on a bagel. Lunch wasn’t until four-ish and took the form of a pre-packaged roast beef sandwich, water, pringles, and carrots. Dinner at seven or so was a cup of strawberry yogurt with rice crispies and some terrible vitamin C fruit drink that Shelby recommended. Oh, yeah. And a bag of Peanut Butter M&Ms. Whoops.

Now the weather has turned bad again – all cold and rainy, and I don’t have any soft, comfortable clothes to throw on for the rain, so I’m just kinda not showing up for our final project meeting. Hey, they can figure stuff out without me, right? And I’m here if they need to call or IM. Unless I fall asleep again. I’ve been doing that a lot lately, but I’ve been waking up very refreshed, so all is good. And many of the symptoms are gone. So Mr. throat soreness, that is your cue to follow them off gracefully. Before I have to bombard you with Robitussin again!

Jacob Wolfsheimer (08:22 PM): You should be shot. Your away message is very revealing…and I don’t need to see you naked, thank you very much.
Danny Silverman (08:22 PM): Away Message: Buffy!!!

It is much more fun to watch a TV show with five or six other interested people. I look back on my year at Brandeis and I’m sad because it is coming to an end so soon, and it doesn’t seem like it’s even half-way over, and I’ve just met so many incredible people and it sucks to have to go away.

And for anyone at MP3.com who might be reading this: VUNET USA == GOOD!!! 😛

Bwah!