SteveAndersen.com

I suppose this post is past due.  I am awair that there hasn’t been an update here in… quite some time.  And it feels weird knowing that this is the last post.

Obviously, in almost any life there is change that happens over 3 years time.  To say that the change in my life has been dramatic would be an understatement.  It is almost hard for me to remember what life was like in January of 2008 when I last posted here… and the me from that time, honestly thought that the me of today could not exist.  It has been an amazing 3 years, a span of time that has contained such drastic changes that I can’t imagine there being another perod of my life that will ever compare.

Obviously, if you know the story of the last 3 years, then this makes perfect sense.  And if you don’t, then this seems like introspective navel gazing.  I apologize.  If you don’t know what has happened, and you feel like you should, get ahold of Vivienne, she is the only one who knows how to find me anymore… though I was so awful to her for so long, I can’t imagine that she will come looking for me very often – and that is as it should be.  Coincidentally, if for some reason you think you need to find me, you will have to get in touch with Vivienne too.

 

Mr. Willy Wonka

Nestlé USA

Office of Consumer Services

PO Box 2178

Wilkes-Barre, PA 18703

 

Dear Mr. Wonka,

 

I apologize for not having written to you sooner to express the sublime joy I have received while consuming your confections, particularly your Runts, through the years.  I have been delinquent in my letter writing, but I have exuberantly and regularly purchased pounds upon pounds of your Runts. 

 

Your Runts have, from a very early age, made an otherwise intolerable life, positively gleeful.  When my stepmother would force me to eat cottage cheese, or vile potato salad that had been warmed by the sun, Runts were there to make it better.  When I was reduced to beating my head against a table because I simply could not fathom a solution to an algebra problem, Runts were there.  In college when Statistics and Research Methods turned me into a raving lunatic, when girls broke my heart, when family members died; Runts were there for me.  When in graduate school and forced to learn Greek and Hebrew, it was not the faculty, or encouragement from friends that saw me through the challenge, it was Runts.  When, during various parts of my life I have felt either homicidal or suicidal, your Runts have always been able to calm me and give me the fortitude to sally forth into this cold and miserable world full of sin and pain.  Indeed it might be safe to say that Runts are, with their crispy, fruity deliciousness, at least partially responsible for the person I have become.

 

And so it was with great excitement and hopefulness that I made a discovery at a local convenience store earlier this evening.  New flavors of runts!  I immediately purchased a box and hurriedly sampled the new flavors.  That is when my disappointment began.  While I felt that the “pineapple” flavor was satisfactory, it certainly was not up to par with other Runts.  I sampled the “Mango” flavor and was utterly dismayed.  Not only did it bear little resemblance to a mango, with far too much citric acid flavor, but it was also almost unpleasant in my mouth.  Having never wanted to spit out a Runt before, I did not exactly know how to proceed.  But only when I returned home and examined the contents of the box more thoroughly was the crushing of my very soul complete.  I made note with abject horror that these so-called “new flavors” were not simply new friends populating the here-to-for rapturous world of Runts, no, these were interlopers!  These unworthy concoctions had not supplemented the Runts I have known and loved for most all my life, but they have supplanted and replaced not only blue-raspberry, and (of all things) cherry, but also my most beloved, watermelon.

 

Now I must assume that, as you are a good and kindhearted confectioner, that this has happened without your knowledge or consent.  That these poor excuses for flavors have, of their own accord, somehow managed to weasel their way into your factory and tied up, or held at gunpoint, or in some other way incapacitated the other, more delicious flavors.  I therefore endeavor to bring this miscarriage of justice your attention and beg, no demand, kind sir, that you investigate and put a stop to this pineapple/mango insurrection immediately.  Return to us the peace and prosperity that we all once enjoyed in the rapturous world of Runts.  Do we not owe them so much more?

 

Yours in Christ,

 

 

 

The Rev. Steven T. Andersen

Ok – so here is my situation: recently, like a month ago now, I purchased a shiny new 24” iMac 2.4Ghz, with 2 gigs of ram and a 500 gig drive. I bought this candy machine to replace my – wait for it – G4 DP450. That’s right baby, 450 megahertz. Slow as the day is long, of course when I bought it seven (7) years ago it was the baddest machine on the block, today it is a trusty dog, a basset hound at that. Honestly the DP450 did pretty much everything I wanted it to do, it just did it painfully slowly. Imagine getting 8fps from handbrake and you will know my pain. I was trying to wait for Leopard to come out before buying a new machine, but gave up (when Steve announced that Leopard had been postponed in order to get the iPhone out the door on time, something inside of me died) – frankly, I got tired of avoiding web sites that made moderate to heavy use of java because they completely choked my machine. You know, sites like Ebay, Amazon, and Flicker – no joke. But I am all-better now. Hmmmmm Intel inside.

So my plan had been to take my venerable old DP450 and put it in the basement with about a terabyte, or two, of storage happening, and just use it as a file server, set it to spin down the drives when they are not in use, and to sleep most of the time, but to wake up for network access. I figured I would just network it, set the drives to mount on log in and have simple painless network storage. One drive for iTunes, and MP4s, one drive for Time Machine for my machine, and one drive for Time Machine for my wife’s machine. Maybe even keep a bootable OS9 drive in there for when I get nostalgic for a less bloated, if less stable OS.

That was my beautiful plan. There are 2 things beautiful about this plan, first, I already own the computer… just buy a new drive or two, pop them in, and presto-change-o I have an easy to use NAS device. Second is that this idea does not require an external drive to be plugged directly into the computer to do regular backups. Who is really going to keep a dedicated external drive constantly plugged into their computer, just to manage backups? In true Mac fashion backups happen seamlessly, simply and behind the scenes and I don’t have to think or worry about them; or plug in a special drive every time I want to back up – it just works. Ahem.

Ok – so I have been busy sharking for new drives recently, getting ready to put my plan into action – but now that Leopard is nearing it’s release date – Apple seems to have pulled the rug out from under me. According to Apple, a Time Machine drive must be either a USB / Firewire external drive, or on a networked machine running Leopard. Not only do I not want to pay for an extra copy of Leopard for my DP450 – but it wouldn’t even run it if I was willing to fork over the extra spread. Machine too old and too slow. Yes – I could get a processor upgrade card for the DP450 that would allow it to run fast enough to support Leopard – but that is just more cash. Part of the goal here is to use what I have and not buy more stuff. Buying more stuff makes the plan less beautiful, less Mac.

OK – so what I want to know is WHY must the server machine run Leopard? Is this just another money grab, an attempt to obsolete more machines, and force users to buy more licenses, or is Leopard actually managing file sharing differently? From looking at the Leopard new features page – it doesn’t look like file sharing was changed from Tiger to Leopard. So what gives? It’s not the much heralded ZFS (which I would happily pay for both a processor upgrade and another license to get) – the drive in question must be formatted in HFS+. What gives?

Anyone know?

Joe?

A brief rant if you will indulge me. And it is my blog, so you will.

No wait, come back. I’ll be nice. Honest.

Yes I am capable. Sha.

So Woot is offering a Microsoft Zune 30GB Digital Media Player tonight for $99.00.

And yet, using any product made by Microsoft is still such a horrifying idea that I am more than willing to pay twice as much to use a quantifiably inferior product from Apple.

Why? No, I am not actually insane.

It is the non-quantifiable issues. Like usability.

I am more than happy to pay twice as much for a new iPod nano with less than a third of the drive space, a smaller screen, and no FM tuner, or WiFi. Because the iPod is usable, and the Zune… well, it will quickly become another mp3 playing brick in the bottom of my technology drawer – which makes it a waste at half the price.

See, it isn’t so much about fandom, security, stability, or even slick design – though Apple certainly has all of that in spades over Microsoft. It is about simple usability.

Though, given that one must wonder what Apple is thinking when they brick iPhones, and release the iPod touch after crippling many of it’s features. Perhaps the Steve is beginning to be affected by his own reality distortion field and needs to go away for a little while again?

/rant

Oh, and if anyone is wondering what sort of bobble I would appreciate for Christmas this year, I like the red one.

So, OK – here is the deal. This is obviously trying to be a funny clip (below). Or, perhaps I should say, the author of the clip was trying to create a funny clip when he put this together and posted it on YouTube. Of course now that the clip has made it on CNN and the folks from the local ASPCA can’t be far from his front door (to say nothing of the folks from PeTA) he is trying to pass himself off as (never mind the cat) the victim of ignorant store employees.

OK – maybe he was poorly advised by some minimum wage pet-store lakie. Maybe he was not out to get a laugh out of people by traumatizing his cat. Maybe. But if that is the case – explain 2 things:

• 1) Who videotapes themselves washing their cat?
• 2) Who sets the video of washing their cat to music from “The Little Mermaid” and posts it on YouTube?

A sadistic punk does.

The thing that is perhaps most disturbing, is that if you go to the web site of the genius that sells this “pet spa” contraption www.petspausa.com, and you watch their cheesy flash intro, or click on the FAQ link; you will find that the company clearly states that the machine, or as they call it “The Cabin” is for both cats and dogs – and that the experience of being hosed off “hydro-massage showered” will relax the pet. Dogs, probably. Cats? Fat chance.

But I think the thing that is most disturbing is how many people sent me the link to this, assuming that I would find it amusing. And, I admit it is sort of amusing in a sophomoric sort of way. But that does not make it funny, or OK. Clearly I need to talk more about humor here.

Ok – for future reference, here is a crib sheet, and it is not exhaustive, just a rule of thumb: Pranking humans = funny; pranking animals = not funny.