Just putting this out there

Hitting someone with a FOIA request because you’re having a workplace dispute is a bitch move.

This is what I really think

Among the long list of annoying things in the world, I am adding this: people who respond to a clever (imho) tongue-in-cheek diatribe with a stock catchphrase. I don't necessarily expect you to take the time to be clever in response, but for god's sake if you can't be clever, at least be genuine.

Related to the previous

Recent suggestions I have made that were inexplicably not taken:

• You should respond with "Will that count as a service item towards tenure?"
• Y'know, some Skoal would aid in expressing that thought mightily.
• I hope someone is going to call them out on advocating spousal abuse. That's so 19th century.
• The baseball bat's in the garage.

Self-assessment

It's performance review time. Here are a list of things I would like to include, but probably won't:

• Successfully refrained from telling clients, "Hey, not my problem. Bud-dee."
• Under obstacles, list "Central IT's inability to tell their collective ass from a hole in the ground."
• "Dude, I fookin' rock!"
• Explained to clients that the time has passed for major changes without any four-letter words.

Inspired by a dream

Not necessarily my dream, but that's not important.

Conversations with my mother

I learned from my mother last night that one of my cousins has been trapping beaver. This conjured up images of 1) Davy Crockett and 2) Wakka Chikka Wakka Chikka... She later said that there was no limit on trapping beaver, and he could take as much as he wanted. I don't think she heard me giggling...

Cloud storage for iTunes?

Ars Technica sums up my thoughts on cloud storage for iTunes nicely:

Removing local storage would bring the iTunes Store model dangerously close to that of Netflix and other streaming services; at a minimum, customers would no longer be able to claim even the limited ownership they have of their media in the current format.

A backup, on the other hand, might be more appealing if it's pitched the right way. As it stands, recovery of iTunes Store-purchased media is far from difficult— often a note to customer service will do the trick— but being able to get whole seasons of TV shows off a cramped hard drive without this extra step to get them back indicates that a cloud-based library- or backup-type solution might actually be helpful to some users.

This is the kind of thing that makes me nervous. The last thing I want is for Apple to be able to do the kind of crap Amazon has pulled with its Kindle content. Case in point: iTunes had the season finale of Leverage up a full week early. They pulled it from the store pretty quickly, but if you were a subscriber or beat them to the punch you could get the file. With a cloud-based storage system, it would be all to easy for Apple to yank the file back.

On the other hand, storage is an issue. Video content is not trivial, and while my desktop can handle it (so far), our Apple TV is perpetually cramped for space. Having a way to deal with that would be nice if they can do it without 1) resorting to streaming and 2) being dicks about access à la Amazon.

The pirate's experience

This graphic sums up my frustration with watching movies on DVD/BluRay nicely. Not every company does this (Disney is among the worst, TV anthologies are generally better about letting you at the content), but enough do that it can be pretty irritating. The worst is that once you get locked in the warning-preview cycle with no way out except to chapter skip all the way to the menu. I run into this all the time when I forget to take the disc out and just want to access Netflix. I have to then deal with the warning and previews just so that I can stop the disc and switch to streaming.

As a side note, it's not just pirates who can go straight to the movie. Netflix streaming pretty much drops you straight into the picture as well.

What kind of pretentious jackass posts on a comment thread as "The Writer"?

One who a) forgot his seldom-used anonymous blog was connected via Google, and b) had no idea comment posts would pick up the author's name from the blog and plop it in the post.

Anyway, hello to any Leverage fans who come strolling by. Sorry there's not more to see here.

Bye bye, Beck

Recently got a gift from someone who doesn't know me very well. I managed to act reasonably polite, but when I saw Glenn Beck's face staring up at me from the book cover I wanted to smack the gift-giver over the head with it. We stopped at Barnes & Noble on the way home, where I presented it to the sales clerk and said, "I just got this as a gift, and I need to get rid of it." Normally they require a receipt, but in this case he said he was glad to help me out. Frankly, I would have been happy to just hand it to the guy and be done with it, but being able to swap it for some Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon made me feel even better.

This thing still on?

Testing...

I got one for ya

On Firedoglake today, I found the following:

Q: Why does President Bush like to talk about “spreading democracy”?

A: Because “bending democracy over my desk” tested poorly in the focus groups.

Ain't it the truth

Parental controls

If that doesn't work, try duct tape

That band-aid I mentioned? It's apparently now been applied to another system, unrelated to the first one. God help us, that place is run by morons.

Roasted Cojones

Spent the majority of the day today pulling someone's cojones out of the fire. And not just some little girl scout weenie roast campfire, either. We're talking just this side of a raging inferno. Of course, all I could really do was provide a band-aid (I know I'm mixing metaphors-- stay with me), but given the urgent need and lack of knowledge of the system there wasn't much more I could do. The scary part is that the fix is very likely going to become a long-term part of the system, and god help the person who comes along later to figure out why the thing is architected the way it is.

Perspective, people

I don't want to minimize what happened at Virginia Tech, which is tragic and I feel for those who lost loved ones.

But.

On average, nearly double that number of civilians are killed every fucking day in Iraq thanks to the maniac-in-chief and his cronies. Where's the wall-to-wall coverage of that?

A question

Do you always stumble around like a drunken whore, or is that something you do special for presentations to upper management?

Happy Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior Day, Here's a Rabbit

Every holiday, we make a trek to the in-laws. This is a chore unto itself, but on gift-giving holidays we always have the added bonus of trying to be polite in receiving some kind of unwanted tchotchke of affection. We have nothing against tchotchkes per se, but the kind that come from dear spouse's parental units are beyond useless, with a kind of satanic sweetness that sets your teeth on edge. Yesterday's gift of pain was a ceramic pair of bunny rabbits, because nothing says "Praise Jesus" like bunnies in bows.

Jeebus help me.

Pulling your weight

There's been some change at work recently, and a number of us got promoted to what is essentially a middle manager level. Meaning that we get slightly larger salaries, the opportunity to participate in larger decisions that affect the group and well, manage. This is all well and good except for one person who we'll call "Menowanna." As in Menowanna manage anyone, and Menowanna leave my comfort zone. Oh yeah, and Menowanna get anyone else to help with my projects.

So how does Menowanna spend quality time at work? Well among other things, apparently spending days making what I assume must be gold-encrusted and bejeweled screenshots. Oh, and making copies of ancient applications, because that's easier than doing it right.

What kills me is that everyone else seems to just let this happen. There are days when I feel like everyone else is saying "Menowanna offend Menowanna." Like it's okay to have one person handling a major client alone. And it's okay to just let that person slide on the duties that everyone else in the office is taking on. Not fucking cool, man.

Things I would like to say

Client: I don't want to bother Billy Bob with this. This should be easy enough for you to handle, yes?

Me: Yes. As long as Billy Bob doesn't up 'n die on me so that I have someone to turn to when I can't decipher his crusty old code. Hey Billy Bob-- ever hear of using a vowel in your variable names? This isn't Fortran, old man.