Saturday, March 24, 2007

evening

The New Unnamed Babies

“Boy” & “Girl”

They’ll probably have names by tomorrow.

update - They’re tentatively named Bunny & Carlo.  They summer on the French Riviera and they winter wherever the best powder is.

mid-afternoon

Hot Action in the Neighborhood

This is what we woke up to at 5 something this morning.  From what we could tell in the blur of flashing lights, there were two fire trucks, two ambulances, two police cars, and a police motorcycle.  We have no idea what was going on.  Leigh-Ann saw one or two people loaded into the ambulance, but other than that it just seemed like everyone was milling around doing nothing.  The garage door of one of the houses back there was open, but it didn’t look like anything but a garage with two cars in it.  We didn’t see a fire (maybe it was limited to inside the house) or a meth lab or anyone being arrested.  Just lots and lots of flashing lots in a very quiet neighborhood.

Oh, and by the way, we have two new foster kittens today.  They’re two days old and they were abandoned by their mom in a warehouse.  They’re really cute.

Friday, March 23, 2007

the wee hours

Wanted:  One Fantasy Baseball Team Manager

I have a fantasy baseball league up & running and I need one more person to play to make up an even number of teams for head-to-head competition.  Or, if three people want to play, that’s good too.  But just one person is vital to the health and happiness of our league.  You don’t have to be experienced - it’s a league full of mostly newbies.  I can teach you the basics and help you out with navigating through Yahoo’s fantasy program.  Just please, play.  I’ll be your best friend.  I won’t even care if you’re using a Mac AND bragging about it.  I’ll just kick your ass on the field.  Don’t make me beg.  Well, don’t make me beg any more than I’m already doing.  If you want to play, just send me an email or post a comment and I’ll send you the signup link.  The draft is next Saturday, the 31st.  You don’t have to draft live - the Yahoo computer will do it for you.

update 3/24 - one team manager pending.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

terribly early in the morning

I Hate People Who Brag About Their Macs

Sure, if you want to yammer on and on about spending double what I did and not being able to do anything more on your computer, you go right ahead.  I don’t hate you quiet Mac folks, who just go on about your business, using your computer like the tool it is meant to be.  I won’t brag about my PC and you won’t brag about your Mac, and all will be right with the world.  Mac zealots are like PETA zealots who are like religious zealots.  I want all of them to SHUT UP.  Zealots of any flavor are annoying.  When you blog or post pictures or write on a message board or play fantasy sports or design great artwork or shout obscenities in all caps or talk about your puppy or your kitten...or any other damned thing you do, I don’t care what equipment you use, unless I’m shopping for new equipment.  I like that you’re happy with a new computer, just like I like being happy with a new computer.  New toys are fun.  But you know, you didn’t design it yourself, so quit patting yourself on the back, except for you, Steve Jobs, because you did design it yourself.  Pat all you want, you deserve it.  The rest of you, even those of you I generally like (this is not aimed at anyone in particular, just a longstanding annoyance and something I came across while reading a new tech blog for work a few days ago), please shut up.  And hey, lookie, I was able to say that on my blog, where I put one pixel in front of the other, until they made words.  I did it, with a lowly PC.

I swiped this from The Guardian UK, but since I share the author’s opinion, I hope he won’t mind me posting his whole column.  If he does, he can email me with his PC and I’ll gladly take it down.  It won’t ruin my love for him one iota.  Okay, maybe one or two iotas, but I can be bitter like that.

Charlie Brooker
Monday February 5, 2007
The Guardian (if you have time, follow the link and read the comments on the column - they’re delightfully snarky and British)

Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, and your head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark - unless you have been doing that, you surely can’t have failed to notice the current Apple Macintosh campaign starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which has taken over magazines, newspapers and the internet in a series of brutal coordinated attacks aimed at causing massive loss of resistance. While I don’t have anything against shameless promotion per se (after all, within these very brackets I’m promoting my own BBC4 show, which starts tonight at 10pm), there is something infuriating about this particular blitz. In the ads, Webb plays a Mac while Mitchell adopts the mantle of a PC. We know this because they say so right at the start of the ad.

“Hello, I’m a Mac,” says Webb.

“And I’m a PC,” adds Mitchell.

They then perform a small comic vignette aimed at highlighting the differences between the two computers. So in one, the PC has a “nasty virus” that makes him sneeze like a plague victim; in another, he keeps freezing up and having to reboot. This is a subtle way of saying PCs are unreliable. Mitchell, incidentally, is wearing a nerdy, conservative suit throughout, while Webb is dressed in laid-back contemporary casual wear. This is a subtle way of saying Macs are cool.

The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign - the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show - probably the best sitcom of the past five years - in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, “PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers.” In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because “they are just better”. Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul - that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn’t really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.

Aside from crowing about sartorial differences, the adverts also make a big deal about PCs being associated with “work stuff” (Boo! Offices! Boo!), as opposed to Macs, which are apparently better at “fun stuff”. How insecure is that? And how inaccurate? Better at “fun stuff”, my arse. The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal “adventure” in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-’em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac’s relationship with “fun”.

Ultimately the campaign’s biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow “define themselves” with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that “says something” about your personality, don’t bother. You don’t have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. Of course, that hasn’t stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that’s what we PC owners are like - unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you’ll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.

This week: Charlie watched some episodes of Larry Sanders (on his PC). He played the customised Fawlty Towers map for Counterstrike (on his PC). He listened to the Windows startup jingle every 10 minutes as his PC repeatedly rebooted itself.

////////////////////////////////////

CharlieBrooker
February 5, 2007 1:23 AM
Hello. Charlie Brooker here.

I wrote this piffle. Then it was subbed. And whoever subbed it decided to add a bit describing Doom as “the first shoot-em-up game”.

Words fail me.

They also changed every abbreviation -– so “they’re” becomes “they are” and “it’s” becomes “it is”, and so on—presumably in an attempt to inject a bit more plodding, impersonal joylessness to the whole thing.

Bet they did it on a Mac, too.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

late at night

The Mysterious Case of the Magnificent Bladder Switch

I’m not sure when this story begins or when it ends.  All I know is that somewhere along the bumpy road of my adulthood, someone switched my 34-40 year old bladder with that of a very very elderly woman.  Now, I’m not incontinent, nor have I ever been on this journey.  Although, the different between me and someone else in my shoes is that I was never stuck in traffic one minute too long; the verbose defense attorney’s closing statement was only almost too long during my jury duty; Las Vegas probably has more bathrooms per capita than any other city in the world; standing is a sure cure for what ails me; and, I work from home.  You’ve all been subjected to my weird bladder symptoms, my uncomfortable descriptions of going out and having to worry about my bladder, instead of enjoying the Wranglers game, the 51s game, my nephew’s baseball games, my other nephew’s concerts, Mamma Mia, The Blue Man Group, and too many concerts at The House of Blues to mention.  Also, many family get-togethers, which are uncomfortable for me to get to.  I’ve missed so many baseball games because not only was the drive to them a crapshoot, but if there wasn’t a bathroom nearby, I would have to spend the whole game standing...which obviously was terrific when my herniated disc pain was at its worst.

On February 13th, I started taking one 7.5mg tablet of Enablex a day.  This was after numerous invasive tests that found absolutely nothing physically wrong with my bladder.  Of course, it was also after seeing numerous doctors who shrugged their shoulders when I told them my symptoms.  When you’re in pain or have a temperature or rash, people care.  When you have to pee too often, most people just think it’s weird (including doctors), but don’t have another thought about it, unless it affects them adversely.  But still, the thought is that you’re not doing what they want/wish you could do, not that you’re suffering almost every day.

I got sidetracked with my pity party.  Anyway, I started taking Enablex a little over a month ago.  At first, I didn’t notice much except for the lousy side effect of urinary retention, which is kind of a cruel joke when you have urinary urgency.  Kind of, “Hurry, hurry, hurry, get to the bathroom....concentrate, concentrate, gah, nothing.” Then, I noticed that after showering, I no longer desperately needed to pee when I sat down at my desk afterwards, or when we went to the store afterwards.  I thought it might’ve been a fluke, but since that was one of the major problems (most people like to shower before they go out, but most people don’t have a bladder that rebels when they sit down in the car after that shower) that happened all the time, it seemed to be a good sign.  It seemed that after each shower, the symptoms still stayed away.  I started to feel better on trips out in the car.  By no means perfect, but gradually getting better.  I was also getting better while sitting on the couch watching tv.  That usually isn’t a stressful situation, so I knew that the couch symptoms were never partially mental.  I know that being in the car did have a mental stress component, which always made things worse.  Stress in general made it worse, but worrying that it was going to be bad was a sure way to know that it definitely was going to be bad.

I can’t remember the last time I went to one of my nephew’s baseball games where I didn’t have to stand for half the game because my bladder was bothering me.  Or, I had to know where the bathroom was.  I went to my nephew’s high school baseball game today that was just a mile away from the house.  An easy non-stressful trip.  I could always go home if there was a problem, even though I’d been feeling pretty good lately.  Well, at least bladder-wise.  However, today, I went to the game and I sat.  Through the whole game.  I didn’t have to get up a single time.  Plus, I was able to drive to the store afterwards.  I cannot tell you how happy that makes me.  The pill is supposed to increase bladder capacity and block the M3 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor, which is primarily responsible for bladder muscle contractions.  By golly, I think it does do that.  I’m not cured, but I seem to be getting continuously better.  That’s really all I can ask, and until I’m sure I’m fixed, I’d also like to ask for an aisle seat, thank you very much.  Oh yeah, and one more thing, I’d really appreciate it if my stupid insurance would cover it.  Does anyone who lives in the US, have any experience ordering prescriptions from Canada?  I was looking at some prices and they’re SO much cheaper.

Here’s Kyle at bat. I’m pretty sure this was the at-bat where he fouled off like ten pitches before he got a hit.  However, I wish I had a video of the great play he made at third.  He jumped up and pulled a rocketed line drive out of the air, then dove back to the bag to double up the runner.  He’s a lot of fun to watch in the field.