Fairly Symmetrical

October 2003 Archives

08:28 AM by Eric: "Vergoofin der flicke stoobin mit der børk-børk yubetcha!" Current Fruit
09:09 AM by Eric: Road warring Personal

Ah, the weekly flight from Austin to St. Louis. :-P Let's just say I'm not going to miss laying over in Houston Hobby for an hour or two twice a week.

I did get to see the Arch for probably the last time as we flew by at a couple hundred feet, which was kind of nice. The Arch was always my "last leg" landmark, coming back from Louisville; I always knew that when I finally spotted it over a hill I was home again, and the rest was just a quick half-hour hop, skip, and jump through the city. The Arch is thus a comforting landmark to me.

I guess I haven't formally posted it, but yeah, I do have a new job, in Austin, starting next Monday. I met everyone yesterday. I'm really looking forward to starting there; it seems like the job will be extremely interesting.

09:31 AM by Eric: When is a dirty word not a dirty word? Culture | Movies and TV

Apparently, it's okay to use the word "fuck" on live television as long as you don't mean it literally:

[T]he Federal Communications Commission … ruled without fanfare Friday that it's OK to use that word (for which we will substitute "feep") as long as you're not being literal. Follow the logical bouncing ball: You can say "feep" or "feeping" if you don't really mean "to feep."

Now, whether or not you think the 7 dirty words should be prohibited on-air or not, I think you pretty much have to admit that this ruling is truly fucked up.

07:57 AM by Eric: Are the record companies hiring chimps to do their programming? Culture | Filesharing and DRM | Tech

I can't decide whether the record companies are hiring morons to design their protection schemes, or whether the people they are hiring are so ashamed of their employers they just can't bring themselves to do good work. Ed Felten has a post up about the latest CD "protection" scheme:

This technology is going to end up in the hall of fame beside the previous Sony technology that was famously defeated by drawing on the CD with a felt-tipped pen. This time, the technology can be defeated completely by holding down the computer's Shift key while inserting the CD.

All right, I suppose it's possible that most people will be using Windows, and that most people won't think to disable autorun (temporarily or otherwise) before putting in these CDs, but you can bet that a simple Google search will tell them how to copy those tracks once they realize something is interfering. Making the copy protection this easy to crack is ridiculous. I realize real protection is very difficult (read: impossible, at least as long as DRM isn't built into every layer of every CD-playing box on the planet), but if this is the best the record companies have, they might as well just quit trying.

10:02 AM by Eric: Music madness this fall Culture | Music

Wow, whole lot of new CDs coming out this fall: Dido is already out, Barenaked Ladies comes out on 10/21, Sarah McLachlan's first new CD in 6 years on 11/04, and a collection of Tori Amos's music on 11/18. That's not even counting R.E.M.'s special edition "best of" collection, due out 10/28. It's like a smorgasbord of musical goodness.

10:34 PM by Eric: Phil Collins stuck in my head Personal

Specifically, that "so you're leavin'…" song. I had a great weekend hanging out with the families, most especially with Jen. I got home 3 hours ago, and already I miss her rather crushingly. I do get to see her again next weekend, which is top-notch.

Actually, in this last weekend I feel like I can kind of see the shape of things to come. The odds that Jen and I will ever live in Louisville again are pretty slim (since Louisville is currently eviscerating its arts scene), and the odds that Conner, Lindsay, or Lauren will end up near us is similarly small (though I would be happy to be wrong about that), which means that a couple of times a year we'll all descend on the same location, have a frenetically fun weekend or week, and then scatter again, leaving everyone feeling a little tired, a little lonely, and a little sad. At least, if my own feelings are any indication. It's nice to have acquired such a great second family; it's like a double bonus on top of having met such a wonderful woman.

Now all I have to do is find a way to live in the same city as her. :-P

Also, the flight back was not so much fun, which is unusual for Southwest. It wasn't really their fault, though; the dipshit in the row in front of me spilled his Heineken all over my backpack (which is fortunately water-resistant, so while the backpack smells like Heineken at least my clothes don't). Then I arrived home to discover that my soap exploded all over all of my bathroom stuff, which was a pain in the ass to clean off. Yargh.

09:04 AM by Eric: Let something go, if it comes back… Books | Culture

This is kind of an interesting idea:

  1. Read a good book (you already know how to do that)
  2. Register it here (along with your journal comments), get a unique BCID (BookCrossing ID number), and label the book
  3. Release it for someone else to read (give it to a friend, leave it on a park bench, donate it to charity, "forget" it in a coffee shop, etc.), and get notified by email each time someone comes here and records journal entries for that book. And if you make Release Notes on the book, others can Go Hunting for it and try to find it!

Obviously I wouldn't do this with any books I really like, but it could be interesting for some of those books that just won't sell on Half.

58 hours…

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