« Archives in December, 2007

Dear Paramount

December 24, 2007 / posted in Dear So-And-So / 2 Comments

Thanks for licensing It’s a Wonderful Life exclusively to NBC. I’d become somewhat complacent, watching the same movie every Christmas eve (sometimes several times! Thanks, UHF stations!). Fortunately, you broke me out of that rut; without your intervention, I never would’ve watched “Holyfield-Bowe III”:http://www.blackathlete.net/Boxing/boxing111803.html on ESPN Classic.

I also appreciate how your decision to only allow NBC to broadcast It’s a Wonderful Life once creates an exciting challenge, one in which I need to track down my beloved movie in its one broadcast slot, carefully noting the time, managing the time change as I travel to see family for Christmas, and then making sure that I get away from family to see that movie in my hotel room. It’s quite a game! Goodness knows I could use more things to worry about in my calm life!

Still, I do wonder if some opportunities are being missed. I mean, won’t you get pretty great ratings if you just run It’s a Wonderful Life all night long? What could be better? This zaftig woman who’s gracing us with a rendition of “O Night Divine” in which she misses most of the high notes? That’s so classic that I’m sticking with ESPN for Tyson-Douglas, despite the ad for “Open the Eyes of My Heart – Ultimate Worship Anthems”:http://www.amazon.com/Open-Eyes-Heart-Various-Artists/dp/B000BF0DK6/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1198559406&sr=8-1. No, sticking with ol’ Jimmy Stewart is likely to give you the best ratings and ad sales. I mean, realistically, late on Christmas Eve, who wants to see anything but It’s a Wonderful Life?

So, taking into account, I hereby request that you maximally monetize your beloved holiday property, It’s a Wonderful Life, by playing it more than once on Christmas Eve. Because I just found out I missed it, and that’s hardly Christmasy!

Best,

Wade

P.S. Bowe won

P.P.S. Buster Douglas won too

P.P.P.S. They both got too fat to box. But why not, when you made millions on your big fight?

P.P.P.P.S. Everyone counted Jimmy Stewart out, too, because he went and fought in WW2 while everyone else stayed at home and made movies to support the troops. But then he made It’s a Wonderful Life.








Let’s A-Wassail!

December 23, 2007 / posted in Otherwise Uncategorized / 1 Comment

Earlier today, as I was shopping in the HEB with my parents, I found myself overcome with the season. Well, not so much with the season as with the music. I’ve been without my music since I came to Houston, although, technically, that’s only because I’m too stubborn to listen to Pandora without my good speakers plugged in. Anyway, the carols playing over the HEB’s PA system put a smile on my face, and suddenly I was singing along.
Frosty the Snowman
Was a very jolly soul
And he called for his pipe and he called for his bowl
And he called for his fiddlers three
Frosty the Snowman
Was a very jolly soul
And he called for his pipe and he called for his bowl
And he called for his fiddlers three
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing
etc.
Sometimes, it’s unclear just who in this family actually had the stroke.















Orage

December 22, 2007 / posted in Adult Problems, Dreams, Otherwise Uncategorized / 3 Comments

The night Rick died, his ex called me in the middle of the night to tell me. But her voicemail was unintelligible; and I was already up. I’d been up for an hour, and I’d spent that whole time in terror. Because I had awoken in the dark, suddenly sure he was coming to get me.
Of course, the concept was preposterous. I’d done nothing to him, and Rick was nothing if not fair. But I was sure of it. The thought was fixed in my mind when my eyes opened, and an hour of applications of logic had failed to knock it away. I sat there, trying to make up excuses that would save my skin, none growing into anything convincing — and how could they, given that I had nothing to excuse?
Then the phone rang, and, half-hoping I’d been asleep, I jumped. It was Rick’s ex, and I couldn’t imagine wanting to speak to her at 3:30 am. So I went to the bathroom, and sat on the toilet, in the dull light that trickles through the frosted glass at night, for a while. I listened to her voicemail, which was incoherent with static, and suddenly stopped worrying. It just lifted. And, after a while, I went back to sleep.















Jamie Lynn Spears is Pregnant

December 19, 2007 / posted in Otherwise Uncategorized / 14 Comments

Can you believe that both Britney and her sister have managed to have unplanned kids? Can you believe that Brit’s mom was going to write “a book on how to raise a celeb family”:http://www.amazon.com/Pop-Culture-Mom-Family-Tabloid/dp/1595551565/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198096511&sr=8-1?
Also, in less important front-page news, someone shot and killed my neighbor and friend Rick in the back behind a strip club the other night.[1] RIP Rick. I’ve a lot more to say than that but I think I’ll leave it there.
!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/72055063-M.jpg!
Richard[1] Winkelman 1957(?)-day before yesterday.
(If this is the only thing that gets me posting here these days, I need to blog more often!)
fn1. Way to bury the lede, asshole! – ed.
fn2. He was always surprisingly picky about being referred to officially as Richard, for a man who everyone knew as Rick.















Gah!

December 16, 2007 / posted in Sports / No Comments

The 0-13 Dolphins are now 1-13 — they beat my hapless Ravens. And my Broncos, “the most inconsistent team in the NFL”:http://www.footballoutsiders.com/2007/12/12/ramblings/dvoa-ratings/5872/ (see Variance) got whomped again, this time by the heretofore-hapless Texans. Gah. Good thing, I guess, I rarely get Baltimore or Denver games here in LA! But the Dolphins? The Dolphins? That’s just embarrassing. Possibly good news that Troy Smith seems to have some level of competence at the Quarterback position, at least.















Give Me Your Tried, Your Ports, Your Mac Apps

December 7, 2007 / posted in Mac, Switch, Tech / 3 Comments

OK, I’ve been fooling around on my new PowerBook — I mean, MacBook — now for a couple weeks, and I’ve achieved a moderate level of productivity. But what are the great apps out there that I’m missing? What small developer should get my $30 for the magic they’ll put in my Applications folder? Tell me your favorites so that I can try them out!
So far I’m using Mail.app, iCal, Address Book, OmniFocus, Office, SCPlugin, and CS3 regularly for work. Adium and iPhoto and iTunes have kept me pretty well amused. Mark/Space Notebook, part of The Missing Sync, is keeping my notes, but it’s a minimally-featured program and I’d seriously consider a change. I used to love me some OmniOutliner but I’m not sure I need it what with OmniFocus, since mostly I plan in outlines. Quicksilver doesn’t seem to quite be up to speed with Leopard yet so I’ll admit I don’t quite love it; I’ll probably give LaunchBar a whirl and see if it’s more my style. And do I need to shell out for SpamSieve, or will Mail learn soon enough?
But, more specifically, what am I missing? Tell me stuff I should try. In particular, I need to eventually pick a text editor. I was a big BBEdit fan back in the days of System 7 and OS 8 and 9, but I’m open to anything. SCPlugin doesn’t do SVN Imports so maybe I could use another Subversion client… or maybe I should just use Terminal.
Also, if someone could tell me what setting lets me tab through all the controls on a Web form, that would be super. But that’s not to be negative; I love it so far. I just want to make the most!















Back in Mac

December 1, 2007 / posted in Mac, Reviews, Switch / 3 Comments

Well, I went and did it. I got a 15″ “MacBook Pro”:http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/ to replace my Dell. The new Mac was supposed to come in more of the April/May timeframe, but then the Dell had a little explosion — a flash of light, an overpowering smell of ozone, and then it wouldn’t turn on for two days (remarkably, after a weekend turned off, the Dell worked fine). That put a crimp in my plans for productivity and whatnot, and I couldn’t quite trust a sparky laptop, so MacBook Pro time it was. And it’s wonderful. It’s beautiful. It feels great, and I love it.
Apple of course made the out-of-box experience a good one, something I really try to imitate in “my own company”:http://dinetothrive.com:
!/images/macbook/Packaging_Manual.jpg!
And it said hello!
!/images/macbook/Welcome.jpg!
I guess great new things make me happy
!/images/macbook/BoyamIhappy.jpg!
So far, it’s been a great computer, although of course there’s a lot to get used to, and it’ll take days to get all my data over. But a few things are obvious:
* Boy, everything’s beautiful
* Typical programs have distinctly better interaction design than equivalent Windows programs
* Of course, the one major exception thus far is “SCPlugin”:http://scplugin.tigris.org/, which I will use everyday, and which is decidedly less-convenient than “TortoiseSVN”:http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/
* zOMG!!1! SSH set-up in 5 minutes? How is it so absurdly difficult on Windows? Yay for SVN+SSH and SFTP!
* The Dock isn’t any better… but it’s still ok, and no worse than the Taskbar
* Two-finger scroll and right-click on the trackpad is _brilliant_
* Ahh, Fn-delete is Delete… *phew*
* Lighted keyboard is all I’d hoped
* “MagSafe”:http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/design.html has already saved me once!
* The Dashboard seems like it’ll be way more useful than I had thought from seeing friends use it
* iCal + Mail.app + Address Book + OmniFocus seems like a very capable combination
* Dock on the bottom looks like crap, but Dock on the left is convenient, useful, and looks nice
* My Dine to Thrive Business Plan and Financial Projections, which ask quite a lot of, respectively, Word and Excel, seem to open with no problems in Mac Excel
But then there’s a few concerns too:
* New firewall in Leopard… I’m not sure if it’s blocking anything, but I sure hope it is! Also, should be on by default, I almost didn’t think to turn it on.
* Speaking of security, I’m so used to having to run as an Administrator in XP that it didn’t occur to me to create a non-Admin user for my everyday use, at first
* Now that I’m not running as an Administrator, I’m having to authenticate for sudo all the time… not a problem, because that’s a side-effect of set-up (how many things have I installed?), but I can understand how Vista users go crazy
* It wasn’t obvious that the way to get multi-user log-in for the screensaver was to turn on Fast User Switching, but I guess it makes sense now that I think about it (shouldn’t Fast User Switching be on by default?)
* “Quicksilver”:http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/what_is_quicksilver seems really powerful but I’ve got sooo much to learn, it’s pretty intimidating — surprising, given “what I used on my PC”:http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/productivity/boost_your_windows_productivity_with_launchy_and_autohotkey.php
* Boy, I’m installing a _lot_ of beta software… I guess Leopard’s pretty new
* Can’t decide if the Dock is hidden by default or not, for best interface usability
* Yikes, which text editor? There’s so many! Fortunately, they all look good
Anyway, it looks like another few hours before I’m even in the position to start moving stuff over from my PC, so real productivity will have to wait. But that’s ok; the fooling with it is half the fun!