rickshangle.com

Possibly the most bizarre homage to the most bizarre R&B “single” performed by the most bizarre R&B singer of all time.

rds

I don’t know much about the history of television, so it would be rash to say that HBO’s series Six Feet Under is among the best shows in television history.

It’s certainly one of the best shows I’m aware of, and as of Sunday, it’s over.

I think I’ll draw out my feelings on Six Feet Under (6FU) over a couple of posts, but just start by saying that if you’ve never seen the show, now is the perfect time to check it out, because presumably all that exists of the 6FU universe has been created (except maybe some “Viva Keith” t-shirts someone may whip up on CafePress, which I would buy).

The first four seasons are now available on DVD, and if you’re quick and TiVo-enabled, the odds that HBO will be re-broadcasting all of season 5 sometime soon are fairly high. Or you can just buy the first season DVD (or Netflix it), watch at your leisure, and go from there. I’m sure the season 5 DVD will be out soon (unless there are some haggard circumstances).

Six Feet Under is a dramedy focused on the Fishers, a Pasadena family running an independent funeral home. It deals with joy, sorrow, (denial of) life, (denial of) death, the inability of people of different personality types to effectively communicate, and overall human disfunctionality honestly, which is something I find attractive, because honesty regarding these topics is so rarely found in real life.

From a enjoyment of content perspective, it’s also one of the most well-balanced and complete works of television out there. Within five seasons, the show says what it wants to say, and finishes without significant loose ends. It doesn’t end like the X-Files, in other words. I don’t forsee a 6FU movie in our future.

In my discussions (which may end here, I dunno), I will do everything I can to avoid revealing significant plot points beyond the first few episodes of the series (season 1). With that said, if you want to know more or less everything there is to know about the show plot- and character-wise, www.wikipedia.org has several good articles, and I’m sure there are more sites out there dedicated to the critically acclaimed show.

The show was created by Alan Ball (writer, American Beauty) and stars … well… these people.

Thanks to my friend Tom Sylvester for badgering me into watching the show back in 2001. I have a known tendency to not watch first-season HBO series, generally wishing to see if they stick around long enough to warrant my interest. In the case of 6FU, it was worth it from the start.

rds

My former colleague Tim sent me this awesomeness over at engadget.

Seeing those styles seemed to open a wormhole in the iPod of my mind, and before I knew it was sliding back to 1987-1989, when I was running a BBS.

My perception was flooded with memories and emotions.

old sk00l, 1987-style. k-rad warez, RLE graphics… in the days before GIF. USR Modems… should i choose the HST, the V.32 or the Dual-Standard model, for $950?

18Kbits per second. I’ve never seen a 400K floppy fill up so fast! This phone call to australia to download these warez is almost going to be cheaper than just going out to buy the program! Almost!

White Knight BBS for old Classic Mac OS… 5? 6?

Wait… was White Knight the BBS program? Yeah. The same guy also wrote the term program, called Red Ryder.

Or maybe Red Ryder became White Knight. Can’t remember with clarity.

Z-MODEM!

My board, at various points, was called:

The Bat Cave
…

sadly… I can’t remember any other names of the board. Maybe, by some miracle, someone reading this does.

Had a 20MB internal hard drive on my Mac SE, which ran the board. It died. Seagate piece of s**t.

I would turn on the SE, and I would hear the drive spin up, then crash stop. Click.

You’d take the drive out of the chassis (and this was a known problem with the old Seagates… they would get smooshed drive bearings), you would hold it between your hands, like you were praying, and you would SPIN the drive mechanism, to free whatever bearing was stuck.

I guess you were, in fact, praying. Praying that, as a middle-schooler, you could save enough money to buy a non-crap hard drive.

Then it would work for a while, until it stopped working again, and you had to repeat that process.

In 1989 or so, replaced that with a 80MB external SCSI Ehman systems (also Seagate) which got me along for a while. That was like… $650. It was also a piece of crap, and lasted about a year.

My first two hard drives seem to have set the tone for my lifelong experiences with premature data loss.

Yesterday, in 2005, I bought a 300GB Maxtor external drive for $300.

Backed up that 80MB focker via 70 or so floppy disks and a program called… well, through the ages, it eventually was purchased and became, in some way shape or form, Dantz (now EMC) Retrospect. But at the time, what was it called… can’t remember… can’t remember. Maybe something pragmatic like, “Backup”.

Sitting at my desk, stack of floppies, labeling them, feeding them one after the other into the gaping maw of the floppy drive. Hours per backup. Hours. Hours. Hours. I don’t even have MP3’s to listen to. Just this crap Sony radio. I haven’t even discovered alternative / punk rock yet. I’m probably listening to Michael Jackson. Perhaps, if I was cooler than I remember myself to be, Billy Idol.

Maybe if I was supremely fortunate, I was listening to the Police, Synchronicity

i don’t think the concept of incremental backups had occurred to me… or perhaps whatever program I was using didn’t support them.

Still swirling, through the mists…

rds

The first year iTunes’ “party shuffle” feature existed, I ignored it, due to lack of understanding.

I can say now that nothing gets played through my iTunes without Party Shuffle controlling the system.

I feed it through a playlist I’ve made called “iPod of the Mind 3″, which is about 3.7 days long and available here. [1]

If you’re working and listening to iTunes, the key is for the music to _never_ stop, which I’ve slowly learned is the purpose of the Party Shuffle.

Get random. In other news, the iPod Shuffle is a piece of crap, but I’ll save that for later, or many others who have already said all that can be said on the topic.

rds

[1] If you didn’t know, you can export and import playlists in iTunes. Download that file, and in iTunes 4.9 (and quite a few ealier versions) select File => Import…

Of course, you have to own the music and have it in your library for it to be worth anything, other than knowing how excellent my musical tastes are.

Since upgrading to 10.4 (or more specifically, 10.4.1), my broadband (cable) performance has been a) 10x slower and b) incredibly unreliable.

I’ve identified this to impact every IP-based app on the system, including:

a) ncftp (which I’ve updated to 3.1.9

b) Safari (about 60% of attempts to connect to page, on any given instance, fail with “server not found”)

c) CyberDuck

d) iChat

e) list continues

After a week or two (or four) of giving my crap cable provider the non-benefit of the doubt (assuming it’s been their service or lack therof), I’m drilling down and making resolving this my top priority. the loss of the functionality has had a dramatic negative Quality of Life impact.

Adding insult to injury, my mom has experienced the same issues since I upgraded her to 10.4.2 across the board, to the level that I’m scheduled to go over there and start replacing equipment.

I attempted the turn-off-IPv6 hack listed on Maniacal Rage, which so far hasn’t helped me, but may help others in a similar boat.

Stay tuned… if you can get to this page.

rds