rickshangle.com

As you may or may not know, Kelley and I are getting hitched on Saturday.

There may not be any posts between now and, say, Monday or Tuesday. Or, there may be. Who can say? I’ll repeat: who can say?

See you on the flip side,
rds

rickshangle.com and a few other web sites I run out of one of my web services providers went down for the past few hours, but appears to be back up now… for now. I hope you survived your loss of knee-slappery / frippery / frippertronics with minimal long-term psychic damage… snort.

given what I do for a living (protect data, manage storage, make systems highly available; also- babble, stink up the joint), it would be the apex of hypocrisy if I went off on a rant re: this unplanned downtime, given that the extremely modest sum I pay annually for these services, versus the relatively broad menu of use-to-use options my provider offers. I don’t pay for five 9’s, so I don’t expect it. Honestly, I don’t pay for three 9’s, either… do I even pay for two? Is there any explicit service level agreement / contract in place between my provider and I? The fact that I don’t know offhand is as good as “no”, in terms of my expectations.

What was my point… oh yeah, found it: I feel like I pay a fair price for what I get (a user-friendly service with a lot of technical features, is up most of the time, and keeps me from having to be a round-the-clock system administrator).

However, what has changed with my provider recently is their level of response to inquiries re: outages et al. For the three outages I experienced prior to today, the chronology generally ran like this:

1. +0 minutes: I notice something’s wrong
2. +5 minutes: I determine it’s very likely not my application (ex. Wordpress) taking a giant dump (and it has on occasion)
3. +6 minutes: I contact the help desk with the problem, asking for status / assistance
4. +15 minutes: I’ve received a response with either said status, or acknowledgment that my inquiry was received, and a number of follow-on questions to help troubleshoot the issue (what I expect in terms of standard content for a help desk dialogue, in other words)
5. +30-45 minutes: I’m generally back online, and satisfied, with the issue resolved. Granted, most issues fitting under said hypothetical timeline are generally minor/minor to resolve (ex. a database got moved)

Contrast that with today’s experience, which is the first outage I’ve had since my provider has been touting their shift to “24×7″ service a few months back:

1. +0 min - I notice something’s wrong
2. +5 min - I determine, since it’s impacting a number of apps (different apps - not all Wordpress, for example, so the odds that a common exploit is being attacked are lower than they could be) in different domains
3. +6 minutes - I contact support describing the problem
4. +120 minutes (now) - my sites are back up, and I haven’t heard from the help desk.

Someone is clearly off making a sammich.

Everyone has bad days. As someone who worked help desk support for about four years, I know this. We’ll keep an eye on it. And at the end of the day… for $120 a year or whatever… how much can I complain?[1]

rds

[1] Terror rising at how much those sound like famous last words.

The “pictogram” approach was so wildly successful last time, we just need to burst forward with it. But the brief commentary:

Taylor, you blew it. I like you, though, and I will come see you with your bar band next time I’m in Alabama in a parallel universe.

Elliot, who is perhaps the biggest talent on the show, is in constant danger of ejection (I mean, it has to happen at some point, because he’s not going to win), but logged another stellar performance and punched out clean… for now.

With that said:

- - -

- - -

- - -

rds

Commentary and brilliant graphic of Sun’s revised corporate plan for the post-McNealy era @ ars technica.

Just the strategy graphic, for those who are lazy/cool:

Jeremy Reimer / ars technica

rds

Note two small black dots dramatically differentiating the 17″ MacBook Pro rendering from prior models in the conceptual rendering.

Configured.

My current g1 PB 17″ appears to be going for about ~$1,800 on eBay.

Can’t do it… can’t do it. I should feel good about holding back, but also feel weak, like a kitten who is afraid to lock into the enormous power.

If I actually believed the 5x speed bump claims emanating from the ARDF (and that they applied to anything other than counting from 1 to 2^64), it’s quite possible I’d feel compelled. As-is… holding off.

rds

Update

I was full of crap - those eBay numbers I quoted were for like “buy me now” new G4 PowerBooks. The actual bidding range for used systems is mid/high sub-$1000.

r

I lack the depth and breadth to come up with a “Worst 50 of All Time” system, and since I listen primarily to “rock” music, I can’t really comment on crappy blues/jazz/country/hip-hop/whatever.

So, for the good/ill of the city, the first (and last) annual rds.com Worst 25 (non-validated; in other words… I can’t guarantee these are actually the “worst” of the worst; that would take too much time). Also, in no particular order… unless I say so:

1. Love Nut, Bastards of Melody
: You would assume (or I would) that any album featuring a dwarf on the cover, brazenly statuesque atop of some sort of muscle car, wearing a menacing look and brandishing a natty Gretch-esque guitar, would really need to rock. You’d further assume that since the lead-in track is called “She Won’t Do Me” that there is something going on. All lies. All lies. Great cover / great look; bad music on record. I will inject some semblance of meaning into these proceedings by making a stand now: this probably is the worst album I own.

2. Aimee Mann, Lost in Space
: Following Q’s lead, Magnolia, I’m With Stupid and Bachelor #2 were all good. The Forgotten Arm was acceptable. LiS sucked; maybe Ms. Mann was happy when she wrote it. It feels phoned in. I’m calling it quits on this one (zing!).

3. The Amps, Pacer
: I think this was supposed to be the junkie-Deal sister offshoot album that was originally going to be with Sebastian Bach and called “The Last Hard Men”, or something. As it is, it’s boring. And on that note.

4. The Breeders, Title TK
: It sounds like the Deals were extremely stoned during the writing of this… in a bad way. Plus Last Splash is so good… the differential kills them. The eight or ten or whatever years between these two albums makes it all the worse. I know there were court dates and prison time and rehab that all had to get squeezed in, but Title TK really should have not happened. Rock snobs would say this record is “angular”, I guess. I would consider it to have dangerously sharp edges, not in a good way like the knife you’d use for a game of “Knifey-Spooney”, but like puppy’s teeth.

5. Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, Self Titled
: The summer between senior year of high school and freshman year of college, I loved this album of music by four of the five original-ish (because the actual Yes linup has been lost to the shifting sands of time) members of Yes. Somehow I figured liking this music would get me laid. Now I realize, for this reason and others, that I should have been beaten to death that summer for the crime of “high folly”, and that thinking there was somehow a connection between this music and sex should have resulted in life banishment of the possibility of fornication. Fortunately, summer’s kiss is over, baby.

6. The Beastie Boys, To The 5 Boroughs
: These five roads are the fingers to the hand that is the five boroughs. And when I close my hand it makes a fist. And I can turn that fist as I see fit. I see fit to smash this album into pieces with the fist, because it is evidence that the Beastie Boys should have stopped making music at Paul’s Boutique, with the potential exception of a few cuts of Check Your Head and, of course, “Sabotage!”.

7. Belly, King
: I really liked this album in college, and I still believe there are some well-written songs on it. However, Tanya Donnelly was clearly smoking a lot of weed and taking some sort of anti-depressant while writing and recording it, because it is too much of too much (i.e. overproduced). I still like her solo stuff… although in five years I’ll probably feel the same way about it. Plus, the constant mashup of childhood and sexuality is just… wrong and confusing and not even sexy… as much, anymore.

8. Ben Folds Five, Ben Folds Five
: We all fall into traps. In my case, ever believing that BF5 was anything other than a really sh*tty band was one of them. Somehow, I still like Rockin’ the Suburbs Ben Folds solo, because it aligns with my melancholy tendencies as one of the Most Depressing Albums of All Time. But every time I hear “Jackson Cannery” (which is fortunately not often these days) I want to claw my eyes out, and can them.

9. Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Sister Sweetly
: I would listen to this in college and get drunk. Now, I need to get drunk to avoid the unpleasant feeling associated with the idea that I ever thought (if even for a nanosecond) that this was a good album by a good band. Redundant, repetitive, stoned, dusty and horrid and the follow-up Strategem is better, but not by much.

10. Billy Corgan, The Future Embrace
: When I saw there was a song called “The CameraEye”, I was excited because I thought it could be a cover of the Rush song of the same name. Nope. When I saw a song called “A100″, I got juiced because I thought it was about the Sun (or CLARiiON, I can’t remember) A100 disk storage array. Untrue… repeat: so untrue. This album sucks, and the full-page ad BC took out announcing the rebirth of the Smashing Pumpkins (without consulting the other former members, or at least the ones who aren’t currently addicted to crack) prove that Corgan is deep inside his post-relevance phase… but then there’s this…

11. Bob Marley and the Wailers, Legend
: Ok - I have nothing against Bob Marley; most of the sex I had in college (like every male in college, ever) was had immediately before, during, or after listening to Bob Marley. I dislike this record for one reason: when it came out, I clearly had a first generation (i.e. crap / experimental / $500) Sony Discman CD player. The liner notes for the record indicate that the music and emotional high point of the record is (logically) the last track: a live version of “Redemption Song”. Maybe it was the last time BM played live, I dunno. Anyway, because it was way on the outside edge of the disk, my gd CD player wouldn’t even roll out there to play it with skips: it didn’t play it at all. So I missed out on the greatest thing ever recorded by Bob, his ultimate statement, and that’s why I hate this record.

Note: At this point, I realize we have a problem. Clearly, I’m going through my library alphabetically, and it seems that eleven songs in we’re only into the B’s. I guess “25″ is going to be more like “250″, over multiple parts. For the good of the city! Since this is going to go on for a while, so I’m taking a break. Expect another rack of 11 soon.

rds

Um, duh.

“[Plaitiff Amaani Lyle] was fired after four months on the job, allegedly because she could not transcribe meetings fast enough or capture the flavor of the meetings.”

Also, because she was working on a comedy series and apparently lacked a sense of humor, and the understanding that if something is funny and sort of racy[1] when you see it on American network television, it started out 1,000x racier (and therefore 1,000x funnier) when it was in the creative stage, before it was whittled down to something that a majority of viewers can understand and networks can accept and still shill Lexuses (Lexi? Lexusi?)

Also, because she was working on a series involving “writers” without understanding that all writers (especially comedy writers) are alcoholic degenerates, God bless them. If that lack of knowledge is not a fireable offense, it should be.

[1] Although I considered Friends neither of these things, I’m told many people did, which is why Jennifer Aniston is one of our finest actors.

rds

The current issue of Q Magazine reveals their assessment of the 50 Worst Albums of All Time.

Let’s see what they are and add some color commentary.

1. Duran Duran – Thank You
: This was their covers album, and yeah it was pretty horrible. Don’t do it!
2. Spice Girls – All Their Solo Albums!

: Why is the word “Solo” in the description?
3. Various – Urban Renewal: The Songs Of Phil Collins
: PC will never match “Against All Odds” in my book, and I assume this is some sort of covers (of his work) album. Unless it has Chuck D doing “Against All Odds”, yes I’m sure it sucks.
4. Lou Reed – Metal Machine Music
: I know nothing about this album except Lester Bangs reviewed it and said it pretty much sucked. Whoever submitted it to this list clearly read that review, too, so it probably belongs here.
5. Billy Idol – Cyberpunk
: Phil Collin’s Effect is in full effect for BI as well, for anything after Rebel Yell. I guess this was the album he did after he broke his leg in six places on a bike accident, post-Internet… I mean yeah, just f**k him.
6. Naomi Campbell – Babywoman

: Naomi Campbell, based on my viewing of her various media ventures, is an empty and horrible person. Although those characteristics allow Lars Ulrich to make good music, I think that’s probably more of an exception than a rule.
7. Kevin Rowland – My Beauty
: No comment; have never heard him/of him.
8. Mick Jagger – Primitive Cool
: Two words: Primitive sh*t.
9. Westlife – Allow Us To Be Frank
: No comment.
10. Tim Machine – Tin Machine II
: This album is, indeed, despite featuring Reeves Gabriel, widely considered one of the worst albums ever and an element of Bowie’s mass consumerism in the early 90’s. Check.
11. Limp Bizkit – Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water
: I’m tired of see Fred Durst’s phallus everywhere I look, so yeah I support this decision.
12. Tom Jones – Mr Jones
: I like that album of him covering rock bands. All else can burn in the flames.
13. Bruce Willis – The Return Of Bruno

: “Fun night! It’s fun night!”
: “Hey, Bruno, what are you doin’ down here, sittin’ underneath the boardwalk?”
“You know, Hans, sometimes a man just needs to sit and think under a boardwalk before spontaneously breaking into a crap rendition of “Under the Boardwalk”. Also, you think I’m fu**n’ stupid, Hans? .”
14. Terence Trent D’Arby– Neither Fish Nor Flesh
: His perfect album was Hardline According to TTD’A. His stint in INXS post-Hutchence cost him. And then there’s the title of this album which implies, what?, exactly? It’s neither fish, nor flesh. That means “it” must be… chicken, squirrel? Robotussen DM? The blue cone of flame that shoots from a bunsen burner? Liquid nitrogen? The name of the album should be nuked from orbit independently of the album itself. I really want that sink it, because it’s an important distinction.
15. Various – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band – OST

: What is this, a covers album? Who dares cover the Beatles? Burn. Or wait, does “OST” mean Soundtrack? Is this the one with Clapton and a hundred other shriveled smack zombies playing on it? Burn^2.
16. Spice Girls – Forever
: See #2.
17. Bob Dylan & The Grateful Dead – Dylan And The Dead
: The Dead suck, so the Midas Touch Principle has to be in effect here.
18. Crazy Frog – Crazy Hits
: Dunno.
19. Goldie – Saturnz Return
: I wasn’t aware Goldie had any good albums, so yes.
20. Mariah Cary – Glitter OST
: Like: her breasts. Don’t like: Her music. But… I hear Mimi’s ok…
21. The Clash – Cut The Crap
: Much as schizophrenics believe that the human mind can be reduced to one atom, the Clash canon can be reduced to one album: London Calling. All these (ehr, except maybe also Sandinista!) go into the burning ring of fire, and burn burn burn.
22. Robson & Jerome – Robson & Jerome
: No comment. Unknown.
23. Alanis Morissette – Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie
: I wonder at what point Bob Pollard began naming all of AM’s albums. I assume this one was the pendulum swinging back from Jagged Little Pill. Takedown!
24. Lauryn Hill – MTV Unpugged 2.0
: Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was good but over-hyped. As with #23, this has to be the payback. Burn!
25. The Cranberries – To The Faithful Departed
: The most horrid cocaine-and-ego-fueled guitar and synth and female vocalist band to ever come out of Ireland. Burn them all.
26. Vanilla Ice – Hard To Swallow
: Haven’t heard, so I’ll take it with a grain of salt and on faith that it’s worth being here. And I realize that by saying that I’m being ridiculously too over-objective, because we are talking about Vanilla Ice. But he was in that Madonna Sex book… and I don’t really know if that’s good or bad, either. Launch all missiles.
27. Destiny’s Child – Destiny Fulfilled
: I would like this if it were a porno; otherwise, not so much.
28. The Rolling Stones – Dirty Work
: Why isn’t this list the entire Stones canon except Exile on Main Street?
: See comment.
29. Various – Christmas In The Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album
: Attach a rocket to it and set course for the heart of the sun.
30. Michael Jackson – Invincible
: Off the Wall = good. Thriller = great. All else = worthy of being on any mag’s Worst 50. Also, I heard some rumor that he’s into kids. Dirty!
31. Stevie Wonder – Woman In Red
: I have a lot of respect for SW, and I haven’t heard this, so I just need to step back.
32. Ace Of Base – The Sign
: Nuke from orbit.
33. Billy Ray Cyrus – Some Gave All
: Nuke from orbit, with the Dixie Chicks also tied up at ground zero.
34. Fishspooner - #1
: Most over-hyped really-shi*ty band in recent memory. They earned this, unlike Private Ryan.
35. Puff Daddy – Forever
: I dunno. How many other under-40 billionaires are on this list? Doesn’t that get taken into consideration?
36. Kula Shaker – Peanuts, Pigs & Astronauts
: My fiance says she really liked this band in college. I always figured all their songs were about heroin (maybe due to the fact that the lead singer Crispian Mills talked only about heroin and its benefits in interviews), so I found it boring and crappy. All I remember about them was their big hit and then doing a cover of “Hush” for some horror flick, maybe I Know Where Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Breasts Were Last Summer”, and it’s all just horrible. So horrible.
37. Shania Twain – Come On Over
: Go back to Russia. I mean Canada.
38. Chris Rea – The Road To Hell Pt2
: No comment - haven’t heard.
39. Big Country – Undercover
: Ok, need to be careful here. Big Country’s The Crossing is a great 80’s rock record with eBow and bagpipe, and we’re still reeling from the death of front-man Stuart Adamson. But, with that said, yeah, from what I’ve heard their rest of their albums are kind of crap. Maybe that’s a key criteria for inclusion here - bands that, at one time, achieved greatness, but also achieved the depths, especially deserve inclusion.
40. The Others – The Others
: Is this some Grateful Dead-associated system? Nuke. From. Orbit.
41. Paul Simon – Songs From The Capeman OST
: Squeaking zombie post-Graceland. Nuke.
42. Babylon Zoo – The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes
: No comment. Never heard.
43. The Travelling Wilburys – Vol 3
: The TW’s were like four great musicians and Jeff Lynne. How is that right?
44. Kiss – Music From The Elder
: Hobbits. Nuke.
45. William Shatner – The Transformed Man
: Huh. I always figured this was in the “so bad it’s good” category. Denny Crane!
46. Oasis – Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants
: I could even go back a step to “Be Here Now” as the seminal moment of Oasis’ crapulence, but SotSoG is for sure shite.
47. Ozzy Osbourne – Under Cover
: Dunno, never heard. But one thing’s for sure: it’s no Bark at the Moon… by definition.
48. Milli Vanilli – All Or Nothing
: Eat it.
49. Neil Young And The Shocking Pinks – Everybody’s Rocking
: Personally I have to put Greendale at the top of my crap Neil Young list, and the bad news is that album is really recent.
50. Beck – Midnight Vultures
: Beyond “Sexx Laws”, yeah, this album really fuc*ing sucks. It’s like that Stephen King book The Dark Half, where the two twin brothers were in the womb, and the weaker brother kind of was absorbed by the stronger one, so that all was left of the weaker brother in the surviving brother was some teeth and like one eye in the kid’s skull (uhh… if you haven’t read the book… just nevermind). Odelay was the brother that made it; Midnight Vultures was the one that didn’t.

Next - the response with the first annual / final / commemorative RDS.com Worst 50. Later on. Maybe never.

rds

I’m pleased to note (in small part due to using the bare-bones (or, as some would call it “clean”) Zen Minimalist Wordpress theme) that this blog is pretty much exactly as usable via Lynx as it is via a regular web browser.

clean, fresh

For those whom demand more dorkiness plus that olde-school slow-roasted cathode-ray Wyse flavor, you could always ram lynx through James A. McCombe’s GLTerminal for true power, and in the process truly welcome yourself to the “limit”.

Lights out.

rds

So I got this remote last week. I would have written about it sooner except I wanted to wait a bit and make sure it didn’t have some hidden defect that would make me wind up hating/returning/smashing it.

A big factor in getting said remote was this coupon system, which (I hope; this isn’t entirely confirmed since I just sent in the Proof of Purchase bit) allowed me to acquire this $250 remote for $69.

Long story short, I like:

1. That it’s activity-based (”Let me watch TiVO” = a button that turns on the TV and tunes into TiVo, and then puts the remote in TiVo control mode) as well as optionally device-based.
2. The screen; it’s pretty.
3. The fact that it’s rechargeable (which seems to be a necessity; after 2 hours of use, 1 of the 3 battery bars is generally gone from the power indicator).
4. The fact that programming it is relatively straightforward.
5. Appears to be ready-to-go with Xbox 360 control.

I don’t like:

1. The fact that it’s made of plastic instead of, say, brushed aluminum or ballistic glass or uranium or the stuff bowling balls are made of. This replaces a faithful (and to-be retasked) Radio Shack Kamelon that basically has the same design principles and aesthetic of a 1987 Hayes 2400 baud modem. In other words my old remote has proven itself to be unbreakable, and this Harmony feels quite egg-like by comparison.
2. The web-based programming interface is truly weird. You basically plug the remote in via USB, do your programming stuff on the Web, and then when it comes time to cram the new code into the remote, your browser downloads a code file which a little waiting batch program finds out about (after, say, a fifteen second wait) and then jams it into the remote. I mean, it works, but is strange. I assume the software is engineered this way so that updates to codes / new devices / blah blah are all always instantly available to users without having to download an updated binfile.
3. I don’t own an Xbox 360.
4. The remote doesn’t appear to have the ability to encode arbitrary additional commands into the various “action” macros that are embedded. For example - mashing the “I Want to Watch TiVo” button a) turns on my projector and makes sure it’s on the “S-Video” input b) switches my receiver to “TiVo” and c) makes sure my TiVo and cable box are on (which they always are, and indeed it was easy to program the remote to understand that I never wanted to turn either of those devices off. Now, let’s say that after those things happened, I wanted the remote to do one more arbitrary command… say… ok, I’m having a hard time coming up with a realistic example. Ok. Let’s say I wanted the TiVo automatically go to the TiVo menu as soon as it comes up, automatically, right, as part of the process. From what I’ve seen so far, embedding additional commands into the action doesn’t appear possible, so I actually have to (shudder) press the “TiVo Menu” custom button on the screen. Whatever.

I would never have acquired one of these for $250, but for $69 (or $120, which I believe is far more likely to be the final purchase price), it’s worth looking at, if you are a huge nerd. It officially passes the Ease-of-Use Acid Test: my fiance can use it and actually finds it easier to use than the Kameleon. I’m not saying she’s dumb, by the way.

The thing: