Alternate.org

Okay, so being the Apple-dork I am, I’m probably the only one in the packed theater showing AI tonight who recognized that a futuristic-looking thing in a laboratory was in fact an Apple iSub..



As far as the movie itself goes… It was definitely interesting, like Kottke I found myself not sure if I liked it until the very end; and like him, I did. Most people in the theater, however, did not. I chalk it up to the fact that most Americans cannot read between the lines, even if those lines are drawn very large, with giant spaces between them, and the lines themselves say ‘Read between us.’

Okay, so I don’t know how they did it, but if you try to just Control-click on a comping image and copy it to the clipboard at GettyOne, you can’t. Either Photoshop tells me ‘Could not copy clipboard contents because an unexpected end of file was found,’ or it simpyl doesn’t register that I tried to copy it in the first place. Basically, it forces you to Control-click and download the image to your hard drive, which you actually can do. Weird.

So, as a Mac-user, I probably take great industrial design for granted. But my gaze just happened to fall on my Apple Pro Mouse and it hit me for the first time since I saw one for the first time that this object seriously is a thing of beauty. One of the most beautiful thigs ever created. I’m not kidding. Perfectly functional without too many ‘features,’ like the rest of the PC world’s mice.. you can launch a fucking rocket with those things with 12 buttons, and yet Apple sticks to the single-button mouse. Because the mouse has one use, and one button takes care of that wonderfully. Fuck that scroll-wheel shit, I say.

Microsoft isn’t being broken up. Lord help us all.

Okay, so it seems to me that it is nearly impossible for two people who are good at backrubs to be together. This excludes ‘backrub professionals’ (so if Jen were to marry another person with the same ‘crazy-o-sacral’ abilities, they would not count), but rather for normal, ‘backrub-enhanced’ people who tend to just be good at it. I myself have historically been one of these people, and I’ve dated a few others in my time, and it was always a point of agression: both people vehemently feel that they are good at it, it being a sense of pride in both individuals. When they get together, sparks fly. Just my experience. So now, with my successul marriage in mind, I find that my wife, who loves me dearly and whom I also love dearly, is quite terrible at backrubs. Jen had once offered to teach her how to do it semi-correctly but I declined, knowing that it would do no good. So now, I’m sitting here with a neck in terrible pain with a wife who wants to help, but seriously just can’t. sigh

Scott at Erasing notes of the Ford Excursion: It’s like what a Chevy Suburban must look like to a hobbit.

So no report yet from the Radiohead triplets… How was the show, guys?

Ok, so Aimster has been finally released for Macintosh. This brings Napster ease of use to the large peer to peer Applications. Kinda cool that it uses the same network protocols of AOL’s Instant Messenger.

Or, rather, how popular is your last name? Search and find out. Mine is number 14,666 out of 55,000. So is it a coincidence that my parents’ address contains the numer ‘4666?’ I think not. [Via Timothompson.com]

OSOpinion:

Where is an idiot-proof OS for the home user with a default GUI install and setup that asks only a few important, easy to understand questions of the owner?



It’s at CompUSA, in the back. It has a giant ‘X’ on the front.

Read this loud and clear: Don’t go to Pep Boys for an oil change. It took them 3 fucking hours to do it, even though I had an appointment for them to do it at 2pm.



My complaint to the BBB:


At 11:00 AM on June 26, 2001, I arrived at the Pep Boys at 487 S. Broadway in Denver, CO, looking to get my car’s oil changed. They told me it would be a 2 hour wait, so I asked if I could make an appointment, figuring ‘appointment’ meant I could come in at the time specified and receive the oil change service. They told me I could and we set an appointment up for 2:00 PM, same day. As 2pm rolled around, I found I was busy working in my home office, and asked that my wife go instead. She did. And didn’t get home until 5pm, exasperated and upset. She told me that we were never going to Pep Boys again. She told me that there wasn’t even anyone at the service desk when she arrived, and there continued to be no one there for at least 25 minutes. Our appointment was for 2pm, and it was now 2:30pm. Eventually, the car got the oil changed, and she came home. It took her 3 hours. Upset about this and that she paid full-price for the service, I called the manager of this particular Pep Boys and asked for her to do something about the fact that we were both upset with Pep Boys’ sub-par service. She resonded that their ‘appointments’ did guarantee service for the time specified, merely that you could get in line for service when your appointment came up. This enraged me, as I understand the term ‘appointment’ to mean that one would receive service at the agreed-upon time, not stand around and wait for it starting at that time. She apologized for the fact that the establishement was ‘busy,’ but did not once apologize for my being upset and for their lack of decent service and communication to my wife that it was still going to take 3 hours from our appointed time. Had she known that, she would have gone someplace else, and probably would have received better service. I am UTTERLY unhappy with the fact that we paid full-price for this service, and I am completely positive of my choice to never step foot near another Pep Boys again.




I refuse to simply accept that service this bad is okay. It is not.

Okay, so now at MapQuest not only can you get a map of a specific location (as always), but now you can get a TerraServer-like aerial photo of it. Just click the ‘Aerial Photo’ tab next to the Street Map tab on the map. Weird. Here’s my house. And this is the Apple campus… At least, the big circle is… try and guess what the small one is…. :)

Today I decided to read the Denver Post to see what’s up and found out that White Spot, a local 24-hour coffee shop, is closing after 40 years.
White Spot will be torn down and replaced with a 15-story condominium and stores.
Well, I guess we won’t be seeing White Spot again upon our return to Denver someday.


And no more plastic wrap in the gravy for 808. Yum!

Since I don’t a) gloat that much, or b) have a forum other than this in which to gloat, you all get to hear the news. I am seeing Radiohead on Wednesday in San Francisco. I’m driving up tomorrow (from San Diego). From all accounts, these tickets are rather hard to come across, and yet my friends seem to have luck when it matters. I’m very excited.

This year started out sucky, but so far it’s getting much much better.

Okay. It’s gone on long enough. Now, I know that there’s a little eCafeNet link on the sidebar, but I bet you haven’t clicked it. I think it’s about time that we acknowledge and thank 808 (aka Tai) for his wonderful generosity for hosting Alternate on his server, via his (and Michelle’s) eCafeNetwork. We get decent traffic here, and never once has he bitched that I don’t pay for it. :) It’s his site, too, but I think it’s worth mentioning that eCafe has great hosting at a great price (not for free like Alternate, but good enough). So here’s that link again, in case you didn’t click it the first time.