I am an Apple person, fully vested, using their computers, their devices, and in general I am very satisfied. But I just had a bad experience, and I need to vent. I upgraded a few weeks ago to OS-X 10.9 (AKA “mavericks”, and it has gone reasonably well. However, 10.9 seriously broke python. First, Apple is always 2 or 3 releases behind. Usually not a big deal, as I am not on the...
A couple months ago, I took the plunge. I canceled my Spotify premium account, and was grooving on the Apple iRadio option on iTunes. While I missed the “on demand” library, I thought that the radio stations on iTunes radio were great, with a very good algorithm at grouping songs in genre’s and subgenre’s. But a couple weeks ago I reactivated my Spotify premium membership...
Hi, I am a coffee-aholic, and it has been 4 weeks since my last date with the evil bean. I have a love hate relationship with coffee. I didn’t start drinking the evil brew until my 3rd year of university. Since then, I have been on and off the bean, often going several months before I break down and tuck into a mug of jo’. Like any true addict, as the effect begins to wane, I crank up...
This is America, the place where the drive through was invented, and perfected. We expect to get our food instantly, coffee and donuts at any time without having to leave our cars. However, I have noticed some people who are slavish to the drive through culture. When cycling, on the weekend mornings, I ride by a Starbucks with a drive through. There are often 15 or 20 cars in line at the drive...
When I bought my Stewie, I made the commitment to keep it clean. I washed it every week, waxed it typically once a month (give or take) and polished/sealed the paint every year. I have all the gear, and all the chemicals to do this, and I actually enjoy it. However, lately I have been pretty busy, and my schedule has slipped. I have gotten lazy, and there is a pretty decent hand wash place nearby...
Quick post today. This morning, I almost got creamed by a soccer mom dropping her precious kid off at school. She ran a red light to “beat the rush” to enter the local Basis school. Fortunately, I had anticipated the idiocy, and had my foot hovering on the brake. Basis schools are charters, who are selective in their admissions, looking for the bright stars. And from what I know, they...
Somewhere, I coughed up my email address. It could have been to access a report, or a datasheet, or something. I used to be naive and think that they wouldn’t spam the shit out of me. But I was wrong. I get a constant stream. People looking to sell me mailing lists for “decision makers in IT software”, “SAP users”, “Oracle Users”, etc. I get 2 to 3 a day...
Not sure where it came from. Perhaps it was playing too much guitar, or all the motorcycle/bicycle riding I have done over the years. Or it is just bad luck, but the arthritis in my left thumb sucks. I started noticing it a few months ago. When I started cycling again seriously (more than once a month 😉 ) I noticed that my left thumb was sore afterwards. It has gotten progressively worse, until...
One of the reasons that I have contemplated often the jump to a VPS for my web hosting was the freedom to do what I wanted. That was always balanced by a bit of fear that I might f*ck up my VPS linux installation. I had played with linux often, in the past, but never seriously. It ran a firewall on my home network back when I had an ISDN line, and I had built some inside the firewall file servers...
For years people, knowing I am an Apple fan, have grumbled about iTunes and how much of a POS it is. And for years, I have responded back that “It’s way better on the Mac”, because the Windows version has been a veritable homeless abortion in all its incarnations. Yes, by the time it was in version 9, it was getting cumbersome to navigate, but at least it was solid and reliable...