wrong, i’ve been up to my neck in moisture festival performances…
Monthly Archives: March 2011
i should know better than this, part II
last week i discovered my sister and brother-in-law’s blog and this week i’ve discovered my brother and sister-in-law’s blog. my brother is ten years younger than me, and the last time we had any appreciable contact was when he was around 10 years old… although it’s frightening how much alike we look. he doesn’t have a beard, but…
now he apparently thinks he’s an edgy tech journalist, or something like that, and there’s at least a 50% chance that my brother and my brother-in-law are hosted by the same company, which may be owned by one or both of them…
moisture spoons
i’ve gotta save up my spoons, because soon i’m going to be subjected to a gauntlet… i’ve got a performance wednesday with the SANCApators playing a whole bunch of music that i have never played before, then i’ve got performances with the fremont philharmonic on thursday, two on friday, three on saturday, and two on sunday.
ETA: i’ve also been tapped to cover a burlesque rehearsal tomorrow… that’s what i’m talkin’ ’bout… 🙂
another week closer to the eschaton…
Germany set to abandon nuclear power for good – good for them! hopefully they’ll set an example that other people will want to emulate… although i doubt it… 😐
Kucinich Wants to Impeach Obama For Libyan Strike – and well he should. US lawmaker targets Libya strike funding – tell me again why we didn’t vote this guy into office in 2008… A Set-Up? – remember vietnam?
meanwhile, Libya: Six injured as US team botches rescue of downed airmen – there should be a rule that you don’t get to start a war unless you know the difference between enemies and… what are those other people called? … friends… that’s it… 😐 no, scratch that… there should just be a rule that you don’t get to start a war. period.
and, in other news, Nobel Committee asked to strip Obama of Peace Prize – they won’t do it, of course, but it’s nice of them to consider it… “Obama has now fired more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace prize winners combined.”
and, while we’re at it, Oil Will Be Gone in 50 Years – so whatever we’re doing in libya won’t make any difference anyway…
Alaska Airlines Apologizes for Jewish Prayer Mix-Up – these guys were jews, not muslims… and while i can understand the confusion of most of white-bread “christian” passengers and their ignorance of such things, the airline employees should know that their tefilin are not esoteric weapons of mass distruction… 😐 along with that is Southwest Airlines Apologizes to Muslim Passenger – they haven’t caught any real terrorists, but they have caught three conventional jews and an innocent mother…
Steven Seagal, Sheriff Raid Valley Home In Tank – the accused had his house destroyed, because the sheriff suspected him of running cockfights… he was alone, and unarmed, and… steven seagal?!? don’t the police have better things to do?
and, along the same lines, Sheriff Schieferdecker Apologizes to "Little Fag Jew Boys" – instead of going after real terrorists, this local sherrif clown is sexually harrassing his subordinates in public, on facebook…
Shipwreck threatens penguin colony on South Atlantic island – will it ever end? answer: probably not, unless something dramatic happens.
Why Is Microsoft Seeking New State Laws That Allow it to Sue Competitors For Piracy by Overseas Suppliers? – so that they will have even more of an unfair advantage in the commercial market, of course. why else? this is one of the main reasons why i gave up micro$awft products over 10 years ago. pfui… who needs ’em?
at the same time, Microsoft: "Mystery bug" blocks Syrian secure Hotmail – suuuuuure it does… nudge, nudge, wink, wink…
oh, and by the way, Study Shows That Piracy Has Not Resulted In A Decrease Of Quality New Music – in spite of what the RIAA wants you to believe.
Pee Power Offers Green Energy Alternative – interesting… and it gives me the opportunity to post the words “pee power” in my blog… 👿
Time to turn on the tardis – light sabres DO. NOT. EXIST!!
i don’t know whether this is funny or not…
in 2007, i did the programs for the moisture festival. since then, they consistently have not found a printer that does as good a job for as little money as i did.
now they’re almost to the point of admitting it. the reason?
apparently i don’t play for the fremont philharmonic!
kiki, the band leader (this year) is listed twice, but i’m not listed at all, in the program.
i pointed this out to tim and macque – “members of the board” – and they assured me that they would bring it up with RB, who is in charge (more or less) of the schedule and programs… but RB is the same person who, last year, gave me his “personal assurance” that the fremont philharmonic would be scheduled for “at least one burlesque show” this year – and despite what my brother-in-law thinks, burlesque is THE reason why i have been involved with this production for as long as i have – only to find out that the burlesque shows have already all been taken by the zebra kings, that RB “doesn’t remember” talking to me last year, and that’s very likely the way it’s going to stay for the indeterminate, forseeable future. RB is also the person who drove me to the brink of violence, back in 2007, when he missed an important deadline BY TWO AND A HALF WEEKS and i had to get the interior pages photocopied, rather than printed (which would have made my programs even prettier, and cost even less), and drove me to say that i would, NEVER AGAIN do the moisture festival program…
so i don’t know if my complaining about it will make the slightest bit of difference…
and my impression is that the only way to “fix” it, in the long run, is to do what i said i would NEVER AGAIN do…
in the mean time, i have been asked to sit in with the SANCApators next wednesday… another share in the event that made me the most money of any event last year – although it’s probably going to be difficult to beat this year, when i got paid over $1,000 for the panto…
ETA: it is more-or-less as i suspected: i got a personal and “sincere” (whatever that means, coming from RB) apology from RB for not being in the program: he said that it is entirely his fault, that kiki sent him the list of names with me on it, and he sent the list, minus me, to the printer… he said that “if they get it reprinted” he’ll personally make sure that the correction is made… but, honestly, as far as i know, they have never had enough money to do a second printing, especially with two weeks of performances left, and the turn-around time for getting a 50-page program printed makes reprinting the program for the last week highly unlikely… i must have been crazy (it was the brain injury… that was it), but i offered my services as a typesetter/printer. RB said that they may take me up on the offer, because the person who has been printing the programs (a friend of sandy, who took over from me in 2007, when i said i wouldn’t do it again) may be leaving next year…
this is our opening night for the moisture festival
the moisture festival has actually been going on for a week, now, but tonight is the opening night of comedie/varieté at the palladium featuring the fremont philharmonic. we’ve settled on “whatever is your take on ‘formal'” for the uniform-of-the-day, and this is what i’m wearing:
we’re supposed to show up around 5:00 pm, i think doors for the first show are at 7:00, and doors for the second show are at 10:00… which means, conservatively, that we’ll be finished around 12:00 or thereabouts… which means that i won’t actually get out of there until 1:00 or so, and it usually takes me around 45 minutes to drive home, so i won’t be getting to bed until around 2:00 or thereabouts… and i’ve got the same schedule again tomorrow, only it starts with me getting to the palladium at 1:00…
busy, busy, busy…
by the way, for those of you who are wondering (and i know you’re out there), the altar cloth behind me is tucked up behind the box to keep it away from the puppy. there have already been several “near miss messes” that have involved the puppy, who wants to tug and chew on everything that hangs down, and the altar… i keep telling myself that he’ll grow out of it, but i keep wondering if he’ll do it before or after destroying my altar… 😐
dead people
i should know better than this…
i should know better than to go poking around on internet with a little bit more information than i should probably have. i feel the same way i did when i was a teenager about to get in trouble. i should stop now…
i found my sister and brother-in-law’s blog… one of the sisters that i haven’t spoken to or heard from for… um… a REEEEALY long time… the last time i remember seeing this particular sister (which is confounded by the fact that i have a swiss-cheese memory) was around 30 years ago or thereabouts… when she was about 12 years old… and i was about 20…
it’s not 100% for sure, but everything i’ve seen points towards that being their blog… everything matches up…
i don’t know whether i should link to it, but it’s definitely going into my RSS feed… 👿
more goodies from the past…
this is ezra kirby, my great granduncle, age approximately 25 at the time of the portrait. he lived from 1872 to 1939 and he spent his entire life as a farmer in champaign county, illinois.
…
is it just my imagination, or does that photo look an awful lot like my own son? … who i named ezra, not even knowing that i had a great granduncle with the same name…
okay, i think i’m going to put this project away for a while. it’s getting scary.
another week closer to the eschaton…
pickings are slim this week, because of our vacation. it doesn’t mean there was any less depravity and chaos in the world, but i took notice of less of it this week. i’m sure that next week will be back to normal.
Killer Cop Walks in Massachusetts Drug Raid Death – instead of going after real terrorists, this cop clown “accidentally” shot an otherwise innocent guy and gets a paid vacation…
Obama Starts Another Illegal War, Rangel Calls For Draft – on the eighth anniversary of bush’s illegal invasion of iraq… ironic, isn’t it, nobel-peace-prize-winner obama… 😐
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
— Sen. Barack Obama, December 20, 2007
The Residents – 18 March, 2011
as you know, if you’ve read my blog for any length of time, my second favourite band is The Residents (my first favourite band is anything with Frank Zappa in it, but that’s another, entirely separate story). the residents played a concert at Neumo’s on the 18th of march, and i was there.
it is physically impossible to give you an idea of what it sounded like, because for 40 years, the residents have never played the same song twice and had it sound the same way each time, which is one of the reasons i find their albums a little iconoclastic, but it’s better than nothing. there is a lot of their music out there, in one form or another, on the intar-toobs, which saves a lot of disk space for me, because i don’t have to post them myself. they played a few songs that i recognised the words to, but even the lyrics were heavily electronically modified most of the time, so it was difficult to determine what they played… although i was kind of amused to notice that the read-out on randy’s (the vocalist) processor unit had names like “snake” and “old lady” and “rubber” and other things that seemed to indicate not only the sound that it made, but the title of the song as well.
i found a spot in the balcony, above stage right, behind “chuck”, the keyboard player, which was very interesting, because i got to watch him manipulating his instruments fairly well, in spite of the lighting. he had a 15″ mac book, with software i’ve seen before, but can’t immediately identify (something like digital performer, i think), a short keyboard with some sort of internal computer, an iPad with some software with which i am totally unfamiliar (having a considerable amount of disdain for the ipad in general probably doesn’t help the matter much), and a vaguely squashed-spheroid device with a use i was never able to figure out.
as an aside, i had temporarily forgotten that i now have a – TOTALLY FREE – G4 tower with a motorolla processor, capable of running OS9 and all of the goodies that i never thought i’d see again when i gave away my own mac a couple of years ago… time to get that up and running again… 8)
the thing that really surprised me was that there were only three of them. apparently “carlos” decided, after nearly 40 years in the music business, that the rock-and-roll lifestyle wasn’t for him, and he returned to mexico to care for his aged, ailing mother… or something like that. nobody’s really sure of anything, since the residents have kept their real identities a secret since they started out, and have appeared in disguise for their performances. so now there are only three residents, “chuck” on “keyboards”, “bob” on heavily processed guitar, and “randy” on vocals, but it’s okay, because “carlos” – the drummer – was prone to taking extended drum “solos” at awkward points. i didn’t really notice the difference, because i’ve only seen them live one other time, and that was before my injury, so i don’t remember it that well.
they played for two hours, and then did a half-hour, three-song encore, and i came away with their new album, Dolor Generar. i was under the impression, when i downloaded the bittorrent a couple of years ago, that i had fairly close to all of their released work, but apparently i was wrong. the fact that it’s the residents to begin with makes me sort of wonder what the person who made the bittorrent was thinking when they labeled it “all of the residents released work”, but it’s the intar-toobs, so i probably will never know. i took a whole bunch of pictures, but only nine of them made it to flickr, because the rest of them are redundant, out-of-focus, or are otherwise defective.
the photos may have been defective, but the concert was outstanding. 8)
beach
we went to the beach for three days of doing nothing except exactly what we wanted, when we wanted to do it. here are pictures:
this was right outside our back window.
the feature, of course, was Rye, also known as “sheep dog in training”…
(more photos by clicking)
one of quite a number of shots i took that wasn’t one or more dogs looking somewhere else, or the shot being interrupted by moe, or other things…
the week then continued with my trip to a concert by The Residents, which will go in another post, later on. 8)
see? this is what i was talking about…
moe and i are on vacation, in ocean park, north of long beach. we are about a block away from the beach and i am on someone’s unsecured wireless network, so i’ll keep this brief. having a great time, but i don’t wish anybody except moe was here, and she’s here, so…8)
pictures later.
another week closer to the eschaton…
Jury Nullification Advocate Is Indicted – if we’re going to have the right of jury nullification, then we should be informed about it. if we’re not going to have that right, then it should be made illegal. but if we’re going to have the right in theory, but not be informed about it, and when we inform others about it, we are arrested, then something is definitely wrong with the system…
When they took the fourth amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
and I can say nothing about it.
I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
and I can say nothing about it.
Meltdown Caused Nuclear Plant Explosion, If There Were a Reactor Meltdown or Major Leak at Fukushima, the Radioactive Cloud Would Likely be Blown Out … Towards the US West Coast – bye… it’s been nice knowing you…
5 Ways DHS Violates the Constitution with Website Domain Seizures – so, let me get this straight… the government is violating the law to catch people that they believe might be breaking the law, and nobody cares because they’re going after terrorists… does that about sum it up?
At Least 27 Honolulu TSA Officers Under Probe, Schumer asks for review of TSA hiring
Bullied Elementary Student Arrested After Wishing For Gun – instead of going after real terrorists, the cops, once again, have decided to go after an eleven-year-old who wished for a gun to deal with the people who bullied him… note: there was no actual gun involved, he only wished for one… 😐
New York man faces five years in jail for ‘linking’ to online videos – and i linked to a story about it… we’re all terrorists!
Arrest in Actual Bomb Plot in Spokane – and guess what? the guy was a “christian” white supremacist, former military wingnut and not a radical muslim… who is really surprised by this development?
Multiple independent lab tests confirm oil in Gulf shrimp – am i surprised? not really…
Cambodia’s deadly virus: 85% mortality rate – “Ladies and Gentlemen, the next Black Death”…
Ron Paul: Hemp for Victory – again…
dead people
Psychedelic icon Owsley Stanley dies in Australia – “dead” in more ways than one, this time…
A Proposal For An All New Ten Commandments
yeah the old ones lost their magick so I thought I’d give you all some new ones…
#1 If you cannot respect the rights of others than you yourself shall be denied your rights.
#2 Shun all forms of social status and classes, these are mere illusions that attempt to justify ignoring the needs of society.
#3 If you make children, you are responsible for their health, education and happiness. If you take a person into your household or join a person in their household that has children of their own you are to accept full responsibility of their care as if they were your own.
#4 When you view someone as a burden to society, know this line of thinking is a much worse burden and more detrimental to society than poverty or handicap.
#5 When your religion, belief, ideology or personal opinion justifies violating the rights of others, know you are an enemy to the cooperative.
#6 Live a full and happy life, shun rewards and promises of heaven. Be sincere in you words, deeds and love. Make every day of your life the paradise you seek.
#7 Do not lose your individuality to fads and peer pressure. Your uniqueness is your contribution to society.
#8 Defend yourselves and your domains, but leave justice and punishment to the cooperative for none of us alone are God but all of us together are.
#9 If you cannot gaze upon the masses with civility then lower your gaze.
#10 Abide by these ten commandments and in so doing, Do what thou will shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will.
something i have always wondered about…
ever since i was very small (and well before things like seat belts in cars became standard, and driving while intoxicated became a crime) i have wondered about why DUI was as big a problem as it was. while i was perusing my news-feeds this morning, i came across a suggestion that i have been making on a pretty regular basis, that Alcohol Detectors Could Come Standard With a New Car – although even that doesn’t seem like it goes far enough, because, under the system proposed there, the blood/alcohol meter would actually control whether or not you could actually start the car at all if you blew over the legal limit.
my idea, which i got from my father, who was one of the scientists that caused the industry uproar about seat belts in the late ’60s and early ’70s, is relatively simple and straightforward to install in already existing cars, and dead simple to design into new cars, and it is this: when a driver sits down in the driver’s seat, they are presented with a breathing tube that connects to a blood/alcohol meter, and the car WILL NOT start until the driver breathes into the meter. once the driver has activated the meter, the car will start, regardless of whether or not they had blown over the limit, but if it detects more than a certain level of alcohol in the bloodstream, it triggers a display on the dashboard that is a 30-second test to determine whether the person is actually able to drive or not; something along the lines of keeping a needle between two lines using the steering wheel of the car. if the driver passes the test, the transmission lock is opened and the driver is able to drive normally. if the driver doesn’t pass the test, the car will still move, but the transmission is governed so that the car won’t go faster than a certain speed (i suggest 5 miles per hour), and the lights automatically flash and the horn goes off at regular intervals… that way, if a person is determined to drive home after a night’s carousing, they can do so, but they’re not anywhere near as likely to cause severe damage, and the police won’t have to search around for the guy that’s driving while plastered.
i have suggested this, and my father has suggested this (and he is a person who is a lot more qualified to suggest things like this than i am) for 40 years, and nobody has taken notice of it. it would be legal, it wouldn’t impair the right of people to drive, even while drunk, and, personally, i think it would be hillarious to see a guy going five miles an hour, with his lights flashing and his horn honking… my impression is that it wouldn’t take more than a few of those before people decided that driving drunk probably isn’t the way to get there…
what’s so hard about that, anyway?
ologies
i got my first ever backup of my entire home directory and my music collection finished a few minutes ago… 107gb… which is nowhere near all of the space i have available… 8) i still have to find out how to make the disk mount at startup, which i suspect will involve finding out how to add it to /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab. i’ve also got to figure out how to actually move my home directory, rather than just using a new one – basically what i want is, when i type cd .. into the terminal, instead of going to the main hard disk, i want to go to my newly populated external disk. i’ve got a list of instructions which don’t seem to do much more than moving stuff from one place to another, and neglects to tell the system of the change, and i already know how to move stuff…
i just got a HUGE packet of information about my heritage and genealogy… it’s enough that i’m going to be able to add another of the missing branches of my family tree, and it will definitely push my family research back to “the old country” – in this case, ireland – and the 17th century CE. it is something that i got in email from someone with whom i am apparently fourth cousins, either once or twice removed (depending on how old he is) – the last ancestor that we have in common was my great-great-great grandfather. i’m still sort of stuck finding any information at all about my mother’s side of the family, but i think i may have a lead on my maternal grandmother’s social security application, which should give me a birthdate and (hopefully) a maiden name around which i can start investigating.
Actually Really
Mar 17 – Mar 19
Thursday, Mar 17 at 08:00PM
Friday, Mar 18 at 08:00PM
Saturday, Mar 19 at 08:00PM
Dancer/choreographer Ezra Dickinson and musician/sound-artist Paurl Walsh create a visual and sonic environment that is directly and kinetically linked to the performance onstage. Employing new technology, Dickenson’s movement becomes the instrument through which Walsh’s sound is created. Together they build an exciting story that explores the making of the work itself. Dickinson has worked with Maureen Whiting Company, Dayna Hanson and Zoe Scofield; Paurl Walsh has worked with Implied Violence, Degenerate Art Ensemble and X-Ray Press.
About the Performers
Ezra Dickinson was born in Bellingham Washington; he began dancing at the age of four. Ezra received training from Pacific Northwest Ballet for twelve years on full scholarship. Ezra earned his BFA in Dance with an emphasis in choreography from Cornish College of The Arts, while at Cornish Ezra was the recipient of The Merce Cunningham scholarship in Dance, The Kreielshimer scholarship, and The Presidents scholarship in Dance. Ezra has toured across America performing at venues such as Jacob’s Pillow, Bates dance festival, The Baryshnikov Arts center, Danspace, The Southern Theater, ODC Theater, PICA TBA, and The Sitka Fine Arts Camp. Ezra’s work in choreography, and movement installations have been on display in 12min Max, Northwest New Works Festival, Gallery 1412, Chop Sue, Act Theater, Gallery 154, Move, Ten Tinny Dances, Moore Inside Out, Heathrow Airport, Henry Art Gallery, 911 media arts center, Next Fest Northwest, SAM Remix, Art Zone, and The Northwest Film Forum. Along with being co-artistic director of The Offshore Project, Ezra is in his fifth year of dancing for the Maureen whiting Company, and is a member of The Castaways.
Paurl O. Walsh graduated from Cornish College with a degree in Classical Composition and Electro-acoustic music. He is an active composer of electronic music (including large-scale surround sound performance installations), modern classical chamber music, music for dance and theatre, and good ol’ rock and roll. Writing and performing throughout the US and Europe, he has been a core member of the hyper-experimental performance art/music group Degenerate Art Ensemble, designed and produced music for the theater group Implied Violence, and can most often be seen performing in the prog-punk outfit X-Ray Press. He also runs ExEx Audio, a creative recording studio centered around working collaboratively with artists to help them better express themselves through sound.
hee hee…
i just got home from driving across puyallup to pick up something that, if it had been brand new, would have cost me $3,500 to $4,000 dollars, but because it is “out of date” it was free…
and i like free things, especially when they’re actually reliably functioning computers… 8)
i plan on reformatting it, installing OS9, and a bunch of the software that i thought i’d never see again… 8)
linux
i know it’s free, and 98% of the time it works exactly the way i want it to (which is significantly more than either mac or windoesn’t), but the other 2% of the time it’s frustrating to the point of distraction… 😐
so a couple weeks ago, i bought a 3tb external (usb) hard disk, and using both the linux GUI and the linux terminal, i was completely unable to do an awful lot more than render the disk unreadable. i’m sure there is a way to partition the disk into two sections, and then “mkfs” them into existence, but i have not been able to figure it out…
so i plugged it into the mac, and it popped up a window that said “this disk is unreadable, what do you want to do about it?”, whereupon i ran the disk utility, formatted and partitioned the disk in about 2 minutes, and went on to something else.
and when i unplugged the disk from the mac and plugged it back into the linux machine, suddenly it was able to read the disk, and it mounted both partitions when i asked it to… but the problem is that now the “owner” of the disks, instead of being “root” is “99” and i can’t change it to anyone else, because /media/home and /media/backup are only the mount points, and the actual device lives at /dev/something-or-another (there are actually 199 “devices” listed in /dev, and only a few of them are actually being used) and all of them are owned by “root”… however, when “root” tries to change the ownership of the mount points, i get an error that indicates it is a “read-only file system”… which isn’t much help…
i can see the disk, i can mount and unmount the disk, i can read the disk, but i can’t write to it? where’s the justice?
grumble, mutter, gripe, moan, complain… *%&#^@*%… (jarns, nittles, grawlix and quimp)
up… date…
i’ve been spending way too much time futzing about with the computers, and need to do something else some of the time.
to that end, i’m probably not going to spend more than a couple of hours or so in front of the computer today, because of the fact that i’ve got a bunch of stuff to do. i’ve got to drive to marysville (approximately 1½ hours each way), to pick up business cards from the printer. i’ve also got to take the empty water bottles up to the artesian well to fill them, which is in between here and marysville, so it’s convenient to do both at the same time. then i’ve got to package the cards and ship them to the guy who ordered them.
then, later on, i’ve got a fremont phil rehearsal, which usually gets out at 9:00. the moisture festival is at the end of the month. counting today’s rehearsal, there are only four rehearsals left until it opens, which is cutting it really close, especially considering that pam, our clarinet player, quit earlier this year.
another week closer to the eschaton…
NASA Scientist Claims Evidence of Alien Life on Meteorite – but at the same time, how much do you want to believe FAUX News, especially considering their reputation these days?
Mass. company making diesel with sun, water, CO2 – what do you bet this is the last time we’re going to hear about these guys?
How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam – these guys that teach anti-terrorism workshops to cops are the primary reason there are so many innocent people who get worked over by the cops because they have the wrong colour skin or act strangely.
Wisconsin Legislators respond to prank call by making it illegal – um… it’s a little too late for that, isn’t it?
Seattle farmers market features medical marijuana – one step closer to the inevitable point when our Holy Vegetable can be Sacrificed proudly in public.
Putting Homeopathy Into Perspective – any sufficiently advanced (or inadequately explained) technology is indistinguishable from magic… it doesn’t make me any less skeptical, however.
getting back to “normal”, whatever that is…
life is getting back to normal, now that the computer is running again, and the dog is no longer eminantly sick. i took valoriez’s recommendation and downloaded picard and i’ve been working on tagging my music. it is sort of confusing, though, and i still have around 7500 tracks that it can’t figure out… and how do i deal with the numerous albums that i have that are missing tracks for one reason or another? and how do i deal with tracks that i’ve downloaded from internet and have no idea who the artist is or what album it’s from? and how do i deal with the numerous tracks and albums i have, which are clearly defined, but are “home made” and there aren’t metadata for them?
i suppose i’ve only been using it for a couple of days… i’ll probably figure out the answers eventually.
moe has gone to a sheepdog meeting in gig harbor in the jeep. i’m waiting for a phone call from the guy who is fixing the brakes in her regular car.
alert
this is to confirm that i did, in fact, buy a dozen whoopee cusions on this date. no, i won’t tell you what they’re for.
magick
magick is largely back to normal… she’s running around and barking at everyone, and the only way you could tell that she had been sick at all is the little shaved patch on her front leg… and we now have another aged pet on a very specific diet that can’t be shared with any other animal, which means 7 kinds of pet food instead of two or three…
moe sez the working theory is that she has a bleeding ulcer and esophagitis, but she still could have cancer or something else. at this point, it’s another miracle of modern science, or something… 8)
THIS is the way it SHOULD work!
i am now running amarok 2.4.0!
and the fact that it still has the same bug that 2.3.2 had, and appears to have introduced a new bug where the track-bar in the transport controls apparently doesn’t work, is irrelevant to the point that i then had to rescan my entire (200gb) music collection, and all was right with the world again!
i complained about a bug and as a result of my complaining, there is now a fix for anyone who has the same problems!
a few weeks ago, someone (and i don’t remember who, but it was someone i didn’t know anyway) made some comment to me about how bugs never get fixed in open-source software because nobody knows who to complain to – and proceded to rave about how wonderful micro$not software was, and how it hasn’t had any major bugs since 1998, and that sort of bullshit… and this is exactly why i can categorically say that the guy didn’t know what he was talking about.
ETA: i also got a personal message from one of the people who helped me out with this:
valoriez wrote:If you were serious in that offer, I might have some business to bring your way. A young friend is going to be cataloging the instruments available to students at Kent-Meridian High School, of which some will surely need repair. I would value your opinion as an expert about the best way to proceed, once they are sorted and catalogued. Are you interested?
am i interested?!? 😀
updates
i’m officially shocked. my request has apparently been answered, although i still am having trouble getting it installed… there’s a good chance that somebody will help me out, however… maybe even today. 🙂
also, magick survived another night, and she’s looking perkier than she did yesterday. we’re planning on spending a few days at the beach in a couple weeks, and it would be great if we had a functioning dog that didn’t have to be carried everywhere for that…
suggestion…
the current suggestion is that i:
contact the packagers and ask them to include 2.4 in lucid, there’s been other posters with the same issue with 2.4 not available so there’d be support for this from others.
so…
who are “the packagers” for amarok 2.4, and
how do i write to them and ask them in a way that will actually get them to do it?
if this actually succeeds in getting me in contact with “the packagers”, i will be shocked. 😐
update
magick is feeling a little better, and she had an ultrasound, which didn’t reveal any large masses, or bleeding into her abdomen, which is good. they still don’t know what’s wrong with her, but the possibilities include HGE, cancer or an ulcer. at this point, they’re going with ulcer and she’s scheduled for more tests with an internal medicine specialist tomorrow.
yay!
magick survived the night, and was actually looking a little bit perkier than she did last night… when she looked totally pathetic (and she was).
moe says it could be a flare-up of a condition that she had – and survived thanks to moe’s heroic intervention – in 2005, hemorrhagic gastroenteritis or HGE. if it is HGE, despite the fact that they still don’t know what causes it, apparently there are newer drugs that they didn’t have in 2005 which are more effective at staving off the effects. of course, if it’s not HGE, then it could be cancer, or any one of a number of other things, which generally have more fatal effects than HGE.
we’ll know more after magick has an untrasound, which is scheduled for this morning.
magick
she’s home, but she doesn’t feel well, and she’s confined, with an IV catheter. she hasn’t vomitted, which is a good sign, but we still don’t know what’s wrong. she’s having an array of tests tomorrow. moe said it could be a number of things ranging from tragic but survivable (and magick has survived such things a number of times in the past) to fatal…
i knew it was too good to be true… 8/
magick is sick… 🙁 and it appears to be one of those “this dog is 12 years old, and we’re really not sure what’s wrong with her” type of sicknesses, but, according to moe, it involves vomitting blood, which isn’t a good thing under any circumstances…
the only good part about it is that she was with moe, at work, at a veterinary clinic, where moe is the senior veterinary technician.
huge sigh of relief…
i don’t have an emoticon for a “huge sigh of relief” (yet), but i should… it wouldn’t get used often, but it would be entirely appropriate here…
kmail works, akgregator works… amarok mostly works (it still has this problem determining track lengths), but i can deal with that… the file manager(s) works again… and now i’ve got this nifty icon in the task bar that gives me access to USB devices, tells me when they’re plugged in and gives me the ability to unplug them without the rigamarole that i used to have to go through when i wanted to unplug the USB devices: now i go to the icon in the task bar, select the device i want and select “Remove Device” from the menu, then i can unplug it. before i had to open the disk in the file manager, then select the actual device, right click, select “Eject USB Device” from the menu, and wait for the light to stop flashing before i unplugged it, otherwise it gave me this dire warning that said i unplugged the device before it was ready, and that there may be damage to the files (which there never was, but it made me nervous when it appeared).
the interface is somewhat different… some of the icons are not what i expected: the network icon in the task bar, instead of looking like a networked computer, now looks like the CAT5 network cable connecter going into the network connection. there’s a new “klipper” icon that wasn’t there before, and the “notifications” icon is different, but mostly it looks the same… of course that’s probably at least partially because i have customised my interface pretty heavily to start out with… i have the task bar at the top of the screen (like it was on old macs) and i have desktop patterns that change every five minutes or so, from a directory of pictures…
i may have the latest unicode fonts installed by default… i have noticed a number of scripts that i don’t remember seeing before (including mah-jong tiles, dominoes, egyptian heiroglyphics, tifnagh, and that sort of thing)…
i’ve still got a lot to do, moving my home directory, which involves figuring out why kubuntu doesn’t mount my second internal hard disk on bootup (like it apparently does to the two USB hard disks that i keep plugged in pretty much all the time), and figuring out how to partition my new 3tb hard disk…
but, for the time being, i’m breathing a HUGE sigh of relief.