Category: Consuming

So, I’m driving back from the land of Vomitola (A.K.A. Lowell, A.K.A. “Factory town turned loft-condo-ville”) and I heard Something for the Weekend by the Super Furry Animals playing on WMBR (one of two good music stations in Boston– the other being WERS). I’m pretty sure I’d heard the song before, but I hadn’t known the title or the name of the band– I thought Super Furry Animals were some kind of jam band or something, but no. So, I found a song I like by listening to the radio. How long has it been since that happened to you?

So anyway I go to look up the name of the song to check the lyrics and come across violent slash fiction apparently related to a BBC TV show of the same name. EW EW EW EW.

And then the next day, at the gym, the Alien Ant Farm cover of Smooth Criminal came on the sports-club Muzak. It’s a good cover and a brilliant video and hey that’s fun. Nice work, boys.

Yes, I’m back. I can’t keep the domain and not use it. I can’t sit around and not make notes, hey I could be blogging this.

I can’t say hey, here’s how long it takes the average worker to earn a Big Mac, and wonder how long does it take me to earn a linen blazer, and what if I get the cheap knockoff instead? And what if I buy the surprisingly well-made car that saves money by recycling the discarded styles of other manufacturers? Anyone with the guts to acknowledge a poor rep (“Hyundai. Yes, Hyundai”) wins in my book. Especially if they acknowledge and address the concerns– by improving quality and backing it with a big fat warranty.

My company has always had pretty good quality, but the reputation as a dinosaur persists. I keep saying, we need to license the line “Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years” from LL Cool J. But I doubt it’ll happen. For starters it’s a song, and we don’t do TV or radio advertising.

All the other techies are commenting on the Ubuntu UI guy’s list of what’s wrong with the Ubuntu UI, and how right he is about what needs to be fixed. None of those issues were particularly surprising or interesting to me. I mean, they’re known bugs, they’re in the list of things to be fixed, we’ll get to them. What did interest me was that he’s started using his own products this late in the game.

I don’t suppose I was that surprised by it. My total lack of surprise suggests to me that I need to stop blogging for awhile. I’ve run out of anything interesting to say.

So, don’t expect much from me for the next few days or possibly weeks.

I’ve noticed that I have the all-too-common habit of posting links to the NYT without much commentary, and that these links are all-too-often about the housing bubble, as the latest Krugman article is, or about gay families, in the case of this surrogate-moms article. You know, there was that article from last month’s Globe about how gay people are totally restoring these beautiful old Dorchester victorian houses, driving neighborhood renewal and prices… that’s everything in one spot!

Just so as to do something different, for once, I was going to point out the Random House essay contest. But I did that yesterday and forgot. I may have to take a break from this– I’m just out of worthwhile spew.

Because they are popcorn fluff with no real depth and no real core. Because they are written by a producer not a good writer. Because, despite all of Lucas’ dislike of the Hollywood Machine, he produces the same shit as the rest of them, only less consistent, with less developed characters, and with no real roots at all.

Reuters article: Intel and Novell point to Linux gains on MS in Brazil. This news is a result of the big Spring push I’ve been one of the worker-bees for: a four-city tour of Brazil ending today, plus, over the past few weeks, 5 events in the US, 11 in India, and a multi-day event in Dublin, all ending with a 3-day conference next week in Ho Chi Minh City. We’ve been busy and it’s paying off and that makes me happy.

Scooba, from iRobot, scrubs your floors. Coming Winter 2005. My Roomba is great, and this should be great too, right? Although Roomba collects all the filth from the floors of my house into three (three!) different little filter areas, which are a pain to empty and which tend to spill everywhere, I imagine that the newer Roombas have solved this problem, and that the Scooba has some sort of ingenious method of handling the dirty-solvent problem as well.

I agree with the developers that clothes-folding robots are crucial. Such a thing could even be built into a wardrobe!

Salon covered Deadwood awhile back but this article on the historical Sol Starr and his portrayal on the show, and on the way that Jewish people fared in the Wild West, is genuinely insightful. I am greedily awaiting Season 2 on DVD.

I may have to watch Carnivale or even the Sopranos while I wait. Who knows.

Albuquerque is boomtown.

Fortune and New York Metro weigh in on the coming bust.