Hah! This is pretty funny, although there’s some issues with one of the voices being WAY lower than the other. But still pretty funny. I guess it’d be better if I’d actually seen Phantom of the Opera, but still…

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So the nice 120-GB drive that I installed a back in February has started clicking. This is a bad thing. It probably means that the drive head is snapping to one extent or the other of its travel distance. If it happens enough, the drive will permanently fail. As it is, it’s sometimes enough of an error that my laptop will stop recognizing the drive altogether, and I get the nice “no hard drive detected” logo when I reboot.

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I was playing around in Second Life again this morning (I got tired of doing observations at work), and decided I needed to learn how to build stuff. A quick google search or two, and I ended up at the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives. I’m still working through the lessons (I’m on the 4th floor, and just finished with cubes, moving on to cylinders), but it’s very well laid out, and the notecards make sense to me. I think I’ll play around with this stuff some more, and build a few things in one of the sandbox regions. And if it’s fun enough, I’ll get a “real” account (i.e., I’ll start paying the Lindens for land ownership rights) and build a small workshop or something.

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I was at work this morning reading a book, and one of my co-workers started this conversation with me. It moved to speech beyond what’s quoted here, but what’s said here is really a good starting point for discussion about society in general, and about stereotypes (and the apparent reason behind them). This conversation also made me realize that I really miss having long, drawn-out discussions with people on higher subjects; I think that working tech support for as long as I have has made me dumber. Or at least deadened my previous ability to have lofty conversations without having to slow down the way I think. (co-worker): the only real reason to read this article is because of this “The politics of this controversial industry are more apparent in Bhagat’s work, where the business epitomises American domination and Indian weakness. Here new trainees are taught the ‘35=10 rule’ on day one. ‘A 35-year-old American’s brain and IQ is the same as a 10-year-old Indian’s brain. This will help you understand your clients,’ training instructors explain.” http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1779759,00.html**Devlogic:**that’s a pretty good article **»**says a lot about the mindset of Indians (i.e, persons from the [Indian] subcontinent), especially in light of how they’re utilized in the modern business world. **»**if I didn’t hate soaps so much, I might be tempted to go find that “India Calling” that’s mentioned and watch it… **(co-worker):**Never heard of it, but I dont watch soaps either. So far tech support being moved doesn’t really bother me, everyone needs to make money to eat, I’m peaceful and all-loving. What annoys me are the hick assholes that call in and say “oh thank god you live in america”. Thats when the subject of foreign tech support really gets to me.

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Heather and I went to the botanical gardens out at Zilker park this past weekend, and I dusted off my old Minolta Maxxum 430si (yes, it’s really a “dead media” camera - 35mm film). The photos turned out pretty good, and aside from the heat it was a really nice time. I think I might have to upgrade to a digital SLR though; Wolf Camera has a pretty nice Konica Minolta digital body for just under $600. Advantage to that particular body: my old lens will work because Minolta hasn’t changed their ring size. And based on the press release on their web site, they probably never will, either.

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I’ve been having a particularly bad morning today, and the rant that I wrote here was so mean that I couldn’t even post it, which is saying a lot. Suffice to say, if you have a residential DSL account, please don’t complain to technical support that you’re losing thousands of dollars an hour because you can’t connect to the Internet. If you want to run an internet-based business from your home, purchase commercial (i.e., business) accounts from not one, but at least two different ISPs, and have the connections on separate inbound lines, be they DSL lines, cable modem, or T1s. If you want to be especially paranoid, work with the telephone company to get a separate NIU installed on the opposite side of your house from the first one.

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So a couple weeks ago, Heather convinced me that I needed to clean my apartment. And last weekend, I finally did it. Well, we cleaned, that is. There were multiple good reasons, chief among them being the constant cough I’ve had for the last year or more. And although I’m jumping the gun to say it, but the cough seems to be gone for the most part.

in any case, my apartment is now clean. Heather volunteered to take all of the tiled rooms: the bathrooms and the kitchen, and I got the carpeted rooms: the living room, the short hallway, and both of the bedrooms (one of which I use as an office). Well, that’s how it started out, at least. She ended up helping me with the office, which was by far the worst room of the bunch.

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no pun intended on the first one…

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Lava Boss Video: Holy crap, I’m so getting a Wii when it comes out. Zelda is a launch title, too… The Robservatory » It’s so … black!: Another good review of the new Apple MacBook… I think I may fall prey to the color tax when I get mine as well… Benefits of Removing ‘www’ From Your URL » Wisdump: Hmmm… Tempting. I think I already have some of these rules in place, but it’d certainly make life a lot easier to go “whole hog”. Daring Fireball: Using .htaccess Redirection to Standardize Web Server Addresses: More of the same Main Page - Discworld & Pratchett Wiki: I needed this a few minutes ago, to look up the Discworld books that I don’t already own. Turns out there’s not a lot of ’em.

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Well, I got paid today, so welovemacs.com got 200 bucks, and I’ll get a new superdrive some time this week. So hopefully by next weekend, I’ll once again have a working CD/DVD drive in my iBook. Luckily, this new drive is a SuperDrive, not a Combo Drive. So I get a DVD burner in with the mix. Which is nice; 6x as much space on a single disc, and my copy of DVD Studio Pro will be useful for something besides making ISO images.

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Apple - MacBook Family: Drool. Now I just need to find a couple thousand dollars somewhere, so that I can acquire one of these.

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