Disorderly Content

I just got home from a grocery run. And checking my email I saw I had a message from Paypal. It was a confirmation of a payment of several hundred dollars for a cell phone. Clearly there was a mistake, and I came within a hairsbreadth of clicking on the convenient Dispute Transaction link at the bottom of the message when it hit me: Scam, scam, scam, scam.... Sure enough, mousing over the link showed a numeric IP address on the URL. So of course I went to my browser, logged into Paypal and verified that there were no suspicious transactions. And then I forwarded the email to Paypal.

Nice try, guys. At least there's something original going on.

Shocking, really. Last night found me in the last place I ever expect to be: a house of worship. The occasion was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year; the impetus my Scaper friend Lindy, who as host of The Scapecast was also responsible for my fledgling voice acting career.

So how was it, being in a temple when someone wasn't getting bar mitzvahed or married or buried? Long; the Rosh Hashanah service takes a while. And strange, at least for me. First because it's been a while, but mostly because the service isn't what I was used to, back in the days when I was dragged kicking and screaming (well, not literally, at least not most of the time) by mom and dad. Theirs was a Conservative temple, where everything onstage was done by men, and unaccompanied by choruses or musical instruments or amplification. And strangest of all were the Stations of the Cross on the walls; the temple borrows a local church for the High Holy Days, since their own facilities are inadequate for these once-a-year activities.

Would I do it again? Dunno; I didn't exactly fill with religious fervor. Still, it was a pleasant way to spend an evening. And I did get a blog post out of it. That's something.

On my shuttle trip from Oakland to San Jose Airport on Friday I was sitting next to a security guy from Microsoft (well, at least it's steady work) who was explaining that there was nothing to the European Union's efforts against his employer except pure anti-Americanism. They just hate America, he said. And I turned to the fellow on my other side and we whispered almost simultaneously the same word. Something about natural fertilizer, if you get my drift.

It brings to mind our president's views on those who question the wisdom of burning the Bill of Rights where it applies to this neverending war against terror(ism|ists). Either you're with him or you're with the terrorists; there's no third choice. And I guess you're either with Microsoft or you're with those who hate America.

Can I please have Door Number Three?

After spending a few days early last week at a golf resort in Scottsdale, Arizona (which would have been a lot more fun if I had interest in any game of golf that doesn't involve windmills and pirate ships), I got to spend yesterday making a day trip to Seattle to meet with a customer. Even in the days before air travel sucked, this wouldn't have been a lot of fun. And even in those days I might have been stuck next to a fortysomething seminary student who seemed determined to win over my immortal soul, although in truth that never happened before. There's a lesson here: if my seatmate isn't both female and very attractive, the earphones go in at the earliest possible moment. Cuz having to listen to this jackass expound on the evils of Democrats, Hillary Clinton and the abomination of homosexuality ought to be outlawed by the Geneva Convention. Assuming of course that the Convention survives the machinations of that other jackass, the one somebody elected president.

But I digress. I arrived in Seattle to discover that Orbitz lied about my rental car. Okay, they didn't exactly lie. They said that the agency I chose was situated in the terminal, which was in fact the case. What they neglected to mention that the cars were somewhere else. So after finding their shuttle and a couple of long delays, I finally got in the car, met my colleague's plane and we headed to meet the customer.

That part of the day went very well. Then it was back to the rental agency, back on the shuttle and back to the terminal. Where I discovered that my flight home, the last flight of the night to San Jose, had been cancelled. Waiting on line at Alaska's customer service counter, I discovered that my phone had received a message, after which it locked itself up. Pulled the battery to get it working again, listened to the message and learned that my flight was merely delayed an hour. Then finally got to the front of the line to discover that that was old news; the cancellation was reality.

So I had two choices: take a flight to Oakland or stay overnight in Seattle. At my expense. With no change of clothes or toiletries. The good news was that they'd provide some kind of transport from Oakland to San Jose. So I took my new boarding pass, went through security, grabbed a sandwich from a snack bar and went over to ask the gate agent about that shuttle. Which was news to him and which, once he checked, really was his responsibility, at least to get a count of displaced persons. With that settled, I grabbed a seat, ate my sandwich and waited for my flight.

At Oakland we had to wait for the passengers with baggage to collect their stuff. Which was a problem, as a bunch of them had bags that were somewhere other than Oakland. But eventually we were delivered to a shuttle. And thence to San Jose Airport, where my car was waiting patiently. I arrived home sixteen hours after I'd left, tired, cranky and not exactly thrilled with the whole experience.

But I gotta say, it was a big improvement on the God Squad.

...and darker than... well... something really dark. I just got back from Reno, where I didn't shoot a man just to watch him die. No, this was about fun. And photography. And not gambling, at least not much gambling. This past weekend was the 25th annual Great Reno Balloon Race, which isn't so much a race as it is a chance to see all kinds of hot air balloons doing whatever it is hot air balloons do. And also getting up way too early in the morning, so we could be onsite when the festivities start at 5. In the morning.

Nothing better than standing around a frozen field in the dark, waiting for something to happen. Fortunately, something did happen pretty quickly, as commercial crews from Wells Fargo, SBC and a few others inflated their balloons for a little light show. Things stayed on the ground for this phase; it'd be another half hour before we got to the good stuff.

In phase two we got five intrepid balloonists who launched their craft into the moonlight. The whole thing is unreal, with these brightly colored vessels floating in the darkness like giant Chinese lanterns. Beautiful, if incredibly difficult to photograph. Fortunately, I'd bought a monopod to help stabilize me for the attempt. One day I must learn to use a monopod properly.

After the sun came up began the mass ascension, as one by one, and then a few at a time, all 106 balloons inflated, moved from horizontal to vertical and then took off. And to my great surprise, there was nobody to stop us from wandering among the crews. It was all so cheerful and mellow, if not exactly quiet. Those big fans they use to cold inflate the balloons are loud!

And now I'm home, and enjoying the ability to sleep in after two 3:30am alarm calls. Can't wait to do this again, maybe even in Albuquerque, home of the biggest balloon event of all. Oh, and I have a few more pictures over on Flickr, as well as some more waiting for review on Shutterstock.

It's times like this that I really love the Interwebs. Here we have a pianist (which isn't dirty, although maybe it oughta be) explaining the process of making a Bach fugue out of Britney's immortal Oops...I Did It Again. Watch and be amazed.

Spotted on Wired News.

Over the last couple of days I've seen several posts about SGI's announcement that they're EOLing their systems based on MIPS processors and the IRIX operating system. (You can read about it on Slashdot if you're interested.) This is a strange milestone for a bunch of reasons: first, because one of my last major efforts when I worked there was to evangelize the move to Linux and Intel. This was a good move, although it wasn't nearly enough to turn the company around; it addressed the relative performance shortfalls of MIPS, it saved the company a ton of processor development money their small market share would never let them recoup, and with Linux it addressed the big and growing problem of attracting and keeping software vendors' products on the platform. The move to Linux was an exciting one, and something I was proud to be a small part of.

But as I say, it wasn't enough. SGI was dying; I kind of knew it when I left in late 1999, although my departure was more about being treated shabbily by managment than about the writing on the wall. Still, I'm saddened by one more sign that the best place I ever worked is moving yet another step closer to the grave. I'd say I'll miss it, if it weren't for the fact that I'd already begun to miss the SGI I loved long before I actually left.

In another life, I would have made a heck of a product tester. If there's a way to screw up a product, or to misunderstand a set of instructions, no matter how clear, I can find it. And if I'm so smart, as my college boards and the membership committee at Mensa once claimed, what do average people do?

Remember a couple of days ago when I was talking about the experience of getting satellite radio installed in my new car? And then my rage at being unable to actually buy the service until I abandoned my Mac for a *gasp* Windows box running *ugh!* Internet Explorer? Well, I thought that was the end of my troubles. I signed in, gave them my radio's ID number and my credit card details and looked forward to trying out my new toy. But it was late Friday night when I did this, so I put it on hold until the morning.

Saturday I took a nice long drive, trying my radio every few minutes and wondering when I'd get more than the preview station. But no joy; after an hour's driving I was still stuck with preview after preview. And, having figured out that something was wrong, I wondered how I'd screwed up.

To make a longish story short, I hadn't given any thought to how a satellite radio figures out whether you're paying for the service or not. Eventually I figured out that they must broadcast a signal to each specific radio to activate it. And with so many radios out there, they can't possibly send out the signal forever. Clearly, waiting overnight to try out my new toy was a mistake; it had long since given up on me. So I went back to the XM website and found a link for refreshing the signal. (Finding the link was easy. The hard part was figuring out how to log in to get to the link.) And as soon as I clicked on the Refresh button I made a mad dash out to the car, cranked her up (okay, it doesn't really have a crank) and tried the radio again. Which began doing its thing just a few minutes later. And if I ever get through all the podcasts on my iPod I'll start exploring the wonderful world of radio.

Is there nothing the man can't do? Judging by this Veronica Mars season two gag reel, I'm thinking blend into the scene may just be that one thing. Joss had a walk-on (really more of a stand-on) as a car rental agent in one episode. But there was a lot more than we saw on the show. His, ummm, performance begins at the 3:26 mark. Enjoy:

Spotted on TV Squad, who say they discovered it on Whedoneqeue.

I'll admit to being a total sucker when it comes to completeness. What I mean is, give me a product that hooks up to something, anything, and I feel something's wrong unless I can actually take advantage of that "something" integration. In this case it's my new Camry, and its support for satellite radio. Now, I don't really need satellite radio. Heck, now that I have an iPod full of podcasts I hardly ever listen to regular radio. And I barely use the car's CD changer, or at least I would if it hadn't eaten two of my CDs and if Toyota hadn't sent the wrong replacement unit and I'm still waiting for them to unfsck my fscked player. But I digress.

Anyway, I somehow talked myself into adding a satellite radio receiver to the car. Which meant ordering said receiver, not an inexpensive proposition. And once it came in (and once the replacement CD unit was also in, since I really didn't want to make an extra trip to the dealer, which I have to do anyway, because did I mention they sent the wrong model?), I had to pay for a few hours of installation, on top of the monthly fee to actually get access to content. Which happened today, the installation part I mean. So here I sit in front of my Mac, radio's ID code in hand, trying to activate the damn thing on XM's website.

Except, you see, they hate me. Well, to be more accurate, they hate Mac owners. It seems their activation page refuses to run on Safari. Or Firefox. Or even Netscape, although they claim otherwise. Which only leaves Internet Exploder, which has so deteriorated from Microsoft's neglect that it isn't included with new Macs. Not that anyone with half a brain would risk running it in the first place, security nightmare that it is. Which is another digression, I know. From my main point, which is that there is no Mac browser that XM considers worthy.

Fortunately (he said, his voice dripping with irony), I do have that Dell laptop my employers insist I use. Which I guess will have to do, as I entrust my credit card number to Microsoft's browser. I am such a brave fellow...