After 11 years, it is a beautiful thing to grab a new record from an old favorite band, bring it home and unwrap it, and discover that as much as has changed in the world around you has changed in your old favorite band, and yet it’s just as familiar — as if you were changing the same ways they were in the interim.
Here it is, though. This is definitely NOT the same Portishead we’ve been missing — and yet, the haunting soundscape, the surprise changes ( on the first listen you say “whoa!” and from then on you eagerly await the moment to happen again ), the simple, bittersweet vocals — are all back, in a new way.
The result: I now have a new fixture in my playlist. Thanks, Portishead.
Watched part one of the American Idol finale, and once again felt like the show was orchestrated to encourage voting for the younger, more ‘pop’ star contestant. Same as last year. Neither contestant really did much of anything outside of their normal oeuvre, but still it felt like the judges pointed to the ‘poppier’ contestant as the best performance. I know I should expect no less than this, but it still left me kind of annoyed.
So I went downstairs and fired up the ol’ PS3, thinking a bout with GTA IV would be just what the doctor ordered. The game froze, so I turned off the system, restarted it, and then….it won’t recognize any discs anymore. None. I tried putting in some DVDs, other games, a Blu-ray movie….nothing. The drive will take the discs, but nothing shows up on the display.
So now I’m sitting on hold with customer support, my fingers cramping because they’re so tightly crossed hoping that there’s some stupid thing I can do to fix it without having to send the console in. My hopes are not high.
My university has a neat program called “Ask An Alum” where students can ask alumni from their school questions about, well, anything. So today, I logged in and updated my profile, writing up what I’m doing now.
It was kind of surreal; it almost felt like bragging. I remember now when I was just graduating, how little I knew about the world and how much there was yet to do. Now, I can confidently say that I’m successful at what I do and have found my niche, both professionally and personally. Then, I didn’t even know where I’d find a job, and today I’m making decisions about who to hire to work for me.
That’s all appropriate; I mean, I graduated 7 years ago. I’ve been working my ass off since. It’s not like I’m some genius (though, nice of you to think it), I just care about being good at what I do and always try to be better.
I guess what I’m saying is, it was nice to think about how far I’ve actually come in comparison to where I started — and it feels extra good that I still have plenty of time to go farther.
By an overwhelming majority of online and offline votes, the cutest little pup is now officially:
Augie Doggie
However, in the interest of staying true to my family’s convention of adding hundreds of names to everyone, along with nicknames galore, he may also be referred to as:
- Kitsune (for his Japanese roots )
- Chiba ( for his Mexican roots )
- Little Dog / Little Pup ( in honor of his predecessor Little Cat )
- Mini-Cash
- Killer
- Poopernutter
- …more to come
The Contenders:
All votes counted tonight when I get home from work….
…but could you resist this face?
I upgraded to Kubutu Hardy Heron recently, and found that it’s easier to get sound working on this lappy now.
You still need to use module-assistant to install alsa from source, and I’m finding that I still need to have
options snd-hda-intel index=0 probe_mask=1 model=benq
in my /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.
However, now sound seems to be more stable and you can control both the headphone and speaker levels independently in your mixer — the “Front” channel for the speakers, the “Headphone” for the headphones.
Need a junior developer to work with release management tasks — Perl/Python scripting, C++ builds using GNU Make, source control and management. The right person could grow into Bigger Things over time. So, if you know someone who’s graduating or recently graduated, and who wants to live in Chicago, or if you’re interested in doing something different, fast-paced, and of course working with ME, then send me a resume.
This comic sums up pretty well what happened to me.
