WTFbrb

As a citizen journalist I feel it is my duty to report the goings-on of my block. Finally something of possible substance to report. Well not really, but read on anways.

So for the last couple weeks or so, on El Dorado Ave., somebody has had a 24′ Enterprise Rent-a-Truck installed on the south-bound (west-bound?) side of the road. I say installed, because it hasn’t moved an inch, and its lift-gate thingy has been hanging out in a take-off-your-shoes-and-stay-a-while kind of way. The truck, however, is closed, and leading to it are an extension cord and a cat-5 cable, overhanging the sidewalk.

I’m guessing they’ve set up some sort of server farm or something that is calculating away at something that isn’t that important (I mean, If it was important, they wouldn’t have it inside a truck that is powered by an easily unpluggable cord. They can’t be relying on a backup if it’s too many computers to fit inside their house, because the backup would either be taking up most of the truck, or it would only last minutes if someone unplugged the easy-to-reach extension cord.

Whoever is doing this is probably doing it for some sort of home business. Firstly, they wouldn’t be paying what now probably amounts to thousands of dollars in truck-rentals to have lan parties. Also, Enterprise Rent-a-Truck is only for commercial rentals, so they’d have to be going through a company to do something dumb anyways, and doing something dumb through a corporate front could land them in big shit.

Anyways, Palo Alto has struck back in a pretty passive way. They’ve placed a notice stating the truck will be towed unless driven half a mile (five-tenths of a mile in parking-noticese) in the next 72 hours. Unless the renters want to do something truly dumb and try to jack up the front of the truck and spin the wheels, they’ll have to take a trip around the block. Which means they probably won’t be able to keep the machines running, and unless they have some serious wireless access points, they definately won’t stay connected to the net.

Well, for now, I’m on the side of the town, because that truck is pretty huge, and its taking up 3 prime parking spots for my friends (and myself, when borrowing a car to take a GRE that starts before the trains start running).

If I find out they are doing something evil or awesome in the truck, or anything in the situation changes immensely, I’ll keep ya posted.

I can burn cds, again. I have no idea why my old burner couldn’t do so, maybe there was some weird thing I had to configure that I just couldn’t locate, but I can once again burn cds. My new drive is hell of fast too, I guess because its new and my old one wasn’t the last time I burned something with it. (Funny to think the last thing I burned on that was probably the Gentoo bootable!) I feel like a real part of the sneakernet again. Now this guy is a DVD burner, so I need to figure that one out, shouldn’t be too much harder, except that the principal dvd burning software I know of (CDRecord-ProDVD) is not open source, so that is a bummer.

Also aside from buying that DVD drive, I just bought a new hard drive. I was at Fry’s, and it was 160 gigs for $50! that is more than 3 gigs per dollar! Who can say no? Does this count as splurging? Where is the money coming from! Why am I so excited!?

In light of recent events, we’re given a picture of a future in which “casual piracy” is ended. Ok.. WTF….. “casual piracy”, is that like I own a pirate ship, but only use it to raid other ships on the weekend? Or maybe I only raid ships that forget to complement me on my ship’s figurehead.

In fact, it seems, at this point, Sony BMG, is fighting not for the benefit of their joint venture or even for the benefit of the RIAA, and definately not for the benefit of the artists the represent. They seem to be fighting toward an ideal that they hold, that few others do. They are fighting toward an ideal where each person who hears a song in a non-Sony-BMG-sanctioned way must pay for it.

The world of popular music is a world of songs which people find out about from their friends. The biggest form of advertising any artist or album has ever had is word-of-mouth. That can’t happen when people can’t give their friend a copy of the album. Ever since the audio cassette has existed, people have shared music with thier friends, indeed “casual piracy” has existed.

That’s not even mentioning the wtf of installing a back-door into someone’s computer…

In the landscape of television, there are mistakes (Cancelling Family Guy), tragedies (Cancelling Firefly), and then tragic mistakes.

Yes, this is the apparent “it” for Arrested Development, the award winning sitcom. With the episode order reduced from 22 to 13, a fourth season on Fox is unlikely at best, the leap to a fourth season on another network requires alignement of several flaming hoops, and cable is out of the question for a show with such high-profile (and talented) actors. The only way this show will brb is a response to it like the response to Family Guy (resurrected on Fox) or Firefly (resurrected in feature-film form): DVD sales. All the fandom in the world did not save those universes from their black holes, it was DVD sales. But, I’m not campaigning for reinstatement yet, I’m just reporting the reporting of news.

Anyways, the show. I’m not surprised it wasn’t a big hit. The hand-held camera, huge main cast, lack of obvious punchlines/laugh track, and somewhat awkward episode format, will lead my perception of the general public to just not get it. It took me a few episodes to get it, and a few more to appreciate it after getting it. The lead actor, Jason Bateman, played mostly the straight man, even though he did have some blindingly hilarious moments, and straight-men have been traditionally relegated to recurring roles (or at least not-at-all-lead roles). With the exception of Portia Di Rossi, there were no downright hotties, female or male. No doubt the humour was off-the-wall at its tamest, and the characters round as… circles, to catch Nielsen ratings (who’s problems are another issue), you have to be obvious, sexy, or placed smack-dab in the middle of The Simpsons, King of the Hill, The Simpsons, and the ressurected Family Guy. And while none of those necessitate a bad show, their absense excludes many good ones.

No doubt, Arrested will linger in the creative minds of a generation, though. It has the potential to come back, if treated properly by both its fans and its network. But even if it doesn’t, I beleive we’ll see its impact on situational comedy in coming seasons.

Oh well, time enjoy a GRE Mathematics (Rescaled) Subject Test.

God has a lot on His Divine Hands these days, what with His involvement in the design of life being questioned and all. But that is no excuse for failing to live up to His agreement with a romanian prisioner. Yes, this man is suing God, and perhaps with good reason. It seems that he was led to believe that his dedication to God would give him a better life, and it did not.

While this suit is making some sort of statement (at least… “wtf”), perhaps the suit should be directed at the Roman Orthodox Church, which seems to be where his big gripe lies. Then he might at least get it to court. Right now the prosecutor is having trouble subpoenaing God.