Food Thoughts

I don't think anyone has ever accused me of making this blog too highbrow or intellectual. I try to make it as thoughtful as possible usually, but that's not the case at all today.

Today we start with food. BBQ is pretty much my favorite, so let's start there. I tried out a new place called BBQ This! in Cedar Rapids on Thursday. Very good stuff. A little more money than your standard fast-food lunch, but well worth it. Large portions of tasty meat, and the two sides that I got were both very well-portioned. The apple crisp as a side is awesome. I was especially impressed that they keep all 4 of their BBQ sauces heated. Classy.

Last night, we ate at Old Chicago, a perennial favorite. Since nobody else was getting pizza, I went with a sandwich instead. They had a new Chipotle Pulled Pork sandwich, so I tried that. Freaking incredible. Maybe the best sandwich I have eaten anywhere. Plus, we had a cool waiter who told me that even though they aren't on the menu, he could make some Jamaican Jerk fries for my side. Those were extremely good too. At first it just added a bit of spice, but after eating a few the jerk flavor was very obvious. I love finding one-off menu items like that.

Finally, from the dislike side, I learned today that I don't just slightly hate Walnuts, I thoroughly hate them. We have some new oatmeal that is raisin, date, and walnut. Upon making it I was nearly sick from the walnut smell. It has continued to piss me off the rest of the day smelling it in the kitchen. I always knew I didn't like them, but I never realized just how nasty I find that smell.

There, your food blog of the day. Eat your heart out Rachel Ray.

Change of Perspective

Without getting too deep, I have been pondering lately how drastically one's perspective on something can change over time. I'll keep it simple with one example.

I used to love building computers. Everything about it. I kept up-to-date on all of the components that were out there, knew their specs by heart, and pretty much knew the best price on anything at any time.

Those days are long past. I no longer give a rip. I want my computer to work, I don't want to touch it, and I pretty much have one that is just "good enough." Until iTunes 7 came out that is, and suddenly I found my machine lacking.

Those who watch this blog saw me love iTunes 7, but also rant about it. However, I never even blogged about my biggest disappointment. After seeing how sweet cover flow looked, I couldn't wait to use it at home. However, I was instead greeted by this message when I enabled cover flow at home: "iTunes is unable to display artwork on this computer." Huh? Why? Talk about a worthless error message.

I immediately hypothesized that my last than fantastic Rage XL graphics card simply wasn't up to the task. A bit of searching on some forums pretty much proved me right. Thus, I was in need of a graphics card. I really didn't care though, and didn't want to spend time researching it. Once again, I really just wanted to be able to click the "good enough" graphics card button on Amazon or something. In the end, I went to eBay, narrowed the list by a few features I actually knew that I wanted, and bought one. Radeon 9250 it turns out, don't really care about the specs, they are good enough, and met the most important criteria, my price point of $30.

Now, I have cover flow goodness. Sweet. Now, lest I forget:

Hawks 24, Worthless Illini 7. Go Hawks.
I'll see all the cool folks under the lights at Kinnick next week.

All is Right With the Cosmos

Normally I tack this onto another post, but this one doesn't need one.

Yesterday was a good day. I got to go to my first Hawkeye home football game. I got to check out the very nicely updated Kinnick Stadium, and vastly appreciated the increased butt room.

Hung out in the parking lots ahead of time, good brews, good folks. I often forget how much energy and craziness college kids have, and it's a good reminder to see it sometimes.

I then watched a great game play out as it should. My "Beat State" shirt was still able to be worn after the game. It's all good.

Hawks 27 Clones 17

Mellow

Okay, my last post may have come across harsh on iTunes 7. That is far from how I actually feel. I was impressed with this the second I saw it, and now I am thoroughly amazed. They hit nearly every feature we were hoping to get added.

1. Burn with CD-Text - Yes
2. Kick-ass view artwork display, similar to delicious library - Yes
3. Album art for all music, free - Yes
4. Backup music library to CD, full or incremental - Yes
5. Automatic ipod updating within iTunes, not a seperate app - Yes
6. Automatic iTunes updating (is this a good thing? Oh well.) - Yes

I don't like that you still can't export a playlist to M3U format, but oh well. Very cool overall Apple.

Battle Hymn

iTunes 7 came out today. It rocks hard, very cool all around, couple this with a lower priced iTV, and things are looking good on the Apple front. I don't think I need any more explanation of all of this, as the geek sites should have it more than covered. However, there is one little caveat, Apple has now phased out anything prior to 6.x buying from the music store.

This eliminates my current workaround for being locked into DRM, using iTunes 5 with Jhymn. Sucko. The only saving grace is that iTunes 6 recently had a workaround created, and iTunes 6 is still allowed to purchase songs, even if you use that account with iTunes 7. So, I do believe I will use iTunes 7 on my main machine because it rocks, and keep a virtual PC image with iTunes 6 and purchase/un-DRM over there. Cumbersome, but necessary for the time being.

Here is a quoted block from the forums over on the Jhymn site explaining this:

Ok, here are my final results of testing iTunes version. I have three machines:

1) XP with iTunes 5.0.1.4
2) XP with iTunes 6.0.5.20
3) Macbook with iTunes 7.0

When I tried to "purchase" (free song of the week) a song with iTunes 5 and an account created with itunes 5 it told me I need to upgrade. Apple must have phased out 5.0 completely with the changes made today.

I was able to download the free song using iTunes 6 no problem.

I created a new account on my macbook with iTunes 7.0. I was then able to use that account in the windows version of iTunes 6 to download the free song.

Conclusion: Thankfully, using iTunes 7.0 does not stop you from using iTunes 6 on another computer. However, I wouldn't recommend upgrading to iTunes 7 unless you know what you're doing. It may be hard to go back to iTunes 6 on the same machine once you've upgraded."

5 of the Beat

More music for you. This time, it's pretty much an assortment of rock with some kick to it, great stuff.

Dick Dale and His Del-Tones - Dick Dale and His Del-Tones: Greatest Hits 1961-1976 - Misirlou

Killer guitar line. Maybe one of the best ever. Probably the only song in my collection that started in the 30's as a middle-eastern wedding dance song. Dick Dale demonstrates that he can do more with one string of a guitar than most people do with 4-6. Yes, you probably know this best from "Pulp Fiction." I hope you don't only know it from the Black Eyed Peas song: "Push It."

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Axis: Bold As Love - Little Wing
I actually wanted to give you the Stevie Ray Vaughn version of this here, but of course, iTunes doesn't have him in the catalog :-( Stevie gives it just a little bit more kick than even the original. In either case, your productivity will instantly change. You will either kick into high gear while grooving out to this, or you will stop everything as you sit back and chill to it.

Disturbed - Ten Thousand Fists - Land of Confusion

You wouldn't normally expect a Genesis song to make it onto an upbeat rock list (at least I wouldn't). I also wouldn't have expected to have liked so many rock covers of their songs in the past few years. First Nonpoint and now this. Great remake.

Kanye West - The College Dropout - Jesus Walks

I know, this is rap, not rock you're thinking. So? I've been grooving out to it lately and it had to make the list. I didn't like Kanye at first, but I really dig his stuff now. If you're looking for G's and Hustla's and Ho's, this ain't it. Check out his "Late Orchestration" CD for some really good live performances.

T.Rex - 20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection - 20th Century Boy

Once again, disappointed by the iTMS. This is one of the top guitar licks of all time, by a group that has been influencing rock bands since "The Who". Nowhere to be found. Amazon to the rescue.

Okay, I know that was 5, but I need to add a 6th. I just recently picked up a single that I saw as a kid. It is the "Ruined by Rick Rubin" remixes of Queen's "We are the Champions" and "We Will Rock You." Hard to come by this single anymore. I'm going to bring it to work and let Ryan have a listen.

You've got your tongue in where?

This is probably the best self-help tutorial I have ever read. Unfortunately, I have to work with several of these bottom-feeders, some of whom live under a rock.

My personal favorite: "Try smoking some crack to ease your pain."

Brain Block

I like to include this as part of another post, but I'm truly drawing a blank today.

Anyway, Hawks win again. It was bit ugly, but you can't fault a D-line that can stop 7 straight plays from within their own 3. Big East meets Midwest Muscle and gets smacked down. Apparently the game has changed since I played as well. Now, it seems if you are a defensive back, you are no longer allowed to even breathe on the guy before he gets the ball.

Come November, this game will simply be a "W", it won't matter how ugly and close it was.

Double Shots

A simple, silly post for the night. I was chilling out to channel 49 (Big Tracks) on XM radio today, which is good rock from the 70's and 80's, and they happened to be playing Queen - We Will Rock You. So, the second it is over, of course I my ears immediately expect to hear "We are the Champions", and as expected, they play it.

Since I was driving home and had plenty of time to think, I started trying to list in my head all of the other "double shots" that exist in rock music. Songs that radio has decided long ago will always be grouped and played together. I didn't come up with a huge list, but I decided to go ahead and make an iMix of them nonetheless.

iTunes did not have everything I needed however, so here is an XML export of the actual song list.

The mix itself lives here.

I went searching for more online information about doubled songs. The best I could do was this link from good old Snopes. It did point out a very obvious one of Foreplay/Long Time by Boston that I should have included. So, who out there has some others I should list?

New Hotness

I tried out the new Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 tonight. Very slick. At least 5 extensions I used to need are now rolled into the software. Most other extensions were ready for 2.0 and worked immediately. I have yet to have any problems with it, very solid.

I researched a bit for Ryan, and found that SVG animations are not slated to arrive until Firefox 3. However, I was reading up a bit on SVG, and not only found a really good resource, but some tricks to do SVG animation with Javascript. Check this page out for some good SVG information.

What is old is new again

First, a quick update on my last post. I have IE7 installed. It looks a bit more like Firefox, I like the integrated RSS renderer and feed handling, and they did at least try to address some security concerns. However, it is still just IE. There is just no way I can go back anymore, I like my Firefox, and especially the customizations I can get courtesy of Extensions and Greasemonkey too much.

Moving on to music. Quick, when was the first rap song made? Okay, how about the first explicit rap song? No, n00bs, Kanye West and Jay-Z did not invent rap. However, I would have been way off base myself. I would not have guessed back in 1965 we had someone dropping the funky beats, in a very explicit manner, but it happened. Moreover, iTunes actually carries it: "Rap Dirty" by Blowfly. Give it a listen, I was amused/impressed.

More on music. I had heard of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in the past, and always showed no interest as it was primarily jam bands like Phish, who I like to listen to, but pretty much ignore. Who of all groups should happen to be at this year's event though? Blackalicious. That would have been awesome to see (especially if they had happened to bring along Lyrics Born...).

UPDATE: iTunes link fixed. I have also finished adding labels to all of my posts for 2006. Eventually I may tackle 2005 as well.

Cornocopia

Today is the day to dive into new, untested waters, and I'm throwing it all into one post.

This is my first post using the new, integrated blogger stuff. I switched my account over to the new beta site today. It's not quite perfect yet, and you'll notice a few things are missing on the blog front right now, but I have been pushing them to do this for so long I thought it would be hypocritical not to use it immediately.

I like it all for the most part. There is still a bit too much original Blogger lingering around, that I want to see eradicated by Google. I really like that I now simply use a Google account, there is no longer a separate Blogger account. The new template stuff is really nice, it borrows the nice aspects of Google Pages, but I still find it pretty extensible. Could use some more work still, but very much a step in the right direction.

I really like that they added label support for posts. I had some 3rd party label stuff I was going to integrate, but of course I never got around to it. This makes it easier.

I also today decided to take the plunge and install IE7 RC on my machine. This isn't all that big of a deal, as I only use IE for Windows Update now, but I thought I would check it out. To be fair, I also downloaded Firefox 2.0 beta, and plan to install that also. I know, I usually just want my software to work, and don't want to be futzing with it. Oh well, I was just on a kick today I guess. I'll have to post my thoughts on the two browsers after I use them a bit.

The Hawks won today. I hope to repeat that statement many times through January.


Oh man. The spellchecking on Blogger kicks butt now. About time.

Cleaning Out My Closet

Actually, my inbox.

Google as part of their new support for sending voicemails to people via Google Talk, created a very slick inline MP3 player that they use in Gmail. This led some enterprising individuals to find how to link that from any other site, and then of course the creation of a Greasemonkey script to do it automatically. Adam at Lifehacker actually created this script.

Now, something you wouldn't have heard 5 years ago. There is a freeware app that is available on Mac, but not Windows that I really want. Google has had the Gmail notifier for quite some time, but now on Mac only, they have the Google Notifier. This handles calendar as well as email notifications. The page links off to the Gmail notifier for Windows, but there is no Google Notifier available for that platform. Damn! Oh well, I need multiple Gmail profile support, so I will probably stick with Gmail Manager and Google Calendar Notifier extensions for Firefox.

One of These Days

The title of this post has a nice duality to it. It happens to be the Pink Floyd song I am chilling with at the moment. It also happens to be a phrase I could probably be heard muttering often lately, followed by either a string of obscenities or shaking my fist.

The target of this dislike/annoyance is customer service, or disservice has it seems to have degenerated into anymore. Companies are simply pathetic at how they deal with the people who keep them around by giving them their money.

We'll ignore pure ineptness, like my former cable company who saw perfectly fit to cancel my service when I moved, but couldn't bring themselves to turn off my automatic payment. (Yay, free money! I wish I had a business model like that). Instead, we'll focus on what it takes to get results when calling a company such as this.

Generally, if you call up and are well-mannered, state your case, and try not to spread anymore angst or hate because you feel there is enough in the world already -- you will get absolutely nowhere. Often ending up with the famous, "I'm sorry, there just really isn't anything I can do." Apathy is less-than-appealing to me.

However, call up, act like an a-hole, threaten to quit, play some Pussycat Dolls at high volume (The lack of talent, it burns!!!), and you'll get things done. Why have companies made this the new way to get things done? It's just plain pathetic in many cases. You can get a person on the phone claiming nothing can be done, that's just company policy. However, call later, threaten to quit, yell about how horrible the company is, and just plain act like a nuisance, and they will magically find a way to make it happen. This isn't reserved for on the phone either, I have witnessed retail establishments where screaming idiots in the store are getting all of the attention and service, while those are politely give their patronage are left with no service. Horribly and completely backward.

I have been advised by people in some situations that I should be more forceful, and create more of an uproar (not often, but sometimes). I tell people that I don't want to propagate anymore of this broken system. The sad fact is that when push comes to shove and I need something to get done, I have to go right back to being nasty. I feel better though that I am at least not just immediately going there.

I like it much better actually, although it is still whack, when complete indifference leads companies to try harder. Call up Discover Card and ask for a better interest rate, no payments for a month, on 1% additional cash back. You won't get any I'm guessing. However, call up to cancel, and have no intention of keeping the card, and they will throw all 3 your way at once. Repeatedly.

Well, Alan Jackson is on my iTunes now, so I'm mellowing out again. Keep your kids away from dirty,dirty slores who are nearly 30 but refuse to grow up (even when they have growing kids of their own), and everything will be good. Peace.