iTunes Store Gripe

I could expound on this to include bad metadata that has plagued digital music from the beginning. I won't - I'll keep this succinct for now.

iTunes (Apple) - why the hell do you feel it necessary to change the name of the album for your free songs each week? You have the song, you list the correct album it is from, but then you tack on " - single of the week" and label it as track 1 of 1. NO!

Actually, it's worse than that in some cases. Sometimes the real name of the album instead becomes "song title - single of the week". But, it's not an actual single, and the album art will still of course be for the full album.

This came from a real album, with a real title, and it had a specific track number. STOP CHANGING IT!

Some Interesting BBall

Tonight, as I have done regularly for about the past 23 years, I attended a Hawkeye basketball game. It happened to be the Iowa State game which always adds a bit of excitement, the crowd was the best I have seen in a few years, and Iowa happened to play a great game and pretty much had their way with the 'clones. Follow that up with the traditional playing of "In Heaven There is No Beer" and all in all - a most excellent experience.

It turns out I also got a nice little celebrity sighting out of the deal. Ashton Kutcher, being an Iowa native and former U of I attendee (I actually had 2 Engineering classes with him the sole year he was there as an engineering student), came back to the state to do some benefit work to provide money for flood recovery. Both he and Shawn Johnson (Olympic gold and silver medalist from Des Moines for those not paying attention) had events throughout the week to help raise money, which I think is very cool of both of them.

Ashton and his wife, Demi Moore, both sat at the scorers table about 10 rows in front of our seats along with Shawn Johnson. I was impressed that along with the good they were doing this week, they did not simply show up for the game, make their appearance, and then duck out. They all stayed well past the final buzzer, and generally seemed to be into the game and all of the events. My craptastic cell phone pictures aren't worth posting, or I would add them here.

There was a screening for Ashton's new movie, Personal Effects, at the Englert theatre in Iowa City tonight as well. I'm not so sure about the movie - it may have had a bit too much pandering to the Iowa fans for even me to stomach, but I'll probably check it out as a rental at some point.

OCD

"3 posts in one day - he must be sick, or deranged."

I recently picked up a TON of great Aesop Rock singles and bootlegs, and many of them are incredible. However, since I don't happen to live near somewhere where you can easily find a lot of the stuff Def Jux put out on 12" easily, I tend to resort to a little bit of ARRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I pay for my regular music - I feel that bootlegs and such are the spoils for those able to find them on the Internet.

The only trouble with obtaining this music in this fashion, is that it messes with my OCD-like need to get my iTunes library to be pristine and complete. I usually turn to my good friend, wiki, but this stuff is a bit too obscure for even wiki to be of help.

I now have a new friend in this battle. google site:rateyourmusic.com ALBUM_NAME ARTIST

At least in the case of Aesop Rock, I found every one of his obscure singles and common boots out there. Fantastic.

Multidock

On a less tyrannical road than my previous post, I received in the mail today a new point and shoot camera to replace our ailing one which has finally died after about 5 years of good use. This camera gets used daily in my wife's business, so it definitely has gotten a workout (being dropped in Key West, Florida did nothing to prolong its life though...).

I found a great deal on a Canon SD1100 and I was very impressed. Very similar to my old S400 ELPH, but smaller, quicker, MUCH larger view screen, and several other niceties. I would recommend it highly to anyone needing a good point and shoot.

Now, to the one nitpick on Canon. We now own 4 Canon digital cameras, so I don't think you can say I'm not a fan of theirs. We have the S400, the SD1100, our 400D SLR, and a ZR50 mini-DV camcorder. All 4 use very nice, rechargeable Li-Ion battery packs which all have awesome runtime.

Now - guess how many of those battery packs allow charging inside the device over USB? None. A bit annoying, especially if you forget to turn off the camera after dumping pictures onto the computer. So, since I can't use USB for charging, I have to use a battery cradle instead.

Okay - guess how many of these 4 cameras use the same cradle? Yeah, the answer would be none. Amazing - they really couldn't come up with a common charger? The chargers aren't exactly small to begin with, so taking a little extra space to be more flexible really wouldn't be an issue.

Guess I can't be too hard on my company for not having a universal dock yet. Why is this such a hard thing for companies to achieve?

Delusional Ramblings

First, can we finally now admit that the FCC has no idea what they are doing? I hope the fact that most of these articles point out that this is the "outgoing" FCC chairman indicates that someone with more intelligence will be coming in. We can't just print money, and I'm really tired of the federal government thinking it (it being the taxpayers of this country) needs to finance everything for everyone. Free Wi-Fi has failed in metropolitan cities - this would just fail in a more spectacular fashion, and that's not even considering their ridiculous "porn-free" clause. *Sigh*.

That plan segways nicely into the next delusional rambling though. How do we find a way to eliminate all credit cards? Now. Seriously, if you don't have the money, you can't spend it. It's as simple as that. You can't have a horribly failing economy and then have the best Black Friday ever - not possible. I know more people who bought flatscreen TV's, Wiis, and computers this year than any year in the past. When did it become a guarantee that every family in America was entitled to a flatscreen TV? When did people start spending thousands of dollars at Christmastime? There is one way to fix the giant blob of crap that the country is languishing in right now. Get some self-control and willpower back in our lives. Stop buying crap that isn't a necessity. Don't buy anything that you can't cover with cash in the bank (yes - I know there can be exceptions like housing - quit nitpicking). Let's want better for ourselves, and put in a little bit of hard work and restraint to make it happen.