Three Major Accomplishments

In the last two days, I've made three major accomplishments that I have to say, I'm really pleased with. I'll relate them here.

Firstly, I released 1.00 firmware for the FBV Express MkII this past wednesday. This is my first major solo software effort, and everyone who's used the product likes it better than the previous generation. Or so they say to my face. They at least think the pedal is better, though they may take issue with UI changes (the way that the double button presses work has changed, and this change may be construed as my doing when really it's just an unfortunate requirement of too many features and not enough buttons...)

Secondly, I finally managed to move all of my shit out of my old apartment (13028 Valleyheart apt). Specifically I've gotten that terrifyingly large table and fridge down those stairs. I actually sold the fridge! I had to wake up at fucking 6:15 am to do so.. but yeah, I got rid of that fridge at 7:45 am, before work. This is great, because I felt like a shithead for leaving the biggest and most immovable stuff in my old apartment the longest. The unmoved status of those very large objects loomed at me in the back of my mind. Even more so because I chose to deal with it through craigslist, which is a ratfuck of flakiness. Craiglist just turns people into flakes. As there is no history and often scant conversation between craigslist contacts, there is very little obligation to return calls or show up. I recently sold a bunch of stuff over craigslist, and it is really, really irritating to set a meeting time over CL and be flaked out on. It's even worse because they can just choose to never talk to you again. There's no accountability in the way friends share. Seriously though, I feel good about being generally unflaky, and I swear to god I've agreed to meet someone, didn't show and turned off my phone several times myself. I think it's just the nature of the beast.

I had a third thing, but it was specific and unkind. My apologies to anyone offended; specifically NM.

"Classic Rock"

I was rifling through a box of music instruction books that I found downstairs at work today.  It had a lot of classic rock books: hendrix, clapton, yada yada.  It also had a fair share of guitar instruction books from the early 2000's or late 90's or whatever, designed to be targeted at what hipsters are interested in playing.  It included such favorites as Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach and Korn.  Seriously?  This is the rock and roll legacy of the 2000's and 90's?  

SERIOUSLY?

This forces me to reflect upon classic rock in general.  Is the music that has been handed down to us the equivalent to this shit?  I don't know, because fuck classic rock.

Ehud and First World Problems

Earlier today I whined at ehud the following:

me: pffb

1:51 PM I love shit like that

  I wish my work had sleep tubes man

1:52 PM we don't have much of the dot-com era luxury I'd hope for

  we do have massage chairs

  but they're like.. stigmatized or something

  nobody EVER uses them

  I just used one

  and I felt like a fuckup the whole time I was using it

1:53 PM but my back feels great

to which he shot back a something awful link compiling some poor asshole's list of First World Problems:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/comedy-goldmine/first-world-problems.php

I guess I do have first world problems.  Whatever.

marginalization of windows

I'm currently "watching" gizmodo's liveblog coverage of apple's WWDC 2009.  With all the everyday-focused enhancements (mail/jpg/pdf opening speed improvements, find my iphone, etc) it's obvious that apple computers really are computers for the average person, and windows machines are oddly enough for specialized interests.  That's what fascinates me- that Windows is now becoming marginalized as something used by the business or gamer subcultures alone.

Wood-Fired Pizza

I'm kind of fascinated at how pizza is somehow better when wood-fired.  Julia told me once about how the Studio City California Pizza Kitchen was the last of the CPK's to use a woodfire grill.  Somehow the rarity of it gives me the impression that it's better that way but quashed by CPKCorp for its inefficiency blah blah blah.  I dunno, I'd like to taste test two similar pizzas, one wood-fired the other .. gas fired?

Also, I like the idea of cooking a pizza myself, over a wood fire. It does seem like the sort of thing I'd fuck up, though.  I've never cooked a pizza the regular way and don't even really know what the regular way is, so when I say that I'd probably fuck it up, I mean I would fuck it up in a way that the word "debacle" only begins to describe.  

Still, sounds like fun.

That's Interesting...

I have never heard someone say "That's interesting..." at work without meaning "That's wrong."  What's funny is that it's generally a phrase used by people who don't know specific technical underpinnings of what they're commenting on, but are spotting a bug and attempting to process it.  Yeah, I've only heard people from QA and Product Development say that.  To be specific, I've never heard anyone say "THAT's interesting.." not "That's IIIiinteresting..." which seem to be the two different ways to intonate that phrase, where the latter could be synonymized as "Iiiiinteresting..." or "Huh."

Terminator Salvation

Saw Terminator Salvation last night.  I kind of liked it; it managed to engage me.  There were several edge-of-my-seat moments; exactly the same amount as in Star Trek, which rx'd nearly 3x the rotten tomatoes value.

Both movies suffer the same problem that many big budget summer science fiction films do: the assumption that once disbelief has been suspended for the larger science fiction devices, it's suspended for smaller oversights as well.  These movies feature a number of striking unlikelihoods: black holes, time travel, further time travel, sentient and malevolent machines, etc.  All of these are fine; if you pay to see a Terminator movie and can't suspend disbelief about future robots, you're .. wrong.  It's the smaller inaccuracies that really tend to break a movie for me.  In the case of TS, John Connor expends a huge effort to infiltrate skynet's San Francisco headquarters secretly.  He calls for backup from the resistance home base.  They dispatch a helicopter, which lands in the very middle of the RnD department completely unmolested.  They then just leave!  

In the case of Star Trek, the planet Vulcan is destroyed by a mining ship, which extends a gigantic laser gun thing into the atmosphere by a ricketyass chain- yes, a chain.  Star Fleet is dispatched from light years away and fails to save the planet.  Much later in the film, the laser beam is destroyed, unsurprisingly, because somebody shoots at the EXTREMELY LONG CHAIN and it unsurprisingly breaks.  Why didn't planet vulcan think to do this earlier?  

Eh.