Category: musings

The years I spent using BeOS daily were marked by some of the most harmonious computer days and weeks of my life. It wasn’t because BeOS was perfect, but it was so fresh and had so many great new ideas. The user community was composed of a lot of people unsatisfied with the state of computing, and looking for something more inspiring. I don’t know if I personally found inspiration in BeOS, but I got at least a little bit of joy out of knowing it existed.

Anyway, here’s thinking of you, BeOS… the second computer operating system that refuses to die… and the first in my heart! Hahaha, umm.

I’ve been finding myself watching pre-recorded episodes of The Daily Show lately. I’m sometimes watching them a week or more after they originally aired. The Daily Show isn’t strictly ‘news’, but it is somewhat based on the day’s goings-ons so it at least sort of counts. Is it weird to be watching ‘old’ news?

Just noticed this on my little daily calendar thingy I have set up:

Martin Luther King assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, 1968

It’s been 36 years now. It sure would have been nice to have Martin Luther King Jr. alive for even a few of those.

I went to see A Perfect Circle play at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco last night. The Bill Graham Auditorium has long been known to me as a place where the Grateful Dead played many times. It turns out it’s located right next to the City Hall building. Weird.

Anyway, I was at the show by myself as I was meeting a friend there. We didn’t meet up until after the show, but I met a few new people. Oddly, the first people I met weren’t very familiar with Tool. How could that be? I thought people who liked A Perfect Circle were mostly just Tool fans looking for more of their fix, but I guess not. A Perfect Circle has their own fan base separate from Tool.

The show was fun. Maynard Keenan seemingly has long hair now, but he still doesn’t like to be very close to the crowd… He doesn’t even look at the crowd most of the time. He did talk to us, though… he called us ‘stoned hippies’ because everyone knows that’s the only type of people who live in San Francisco.

I just watched Karate Kid again. I haven’t seen it since junior high or something. The funny thing is I still ended up wanting to be Ralph Macchio by the end of the movie, goofy 80’s jeans and shirts with the sleeves cut-off and all. That’s a sign of great entertainment if ever there was one. I might have to watch Top Gun next, haha.

I paid by the minute to chat with a pretty woman on a webcam while she took off her clothes. I was mostly curious to see what the experience was like, but I can’t say it was a chore. I don’t think it was worth the money, but it wasn’t a bad time. If you’d like to do some of your own ‘research’, send me an email and I’ll tell you the name of the site.

This is probably an old hat topic for all the weblogging types, but I still think it’s funny. I’ve been watching the things people search for when they end up on my website and it has been a pleasant source of amusement for awhile now. In the interest of sharing the amusement, here’s a short list of some recent ones:

things can fuel the desire to masturbate
tasteful adult movies for couples
seahorse halloween costume
spoiled americans i don’t think so
philippines holiday massage couple erotic
see through socks
in the future people will look back i think they will think it’s a real step forward and a turning point for our franchise

Strangely enough, that last one is really all one long search query.

Since I got my Tivo a year or so ago, I’ve been increasingly interested in the little recorded pieces of whatever show the tv is on right before the Tivo changes channels to record something. It’s usually the very end of some show or some bit of a commercial and it lasts for about one or two seconds as the channel is changed and then changes (it’s an annoyingly slow process). I’m also interested, though slightly less so, with the bit of the last commercial of a commericial break that you see when you switch back from double-fast-forward to play. It’s usually just the punch line and it’s sometimes pretty funny when taken out of context. I have a theory that the people who are in charge of timing the shows and commercials will start to figure out how to make sure us Tivo people always catch most of the last commercial. Anyway, I’ve started calling these little bits of tv Tivbits, which is sort of short for Tivo Tidbit. If you’ve ever thought about this phenomenon yourself, please let me know!

We’ve spent about 5 full days in the super-dope submodern studio and now have 4 songs fully tracked out and in a listen-able state. We’ll continue with this schedule until we’ve done all 10. Then we’ll spend an additional half a day each completing the final mixes and adding any mastering touches we have time for. Hopefully we can have the whole darn thing done at the end of it all and then we can move onto getting it out to the people (who are almost definitely on the edge of their seats in anticipation).

I just found myself thinking about Dell after I noticed how prominently their products were being displayed on the set of 24. It was pretty much an even heat with Apple, which is interesting. Then I started thinking about what a match with Dell and Apple would be like. What if Dell started suddenly selling only computers with Apple operating systems on them? I pondered that for a moment and then realized Apple doesn’t care about that business and neither does pretty much anyone else. Dell is becoming king of a crumbling empire. Desktop computers are a thing of the past. Of course, if you look at Dell’s product lineup you’ll see that they know it as well. They sell a lot more than computers these days.

So, I’ve heard this all before of course, but for some reason I didn’t quite believe it then. I just couldn’t see how you could possibly do all the things I do with a computer without it. But now I realize that wasn’t really the point.

At this point, I could probably live for quite awhile with just my Treo and iPod. I mean, of course I could live forever without any of my belongings, but I could probably continue living basically as I do now for quite awhile with just my Treo and iPod. If I had to pick one, it would be hard… the Treo would definitely help me continue to make a living, but the iPod would keep me sane. Anyway, I bet lots of other people are just like me… this is the beginning of the end of our attachment to desktop computers.

So, now I’m starting to think about what part of this newly emerging technical world I might want to play a role in.