Work is a little slow today

I’m reading catalogues. Man, how boring. I have to do up budgetary costings for extra fibres for some of the work needing done. At £20 per fibre, the costs quickly mount up especially when you need more than a hundred of the buggers. And of course, the rain is coming down heavily reminding me that … Continue reading “Work is a little slow today”

I’m reading catalogues. Man, how boring.

I have to do up budgetary costings for extra fibres for some of the work needing done. At £20 per fibre, the costs quickly mount up especially when you need more than a hundred of the buggers.

And of course, the rain is coming down heavily reminding me that we’re at the height of summer for Northern Ireland. I can hear it thumping off the roof and there’s a chill draught coming in from outside.

I miss dancing a lot. It’d be nice if Lesley had any tolerance for it but she doesn’t like dancing or discos.

Nostalgia

Tonight has been an “80’s Weekend” on MTV and it’s such a blast from the past. Listening to bands like Poison, Iron Maiden, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, Guns’N’Roses really brought a lot of memories back. I had different friends then, I even looked different (very skinny, stupid big hair). I went to see bands play live … Continue reading “Nostalgia”

Tonight has been an “80’s Weekend” on MTV and it’s such a blast from the past. Listening to bands like Poison, Iron Maiden, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, Guns’N’Roses really brought a lot of memories back.

I had different friends then, I even looked different (very skinny, stupid big hair). I went to see bands play live (Kings X, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Black Crowes, AC/DC) and thought I had attitude. I didn’t of course – I was too shy for that. I don’t even have attitude now – just arrogance – which on the surface is much the same but in no way cool.

I think it was compounded by popping onto the Friends Reunited web site and seeing the number of people from my class there. I miss some of them but frankly I’ll never get in touch. I don’t think I was a big hit in school. Too different.

see how things change

Bought some CDs yesterday. Got home and noticed ONE of them had the “Will not play on PC/Mac” notice. Sure enough it wouldn’t play in iTunes and certainly wouldn’t import. Resolved to take it back to the shop. Tried another CD. It also wouldn’t play or import. I felt a bit let down as the … Continue reading “see how things change”

Bought some CDs yesterday. Got home and noticed ONE of them had the “Will not play on PC/Mac” notice. Sure enough it wouldn’t play in iTunes and certainly wouldn’t import. Resolved to take it back to the shop. Tried another CD. It also wouldn’t play or import. I felt a bit let down as the latter definitely had the CD logo. Tried the third disk – not only played but imported fine. Fourth one also worked fine.

I’m more than a bit hacked off now. One of them had the CD logo which is meant to imply a standard and no warning that it wouldn’t work. The other was my own fault – but I was too busy paying good money to notice.

The really annoying thing was that I opened my DELL craptop, downloaded WinAMP and played ALL of the CDs fine – admittedly it was a very recent update to WinAMP. I still, on the other hand, couldn’t encode them using any MP3 encoder that I could find. That makes the CDs next-to-useless for me. I never carry CDs around – I MP3 them and listen to them on my laptop.

And I’m allowed to do that – it’s called Fair Use. I don’t supply my MP3s to other people, I don’t copy my CDs and give copies to other people. Under the guidelines for Fair Use I’m permitted to make a copy of the CD for personal use.

If I wanted to I could still output the CD to tape and give copies of the tape to all of my friends. It would be highly illegal but I’m technically able to do that. It’s the big bad scary Internet and techno-savvy music-thieves that the record companies are targetting.

It’s possible to defeat the copy protection using a marker or a post-it or a bit of tape. But that means going to some lengths just to get a CD that I own and music that I have legally licensed to work in my Cd player.

As a matter of principle I’ll be returning the two CDs that do not work in my CD player as they are sold as Compact Discs yet do not conform to the Compact Disc standard. I don’t believe that I should be assumed to be a thief just because I use a computer.

The real irony is that I always buy CDs if I like two songs or more on the CD. I usually hear the music through Internet Radio stations which use MP3 quality tracks. I can see a time when I can’t buy any more CDs because I refuse to have this copy-protection muck in my possession.

don’t let me get me

Sometimes you talk to someone for the first time and you start thinking. Then you remember the real world and go back to work. I don’t want to work – I want to look out of the window. But the windows here are too small and too high up and there’s nothing beautiful outside On … Continue reading “don’t let me get me”

Sometimes you talk to someone for the first time and you start thinking. Then you remember the real world and go back to work.

I don’t want to work – I want to look out of the window. But the windows here are too small and too high up and there’s nothing beautiful outside

On other news –

Meggan still has a cold and it may have gotten into her chest so we’ve got anti-biotics for her. Lesley is, of course, freaked and feeling guilty about working.

The Mac Shop in Northern Ireland will be opening in September.

A lot of people today were told that they won’t be working here any more. It’s going to be a long, cold and wet summer.

30 and all’s well…

So…I turned 30. It wasn’t a big event. Still had to go to work. Still not a billionaire. Oh well. We did go out to recently opened Malay restaurant in Belfast (on Royal Avenue) and had a rather wonderful meal – it was sort of a cross between Thai and Chinese – in a good … Continue reading “30 and all’s well…”

So…I turned 30.

It wasn’t a big event. Still had to go to work. Still not a billionaire. Oh well.

We did go out to recently opened Malay restaurant in Belfast (on Royal Avenue) and had a rather wonderful meal – it was sort of a cross between Thai and Chinese – in a good way.

Work. Bleh. What a depressing place. I’m spending too much time trying to get people motivated that I can’t actually get anything done. The guys in Germany are screaming out for some work to be done but there’s a lot of holes in their proposal and I’m not comfortable with just signing onto work without seeing the full picture.

Crucible is a balls-up as well. There’s been some recent recriminations that we didn’t do stuff that fired some people up. I wonder whose fault that was.

NiMUG is comparitively a breeze. 150 separate addresses on the mailing list and growing. Reminds me – I have to get an AppleScript workshop sorted out!