Linkstew

So I just got this email forward, and I'm not exactly complaining, I'm just curious in a folkloristic kind of way. So below is the forward, and here's what I want from you: If you get a copy of this forward, please post in the comments or email to me any differences between the copy of the forward I got and the copy of the forward you got, along with your email address, so that I might ask you some other questions about the forward later. I may or may not use this for my folklore class, but even if I don't use it, I'll still post anything interesting anyone shares. Thanks!

TEN PROPOSED NEW LAWS FOR THIS CRISIS:
1. To buy an American flag, you must present proof you have voted at least once in the last three elections (yes, local and state elections count).
2. To display an American flag in any form, you must present proof of voter registration.
3. To wave an American flag in public, you must be able to name at least one of the following:
   1. One of your U.S. Senators
   2. Your U.S. Representative
   3. Your President ("George Bush" does not count; ambiguous)
4. To sell any product with an American flag on it, you must answer the following question correctly: The Bill of Rights is part of:
   1. The Declaration of Independence.
   2. The Constitution;
   3. The Magna Carta;
5. Those heard singing patriotic songs in public may be asked to show their voter registration cards.
6. To be permitted to scream "Nuke Afghanistan!" you must be able to correctly locate Afghanistan on a map or globe.
7. To be permitted to scream "Arabs go home!" you must list and correctly locate ten Arab homelands.
8. Those who wish to express opinions about Arabs and Arab-Americans must pass the following test:
   1. Those who follow the religion of Islam are called:
      1. Muslims
      2. Muslins
      3. Fanatics
   2. The holy book of Islam is called:
      1. The Koran
      2. The Koram
      3. The Bible
   3. In Arabic, God is called:
      1. Ali
      2. Allah
      3. Jehovah
9. Priority for purchase of American flags will be given to those whose ancestors lived on American soil the longest. When all American Indians who wish to display the red, white and blue are satisfied, other applicants will be accepted.
10. A call for war on any radio talk-show will be construed as a public declaration of willingness to enlist in the US Army; callers will have 24 hours to complete the paperwork.

So I did all that bitching about the 10.1 upgrade options, and bad Benjy, I failed to provide a better alternative! So here it is, quite simply: Apple should have offered the free upgrade CDs at The Apple Store for the price of shipping, or even $5 or $10 plus shipping. Further, they should have started allowing orders of that CD before Tuesday (or they should have posted and started accepting orders via the Mac OS Up-To-Date program before Tuesday) so they could get the CD into our grubby little hands on the "release date."

So the current status of operation: OS X 10.1 on my PowerBook on Saturday, September 29th? M.A.C. told me "we're only getting about 50 copies, so they're going to customers who have recently bought systems from us that had OS X on it." And as irritated I am with M.A.C., that's logic I can appreciate, and I'm sure their customers will appreciate. And the San Francisco CompUSA told me "We've received our full retail versions, but we have not gotten the upgrade CDs yet." So, if I wanted to buy OS X again, I could get it tomorrow. But uh, I kind of don't want to do that. So I'll call the San Francisco CompUSA again early tomorrow morning and find out if they've gotten any CDs in, and other than that, I guess I'll wait for my friend to get his retail copy in the mail next week, or maybe a co-worker will catch hold of a random CD from somewhere I overlooked.

Of course, what I failed to do was ask M.A.C. what they would do if I brought my PowerBook in and asked if I could do the upgrade there. I doubt they'd go for it, but I might call again tomorrow and ask, just for funsies.

I've been eagerly awaiting Mac OS X 10.1, and today, not only did I get my laptop back, but Apple announced the availability of 10.1, and made lots of neat movies showing off features available, and so on. And all in all, this should have been a very happy Mac day for me. But no. I am left highly frustrated.

Here's a quick review of the facts:

1. Mac OS X 10.1 is announced as being available Saturday, September 29.
2. As a user of Mac OS X 10.0, I have two options to upgrade to 10.1.
3. I can get Mac OS X 10.1 through the "Instant Up-To-Date Program," wherein I physically go to an Apple retail stores or a participating Apple reseller and pick up a completely free OS X 10.1 CD and OS 9.2.1 CD "before through October 31, 2001, or while supplies last."
4. Or, I can participate in the "Mac OS X Up-To-Date program," wherein I mail or fax ("Before December 31, 2001") an order form and proof of purchase to Apple, along with $20, and wait 6-12 weeks for "upgrade install CDs." (By the way, when I got Mac OS 8.0 through the Up-To-Date program, it seriously took them like 8 weeks to deliver the damn CD)

Um. What the fuck? This is the Internet age, and this is an "Internet operating system," and both of these options are so 80s. Here is some specific reasoning:

1. Apple is offering free upgrade CDs without proof of purchase to anyone who physically goes to one of their stores.
2. Apple's Mac OS X Upgrade Page calls the CD you get through the "Instant Up-To-Date Program" an "Upgrade CD", while it calls the CD you get for $20 + Proof of Purchase + 6-12 weeks "10.1 CD (upgrade install)"
3. Based on their names, both CDs will require 10.0 to be installed before 10.1 can be installed.
4. The only thing I'm getting by going for the second option is a Developer Tools CD, which in the past I've been able to freely download.
5. If 10.0 has to be installed before 10.1 can be installed, then Proof of Purchase is not necessary.
6. Apple is giving away free CDs to anyone without proof of purchase.
7. Apple did not inform their resellers of the free CD program, so today, when I called CompUSA and The Scholars Workstation, they said they didn't know if or when they'd have the free CDs. When I picked up my computer from M.A.C., they said they also did not know if, let alone when, they'd have the free CDs.
8. There's no reason that I can't "pay for shipping" and get that free CD shipped to me.

So, this isn't a pretty picture, and I want Mac OS X 10.1 right now. What options do I have?

1. Send in $20, 10.0 Proof of Purchase, and wait patiently 6-12 weeks for something I've been patiently waiting for since March 24th
2. Wait patiently for Apple to send out information to their resellers about how they can get Free CDs, and then wait patiently to find out, and then hope I get there "while supplies last."
3. Pay another $129 to get a full retail copy by some time next week, and pay a harsh price for being an early adopter (and fairly vocal supporter) of 10.0, and be very bitter.
4. Pay $69 to get a full educational copy by some time next week, and pay a slightly less harsh price for being an early adopter (and fairly vocal supporter) of 10.0, and be slightly less bitter.
5. Pirate a CD image and deny Apple of nothing (Free Upgrade CD, remember), thus not making much of a statement while still being illegal, but I'd get it sooner. I'd do this, but I don't have a CD burner.
6. Repeatedly bug the people I know who work at Apple for one of the free upgrade CDs and watch as my emails have so far gone unanswered.
7. Wait for someone I know to get a disc through any of the above methods.

So, possible conclusions regarding Apple's Idiotic upgrade procedures?

1. Apple is trying to get people into retail stores in hopes of getting them to "buy other things while they're there."
2. Apple hopes people get so frustrated with the upgrade options that they buy a whole new copy.
3. Apple hates early adopters and is trying to punish us and make us forsake Apple and become ecks-pee-triates. ;-)

In all seriousness, this is very ridiculous. I want my system upgrade, and I can't get my system upgrade, and I'm left stewing.

What are my plans? Well, I'm still hoping that my Apple friends come through. I'm considering ordering a CD burner tomorrow and having it shipped next day and burn myself a pirated copy of 10.1 before it's "released." I'm going to keep calling the local Mac stores to see if they'll have free CDs. And as a final fallback, a friend ordered a full copy of 10.1 which I'll have access to hopefully by the middle of next week.

But it's released "Saturday, September 29th," so in my mind, that means it should be on my PowerBook on Saturday, September 29th.

I handed Hayward a check for $810 dollars, and Hayward handed me my PowerBook. I opened him and pushed his button and he made that sound he so distinctly wasn't making when I left him in Hayward's [adjective deleted] hands. And I smile crossed my face (but I made sure to not let Hayward see it) and I put my laptop in my backpack (and immediately wished I hadn't also have books in there today) and I went to a cafe and I just used my PowerBook for awhile.

I'm writing this from bed right now. God it feels so good. This is the way it's supposed to be. Aww yeah.

I'm sorry I hurt you. I won't do it again. I'll pay for the posh treatment next time.

This "class" thing is something I've often heard about, and occasionally even checked out for myself. I'd say that in a typical semester, I make it to about half of my classes total. So I'm a month into my seventh semester at Berkeley, and how am I doing?

Well, so far I've attended every lecture of Folklore, which is unheard of for me. I'm pretty sure that after the first month, I'd have missed at least two lectures of a normal class. I'm going to try to buck the record here and make it to every lecture for the rest of the semester.

Then there's the middle ground with CS 188, where I was at the first three lectures, then I missed two, made it to one (but slept through it), and then missed the last two, so that puts me at more or less my standard 50%. As far as the discussions go, I went to one and a half out of four, and don't really plan to go back. I might stop by tomorrow night just to confirm that decision, but it's not a good idea to tell me something is "optional."

And then there's CS 170. I went to class on the first day, but I don't think I stayed for more than half the lecture before leaving and not going back. As I told a friend after the TMBG concert, "I'd say I'd see you in 170 tomorrow, but I'd be lying." In the worst case, my attendance record for the class will be doubled come the midterm next Thursday, but I'm considering going to this Thursday's lecture. Considering, mind you. I've got to balance out my Folklore attendance some how. ;-)

I'm a Dr. Pepper fan, and in Berkeley, Dr. Pepper is a Pepsi product. The problem is that most of campus sold its soul to Coke long ago, and so when I'm on campus, it's far easier to find a coke vending machine than a Pepsi vending machine, and so I'm forced to resort to a Coke to fill my to fulfill my carbonated beverage needs. I don't mind Coke, I just far prefer Dr. Pepper.

For the last three years, though, there was a Pepsi machine in Evans hall serving my Dr. Pepper needs. Until this August, when I went into Evans and found my faithful Dr. Pepper dispensing machine replaced with yet another big red Coke machine. I have yet to check on the Pepsi machines in Wheeler and Soda (hall, that is) to see if they've survived Coke's onslaught, but the outlook is bleak. (The word on the grapevine (being the grapevine associated with my job, not student transmitted rumors) is that the campus cut even more of an exclusive contract with Coke). So now to have a Dr. Pepper during class, I have to plan more ahead and pick it up before I'm on campus.

The storm didn't come as a complete surprise. The sky had been dark all day. But while I'd expected a storm, thunder and lightning isn't the most common of occurances in the bay area.

My apartment, unfortunately, didn't offer me a very good view of the show. Instead, I sat on my couch, with the lights and TV off, and the glow of my roommate's iBook in front of me. The walls flashed with the lightning, and the building shook with the thunder. And I didn't realize the power had gone out until I noticed the internet wasn't working. So I set down the iBook and went outside with the intention of watching the sky for a little while.

Only as soon as the door closed, I realized I didn't have my keys. And my roommate wasn't home.

So I watched the sky for awhile as planned. And then I tried contorting myself in various ways in a futile attempt to reach through the bars on my window and unlock my door. And then I went and found a Chronicle out front and read in the stairwell.

For two hours.

This is not my roommate's fault for not being home, and I in no way hold it against him. This is called: I'm a moron.

I'm just lucky he stopped by the apartment before going out for the evening. Otherwise, I would have been stuck outside with absolutely nothing but my newspaper for a very long time.

later: Oh boo, I just realized the power outage rebooted my computer, throwing away more than 100 days of uptime. Oh well.

Here is a page of pictures someone took at the TMBG concert I was at on Wednesday. I'd like to point out that damn this girl was in a horrible position, though it looks like she inched her way closer as the show wore on. For the record, I was pretty much directly in front of the Linnell's microphones (the ones to the left of the keyboard) and three people back. Pretty dang good spot, I thought.

Well, except for the weird guy next to me who had gestures for every verse of every song. I'm not joking. He was like... acting out the songs. All of them. It scared me, and also irritated me when his gesture hit me.

Also, look at this list of recent San Francisco concerts, and note 1. all the diversity in those set lists (sarcasm) and 2. that those last three concerts in San Francisco have all been on Wednesday. What kind of weird pattern is that?

So now I've now been without my PowerBook and I'm strangely having ergonomic issues. But to make matters worse, I called to get an update on the status of the repair today, and things ain't good.

When last we left our fearless Hayward... Wait, no, that's not quite right -- When last we left my fearless PowerBook in the hands of the adjective Hayward, a "replacement part" was going to take "a week" to order and cost me "$350." So it'd been two weeks, and no word. So I called back M.A.C. today to find out what was going on. My "replacement part" hadn't arrived yet, and Hayward promised to call and find out about the status of my "replacement part."

So I went to class, and after class, I had a voicemail message from Hayward. Here's a paraphrased version: "We sent your old daughtercard in to be repaired, but it turns out that the processor was also damaged and they're going to need to replace the whole thing, but that's going to cost $650 instead of the original $350 you were quoted."

Okay, what's wrong with this situation? Let's count:

1. After the first week on a one week estimate, I wasn't contacted, and M.A.C. didn't contact the whoever it is they're dealing with, and it was just left hanging. I gave them some slack, because I assumed their might be shipping issues in the wake of the attacks of the 11th, but it appears I should have been more diligent.
2. I was told I would be paying $350 for a "replacement part". This led me to believe that was the whole assembly, which in my mind included the processor. Apparently, that was $350 for just the daughtercard itself (with the memory controller and cache, etc)), but not the processor. It was assumed the processor would be in working order and ready to slap onto a new daughtercard.
3. If that $350 was for a repair operation and not just for a replacement daugthercard, then some of that must of have covered labor on the repair, leaving the daughtercard costing let's say $300. Now my replacement daughtercard+processor is going to cost me $650, which leaves a 400 mhz PowerPC G3 costing more than $300! Hmm...
4. It's probably now going to take another week to get this thing fixed, putting it at a month total that I've been without my laptop.
5. M.A.C. diagnosed my problem by replacing my daughtercard assembly (processor and all) with a known working daughtercard assembly. Now, what part of this process gave our adjective Hayward enough information to conclude that I would just need a daughtercard replacement? In other words, I was lied to and told that a "replacement" would cost me $350, when in actuality, a replacement was going to cost me $650, and that $350 was assuming the best case.
6. Why didn't M.A.C. tell me the worst case estimate and then surprise me if it had turned out to be only a $350 repair.

I could go on, but it's really that last point that irritates the dickens out of me. I had expected it to be expensive an expensive repair, and I was pretty much prepared to pay up to $700 for the repair without thinking twice. I was ready to pay for my mistake. If $650+labor had been their original estimate, then I would have said "Do it." But that wasn't their original estimate, and now I'm really bitter about this whole thing, and it's costing me two extra weeks without my PowerBook.

But as pissed as I am, I sighed, called Hayward back, and said "Just fix it as soon fucking as possible." Well, I didn't say "fucking," but I intoned it.

Why? Because as pissed as I am at M.A.C., it's still going to cost me $650 for the parts. Further, I would have to wait for the broken daughtercard assembly to be shipped back, and then I would have to take the PowerBook to another shop, where they would have to send the assembly back out, and then get another assembly back, which would take a long time. And I just want my fucking PowerBook back. Working. Now.

There are two morals here: First, don't shop at M.A.C., don't take your computer there for repair, and don't trust anything they say. Second, and more importantly, don't try to upgrade the RAM in your laptop yourself, avoiding getting yourself into this situation in the first place. Invest the $50 or so labor to take it to a store and have them install it, so if they fuck it up, they pay the price.

I've now been without my PowerBook for three weeks. And I've causally linked my lack of a laptop to the fact that my wrists have been killing me for the last week. It seems backwards that my laptop is what keeps me from having wrist issues, but that would appear to be the case. Without my laptop, I've been using my desktop computer something like 98% more than I did when I had my laptop, and apparently I don't type properly at my desk.

Or, I was just more mobile, and adjusted my position more often with my laptop. But with my desktop, I'm forced to use it the way it's set up, and I can't very easilly type while lying on my back with my wrists vertical (for example). Of course, this combined with the rigid ergonomic situation at work is probably what's aggravating the situation. So now it's not just a recovery of my computing mobility that's got me aching to have my laptop back. Speaking of which...

So I described the concert as consisting of "Mink Car material and their standard concert staples," and to prove this, here's a breakdown (defining concert staples as things that were either on Severe Tire Damage or that I've heard every other time I've seen TMBG in concert):

• Mink Car - 9 songs (Out of 17 on the album. But thank god, they didn't play Mink Car, Working Undercover, or Edith Head. I can't emphasize enough how important the lack of those three songs is to me.)
• Standard Concert Material - 16 songs
• Other - 3 songs (Fingertips, Boss of Me, and Robot Parade)

But I reiterate that this did not bother me, and only makes me want to see a non-tour show more.

Second, with the help of alt.music.tmbg, I've reconstructed more concert quotes:

• As another part of the long intro to "Yeh Yeh", Flans told us that "This song is going to be featured in an upcoming monolithic Chrysler ad campaign. Of course, we drive the Ford product." But Linnell came back with "I hope there aren't any Chrysler executives in the audience. We... advocate Chrysler for others." This was especially funny, because during The Sun, everything on the sun was a gas, including "Chryslers, Fords, and GM Products."
• As a part of the intro to Lie Still, Little Bottle introduction, Flans was explaining The Stick, and Flans shared that "We're working on getting a Shure endorsement." After some confused shouting from the crowd, Flans clarified that "No, no, Shure is a microphone company. Shure microphones kick ass. *pointing at mic on the end of the stick* This is a Shure mic; see how it has the characteristic round end? These things are indestructible; Everything else we've used just stops working after about three or four bars into this song." (I remind you that The Stick, with it's Shure microphone on the end, is pounded repeatedly on the stage, to great effect.

Third, I wanted to touch on intensity versus new material. As I've mentioned, the concert was super intense, and the band was really into it, and Linnell was even smiling except for when he was glaring at the girl trying to give him a note (Linnell is notoriously afraid of fans. (I was so grateful for John when Dan (Miller) took the note when he was on Keyboard duty while Linnell was playing the sax.)) Uh, anyway, this was the second concert of this tour, and they'd been cramped up in cars for several days, and this is what I'm blaming the intensity on. But because of that, there was no road material (new songs written while on the road (Such as Working Undercover for the Man (I heard that when only half of it was written. They stopped halfway through and Flans said "We should write a second half for that song... Maybe we'll finish it for Los Angeles." (To which the crowd bood mightilly (San Fransisco does not like Los Angeles (Los Angeles, on the other hand, mostly ignores San Francisco and doesn't understand what the big deal is)))) or songs which were fresh in the rotation because they were tired of what they'd been playing for the whole tour. So what I'm saying is, there's a tradeoff to be had with tour concerts, but you don't get much choice in the matter unless you're willing to invest in plane tickets, because they do the tour in whatever order they feel like (Well, probably whatever order the manager feels like, but them's details).

Update, 2006-09-26: Comments have been disabled on this post due to excessive comment spam.

So I was reading Keith's Blog tonight, and I idly thought to myself "Man, Keith should register kcblog.com to go along with kccomics.com so that I can get to his blog with an easy URL." And then I started laughing madly when I realized what a bad idea that name would be.

(Since I'm pretty sure that Keith won't catch that reference, or understand why it's not kosher, here's a hint.)

Heh. Heheh.