Month: July 2012

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Anticlimactic

I haz.

To be honest, I was a little worried about upgrading after the fiasco I went through last summer when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, but the word that best describes today's experience is anticlimactic.

This morning I fired up the App Store, paid my $19.99 and the download started. It took about 30 minutes, and after making a backup copy of the installer and closing everything I had open, I started the install and left to attend to a user who had to have nearly 3 GB worth of archived mail always available on her laptop (don't ask). By the time I got back, my Mac was waiting at the login screen.

Everything works. This was one of the most painless OS updates I've ever gone through.

Microsoft who?

Good job, Apple.  Bravo!

 

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Commandment Number Nine

Apparently Chick-Fil-A needs a refresher course:

"There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers." ~ Proverbs 6:16–19

How very Christian of them.

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Beautiful

This is what I envision of when I think "21st Century Desert House," and it really makes me regret having left the architectural field fifteen years ago. From the firm ibarra rosano design architects of Tucson. We'd move back to AZ in a heartbeat if this were waiting for us. Absolutely stunning. (Click on any of the images to embiggen.)

Be sure and check out all their other work!

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Perkins: Google Trying to "Destroy" Values with Gay Rights Initiative, Should Expect "Blow Back"

Ugh. Will it never stop?

So… the usual suspects are at it again, threatening a boycott of a gay-friendly company. I mean seriously…how do these people look themselves in the mirror each morning with so much hate festering in their shriveled little hearts?  And um…how exactly does a boycott of Google (a free service) work? Are they going to refuse to look stuff up on the Internet? Are they going to delete their free GMail accounts?

Not that the Bible-humping…er…thumping crowd was ever terribly bright to begin with, but seriously, they're going to boycott an Internet search engine?  What's next, a boycott of gifs? jpegs?

I'm actually kind of surprised Miss Perkins even knows the definition of blow back; at least not in any usage other than, "If I blow you, will you blow back?"

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Some Thoughts About Boycotts

While I support them, I'm not sure that the threat of boycotts—whether they come from the left or the right—are really all that effective in changing the hearts and minds of whatever company is being targeted. I'm not sure that when I and a hundred of my closest friends say we're not going to patronize Company X, it really makes any difference to the individuals running those companies—no matter how fervently we believe in the cause.

On the other hand, when millions of people join forces to boycott a company and said company sees its bottom line being affected over the course of one or two quarters, then it might examine how it's doing business. But except in a few select instances, that rarely happens. (Someone please fact check that for me.)

That's why I laugh when I hear organizations like OMM (One Misguided Mom), NOM (National Organization of Morons) or the AFA (American Family of Assholes) loudly proclaiming they're going to boycott Starbucks, or General Mills, or whoever. They simply don't have the numbers to affect corporate policy—especially when that company's policy is inclusion, rather than exclusion.

If their members want to stop drinking Starbucks, fine. If they feel better about not eating Oreos, more power to them. From what I've seen of their membership they could stand to lose a few pounds anyway. (Not that I have room to talk.) But are they going to force their medieval views of what is right and wrong onto a company by those actions? Hardly.

(By the way, OMM, NOM, AFA and the rest of the alphabet soup of hate groups: good luck ripping Tickle-Me-Elmo out of your toddlers' hands now that Jim Henson's company has publicly come out in favor of equality. Your children will remember it forever and a part of them is going to hate you for the rest of their lives. But hey, you're saving their immortal souls, so what difference does that  make, right?)

The same goes for the left and the call to boycott Chick-Fil-A.

I boycott Chick-Fil-A (and Walmart) because I personally feel better about myself for not continuing to enable the funding of bad corporate policies. Do I have any real expectation that this will affect how they do business? Hardly.

By all means boycott if you want. But do it because it makes you feel better as an individual, not because you think it's going to change policy overnight. That being said, if enough people simply do what is right, it will eventually affect a company's cash flow and the company will be forced to look at how they do business.

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Thinking of Moving

The lease on our apartment is up the first of September. Even though the place is small, Ben and I had decided some time ago that if the rent increase was minimal we'd stay there for another year. If it went up substantially, we'd move elsewhere. We got our renewal offer the other day and they're raising the rent $77 a month.

Why?

Because they can.

The last thing I want to do is pack everything up again, but we found a very nice place southeast of where we're currently living that makes it worthwhile. For essentially what our increased rent would be, we'd be getting a brand new two bedroom place (we currently have a one bedroom, but want someplace that will accommodate out-of-town guests) that has all our current amenities, is literally a five minute walk from light rail and has hardwood floors.

The complex is about the same distance to Ben's work that our current place is, but it's a bit closer to mine, and will allow me to avoid I-25 entirely on my commute. As I mentioned earlier, it's ridiculously close to a light rail station, and that will make my snow day commutes a breeze.

The only real worry I have is that the unit we want (the one with the hardwood floors) is the last one they currently have available. They have several others with a nearly identical layout—all brand new—but they're on upper floors and are fully carpeted.

Fingers, toes, legs and eyes crossed that it will still be available when we're actually allowed to reserve it…

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You Knew This Was Coming, Right?

Especially after a few of today's earlier posts…

Don't get me wrong, I luvs me my iPod somethin' fierce. It literally holds my entire music collection (12,700 items and counting). But there is something wonderfully organic about the experience of listening to music on vinyl that digital will never be able to reproduce.

I'm so happy to have been able to live through the "big iron" period of audio equipment in the 1970s. It was truly something amazing.

I only wish my hearing was still as good as it was back then. Getting old sucks on so many levels.

I pulled a random record from the shelf tonight, ending up with Dead or Alive's Rip It Up. It was a fun, but not completely satisfying experience, so I moved on to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, an album meant to be heard on vinyl—loud—through headphones.