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I’ve got thirteen channels of sh*t  on the TV to choose from.

-‘Nobody Home’ by Pink Floyd

The above quote is so archaic at this point in time that you want to tousle its hair and tell it how adorable it is. Have you looked at how many channels you have access to recently? The descriptor is still fairly accurate, though it’s through the eyes of the beholder.

There are just way too many channels that I will never watch, and I’d love to not have to pay for them. Sports would be the first set of channels that go away. There have been two occasions where sports have been on in my house – once for HD testing, and once because a couple of friends came over to watch a World Series game last year because their cable hadn’t been hooked up yet. I’d be glad to be rid of them, on general principle. Don’t even get me started on Spanish channels. I don’t speak Spanish, so I’m paying for channels that I cannot even understand.

So, it’s not wonder that I’ve long been a fan of the idea of paying a la carte  for cable TV.  I would love to see a smaller bill from Charter.

This morning though, I found something that actually moved my irritation from passive to active. I found a chart from last year showing the costs to a cable provider per channel. Click here to see the memo. Seriously, go look at it. I’ll wait.

I know that everyone derives entertainment from different things, but I’m going to say, for me, the idea of paying about $6.45 for the top two sporting channels is outrageous. I didn’t even bother adding up the Spanish Channels, because I’d probably pop a blood vessel. And this is on top of the “Well, you can get HBO by itself, but it’s actually cheaper to bundle every channel we offer" scam. I bet that if I could go out to Charter’s web site and put a checkbox by the channels watched in my house, it would end up with under 10 selected, plus one or two premiums (assuming you give me reasonable prices for them – $5 a channel seems about right.)

There’s also a larger issue here – we’re subsidizing channels that otherwise would have no chance of ever making it. What’s the revenue plan here? Just leech off the subscriber fees forever? Seriously, there’s a Wedding Channel on my lineup. If you can show me how that channel would make it in  a world where cable subscribers aren’t forced to pay for it, I’ll eat their CEO’s business card.

I’m done with iTunes and iPods and iWhatever.

Last night, courtesy of the fine folks at Amazon.com’s shipping department, I received a 16GB microsd card for my Nexus One phone. I’ve been really looking forward to moving the rest of my mobile experience to the Android platform, which has really become an integral part of my life over the past couple of months. I use it for virtually everything now, and I’ve finally discovered what people must mean when they talk about a smart phone. Google has come a long way with Android since I wrote this article.

In addition to becoming my main email/news/web surfing platform, I’ve started using some of the media functions of the phone (which, incidentally, are among the weakest of the Android offerings), migrating them off of the iPod. The first thing I did was load up Google Listen for managing podcasts. Then I started using booksshouldbefree.com to fill up my audio book addiction until Audible get’s their act together and releases an Android client. The only two things remaining? A Bluetooth interface for my car stereo (where I do the majority of my listening), and moving my music over.

I’m currently using a 32GB iPod touch, and prior to that, I was using an 8GB Nano. That’s where it gets tricky. My music library is about 60GB, so I had to find some way to pare it down to the essentials. I am NOT a random music listener, so I finally settled on picking the songs I know I want on my music player, no matter what. I added a comment of kris_ipod to each track, and then made a smart playlist inside of iTunes that sync’d that to the player. Add in audio books, podcasts, and a second smart playlist to add some random filler and that took care of things. As I moved forward into larger iPods, I made larger random lists, and the core list grew as I added music from Amazon’s MP3 store (clean, unencumbered, play-it-anywhere music in high quality, fully tagged MP3 goodness), but I made a habit of making sure that all of my music that I wanted available to me on a mobile player had a comment tag.

Meanwhile, last time I reinstalled iTunes and imported my library off the server, it started an annoying process of “normalizing” my volume – essentially trying to make every track on an album the same volume. It’s a process that takes forever, and no matter how many times I cancel it, it just starts back up when I launch iTunes. At some point, I finally decided to just let it run. Since the setting for “Don’t Do That” didn’t work, I figured I’d just cave in and let it go, just like I did with the equally annoying “Downloading Album Artwork” feature.

To shorten the back-story, let’s say that everything worked fine up to a certain point. I copied the existing card’s content over to the new card, booted up and tested a few key apps to make sure everything looked good. The speed was great, and all of my data was there.

That’s when everything went south.

I still don’t have a good solution in place for syncing my music over to the Nexus, so I decided I’d just do a Windows search against my library for everything with my tag, and copy it. When I did the search, I came up with a number of songs that was about 1200 less than what was on my iPod. After about an hour of trying to pin down the problem, I checked a couple of individual files on the server and realized that while iTunes shows the metadata as being correct and what I anticipate it to be, the actual metadata in the files was overwritten with a volume level code in the comments field, completely overwriting my own comments.

Thanks iTunes. Thanks Apple. Now I have to go back and redo that entire effort so that I can move my music. I am literally talking about hours of work, unless I can pinpoint where you decided to screw up my files and restore them from the backups.

I’d like to point out that my music library is METICULOUSLY maintained. Every single track has album artwork and correct tags. I did that external to iTunes, and I don’t want it dicked with. If you’re going to do that, do it in your own damn data structure, not in the data structure of the physical files. Also worth noting is that fact that all of the music I bought from Amazon has now had the fingerprint comment overwritten.

Why did Apple feel the need to do that? I’m glad you asked.

It’s because Apple firmly believes they know what’s best for you. They want to tell you how you should listen to your music, how you should organize your music, and how you should access your music. They know best, and that’s how you’re going to do it. You won’t move to another platform ever, so why should you care if your files are damaged? Don’t worry your pretty little head about it – we’ve got it handled and we’ll show you what you need to know.

I won’t lie to you, Marge. I love me some Apple hardware. iTunes, on the other hand, is one of the worst-designed pieces of crap on the market. It constantly adds crap that it decides you need (like, you know, a whole new web browser and an auto update mechanism and a new network protocol), whether you want it or not. Don’t worry, we’ll tell you what you need and you’ll be happy.

Apple builds a really beautiful walled garden. Once you’re there though, good luck getting out with your data intact. They cleverly conceal a number of locks on the gate.

Consider this my “Dear Jobs” letter. In a time where we are overwhelmed with choices in mobile media players and the software to manage them, I don’t have to settle for a significant other that never listens to me, tells me “Pipe down sweetie pie, the men are talking. We’ll tell you what to giggle at”, smacks me on the ass and sends me to the kitchen for pie.

Sorry Apple, it’s not you, it’s me.

I was logging into Audible this morning to download a book that someone recommended to me and discovered, in a note on the front page, that David Eddings had passed away on Tuesday.

I was introduced to Mr. Eddings almost 20 years ago by a member of the staff at Oxford Books here in Atlanta, who almost negligently pulled the first few books of the Belgariad off the shelf and handed them to my ex-wife. We devoured those books, and went on the read the Mallorean as well. Later on I read the Elenium and the Tamuli, as well as his standalone novels set in the world of the Belgariad.

His most popular writings always touched on the time-worn themes of a “man of destiny”, engaged in a quest, struggling against the forces of evil to determine the fate of the world. The theme may have been common, but his rich characters and his ability to convey humor, tragedy, triumph and detail brought the books to life for me. I frequently re-read the Garion books, as well as the Sparhawk adventures, and I always feel like I’m revisiting stories told around the fire with old friends, and I’m often surprised when I read a passage and discover something that I had missed before. The books were amazing, and I’ve always found them much more accessible than Tolkien and other “masters” of the genre.

Eddings, always self-effacing, is reputed to have said in an interview once a reader was no longer challenged by his writings, they were free to then move onto "somebody important like Homer or Milton." I think he underestimated himself. I may visit other worlds, but I always come back to that busy kitchen on Faldor’s farm in central Sendaria.

I’ve never talked to anyone who has read any of his stories that didn’t feel the same. Such is the power and legacy of Mr. Edding’s work.

I find it particularly poignant that the book I’ve been listening to this week is “Domes of Fire” (Book 1 of the Tamuli). I’ve been waiting for it to come to audio book, and I was almost giddy when I found it finally. I’ll finish the series for the hundredth or so time soon, only this time, it will be with a tear in my eye and a profound gratitude to the man who shared this wonderful world with me.

Rest in peace, sir. You will be missed, and we are richer by far for your wonderful works.

I have a very long commute. It’s around 38 miles one-way, and depending on the day, the weather, and the time of departure, I’m looking at around an hour in the car. I cope by listening to a lot of audio books and podcasts, and it’s generally a happy time, unless it’s raining or there’s a car fire.

Seriously, that was yesterday morning. It took me two hours to get to work, and ran my collection of podcasts to dangerously low levels for the week. It happens…no big deal. Some days you’re the bug, and all that. Today was a bit of an odd one though, and it’s got me wondering just what in the hell happens in my brain sometimes. Traffic was fine, and I’m listening to the first book in the Sookie Stackhouse series (the series of books that "True Blood" is based off of.)

There are two exits I can get off at, and which one I choose is completely time dependent. If I’m doing good on time, I exit early and go by Starbuck’s. If not, I go a mile further and take the direct route to my office. This morning I was doing great on time, so I decided to get  some coffee.

OK, bear with me, the set-up is necessary…

So, the exit becomes a three-lane exit. The two left lanes are for turning left, and there’s a separate lane for turning right. The lane for turning right leads into a short right turn lane off the exit with about twenty yards of solid white line. There is a yield sign, which seems redundant with the solid white line, for those exiting the interstate. I usually check the oncoming traffic and then turn right (well, whip through is a better way to put it) onto the main road. There’s rarely anyone coming, so my biggest concern is getting across three lanes into the turn lane to the development where Starbuck’s is.

This morning, there happened to be a guy in a minivan coming through, and he was trying to cut across the white line, while I was trying to ignore the yield sign. So, we were BOTH in the wrong, as far as technicalities go. No biggie, right? Horns blow, fingers hit the air, and we go on about our business. That’s how that usually plays out. Not this morning.

This morning, we had ESCALATION!!!!

The guy got in behind me and flipped me off, I raised my arms in the universal "What the fuck?" gesture, and we started yelling at each other. Yeah – two grown men, in our cars, where neither one can hear the other. That’s intelligent AND effective, right? And then it got really interesting. He motioned to the side of the road while still flipping me off and yelling, and then screeched into a parking lot. I slammed on my breaks and tore back through the parking lot only to realize that I couldn’t get to where he was.

Yeah, I seriously went back with the intention of getting to the guy and…what? What was I thinking was going to happen?

Let me say, for the record, that I hate confrontation. I cannot stand it, because generally it solves nothing and more often than not makes matters worse. Let me also say that despite the fact that I’m 6′1 and 245 pounds…I’m also a guy that sits at a desk all day long banging on the keyboard and making funny over coffee and doughnuts. I’m not exactly training for the UFC here, ya know? I take (/have taken/will take again) karate, and I am fairly fast and have good reflexes…but this dude might be someone who gets into bar fights on weekends for fun. So, again, what the hell was going through my tiny little mind right then?

Anyway, it ended up ok. I got into an adjacent parking lot, we yelled at each other (he called me a jerk off, I called him a fucking moron, we quoted road rules to each other), and I drove off to get my coffee.

I’ve got to start keeping a lid on my temper though – that kind of Mickey Mouse shit is going to get me in trouble one day.

NEW YORK (AP) — James T. Newman, a Vietnam War helicopter pilot whose rescues of downed airmen earned him the Distinguished Service Cross and other honors, has died. He was 73.

Newman’s son, Jay, said he died Sunday at the University of North Carolina medical center in Chapel Hill of complications associated with lung cancer.

Newman was twice nominated for the Medal of Honor, the highest military award for valor. While he did not receive that medal, he did get a Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for combat valor, the Silver Star, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and 23 Air Medals, among others.

In an interview years later, the Georgia native said he could "get the shakes" in recalling such incidents although at the time he had felt "no fear."

He first served in Vietnam in 1966, suffering a leg wound that nearly led to an amputation. Regaining flight status, he returned in 1970 as commander of C Troop, 2/17 Air Cavalry, 101st Airborne Division.

His first nomination for the Medal of Honor came in February 1971, when he rescued four U.S. crewmen from a crashed medevac helicopter on a mountaintop base in Laos where South Vietnamese Rangers were under heavy attack by North Vietnamese troops.

The same week, he rescued two other downed pilots by chopping down small trees with his main rotor blade, an act that astonished helicopter experts but earned Newman a Silver Star.

Five months later, Newman rescued two more pilots injured in a crash near the Laotian border, spotting a flash from their signal mirror and extracting the men with seconds to spare.

Richard Frazee, another former C Troop member, called Newman "a man of immeasurable courage who made us all feel invincible."

In 2000, Newman was inducted into the 101st Airborne Division’s Hall of Fame at Fort Campbell, Ky.
Burial will be in Arlington National Cemetery, the family said.

…like the moon and the stars and the sun."

28 years ago today, John Lennon was killed. I was nine years old.

My father is a HUGE Beatles fan, and consequently, I was raised listening to them. I remember being devastated and confused when I heard it on the radio. I couldn’t understand why someone would want to kill someone else. I cried a lot the next day, and I remember my teacher asking me why I was crying and being somewhat stunned that a child of nine would be that upset over a musician being killed.

Take a moment and remember the man behind the music.

Let me start this by saying up front that I have used an iPhone for about 10 minutes, and that was to send someone’s pictures to a website for them. So, I’m not going to get into how great it is. I do own an iPod Touch, and I will state for the record that I think its interface is top notch. I’ve heard from a number of sources, however, that email is problematic on the iPhone, though supposedly the iPhone 3g corrects a lot of the perceived problems. Since I’ve never owned one, I don’t really feel like I should get into the relative merits of the iPhone, other than to say I’ll gnaw off an arm before I’ll go on the AT&T network – which, taken with the fact that it doesn’t work for Exchange in my environment, pretty much nixes my option of ever having an iPhone

I owned a T-Mobile G1 (the Google Android phone) for three days before returning it. I could go on and on about all the positive features that Android brings to the table. It’s a slick phone OS, considering it’s a version 1.0 release. I’m impressed, and you can bet I’ll be following its development.

I currently use a Blackberry Curve 8320 from T-Mobile. It’s my primary phone. I got it as part of a pilot program from work, and decided that since I hate carrying multiple phones, I’d just go ahead and make it my primary. It’s a stubby, not-at-all-elegant piece of hardware. It’s too wide to use comfortably as a phone without a headset (for which I use the incredibly elegant Jawbone gen 2), the screen is too small for video use, the camera is sub-standard, and it’s generally a temperamental piece of crap.

Having said that, why do I continue to use and love my ugly little baby?

Simply put, it just works.

I have some rather specialized needs from a phone if it’s going to give me my email and a pseudo-online experience. I have one Exchange email account, and 4 Gmail accounts. I need to receive email on all of them as near to real-time as possible. I do not want to get an alert 5 minutes after it’s been generated. I need it as soon as possible.

You can imagine that I was really anticipating the Android phone, even more so when I learned that it would be available on T-Mobile’s network first. Lots of people have complained about T-Mobile’s 3G network, but I didn’t encounter a single hitch with it. It was snappy and things loaded quickly for me. It helps that Atlanta is saturated with TMo’s 3G.

My enthusiasm quickly diminished from the point where I actually purchased the phone. First problem is that it’s locked to one Gmail account. From a technical point of view, that’s not entirely true, since you can add up to 5 other email accounts via POP or IMAP. Those four accounts, however, are fetch email, as opposed to push, and the fetch cannot be set lower than 5 minutes. Strike one. I need all of my Gmail to be pushed to my phone.

I thought about trying to work around it by setting all of my ancillary Gmail accounts to forward into my primary, but that’s where the Android hit strike two. Despite being an OS from Google, there is no provision for doing a send-as in the main Google account. So, I can’t even do a half-assed workaround to get past the problem. That’s just plain inexcusable. Google controls the OS, Google controls GMail – Google should be mimicking every function on the web interface. If they can code in the keyboard shortcuts, they can code in the send-as. I can only assume that this is a feature that will be forthcoming in a service release.

The next strike was when I realized that, since the phone is tied to one GMail account, I wasn’t going to be able to use the Google Apps (spreadsheet and writer) from multiple accounts. That’s a big problem, as was the realization that I’d only be able to use one of my Google Talk accounts (A problem for me since I chat on one, and do ping.fm updates from the other). Strike three, and the G1 is OUT!

My Blackberry is ugly, but it works. It has neither an interface as pretty as a G1 or an iPhone, nor any kind of rich ecosystem of apps like those phones. Really though, how many tip calculators or flashlights do I need? I can calculate a tip in my head, and the bright white screen on my Blackberry lights up enough of the room so that I don’t stub my toe in the dark.

In exchange for those minor issues, I get my Exchange email, and all of my additional GMail/Pop inboxes pushing email to me as soon as it hits my mailbox. I have apps for Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. I have a couple of neat games, and some decent themes. I can’t really say I need anything more than that from a handheld device.

I went into the purchase of the G1 knowing that it would not do Exchange in my environment without going through OWA. My criteria for keeping the phone was simple – if I’m going to have to work around not getting my corporate email (which is important, since I use it for monitoring servers and environmental at work, for which they pay me), then everything else was going to have to work perfectly out of the box.

I’m not the only one grousing about this, either. Google’s lack of understanding about how a lot of people manage their email will harm them in the near-term, I think. Until they get with it and add support for multiple accounts which can interface with multiple services, and figure out a way to get Exchange email, the Android will remain an enthusiast platform, with no real chance of invading RIM’s turf in the Enterprise.

(This is a reposting of an article I wrote for a podcast I co-hosted, once upon a time.)

Let me preface this entry by saying that I like to wear jeans and t-shirts as much as the next guy. Generally speaking, my wardrobe consists of more dark than a black hole. And we all know that if you’re going to be spending the day crawling around the raised floor pulling cables, common sense dictates casual clothes that don’t ruin easily.

My organization’s dress code calls for business casual, except on Fridays (when you can bribe your way into wearing jeans). For me, that generally means khakis (I recommend Bill’s Khakis, by the way – comfortable as jeans, and sharp looking as well) and a button-down long sleeved shirt.

Today is different for me, though. Today, I’m wearing a crisp white dress shirt with a tie, and the comments have already started. We’ve all heard them a million times, and in fact have probably razzed co-workers with the same words. Say them with me:

• “What’s up with that? Got an interview today?”
• “Trying to impress someone?”

or, my new favorite:

“I’d ask if you’ve got an interview, but I want to make sure it’s not a funeral first.”

By the way, the first question always amuses me, since if I had an interview, I’d be wearing a suit. Of course, you wouldn’t have seen me in it, since I’d have it in the car waiting to change in the bathroom of a convenient McDonald’s, a process referred to as “Dancing with the Clown”.

No, I don’t have an interview, and I’m only trying to impress one person. Me.

The way you dress is important for many reasons. The obvious ones, like meeting your organization’s dress code, representing your company well in front of visitors or during an off-site meeting, or just looking your best for an important meeting all come to mind. In my experience, however, there’s a much more important function to be served.

You see, I’ve been feeling a little whiny and off my game for a few days, and I need to get back in my zone. For me, the start of that is wearing a tie. What I’m trying to say is that how you dress can be a touchstone for your professionalism. It doesn’t hold true for everyone, but it is something to consider.

It can be argued that I can be just as effective in shorts and flip-flops, and from the perspective of someone who worked exclusively from home for several years, I can tell you that it’s a valid point. On the other hand, there’s just no substitute for putting on the uniform if you want to be a superhero.

When I wear a tie and a dress shirt, I remind myself that I am NOT some scruffy hippy who holds down a day job in IT. I am a professional systems administrator, with all the responsibility implied by that. I slouch a little less. I speak with more clarity and focus. In short, to paraphrase Clint Eastwood from Heartbreak Ridge:

When you dress like a professional, you’ll feel like a professional, and pretty soon, you might start acting like a professional.

Besides, when you’re up at 05:00, a tie is a great way to annoy yourself into staying awake!

So, it appears that the company I work for, which is otherwise a fairly sane and sensible collection of folks, has decided to "go green". Now, don’t get me wrong. I think we should all have some sense of stewardship for the planet, some sense of ecological responsibility.

I must confess though, this news from my company has me scratching my head.

HR drug a box through the corridors today, and dropped off a present to all the full-time employees.  A water bottle.

The idea here is that we will no longer offer bottled water in our vending machines, and we won’t be putting out plastic cups for people to use at our oft-broken, self-purifying water fountains.

Instead, people will now be saving the planet one water bottle at a time.

The kicker is, we’re still going to sell bottled water by the case to our customers. We’re not doing anything about the hundred or so cars that drive in every day. We’re not going to do anything about requiring business casual attire (which means dry cleaning). We still haven’t put in the bike rack. We still don’t do anything to encourage carpooling.

No, we’re going to spend money on water bottles. It’s a token gesture, barely. It’s almost offensive.

Seriously, check this out…

That’s just a small sampling of the parking at ONE of our HQ facility buildings.

If we allowed even 10% of these people (of the 30-50% of our HQ staff who are able and ready to work from home) to work from home 2 days a week, the positive impact to the environment would be something truly worth crowing about, and the benefits to morale would be priceless.

Instead, as so often happens, we embrace the idea of the winds of change without actually embracing the change. We stick with what has always been the norm, because it’s easier, or gives the impression that somehow it makes us more effective and professional (rather than understanding that true professionalism happens no matter what you’re wearing, or where you’re working from).

What a pity.

Update: We started a carpooling initiative, which is a very good start. We even have a few parking spaces marked for carpool only. Given that my cube neighbor still hangs his bike in his cube, I’m guessing we haven’t gotten around to the bike rack.