khaosx.com

Really funny article about people why people actually like the Twilight series. I personally enjoy a bit of fluff every now and again, and the series, while VERY slow to get going, actually ended up being an enjoyable waste of time.

The author of this article summarizes much better than I can, saying:

A lot of people are really passionate about these books. Some of them love and defend them passionately; others… well. I’m not going to defend them any more than I’m going to defend Twinkies–you go and get yourself a Twinkie when you have a very specific kind of craving SUGARRRRR!. If you want gourmet pastry, or even a homemade cake, you know where to get that. If you’re eating a Twinkie, you clearly know what you want and why you’re eating it, and you know that it’s not good to eat very many of them, but… you know… sometimes you just want one. And then when you’re done you read it all over again. Apparently there are people who think that Twinkies count as fine dining, but… well, live and let live, I guess.

Go read it.

Occupation: Girl – My thoughts on Twilight, let me show you them

I was logging into Audible this morning to download a book that someone recommended to me yesterday 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 know, I know…anyone who has heard me go on at great length about music, the music industry, the RIAA, and music piracy has already tuned out on this one. That’s cool. This is for the RIAA. I’m asking for the RIAA to just cut me some slack and let’s go on about our lives, and maybe I’ll continue to be a customer.

Here’s the back story:

So, about a year ago, I took a long look around the landscape of the DRM war and realized that, while we haven’t won, we’ve certainly come out ahead. Everything I asked for years ago is now a reality. I can go to Amazon.com, eMusic, and even Apple and come away with almost anything I want to listen to, without DRM, in a portable format that I can take anywhere and play on anything.

Aside: Holy crap – that’s awesome when you really think about it. I remember, when I was a teenager, carrying around a HUGE tape case in my car (72 tapes, to be precise in a double sided, faux-leather suitcase) just so I could listen to a good selection of my music whenever I was in the car. Now, I can fit a thousand times that number on a device the size of a deck of cards. Damn.

Anyway, I decided that since I had always preached that “the day I have easy access to most music, at a decent price, in a non-drm’d format – that’ll be the day that I’ll back up the money truck to the record labels and start worrying about their piracy concerns”, it was now time to put my money where my mouth is.

So…yeah…um…about that…

I had a LOT of pirate music. I lived on Napster, and I freely ripped other people’s CD’s. Hell, I even once traded hard drives with someone and just added most of their collection to mine. So, how to reconcile that with my pseudo-activist ideals and actually practice what I’ve been preaching?

Simple. I re-ripped every CD I owned in 256bit mp3, pulled some of the stuff that’s not available anywhere else (live stuff and such), and then deleted every song I couldn’t personally vouch for having ripped off my own CDs, or purchased off of Amazon or iTunes.

I did NOT, however, ask my wife to participate in this. So, she has a completely separate library from mine which doesn’t have album art or anything good like that. It’s not organized like I want it (ask anyone who has seen my library. It’s beautiful, and yet terrifying in its organization rigidity), nor is it updated, which has led to some nasty looks when I buy something and don’t make it available to her.

This week, I bought an HP Mediasmart Server and started going through the process of moving all of my stuff (music, videos, backups, etc) over to it. It’s a really neat system, and I’ll be writing some about it in the coming week, but suffice to say that I love it entirely.

The only problem is that nagging second library.

So, I started going through it. Just finding the dupes was hard enough. Then there was the “ok, I bought this on iTunes, and now I’ve paid AGAIN for it on the iTunes plus service, and OH YEAH, I BOUGHT IT ON AMAZON TOO, so keep this one, throw that one away” rigmarole. What a pain in the ass.

Did I mention that I’ve spend several hundred dollars over the past few months buying stuff I’ve owned before, just to be legit?

I’m just going to go ahead and say “I’m done”. Period, end of story. I’ve winnowed down to about 12000 songs. Out of that, I have about 1100 left that I can’t make a call on. I’ve thrown away about an additional seven thousand songs. I’m just out of patience and out of time on this project.

I can look at about 90% of those songs and KNOW that one or both of us have at some point owned a legitimate copy of that music, even if we don’t have it now. I’m not going to spend one more second working on this.

So, RIAA and Lars Ulrich – here’s my promise:

I won’t pirate any more music. Ever. (Unless you guys do something stupid again and make it so that I can’t enjoy music that I have paid for in the manner that I want to enjoy it.) You guys stay cool, and so will I. I will continue to tell people that piracy of music is wrong, and try to discourage people from doing it.

In exchange for that, and my continuing patronage (don’t forget, I am your customer), you guys cut me some slack, and let it go at “I gave it a good faith effort”.

Deal?

(Author’s Note: This was originally published on Sunday, July 10th 2005. I thought it particularly fitting that I reprint this, in light of my encounter yesterday. I think it actually would have been a lot LESS likely that I would have been such a d-bag had this been the case!)

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It is entirely possible that the decline of manners in this country can be directly traced back to the fact that we no longer allow dueling.

Think about the last time you flipped someone off while you were driving.

Would you have flipped them off so cavalierly if you’d known that, an hour after you got to work, they might show up with their second to deliver a challenge? Or that you might have to spend your lunch hour out in front of your office with swords or pistols?

Speaking as someone who a.) actually knows how to use a sword, and b.) can hit the center ring from 15 yards on a from-the-holster double-tap, I say we might want to start thinking about taking some of the burden off the courts.

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.

And I need us to talk quietly, gentle reader. Here at khaosx, things have gotten a little too chaotic (if you’ll pardon the pun), and we’ve got to settle down and get back in the business of actually writing stuff.

My old site, (It’s here, just in case you want to see what the design looked like) which I spent a lot of time building late last year, has been completely silent. My goal of writing a post a week has dropped like everything else this year. I still haven’t done a single bit of the legwork to take a Spanish class. I haven’t done anything on learning to touch type. And the vegetarian thing lasted all of 23 days before I totally said “Screw this!” and had a cheeseburger.

I really wanted to start writing. By nature, I am a creative soul, but I’m not doing anythign to feed that hunger to actually create content. Truthfully, I haven’t done one damn thing in at least three years that I’ve been proud of, from a creative point of view.

My blog (and by the way – I’d like to point out that I have been “blogging” in some form or fashion since long before “blogging” was a word), which should be the centerpiece of my creativity, has become what military folks call the “I Love Me” wall. Lots of flashy Web 2.0 stuff, articles on what DVD’s I’ve watched, and other assorted crap, with very little substance behind it.

WTF? I LOVE to write. I think I’m quite good at it when I can stifle the ADD tendencies long enough to see a post all the way through. I have emotions that I think I want to show, but here on the stage, I completely lose my shit and start babbling about nothing, when I could be using this as a tool to help me understand myself better.

I have fears and doubts and uncertainties, and gripes and bitches…and kind words for people that I love and respect. I’ve been seriously considering what the second (ok, truth be told, LAST) half of my life will look like. I’m approaching 40, and I’m starting to keenly feel my own mortality. More on that in a later post.

So, I have to get this thing back on track. I’ve been inspired by things. I’ve been reading Wil Wheaton’s excellent book “Just a Geek”, as well as his blog. While I have been accused of having a man-crush on him, I have really enjoyed hearing his experiences as he struggled towards some sense of self-awareness. A lot of his experiences are mine too…well, minus the whole “I was a movie and TV star” thing.

Speaking of inspiring – Kevin Smith’s podcast has been rocking my boat recently. I cannot get enough of that guy. Yeah, he’s stoned out of his fucking mind a lot of the time…but he’s just so dammed good at dialog, even when it’s his own. I wish I could be that open and honest.

So here we go. I’m gonna take a swipe at this again. I need a place where I can talk about my life, or technology (which I’m passionate about), or projects I’m working on, or shit that just flat-out wows me.

I’m going to do some work on the site over the next couple of months. I really liked the lifestream thing, because it makes it easy to see what I’m up to. I need a different theme. There will be a few plugins added, and some minor tweaking here and there. But this time, I’m going to just let that happen as it happens. I’m going to write. I’m also going to be bringing back some of the posts from the other site (some of the ones I enjoy reading), and putting some sense to a few others.

But we’re gonna talk, you and I.

We’ll talk about the geeky stuff that I love to talk about. We’ll talk about life in 2009 and beyond. We’ll talk about the things that move me and that scare the pants off me. Mostly, I’ll just run off at the mouth to an audience of none and see what happens…but I have to feed the beast and get some of this out, or I’m going to go batshit crazy.

See you tomorrow. I’ll bring the coffee.