Not my practice blog, by Scott Knaster

Nasty pumpkin

A girl in Warren, Michigan, carved a pumpkin to say "FUCK OFF" and put it on her porch. A neighbor called the cops, who initially refused to do anything. Later, after the neighbor contacted the mayor, the police changed their mind because the pumpkin was causing a public disturbance. The people in the house then apparently decided to remove the pumpkin themselves.

New uniforms gone in one

The Dallas Mavericks got shimmery new road uniforms this year. Apparently, they looked so awful that the team is abandoning them after wearing them once.

Happy Halloween

My favorite Halloween memory is going to work at Apple during the '80s. Lots of Apple people dressed in costume, and there was an enormous "parade" as all the costumed folks marched up and down Bandley Drive and into every building. Hours of fun.

Beware Panther

Yikes! If you have an external FireWire drive, don't install Panther just yet. From the story: [Ben] Wilson [from Macfixit] said in the majority of [problem] cases, the external drive is toast: It will no longer function on any computer running any version of the Mac operating system (OS 9, Jaguar or Panther), and data-recovery programs like Alsoft's DiskWarrior are unable to salvage the disk."

Apple says (free Apple ID required) the problem is only with FireWire 800 drives, but Macfixit says people are having trouble with FireWire 400 drives too.

Weather madness

Two days ago, the SF Bay Area was at the end of a two-week heat wave that featured record temperatures in the 90s. Yesterday, max temps dropped by as much as 20 degrees. And this morning it's raining -- RAINING, I tell you! We've gone from summer to winter in 48 hours.

O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference 2003

I dropped by the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference in Santa Clara on Wednesday. I thought the conference was at the Santa Clara Convention Center, but it was really at the adjoining Westin Hotel. This led to an amusing and futile search through the convention center, where I found the massive Microsoft Office launch event, but no Mac folks. Seeing all those eager MSFT folks really took me back to my Softee days.

After about 20 minutes of fruitless searching, I was convinced the O'Reilly Conference was an elaborate hoax. Finally I made it into the Westin, where the geeks were geekier and all the laptops were made of gleaming aluminum and tarnished titanium. The conference looked like a lot of fun. I came mainly to see the exhibit hall (it was sparse) and friends (there were many, and I had fun hanging out with them).

Based on the attendees and the agenda, the conference looked good. Next time I would like to find time and money to attend.

San Jose: America's third most fun city

According to rankings produced by a game company, San Jose is the third most fun city in "America". The rankings are based on everything from "the number of sports teams, restaurants, and dance performances to toy stores and city budget spent on recreation". Offhand I'm not thinking San Jose particularly excels in any of those areas.

Minneapolis-St. Paul came in first, and Orange County was second. Um, dudes? Orange County is not a city.

Maybe this is actually an Onion article.

Trackback

Now that I'm playing in TypePad, I get trackback. What is trackback? I've read the explanations, and I think it's simply a way to link to a post on another blog while letting that other blog and it's readers know you've linked to it. Is that right?

Napster sucking less today

I tried Napster on Tuesday after getting an e-mail saying it was up and I could get 5 free tracks. Nothing worked -- not a terrific first experience. I'm back there this morning, and my free tracks are downloading nicely. The interface is still kinda quirky, but at least it works. And the download progress window is a kick, with a hint of nostalgia because it looks a little like Napster did back in the day when more than 5 downloads were free.

One neat feature is the ability to look at Billboard charts dating back for decades, and then buy music from the charts. Those charts could be dangerous (=expensive) for me. In just a bit of peeking around the edges, I noticed music that's available on Napster but not on iTunes. For example, Napster has five Pretenders albums, iTunes only one.

I don't like that Napster's music is locked up as WMA files that don't work on a Mac or iPod, so I won't be buying too much. I wonder if you can do the burn-and-rip trick to turn them into MP3s.