RAW R.I.P.

As Richie and I deal with Richie's life-threatening condition, I finally hear (4 days late) that Robert Anton Wilson has taken his final voyage, mere days before his 75th birthday.

Here's the message I left on RAW's blog, tagged onto his last post:

93, 31, 23, 5, hike!

I don't know what kind of clever thing I can say. I hope your passage was like your friend Tim Leary's. Reportedly his last words were these: "Why not? It's beautiful."

I hope you had a beautiful passing. I hope you saw whatever beatific vision Leary did.

You were so optimistic about our future as a species, that we were on the way to evolving, that if you saw the world getting better and better you were getting smarter, and if you saw the world getting worse and worse you were getting more stupid.

Of course, you wrote those words before America elected George W. Bush not once, but twice, and California elected Arnold Schwarzenegger twice as well. I think perhaps DEVO had it more accurately: as a species, we are devolving. Of course, that shouldn't stop those determined to evolve. And that was your determination throughout life.

I wish we would have gotten to that optimistic, brave new world you saw in your mind's eye in your lifetime. I wonder if we ever will in my lifetime, or in the lifetime of those who are the right age to have been children of mine if I had decided to have children.

I suppose we just have to keep hoping.

I suddenly have a craving for pasta tonight.

Arrividerci, mi amici. Pax vobiscum.

93
93 93
Michelle

Peter Jackson gets screwed by New Line: It's on.

What was one of the reasons why the Lord of the Rings movies didn't suck? Peter Jackson. What's the reason why the upcoming Hobbit movie will probably suck? Absence of Peter Jackson.

According to New Line Cinema co-chair Bob Shaye, Jackson is now persona non grata at New Line. What horrible sin is Jackson guilty of that Shaye would disassociate from him? He simply wants to get paid his rightful share of the profits that are due to him for the three movies, that's all. No Hollywood "creative accounting" chicanery. None of that bullshit. He wants his share. And that's only fair.

This is an age-old story. This is why I have nothing but contempt for the MPAA and the Four Families of the Record Industry. I don't see Universal Studios crying over what they made from Jackson's surprisingly good remake of King Kong.

All I can say is that this makes Shaye look like a dick, and Jackson look like a hero.

Oshogatsu greetings...

Just wishing everyone a happy new year, and a very geeky Otakushogatsu.

Here's my card.

Finally I write a post about something other than Richie's health...

Ever since Wednesday night I've basically been living through a nightmare...my husband Richie is in the hospital and nobody exactly knows what's going on. They are testing and testing and so far nothing conclusive.

However, you try to find the good whenever and wherever you can. And this is good.

I finally have the MacBook where I want it. 2GB of RAM. It does make a difference. 1GB is great, but 2GB is better. Way better. Richie was able to get some nap time in as I took the boxed Micron RAM to the Apple Store in Northridge to get it put in. Yeah, I know I could have done this myself...but what if I screwed it up? It's considered a "DIY" fix, but still...Apple gets kind of funky when home-done repairs go wrong.

Anyway, maxing the RAM on a MacBook makes it...MIGHTY. Things tend to move fast, even when Rosetta is involved. w00t.

I want to experiment with Parallels now. However, I have more important priorities to think about, so those experiments will probably be tabled for a while. Richie's health, and the next semester at school, have to take priority, in that order. Geeking around must be third on the list at best.

Main screen turn on...It's YOU!!!

I know not everyone is happy about this, but dammit, I think Time made an excellent choice when they chose John and Jane Q. Internet User as Person of the Year.

Yeah, in a perfect world Dr. Howard Dean should have got it for winning most of the US back into the Blue column with his "50 State Strategy." But in a perfect world Ah-nuld der Gropenfuhrer would be on his way back to Fucking Austria and we'd be preparing for the inaugural of Governor Phil Angelides. Or maybe the inaugural of Governor Warren Beatty because maybe only a movie star could dislodge another movie star from the California State House. OK, at least we have Secretary of State Elect Debra Bowen to celebrate. Time to throw those Diebold DRE machines into the same shredder they used to turn the EV-1 into metallic mincemeat.

Anyway, just when it looked like Big Media and Big Telecom was going to turn the current Internet into a frontage road for their super toll road, in rides the Googleplex to bring the democracy back to the Internet. Maybe they don't do 100% of a good job "doing no evil" but still they do a hell of a lot of good for a company that's gotten so big so quick. And it's not just the Googleplex. AOL is beginning to look like they ain't so bad now that they've almost given up the ghost on their stand alone system and joined the Free Generation. I've parlayed my AIM account into 5GB of encrypted storage for my stuffs that might have gotten lost in a disk crash. That came in handy. And it was free.

Yeah, probably Web 2.0 is going to bust up just like v1.0 did in 2000. This time I don't have a dog in the fight like I did when I was working for Onyx Networks in their quest to become the UUNet of the Pacific Rim. I'm just going to watch and enjoy it while it lasts, then hope that I'm not taken down in the undertow in some indirect way.

One A...in the course I wasn't expecting to get one...

I'm now finding out what my likely grades are for this semester...well at least on one class, anyway.

Would you believe...STATS 1????!?!????

SPSS test went off with no hitches, the "statistics concepts test" was way easier than I thought, and even though I need to do a rewrite on my paper the current paper was graded an A. So I am likely to have an A. Amazing. Freaking amazing.

The question of the day:

It's been asked many times before, I will ask it again. Pirates or Ninjas?

I stand four-square on the side of Ninjas.

Here is a synopsis of the controversy.

I will leave you with a picture, from an Iga-Togakure associated dojo. Does this chick not look like she can kick ass, take names, and chew bubblegum? Does this chick not look like she's out of bubblegum and in the mood to kick even more ass?


(you can click it to get a better look.)

Well?

One of those "WTF?" facts of life...

Why is it that people are opting for USB2 drives over FireWire while most computers have a FireWire/IEEE 1394/iLink port? The USB2 protocol is inferior, requiring an intelligent host, while FireWire runs without any intervention by the computer. This is why you see FireWire ports on DV cameras: you don't have to build smarts into a DV camera to handle a data transfer. You can't use USB2 drives for video geeking, because it robs CPU to do data transfer.

Because of this, good inexpensive FireWire drives are hard to find, and Apple no longer includes FireWire ports on the iPod. That is SO wrong. Is FireWire an endangered species? Do geeks have to start a "Save FireWire" movement? Just a thought.