Welcome to the family, russiandell!

There is a new addition to my household. Her name is russiandell, which is pretty self-explanatory when you consider the she's both a gift from my little sis (thanks!!) and a Dell Inspiron 600m.

Poor russiandell, you see, went all gimpy a few months ago. My sister, not being the type of person to fix a computer and definitely being the type of person to want an excuse to buy a new laptop, went out and bought herself a new Apple MacBook Pro.

Me being a helpful brother and all, I diagnosed her problem as a failed hard drive and also discovered, after many hours of thorough research and analysis (or two minutes at http://support.dell.com), that the computer was still under warranty! A couple days later, I had a new hard drive. My awesome sis told me I could keep the computer; after a few weeks of laziness and Broadcom-hating, I installed Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (homepage, Wikipedia page) and haven't looked back.

I could turn this post into a huge gush-fest about Ubuntu and how it pwns windoze, but I'll restrain myself. Instead, I'll just hit 'publish' now and concentrate on enjoying the fact that I'm making this copylefted post on a copylefted browser and operating system, all while sitting on my porch on a beautiful summer evening. :click:

fscking lawyers!

Disclaimer: I understand that there are one or two lawyers out there who are not the spawn of Satan. I really do. That said...

Class-action lawsuits (CALs, from here onward) are among the biggest scams perpetrated on the American public. Recently, I've received letters about two CALs of which I am a member. The first was against Microsoft, regarding the flagrant abuse of their monopoly, and the second was against Sprint, regarding some dodgy billing practices which caused a bunch of people to pay too much in fees.

The payout for both CALs was pretty small, ~$20 or less. Even worse, they were in the form of discounts for products and services offered by the defendant! What kind of bullshit is that?

Let's say I punched 2,000 people in the face, and they turned around and hit me with a CAL. It seems that the 'punishment' I could expect would be an order that I must offer them an UNCLBEN(R)-brand mouthpiece at half-price (which is still enough that I will profit from the sale), but only if they will allow me to punch them again! If they want to go be friends with someone else, who /won't/ punch them in the face, that's too bad; they'll get no compensation for the punch I dealt them.

Of course, CALs continue to thrive because the lawyers get filthy rich. A million people/victims get $10 each in coupons to the offending company, but the five lawyers/piles-of-excrement each get $2,000,000 in cold, hard cash. Fscking lawyers.

T minus...

34 days, 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Gooo Biiig Reeed. GO BIG RED!

CD Baby rocks!

No pun intended, of course...

Payola has ruined radio for me. I don't like paying money for digital downloads, so sites like Magnatune aren't at the top of my list. Pandora and Last.fm both offer great services, but don't allow me to filter for RIAA affiliation. CD Baby has none of those drawbacks, and has become my one-stop shop for finding new music. IMHO, it has two meta-features which make it better than competing stores.

Meta-Feature #1: Ease of finding music you'll like.
Feature 1a) Search. There are four different search algorithms (including the two obvious ones, Artist and Album).
Feature 1b) Simple bins for browsing CD Baby's catalog. This isn't very different than most sites have, but it's still useful. Major categories include broad genres (e.g. Blues, Latin, Rock), top sellers (this week or ever), and sale items ($5 or less!). In addition, each genre is broken down into subcategories; there are about thirty of these for Rock, including 60's Rock, Extended Jams, and Rockabilly. Within each genre and sub-genre, CD Baby even lists some Editor's Picks and the top sellers.
Feature 1c) Flavors. The editors have selected albums which are particularly appropriate for a given occasion (e.g. 'To Drink Alone To', 'Long Drives / Road Trips') or mood (e.g. 'Sick of all normal music', 'Smash! Burn! Destroy! Rage!'). This may be the best part of the whole site.
Feature 1d) Song previews. Every album has a selection of its songs available for preview (the first two minutes of the track).
Feature 1e) 'Similar to' lists for each album. CD Baby provides links to other albums by the artist, similar albums by other artists, appropriate genres, and albums by bands from the same geographic location.

Meta-Feature #2: A business model that everyone can love.
2a) Respect for musicians. CD Baby will sell albums by any artist. You don't sell your soul to CD Baby to get distributed. Each artist sets the album price and determines which songs will be available for customers to preview. There is no lower volume limit to be listed at CD Baby; you can sell three CDs a year, and your page will get just as much love as one for a Jack Johnson CD.
2b) Respect for customers. CD Baby does not accept payment for prominent positioning on the website. Because of this, CD Baby will never be like mainstream radio or brick-and-mortar retailers, in which products are promoted (via airtime or shelf space) in proportion to the size of the payola, not in proportion to the quality of the product. The website is built to accommodate W3C standards, so that anybody with a standards-compliant browser can use the full functionality of the site; you are not locked-in to one, particular, proprietary software package (a la iTMS, Rhapsody, Pandora, and most others).
2c) An all-around awesome founder/owner. Derek started CD Baby in his bedroom. He makes it a point to listen to every CD sold through the store; it's too big to keep that up, but CD Baby employees keep up the practice. Derek still maintains the website. Heck, I wrote them an email the other day with a question about the 'help' section of the website. Within 24 hrs (on a Sunday, no less) I got a response from Derek himself. We shot a few emails back and forth throughout the day. That kind of genuine customer service is invaluable.

This is a huge post, but it's hard to express how happy I am with CD Baby. Now, if only more people read this blog so word could get around. :-P Oh, well...

Benito en Mexico

I went to Cabo over a month ago. It was very, well, Mexican, despite the fact that Cabo is a gringo-ized tourist area. There were people everywhere whose sole apparent purpose was to do random crap for tips. It was like a whole city full of those bums that try to wash your windshield but really just make it dirtier.

Even for someone who hates heat, it was nice to be in a place where you're not always in a mopped/air-conditioned/purified/fluorescent-lit building. Many of the buildings (even the airport) were mostly enclosed, but still open to sunlight and a nice a breeze... very refreshing, indeed. I know that such things are common in many places outside of Mexico, but I've spent so much of my life in the Midwest that it's still novel to me.

Probably the biggest disappointment of the trip was that we couldn't find a Taco Bell anywhere amongst the smorgasbord of American fast food restaurants. I really wanted to see what Taco Bell tastes like when you're /actually/ south of the border. ;)

I would have posted this sooner, but I was waiting for a certain someone (you know who you are!) to send me the pics from her camera. I finally got sick of waiting, so here's a short photo tour of the trip... as always, click the picture for a bigger version.

First, a few pics of the place we stayed. It was a tiny little gated 'compound' with a few buildings, so I felt like a drug lord or something.



I even caught a Cat BHL and MWL roving the neighborhood. :-P


Last but not least, pictures of two of my most favoritest things in the whole wide world: lizards and shuffleboard!