February 24, 2009 at 3:04 pm
· Filed under tech, music
My job has nothing to do with this statement:
The Amazon mp3 store rules
The service works really well, the price is almost always right, and the recommendations are really good (way to go, John!). Here’s what I’ve learned about it:
Scroll down to the section for “Today’s Top MP3 Albums, Most $8.99 and Under”
Check these out
There seem to be many great deals that rotate in the site over time. I don’t know anything about what’s discounted at any given time, but discounts are a great influencer of popularity, so it seems great albums (or at least great deals) wind up making that list. Here’s what I’ve downloaded today:
I probably wouldn’t have bought all those unless it was super easy, the price was right, and I knew I’d be getting good quality tracks - all of which the Amazon mp3 store does. And obviously I demand that it’s DRM-free, which everything in the Amazon store is. Yay, my company!
Has this been coined yet? It should - I’m probably just behind the times. But with the advent of blogging (um, no irony intended there!), twitter, and facebook we’re increasingly self-obsessed. Those platforms don’t have to be used that way, but I think this is what the “25 things about me” meme or innumerable other ways that people are finally getting soapboxes where they can broadcast the most mundane aspects of their daily life are about.
Here’s the article that inspired this, which is basically a couple hooks you can use to push the music you’re listening to on digital sites into twitter and the like. The question it obviously raises is WHO THE HELL COULD POSSIBLY CARE what song you’re playing every time you listen to music? Are our own lives really that empty that we’re desperate to spy on the routine aspects of the lives of complete strangers? Or even our friends?
Life’s too short to waste on completely uninteresting, uncreative vicarious living - be selective with what you talk about and what you spend your time taking in.
OK, I have to go chase the kids off my lawn now and go eat my prunes.
February 24, 2009 at 8:59 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
US Bank, or at least their home mortgage arm, have got to be one of the most incompetent, customer-hostile companies I’ve had the misfortune of having to deal with. I refinanced my mortgage toward the start of 2009 and apparently they’re picking it up. I knew somebody would be getting it so I paid attention to my mail looking for details so I wouldn’t, you know, lose my house or anything. Here’s an approximate timeline of the last week and a half with them.
2/11 - mail is postmarked telling me that I’m past due on a payment that was due 2/1 and informing me of my next due date.
about 2/13 - I get that letter. OK, this doesn’t seem right. I had a clear conversation with my mortgage broker that I would skip my January payment in the refi and I’m pretty sure that I’d never received any mail from US Bank telling me account information or due dates (which I would have verified or contested).
I try to call them but realize they’re only open during some hours CST and it’s 2 hours later in Seattle so there’s nothing to do till after the weekend, but I get a billpay transaction set up with my bank to send them the apparent full balance asap.
2/16 - I try to call US Bank’s number from the letter. I wade through call screens and finaaalllllyyyy…….am told they’re too busy to take my call so I should try back later and am hung up on. What - the - fuck. Is this 1999? Have they heard of a queue? Even if the wait is 45 minutes, give me the option. Or how about them newfangled systems where I can request a call-back?
2/16 - I call at least 3 more times and get hung up on every time.
2/17 - I call again and get hung up on again. Now I’m deciding “well, either the payment’s already late or they’re screwed up and I still don’t owe yet so there’s no real sense sweating it…”
2/17 - later that night I get a call from an 800 number that I don’t take and upon listening to the voicemmail, it turns out it’s from their collection agents! I immediately try returning the call and get routed to another call system telling me they’re closed, try back during regular hours, central time. AAAAAARRRGGGHHHHH!!
2/18 - I call and FINALLY get someone. The gist is: yes, their call system is frustrating (I’m told I’m the trird person that guy talked to that day who had issued that comlaint); no, I’m not past due on anything - he didn’t know why the letter said that I was past due; and yes, they got my payment - since it was basically two months payment and paid ahead of the correct due date, it’ll make me paid through the following month (payments slightly above the balance have the difference go to principle, but when you’re way over, it pays off future months’ payments). Great. I’m not a happy customer but whatever, all I need is a payment schedule and account number for my check.
2/23 - I get a letter from their collection vultures. This leaves me debating: do I need to try to call them again so they don’t errantly screw up my credit (which is and should be fine?) or just leave them to eventually figure it out?
Ugh. The really sad story here is what will happen to people who are legitimately struggling to make payments? I’m not late - I don’t even have payments due and their left hand has told their button-man right hand that they have a bill to collect.
February 20, 2009 at 4:26 pm
· Filed under marathon
So after the disaster that was last year’s SeaFair marathon, the Rock n Roll marathon have picked up the Seattle summer marathon and added it to their franchise. Today, they announced the course which raises a couple questions, including “huh?” and “what were they thinking?”
It doesn’t matter who you are, a marathon’s not easy to run. The first half (which is the course of the half-marathon) looks pretty interesting, though it obviously runs the same risk for calamity with getting runners to the start that left so many frustrated last year. It winds from down near SeaTac airport in, um, scenic? Tukwila, through Renton and then essentially runs part of the Seattle marathon course in reverse, finishing at the stadiums. But those lucky souls who registered early for the full marathon! THEY get to get on the viaduct and run up it four and a half miles, then back, then keep going another two and a half miles before coming back again to the finish! That’s how I spell: “recipe for fun.”
Naturally, I speak only for myself and my comments don’t represent my running club, coach, or anyone who influences the decision about whether I get to run with the group as a pacer.
This week has been pretty full of suck. I have missed cool things left and right since getting back from Peru. First, my cafe had Arrested Development trivia the Friday right after I got back. Found out about that on the Saturday. Then I totally forgot that Broken Social Scene were coming to the Showbox and by the time I remembered those tickets were sold out (and I missed the solid, beautiful two-hour set). THEN this week David Byrne was playing at Benaroya and by the time I remembered that, it was also sold out.
On the bright side, there’s The Pains of Being Pure at Heart:
Who are exactly the type of band I’d be completely in love with right now if Rock n Roll Wing Ding were still on the air.
run the appropriate sql mode entry hook for the database backend you’re talking to. I often connect to mySQL databases, so for me, that’s sql-mysql
Give it the credentials to connect to your database (username, password, host, database)
At this point, if it was unable to find the appropriate underlying tools to talk with the database (the mysql executable for mysql, isql.exe/osql.exe/etc. for SQL Server, etc.), it will die - otherwise you’ll have a buffer named *SQL* with the interactive prompt for talking with the database
This is where things start getting useful. Split your emacs to two windows (C-x 2 or C-x 3) and C-x o to switch to that new window. In there, switch to a buffer named test.sql (or whatever you like - C-x b test.sql[enter])
Switch to SQL mode M-x sql-mode
This does the normal syntax highlighting for the SQL language and so forth like all emacs modes
It also looks for your *SQL* buffer and sets up a hook so that commands issued from test.sql are hooked back to your *SQL* buffer, as you’ll see in a second
Back in test.sql, type some SQL statement, like select * from schema_info; and press C-c C-c (sql-send-paragraph). This will send your SQL statement back over to the associated *SQL* buffer and pump it through the sql interpreter and leave the results in there
Which is all totally rad. Some of the benefits are that
you’re in emacs, so all the niceties of syntax highlighting, copy/paste/search are at your disposal (the MySQL query browser doesn’t let you easily select/search/copy output - neither does SQL Server’s Query Analyzer)
the output from your commands just keep scrolling through in the *SQL* buffer (so you can see a running history of your commands and their output, save it to disk if you want, etc.)
if you save test.sql, you’ve now got a log of your interactions with the SQL backend that are easy to retrieve
if you need to interact with another SQL backend in the future, you don’t need to learn a bunch of new client tools. Of course you’ll have the vendor-specific idiosyncrasies and performance issues of doing effective database work - but some things never change
and you don’t need all the vendor specific client tools - just the minimal command line interface to talk with the database
The drawback is that you don’t have the rich client interface that you’re probably expecting or wanting that lets you browse the database interface, table layouts, etc. You can always fall back on the regular client tools for that. Note that there *is* a construct in sql-mode for what it calls a “data-dictionary”. I’ve looked at the lisp for this and never gotten it to work, but essentially what it does is try to call the SQL functions or inspect the SQL tables which retrieve schema information from the DB and record that in some elisp structures. Then this (in theory) cooperates with the pcomplete mode so that you’d get tab completion and could type (in your test.sql buffer which is talking to the *sql* buffer) “select * from authors.dTAB” and it would cycle through column names in a theoretical authors table for .date_of_birth, .distributor_id, etc.
Final comment: this also works really well with one of my other favorite emacs features: registers. You can have multiple of these sql sessions rolling. Once test.sql is associated with its *SQL* buffer, you can rename the *SQL* buffer (e.g. to *SQL-databasename*) and fire up sql-ms to connect to a Microsoft SQL Server. This will create a new *SQL* buffer and then you can create a separate composition buffer to talk with it named, say, test-ms.sql. But now you have a bunch of associated window configurations and buffers for talking with different databases, so if you use emacs’ window-configuration-to-register and jump-to-register, you can store and restore those layouts to get back to the session you were working with (or jump between SQL modes, development, dired, your shell, gnus/email, and everything else you’re doing).
February 16, 2009 at 3:04 pm
· Filed under miscellaneous
I haven’t written anything here in ages. Some update is overdue, if not completely falling in an empty forest.
My second oldest sibling just turned 40. Only three of us to go…but happy birthday, big brother!
In January I went to Iquitos, Peru, the Amazon rainforest, and to Blue Morpho. That was the weirdest thing I have ever experienced. The probable irony was not lost on me.
I sold my house in January. Yay! Met the new owners this weekend and went through the drip irrigation system, plants, etc. with them. They seem super nice.
This Friday they’re announcing the course for the Rock n Roll Seattle marathon in June. I hope to 1) not run this as a race but 2) still be out as a pacer. ChuckIt will be providing the pacers.
And speaking of ChuckIt, I made a small modification to the marathon training ladders so that if you’re looking, for instance, at an advanced schedule, you can ask for the “aplus” level program and get the no-holds-barred exxxtreme advanced schedule, like I’ll be following for Eugene.
Io turned 3 this weekend - he had a nice party with licks from Jupiter, unwrapping a fresh bully stick, a new toy in the backyard, a trip to Mud Bay Granary out in the sunshing, and some time just lounging around.
