Happiness Is A Well Organized iTunes

As some of you may know, I am really hoping for the man in the big red coat to get me an iPhone for the holidays. Well, in preparation for the event whether it happens or not, it motivated me to create a balanced, organized and awesome iTunes library which my iPhone could sync to. This means I want everything to be ready for easy sorting and syncing. Yes everything, album art, and all the fields filled in (minus ratings). So I copied non-iTunes store music over to my laptop from my desktop and started the process of filling in the loose ends.

The reason I am trying to get all the album art working, is because on the iPhone you use the newer cover flow method of viewing your music. In my case I was trying to get all the music under one album to go under one image for the cover art. The problem, is even if I copy all the same information to easy song except for the title of the song, I can not get some of the music to go under one album. For example, I have the Legion of Doom's album "Incorporated" and even though I have ripped the music directly from the CD, the album art splits into two images for the one album.

I would understand this if there were multiple CDs to the album, like Metallica's S&M 1 and 2, but they just split, and like I said, even after all the data in the entry being the same. I could ask my friend at the apple store but I was going to try and figure it out before I asked an "Apple Genius." He knows how much I loath apple computers. Although I have to say they make some fine other products.

CDs, iphone, ipod, itunes, legion of doom, metallica, organized, anal retentive, obsessive compulsive

Always Last Minute

Have you ever wondered what motivates people to not do something till there is barely enough time to finish the task? Procrastination works in marvelous ways. Thanksgiving always cracks me up. Don't get me wrong, it is by far one of the greatest holidays in my opinion, but people just take it a little too seriously.

I went to Safeway the other day to get batteries for the wireless Guitar Hero controller and already the madness of the Thanksgiving shopping had begun. I was not surprised, but was does surprise me, is how long some people wait to get that turkey and can of corn. When I used to work for Safeway there were many things that puzzled me, but one that always stood out was why people never shopped for the things they needed for Thanksgiving in advance? Don't leave me a comment saying that people just forget, or that they have busy lives that keep them from going shopping. If someone has time to put of load laundry in the washing machine, then they have time to shop early.

The week that the Halloween candy disappears from the shelves (which is actually the night of Halloween) they start loading the turkeys into the open freezers. This would be the opportune time to go out and get one, stick it in the freezer and not have to worry about it for a month. Sure, some people don't know how many people are coming for Thanksgiving, but you know... you could call them? Oh wait, we live in a society that is afraid to pick up the phone. (myself included) Also, it is not like you couldn't get a second turkey if you needed it. Everyone these days has one of those stupid "Set it and forget it" things.

What peeves me the most about last minute shoppers is that they always do it two to zero days before Thanksgiving. This causes people to stand in checkout lines that extend all the way down isles to the back of the store sometimes. This only further slows down the process, because people are fighting for positions with their fully-loaded karts while other shoppers are just trying to reach merchandise on the shelves. The isles are barely large enough for two shopping karts let a lone a whole checkout line full of them.

If I could offer some words of advice to you shoppers. Avoid the day time. Just go at three in the morning and get your shopping done if you absolutely need to shop before Thanksgiving. There is no one in the store and the shelves are stocked since the night crew has been hard at work filling the empty spaces that eager shoppers have created in the day. Also if you are going to go, leave your kids at home, there is no point in bringing your rug-rats into the store so they can kick and scream and make you look like a bad parent for not buying them a whole two liter of orange soda. I know, I love it too... I do, I do, I do ooo. Have some respect for the other pissed off shoppers. Chances are they have been sitting in the same crazy-ass line you have also been waiting in. Also treat the employees with respect, if you treat them like crap, I guaren-damn-tee they are not going to want to lift a finger to help you locate the organic stuffing mix. (It is in produce for some reason) Then again, you could avoid all of those things by going at three in the morning.

Even though it sounds like I have disgust for the holiday, Thanksgiving is actually one of my favorites. By the way, the lady at the register forgot to bag my batteries, so I will have to go back, but I will bring my camera and take some pictures. So be safe this holiday break, eat lots of good food, watch some football games and don't yell at your family members. I know I will be holding back the urge to. Happy Thanksgiving.

Procrastination, Safeway, long lines, Thanksgiving, Turkey, Holiday, Shopping, Guitar Hero,

Pinball Wizard

It has been confirmed. I officially have no life. That or no exciting games to play. Over the past day I have had a Space Cadet Pinball game open. Oh yeah, I had re-discovered the game after realizing that I need to always be doing three things at once. Multitasking has become my normal mode. Living and being on the computer were just not enough. So I was playing and just wondering how long I could keep the game going.

I looked at the high scores and sort of laughed at myself, thinking that I could do better. Well... I have. And in doing so I have proven that you CAN spend more time at your computer than you want playing a stupid game. I did that before with WoW, but this is something that comes installed on your computer. This has to be some record. I have never seen a high score like it. I played this single round, on and off for the entire day. F3 pauses the game and came in handy.

I literally got every medal that I think you can get. I activated the gravity field and multi ball mode numerous times. The missions keep getting harder but the points are insane. On the second to last mission that I completed, I was awarded ten million points for completing it. I am just going to sit back and enjoy the site of this high score. 414,120,250 points. Here is my screen capture.

That took so long to do, I might never open that program again. I really need something else, other than blogging and computer pinball to waste my time on. Got any suggestions?

Are You F@#$ing Kidding Me?

I try to keep from swearing in public and also not using vulgar language when I write, but I have just got to vocalize how much I hate censored music or "clean" editions. When you buy something in iTunes that is edited for adult content it puts a little [clean] icon next to your music. For music that has adult lyrics the also put in a [explicit] next to the song. But no offense to Apple, but that is the type of thing that makes a teenager listen to it.

I just recently got Sugarcult's album "Lights Out" and I was disappointed to find out that it was the clean version. I am 21 years old. There is no reason for there even to be clean versions of music available for me to search for. I want to listen in the original form that it was created, in all its obscenity goodness.

I do my online music shopping by getting ideas from Pandora.com which is an online music sampling space. They don't let you hear songs again once you have heard them, or let you choose songs for that matter.The Idea behind Pandora is to make the user experience music by breaking it down by genre and style of the music you like. Oh yeah, and they don't censor their music. With the whole Sugarcult thing, I was more disappointed than Chris Rock when he bought a clean Jay-Z album. Then again, being able to watch vulgar stand-up comedy acts, make people laugh like this one, (Only Click If You are 18+ years old. Adult Content)



How hypocritical of me to even give you a warning.
So again, the whole concept of cleaning up music confuses me. Kids are not listening to music and then going out and yelling obscenities because they hear them in songs. This is my same argument for video games. Kids are not going out and killing people with guns because they learned how to shoot in a video game. The thing is, everything a kid is going to learn is from the family and school environment they grow up in. So why the hell are we still putting warning labels and making clean versions of music? And don't even think of leaving me a comment about the warning labels on cigarettes. People who smoke choose to smoke also choose to cash their lease on life in early.

Inspiration On Demand

It is amazing what can happen in one day. Yesterday a comment was left by a moderator of jackbook.com, the website who was hosting the iPhone template I commented about not working. In the comment I got a copy-pasted how-to guide of how to fix the template. Even though I didn't mention it in my last post, I had taken the necessary steps to host the images for the template on my own and properly inserted them into the HTML editor. The comment felt like a weak attempt of saying "It's not our fault you're stupid."

I deleted the comment because I have moved on from the whole iPhone template and decided that it is easier to make small changes to the blogger templates in order to make it different but personalized. I am not HTML retarded for the record. I know how to make all the changes to the template to get it to work, but the comment left by the jackbook rep made me realize that they think I am.

Which lead to my early morning (for me) post about the politeness of comments on the internet. Sure I did call the result of my attempt to make the Iphone template work on my blog, " Transformed into a ridiculous piece of garbage," but it is not like I was directly insulting the creators. It was merely a creative attempt at me voicing my opinion about the increased difficulty of installing that particular template. You know... the main reason people make blogs. To publicly share their opinion.

I was shocked in the first place that they found me (even though I linked to them) and that they were peeved enough with my comment to try and tell me how to fix my template even though I have already decided to not go with it. The whole thing just put me in a sort of funk. Now that I think about it I might put the comment back up just so you all can see how funny the whole thing is. Sure people don't read instructions when they buy things, hell I don't read instruction manuals in video games I buy. But to assume that people don't read install instructions for blog templates (especially when they are not created specifically for you blog host) is like saying people don't read the details of their "cool-down period" before buying a gun. Am I going to get it immediately... NO!

But I have better things to do, like look for presents for the holidays and research the iPhone. I am going to end this post here, I am starting to sound like the ranter of old. Comments and critiques of the new blog look are still welcome. Let me know what you think.