Joey Gibson’s Blog

Ever since I got my 60 Gb iPod for Christmas, I’ve been using iTunes as my music player when I’m on my computer (XP Pro, sp1). Overall, I’m very pleased with it, but there’s one thing that has really been frustrating me, and that’s the failure of a “smart” playlist when used with Party Shuffle.

I have lots of music. 12,701 songs, to be precise. With a library that large, it’s easy to forget about entire albums, so I have setup a playlist that I call “Never Played” that is supposed to only return songs that I’ve never listened to through iTunes. The definition of this playlist looks like this

Given that definition, one would expect this “smart” playlist to only return songs with a play count of 0, that do not have a genre of classical or musical (as in Sondheim, Webber, etc). I use this playlist via Party Shuffle like so

How, then, do you explain this? Notice the line that I’ve highlighted with a red box. The final column on the right is the play count column. This should always be empty when using this playlist until after the song plays.

This happens at least once a day, and usually more frequently. If I change Party Shuffle to use a different playlist and then switch it back to “Never Played,” the duplicate will be gone and things will work properly for a while. Then another already-played song will show up in the list. I’ve even noticed a few times that as soon as a song has rolled off the top of the list it will roll back on to the bottom, complete with a 1 in its play count field…

I update to the latest iTunes every time there’s a release, but it still happens. I can’t imagine that I’m doing something wrong, but you never know. Ideas, anyone?

I finally got off my duff last week and signed up for BellSouth Fast Access DSL Xtreme and so far I’m pretty happy with it. Well, it was a rocky start, but now it’s good.

I signed up last Thursday and was told my DSL modem would be here by 02/23, which is this Thursday. This morning I discovered that my existing DSL connection with EarthLink was dead. I tried to bring it back up through my SonicWall router but it wouldn’t come up. Let me qualify that: it wouldn’t come up to a point of usability, but it did get an IP address that was different from the one’s EL would give me. Thus I surmised that BellSouth had gone ahead and switched the line, even though I still didn’t have the modem.

The same thing happened to a friend who made the switch to BellSouth a month or so ago. His modem arrived on the same day, but a few hours after the switch. And that’s what happened to me. Mine arrived around noon. Now, how hard would it be to include a slip of paper in the box that says “Hey, when you get this thing plugged in, give us a call and we’ll make the switch?” I guarantee the switch didn’t take longer than a few minutes, and by doing that, they could save their customers some frustration. I’m no longer frustrated, but I was then.

So how fast is it? Well, with EarthLink I was on a 1.5M/128K plan. Now with BellSouth I’m on their “Xtreme” plan that is supposed to be 3.0M/384K. I tested it twice today using DSL Reports Speed Test and got 2,630K/297K, which ain’t bad. Plus it was cheaper than EL, so that’s a bonus.

Last Thursday was my 15^th anniversary, and in commemoration of that date, I decided to get my lovely wife some flowers and have them delivered. I ended up going with proflowers.com and got the Three Dozen Assorted Petite Roses. I payed for shipping plus an extra charge (about $4) for “guaranteed morning delivery.” The price was good, overall.

The day of delivery came and the morning went and still no flowers. They finally showed up via FedEx around 1:30 PM, which is definitely not morning delivery. So I sent an email to ProFlowers customer support telling them what happened and asking for a refund of the $4 that was supposed to guarantee morning delivery. I got a response back later that day. They didn’t just refund the $4, they refunded the entire shipping charge, which was a decent chunk of the total price. I was happy, and I will definitely use them again in the future. It’s customer service like this that keeps customers coming back.

And by the way, the flowers were beautiful and have lasted the 7 days they said they will, and I believe they will last several more.

I’m sure you’re all just dying to know what annoys me… Here’s my latest list of two things:

1. People who back into parking spaces
2. The awful words “gifting” and “efforting”
   (not to be confused with the sacred words, Ni!, Peng and Ni-Wom!)

The first I encountered again this morning. As I pulled into the parking lot for my company’s weekly meeting, I was behind a rather nice sedan. The guy zipped to the left, apparently heading for one of the 9,000 open spaces on that side. I prepared to slide in behind him — but wait! What are those?!? Backup lights, that’s what. I had to stop my car and wait for this yahoo to back into the bloody parking space. That’s very annoying. Had there not been any spaces on the left, then it would have been obvious what he was doing (i.e. being an annoying twit). But since there were the aforementioned 9,000 empty spaces on that side, it wasn’t obvious. And I don’t suffer idiots lightly or patiently…

The second (and, OK, third…) are these new “words” that are creeping into our language. The use of “gifting” has suddenly gotten heavy, though checking Google shows that it has been around for a while. It’s just a stupid word. I mean, is it really that hard to say giving? The other I’ve only heard once, and I’m not the only one annoyed by this ridiculous word used by some talking head on CNN or some other news station during coverage of Katrina. He used it instead of saying “trying.” Now I ask you, what’s so wrong with “trying?” That’s doubleplusungood, indeed.

I went to breakfast with my wife this morning after dropping our boy off at school. We went to Bojangles for some biscuits, and while we were in line I witnessed something so sad it was almost funny. The guy in front of us bought something that only cost $0.53. I don’t know what it was; in fact, I didn’t think there was anything there that cost so little. Anyway, to pay his $0.53, he handed the girl working the register a $1 bill. She laid the bill in the cash drawer and began to think. I know she was thinking because of the look on her face. After several seconds of “thought,” the look on her face changed from concentration to the “deer in the headlights” look. She then looked at the customer and said “How much change do I give you?” I was floored. This girl couldn’t make change from a $1. The customer was good enough to A) not laugh at her, and B) tell her $0.47.

What’s really sad is that this girl clearly graduated from high school, otherwise she would have been in school instead of working at Bojangles at 08:30. Sad, sad, sad. Pathetic, really.

There is a word that I know that I know, but I can’t remember it. I’ve been trying to remember it for the last three weeks, with no success. I’ve had a “background process” in my mind that’s been combing through all my memories, but it keeps coming up with bupkus. If anyone knows this word, please email me and let me know.

The word, if I’m remembering rightly, begins with trans-. Googling for “trans-” mostly just brings up articles about “transgender” crap, which is not what I want.

The word I’m looking for describes a literary condition where you ascribe an action to the wrong person in a sentence or paragraph. This happens a lot in books like The Bible where you see sentences like “He looked at him and he died.” The potential confusion in a sentence like that is which “he” in that sentence died? Is it the first “he” who looked at the other, or is it the second “he” who was looked at by the first? The word I’m looking for describes this confusion of pronouns.

If you think you know the word, please let me know.

Did I arrange the stones and rake the sand properly to attain enlightenment? Given these photos of real Zen gardens, I don’t think so.

I saw a commercial for Quiznos yesterday that, as Jerry Clower would say, “flung a cravin’ on me” for their Steakhouse Beef Dip sandwich. It’s a French Dip, that’s toasted and is really good. You should try one.

Well, it’s been a rough week. My old host kept going up and down, and at its worst, was DOA for a full day. Not good. I’ve moved my hosting to one of my own servers, and now it’s just a matter of waiting for DNS records to propagate. So, if you’re seeing this message, then things are ok where you are. If not, you won’t realize it anyway. I should be back to regular blogging within a day or two.

Well, those wastes of oxygen, otherwise known as comment spammers, have been at it again. I’ve been getting hundreds of attempts to post comment spam lately, and I’m sick of it. Fortunately, thanks to my CAPTCHA modifications (the wiggly text at the bottom of the comments pages), none of them have gotten through, but it’s still quite taxing on my CPU. And when that CPU is shared with others, that’s not good. So, since I can’t actually kill any of the toads who try so hard to vandalize my site, I figured I try to outsource the comment system. Someone at church mentioned HaloScan as a comment-system-provider that did blacklisting and such, so I thought I’d give them a try. If nothing else, at least my CPU will get a break… I’m hoping that this will work out. I really like having comments from readers, but it’s getting to be a real PITA dealing with the living sewage who like to post ads for pr0n and drugs on other people’s blogs.

As an example of how bad it’s gotten, last week, when I still had email notification turned on, I received 334 emails alerting me of attempts to post spam in one day. None succeeded, but I still had to wade through all those emails. And just last night I got an email from my friend (on whose box I host my site) that he had to rename the program that runs my blog, because it was hogging the CPU. It’s all because of the worthless dirtbag comment spammers. Have I mentioned that I hate these “people?”

Now that’s a bloody big rock.

I just heard on the radio that Detective Lenny Briscoe won’t be returning home after his last shift. Jerry Orbach, who played Briscoe on my favorite tv show (Law & Order) died yesterday of prostate cancer. I just found out that he has prostate cancer last week, and now he’s gone. He was 69. I really hate that. MSNBC has the story.

Saturday night we went to the New London Theater’s production of “An Evening With Edgar Allen Poe.” It was a very enjoyable evening with several Poe classics (and two I’d never heard of) woven together into a single show. It’s community theater, so there were no Tony-worthy performances, but we did have a great time, and the cast should be proud of their work.

The show weaves together these works

• The Fall of the House of Usher
• The Tell-Tale Heart
• The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether
• The Raven
• The Cask of Amontillado
• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
• The Masque of the Red Death

all within the context of the House of Usher. The narrator, here as “Edgar,” goes to see his despondent friend, Roderick Usher, who has written to him. Over the course of his stay, he regales Usher, and his sister Madeleine, with the other stories listed. He begins a tale, the house lights go down, the stage hands reset the stage, and then we see the story unfold. At the end of each story, the action goes back to Usher and Edgar. It was a clever way to combine several disjointed stories into a single evening, while still maintaining a thread of continuity.

I’d never heard of “Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether,” which is a very funny story about inmates running the asylum. After checking in my Poe Reader, I discovered that I have this story, so I’ll have to read it sometime. I’d also never heard of “M. Valdemar,” which is a story about Mesmerism and its consequences. “Amontillado” and the “Tell-Tale Heart” are among my favorites, so it was nice to see them worked in. I thought “Red Death,” which was the last story told, should have either been given more stage time, or taken out altogether. It was a very short segment and just didn’t work that well. But one not-so-great and six really-goods, is not a bad record.

Altogether an enjoyable evening. We’ll definitely be going to more productions by this group in the future.

I want to personally thank all you worthless pieces of human filth that keep vandalizing my website with your childish “ads” for prescription drugs, pr0n and gambling. Because of this pathetic, sophomoric shits-and-giggles-fest of yours, I’ve had to take down my comment system again! Because you have nothing better to do than deface other people’s property, attempting to raise your Google page rank, I have to change MY website. I hope you worthless little shit-pigs eventually get to spend several years in some sleazy Southern county jail being the bitch for some really pissed-off biker dude named “Doris”… Even that is too good for you. Bastards.

I’ve grown extremely tired of these ass-hat comment spammers who have nothing better to do than deface websites with ads for their ridiculous ‘products’ and pr0n sites. I took the entire comments system down a while back as a stopgap, but I didn’t like not having it. So I re-enabled comments and wrote a couple of Ruby scripts to help me manage them. I have one script that finds all the comment files and sorts them so I can see if any have changed. If any have, I run another script that lets me edit/delete any comment files. This works, but requires me to diligently check for new crap, so it’s sub-optimal.

Tired of fighting, but still wanting my comment system enabled, I put my Perl hat back on and hacked in a moderation system to the comments. Essentially, no comment will actually show up on the site until I bless it, and I’ve changed the ‘thanks’ page when someone adds a comment alerting them to the change. So comments may be delayed, but they probably won’t be. I’m pretty good about checking, but now I don’t have to check constantly to make sure I’m not involuntarily pimping for some pr0n site. I think this will work nicely.

Well, thanks to the handywork of a bunch of miscreants, I’ve had to turn off the comments (writeback) system. The latest fad in spam is to unleash a robot that understands the comment systems of various blog publishing frameworks that will then post ‘comments’ for everything from pr0n to online casinos to prescription drug sellers. I’m tired of it. I just deleted a comment announcing vicodin but linking to some casino. So because of a few punks I’ve had to take the system offline until I can get a filter in place.

And to the little punks out there, thanks guys, thanks a lot….

I finished reading The Island of Dr. Moreau last night. That was one twisted book, especially since it was written in 1896. Twisted is really the only word to describe it. It was a good read but somewhat disturbing.

After finishing the text, I read the pages at the very back of the book and found something very interesting. My copy was printed and published in 1968, and the last two pages were an ad for the publisher listing other titles that they have. Here’s what it looks like

Notice the top paragraph on how to get these titles if your dealer doesn’t carry them: send the price of the book you want plus 10 cents for postage. Then notice the prices of the books. Most of them are 95 cents! (Well, all of them in this image are 95 cents, but there were others on the page for $1.25.) I know that money today and money in 1968 had vastly different values, but it’s just kind of funny to see books this cheap. To get this same book from Amazon.com today would cost $4.95, just for the book. Tack on 3 to 4 dollars for shipping and we’re up to 9 or 10 dollars at that point. Pretty sharp difference in price, eh?

After newly a full week of no DSL I’m back online. Last Friday night we had some pretty severe storms in the area, and apparently my DSL bridge got cooked. The Sync light was flashing green/amber/green/amber/etc which it had never done before, and I had no connection. After 30 minutes with EarthLink tech support, they agreed that it sounded like the bridge had been cooked. The tech said they would send me a new one and it should take three to five days. Today was (business) day 5, and it arrived.

As I took it from the box, I noticed that it was not the BroadMax like I had before, but a DQ-something-or-other. There was no documentation in the box, so I was a bit unsure if things were going to work or not. I hooked it up, turned it on, and within 60 seconds sync had been achieved, my router had done the PPPoE shuffle, and I was live again. Ooh yah! I’m so happy…

I said yesterday how I had been hosed by FeaturePrice.com so I’ve been trying to find a decent hosting solution. I signed up with EarthLink yesterday for hosting, and 10 minutes ago I cancelled that account. Why? My blog is powerd by Blosxom which is a beautifully simple Perl script that needs a relatively modern version of Perl. The latest version of Perl is 5.8. Earthlink’s version is 5.004, which is about six years old! I asked if there was any chance of updating it, but they said “no.” Alas… I’m just going to host the stupid thing at home for a while. Not great since that’s a DSL line and won’t be as snappy.

My office-mate suggested we get two other guys and go in on a box at RackSpace or ServerBeach, which would be a pretty good deal. We’re looking in to it.

In the meantime, can anyone suggest a decent hosting company? With a modern version of Perl?