Not What I Expected...

And the weather *was* nice, thanks

A reminder why we pay those mortgages here--in the 70's sunny, and just a hint of breeze. A good day to get the car washed, crank up Berlin on the stereo, and do some serious driving.

Thought you looked familiar....

The checkout clerk at the Los Altos Trader Joe's asked me how I was liking the local weather. I told him I was especially liking it, since I'd spent the better part of the last week in Seattle, where it was 50 and either grey or drizzling.

All around me, people murmured their sympathies and nodded. How many of these people were doing the same business trip, anyway?

So, say guys, next time we find ourselves on the ASA 325/378 round-trip to the great PNW, let's all go out for a beer or something, okay? I know some great places in the Fremont district!

Stuff I don't see from my office in San Jose

I'm at the Seattle office, and while I was having a meeting with one of my engineers, I saw a bald eagle being mobbed by crows. That's not something I'm going to see in San Jose....

Today's Lunch Topic

"Tinkerbell--Co-Dependent Enabler, or Marginalized Tomboy?"

Annual rite of Spring--MLB Gameradio is broken again

It's the first day of spring training where games are bing played, and as usual, MLB GameRadio is broken. I pay these idiots $14.95/yr to listen to Cubs games, and for the past three seasons, I have not been able to catch the beginning of a Cubs game on the first day of the real season. The site is always overloaded, or spewing some whacked stuff instead of an audio stream.

Well, this year they've outdone themselves. They're requiring people to sign up *now* for broadcasts, rather than allowing people to come in for free during Spring Training.

Now, you might have thought that they would send a renewal notice or something. Uh, nope.

So, after remembering last year's mess, I brought up the site under Mozilla. Ran through the usual "oh, you don't have RealOne"--Oh yes, I do--your code looks for the effing Windows version, you dopes--and signing up and paying for the privilege of having their bits fall into my lap, and....

Nothing--the site loops, and refuses to download the .asx file

Off to Safari. No better, in fact, worse--it causes Safari to crash once, and then just hangs (after I go through the "yes, I effing *have* RealOne" routine) when I attempt to hook in.

Off to MSIE. Same questions about RealOne. But wait--there's more! The idiots who coded this piece of crap decided that the asx file should be opened by WindowsMedia, even though their site *requires* RealOne. Even though I have my MSIE prefs set to use RealOne for anything that isn't overtly QT or iTunes.

What sort of garbage is this?

So, MLB, why are you so interested in pissing off your customers?

Update: I called their customer support number. A tape recording of someone with a NYC accent told me that the office was closed for the day. And then the recording told me the office was open 9AM through 11:30PM M-F, and 9AM to 10PM Sat-Sun. So, is what MLB telling me that their customer support line is somewhere offshore, or just completely clueless?

So, who else bought the Firefly DVD set?

Of course you have to go and take the quiz after an evening of Firefly episodes....

"The Pilot"


Which Firefly character are you?
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