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Top Five of 2007

By request... my top five records of 2007.

  1. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Every Spoon record takes a little time to grow on me, and this one was no different. But, once I got into it, I was hooked. It's too short, one of the songs annoys the hell out of me, but "Don't You Evah" and "Finer Feelings" are two of the catchiest songs they've evah done. It doesn't beat-out Girls Can Tell for favorite Spoon album evah, but it's a strong second, and it beats every other album released this year.
  2. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha Another great bunch of songs. Musically, he's a genius, in a league all by himself, working in his own genre. Even better: I'm a sucker for clever lyrics and this guy ranks among the best. His imagery is surreal and vibrant, rhymes interlock within and across lines, and his delivery is loose and free in ways that remind me of a rapper like Beck or Q-Tip (Andrew Bird and Beck... that'd probably be a great record):
      turnstiles on mezzanine
      jet ways and Dramamine fiends
      and x-ray machines
      you were hurling through space
      g-forces twisting your face
      breeding superstition
      a fatal premonition
      you know you got to envision
      the fiery crash

      oh close your eyes and you wake up
      face stuck to a vinyl settee
      oh the line was starting to break up
      just as you were starting to say
      something apropos I don't know

      beige tiles and magazines
      Lou Dobbs and the CNN team
      on every monitor screen
      you were caught in the crossfire
      where every human face
      has you reaching for your mace
      so it's kind of an imposition
      fatal premonition

      to save our lives you've got to envision
      and to save all our lives you've got to envision
      the fiery crash
      -- from Fiery Crash

    But he's singing those words, not speaking or shouting them. Brilliant.

  3. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky I liked this one immediately, and wore it out quickly. It's got a laid-back 70's country-rock vibe, but the little streaks of weary nihilism and irritation here and there keep it from turning into a Ryan Adams record. It's my favorite Wilco record so far.
  4. The Shins - Wincing The Night away. It's not as infectious as Chutes Too Narrow, but there are solid songs throughout. And happily, they looked back to The Smiths at the same time I did. They put on a great live show, too.
  5. Neil Young - Live At Massey Hall Neil always sounds better live; his songs just don't need the over-production he typically slathers on them. And this is Neil solo/acoustic, doing stuff from the peak of his career. There are a couple of weak spots (ex. I hate "A Man Needs A Maid", it reminds me of something Dana Carvey's "Choppin Broccoli" guy would sing), but the rest more than makes up for it.

Actually, the request was for ten, but I couldn't come up with a solid ten favorites; and lists that aren't multiples of five bring bad luck.

Lousy Fucking Stupid Piece of Goat Shit iTunes

I keep all my music on a network drive; that way, all the computers in the house can see it. I am smart. I know what I want. All the computers have the network drive mapped as their Y: drive, so, all the iTunes installations have their "Music Folder" location set to Y:iTunes. And, iTunes keeps, in its library file (one on each computer) a full path for each song in the library: ex.

    Y:\iTunes\Sugar\Copper Blue\2 A Good Idea.mp3

Simple enough so far.

But, when I start my laptop, which connects to the network with WiFi, it sometimes takes a little time to make a network connection. And if iTunes starts (or is already running, like when the laptop wakes from Stand-By) and can't find the songs, it automatically changes the music folder location to the local "My Music" folder (a folder Windows creates but which I never use) on the local drive. Of course the song files aren't there, but iTunes goes ahead and changes its library files so that all the paths for all the files to point to the My Music folder - even though the files aren't there! iTunes thinks I'm dumb. It decides for me. So, then all the files paths in the iTunes library file end up looking like:

    C:Users\Cleek\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Sugar\Copper Blue\2 A Good Idea.mp3

Again, it does this without asking me, and it does this even though that file doesn't exist - it doesn't even check to see if the files exist. iTunes is actually dumb. I know what it's doing and I know it's wrong. It just silently (and instantly) changes the paths in the library files; and then when I try to play a song, it complains that it can't find the file.

The fix is to wait for the network to connect, then change the iTunes music folder back to what it should be. But that causes iTunes to scan the entire library (10000+ songs) and match the songs in the library file to the actual song files - a process which locks me out of iTunes for close to an hour (depending how slow the WiFi is feeling that day).

This path change even happens on my desktop machines, which are hard-wired to the network, from time to time, if the network is particularly busy; and it happens every time i do an iTunes upgrade. Apple is fucking with me.

I've written to Apple multiple times, asking them to add a switch to prevent iTunes from making this change, no matter what - just leave the mutherfuckingdouchebagasshairshitshitpurpledicked library files alone!

No luck so far...

I know a better way. Apple prefers to cause me heartache.

Oh, and speaking of crappy software design... why does HP Digital Imaging Monitor need to create thirty seven thousand (literally) temp files in my temp folder ? There's an HP software office on the floor below me, in the building where I work. Maybe I'll stop in and ask them tomorrow. Now if only Microsoft had an office there, I could stop in and ask them why Vista spends 5 minutes thinking about deleting those files, before it actually starts deleting anything.

Update:
OK, the solution to the iTunes catalog file rewrite is to keep all the iTunes library files on the network drive, too. That way if iTunes can't find the network, it can't wreck the library files either.

We Wish You Unagi Christmas

"If we could gather all electric eels from all around the world, we would be able to light up an unimaginably giant Christmas tree"

...or so says a man in Japan who found a way to use an eel to light one Christmas tree. And as the Japanese say: a man who uses an eel to light one Christmas tree, lights an unimaginably giant Christmas tree, in time.

The Nerd Handbook

A lot of this describes me, exactly. While reading it I thought: if I showed this to my wife, she'd laugh and point at me - "That's you!" The rest of it sounded nothing at all like me, and I found myself getting annoyed that the author was wasting so much time describing himself instead of talking about me some more. The Mrs will know which parts are which.