I got Mrs Cleek an iPod Nano for Christmas - and wow are they cool looking. Today I tried to set it up on her PC. I installed iTunes; iTunes asked if we wanted to reboot to finsih the install process; I said Yes.

Windows never came back up. I unplugged the iPod and tried again. Nothing. I unplugged everything non-essential (leaving keyboard, mouse and monitor), and tried again. Nothing. I tried booting to the "Last Known Good" configuration. Nothing. Tried booting to Safe Mode. Nothing. I searched the web to see if this had happened to anyone else. It has. It's quite common, actually, and has been a problem with iTunes and Win2K since at least 2003.

I called Apple to see if they had a fix. Fifteen minute wait. The first girl had never heard of the problem and gave me to someone else who had heard of the problem and who cheerfully suggested I re-install Windows 2000. I declined.

A little more Googling turned up this, which suggests a conflict in Win2K between Adaptec's Easy CD Creator v4 (which was installed) and iTunes. Solution: unplug the CD-RW drive, reboot, uninstall iTunes and/or Adaptec. That will let me boot again. Now to see if I can boot after reinstalling iTunes and reconnecting the CD-RW drive.

...

I can.

Joy!

I'm not popuar enough to get tagged for these things, but I love to play them anyway:

Four jobs you've had in your life: ice factory worker, stockboy at Barbara Moss, janitor at a Salvation Army, President of a corporation.

Four movies you could watch over and over: Star Wars (IV), My Cousin Vinny, Full Metal Jacket, Monty Python's Holy Grail.

Four places you've lived: Corning, NY; Wellsboro, PA; Newmarket, NH; Wells, ME. All before the age of 4.

Four TV shows you love to watch: The Daily Show, The Family Guy, Antiques Roadshow, Alias.

Four places you've been on vacation: Hawaii; Ambergris Kay, Belize; Maastricht, Netherlands; Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Four websites you visit daily: Atrios, Boing Boing, The Code Project, Straight Dope.

Four of your favorite foods: apple pie, Apple Jacks, apples, pizza.

Four places you'd rather be: Beaufort, NC; Holland; in bed; Lake George, NY.

I tag Gordon & The Fixer.

(via Digby)

I'm just an average guy with an average life
I work from nive to five, hey hell I pay the price
But I want is to be left alone in my average home
But why do I always feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone

CHORUS:
I always feel that somebody's watchin' me
And I have no privacy
I always feel that somebody's watchin' me
Is it just a dream?

In a piece called Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis, an idiot at the Washington Post says:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act makes it difficult to conduct surveillance of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents unless they are suspected of being involved in terrorist or other hostile activities. That is too restrictive. Innocent people, such as unwitting neighbors of terrorists, may, without knowing it, have valuable counterterrorist information.

When I come home at night
I bolt the door real tight
People call me on the phone I'm trying to avoid
Well, can the people on TV see me or am I just paranoid

The goal of national security intelligence is to prevent a terrorist attack, not just punish the attacker after it occurs, and the information that enables the detection of an impending attack may be scattered around the world in tiny bits. A much wider, finer-meshed net must be cast than when investigating a specific crime. Many of the relevant bits may be in the e-mails, phone conversations or banking records of U.S. citizens, some innocent, some not so innocent. The government is entitled to those data, but just for the limited purpose of protecting national security.

That idiot, by the way, is also a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals.

When I'm in the shower, I'm afraid to wash my hair
I might open my eyes and find someone standing there
People say I'm crazy, just a little touched
But maybe showers remind me of Psycho too much
That's why...

I always feel like somebody's watching me
Who's playing tricks on me
I always feel like somebody's watching me
Tell me it can't be

I don't know anymore
Are the neighbors watching me
Well is the mailman watching me
And I don't feel safe anymore, oh what a mess
I wonder who's watching me now?
Who?
The IRS?

The only valid ground for forbidding human inspection of such data is fear that they might be used to blackmail or otherwise intimidate the administration's political enemies. That danger is more remote than at any previous period of U.S. history. Because of increased political partisanship, advances in communications technology and more numerous and competitive media, American government has become a sieve. No secrets concerning matters that would interest the public can be kept for long. And the public would be far more interested to learn that public officials were using private information about American citizens for base political ends than to learn that we have been rough with terrorist suspects -- a matter that was quickly exposed despite efforts at concealment.

You can trust us, we're the government! Well no, you can't trust us to run a national health care system, that's different. But you can trust us to know everything about everything everybody does, any time we want, with no oversight or public disclosure. And trust us, we'll never mix national security and domestic politics, besides, we're entitled to know all that stuff. It's our country - you just live here.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I always feel like somebody's watching me
Who's playing tricks on me
I always feel like somebody's watching me
I can't enjoy my tea!

'We could poke the jar with a stick,' Emily says.

'This is a proposal with many possible outcomes,' Sid points out.

Emily considers. She glares up at the jar

I have discovered something wonderful. It is called Hitherby Dragons. It's like the legendary Fafblog, but deeper... or something; my descriptioning is inadequate. Try this: if you like Fafblog's little philosophical vignettes (which I wish they did more of), you'll probably like Hitherby Dragons.

I know what I'm doing at work tomorrow.

via Ticklish Ideas:

Start your humming:
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful trip.
That started from this tropic port,
aboard this tiny ship.

The mate was a mighty sailin' man,
the skipper brave and sure.
Five passengers set sail that day,
for a three hour tour,
a three hour tour

Now, switch lyrics but keep the same tune:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see
Was blind but now I see

T'was Grace that taught...
my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear...
the hour I first believed.

It works on hymn-influenced verse too, see:

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.
We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—
-Emily Dickenson

Oh how I love me some Gilligan's Island.

Just this morning I was telling myself I knew a lot of apple varieties. I was fooling myself.

I found these cartoons, last night, on the back of an old Esquire pinup (shown here as the "Sentimental" cartoon) which I bought at a used book store years ago. There's no date on the page, but I'm guessing they're from the late 40's early 50's.

And then there's this crazy Camel ad from 1936:

"It's swell the way they make food taste better and set better."

Indeed.

I bought this ad at the same time I bought the pinup, above. And like that one, I hadn't seen the back side until last night. When I took this one out of its little plastic sleeve, I looked on the back and saw that it apparently ran on the inside of the front cover of a magazine called the "Nonsenser". Couldn't find any info about it on the web, though.