Started organizing a playlist of  my best trance today. I’ve heard people say classical music is the best to put on in the background whence you are studying or doing any task that requires your focus and/or concentration. I say nay. I say trance is better. But not just trance, but good trance. I’m talkin stuff from the masters, like PVD, Tiesto, Oakenfold, AVB, and the likes.  And even most of their stuff isn’t good.  Play one of their albums all the way thru and see what I mean.  You’ll know it’s good when you’re tapping your foot or lightly bouncing your head, and you catch yourself doing it.  It’s a natural reaction.

I love it when I’ve got an album going and it gets to a good song, but I don’t know it’s coming. In the first minute of the song, something in my subconscious tells me I have to get up; I must move. And get this cleared up : I don’t dance.  I don’t know if I’m any better when I’m drunk, because by that point I won’t remember anything anyways. We’ll just say yes for now.

It’s a hard process looking for the good techno; I’ll usually just skip thru the songs and listen for stuff I remember, stuff my mind tells me is good. It’s like I always tell my friends, techno and trance aren’t genres of music you listen to, it’s background music.  You don’t listen to lyrics (I don’t like the songs with vocals), there’s no guitar solos, it’s just electronic noise. I understand your hate, your fear. Most of the techno/trance out there is bad. This I know. But there’s some good stuff, and when you find it, it’s all worth it.

BTW, check out tranceaddict.com. Horrible site design, but the members constantly keep up to date on concerts, track lists, and uploading live sets and (to a lesser extent) singles. I love live sets. Put ‘em on, and forget about it. Let the DJ do the rest. Let him control you. Allow him. And then you’ll be free.

I just got done with a long overdue visit to 2advanced.com today, and just as ever, boy am I impressed. The way that they think of everything that you want to do and deliver it in such a spectacle, it’s simply overwhelming. Think about it. You type in a URL and hit enter. All the sudden the page goes dark, and something flashing in the middle says loading. Ok, what’s going on here? Then WHAM, the page explodes into light and unfolds into this dimension of content, and not only is it just content, but it’s laid out in a way that makes sense. Every element is so tactile, moving your mouse over an element fills your senses, it lights up, a small sound plays, something moves. You click it. The page goes dark. What just happened? Schwoop, a whole new page, familiar layout, completely different color scheme. Amazing. Wouldn’t it be awesome if websites weren’t just text and pictures, but rather an experience? I thought that the way the WordPress control panel worked was cool. I thought that adding a random header image would be cool. But coming back to checking my email in neat little webapps and reading blog posts is just fucking boring. Especially since there’s nothing stopping the internet from being that wonderful. I viewed their website in IE 5.5 back in the day, and I’m using Firefox and Chrome to view it today.

The only qualm I have about the use of flash is the way it changes how you interact with the site. You can’t hit the back button. You can’t right-click and save an image. But that’s the tradeoff for being able to change the way you interact with a site, even with just your mouse.

But it’s not even limited to that. You could make your blog in flash. You could run a store in flash. I love saying it: the possibilities are almost endless in flash, except that our browsers aren’t equipped well enough to handle what people come up with.

This is purely a rant and it will continue later, I wanna talk about how the designer can control just how we interact with a site. And how that control is why we don’t have enough flash on the web today.

Today we were told that we must install Office 2007 on all the computers in our control. No real use fighting it, the words came from the CO, who was backed by MEF policy that I had blatantly ignored until now.  On top of that, MEF or anyone wasn’t going to provide us with the .msi installer for us to push over the network (with licensed keys of course). If we had waited on someone supplying the legal copies, we wouldn’t have made someone’s perfect deadline of 2 days! Ohmigosh!

It was kind of fun from what I hear (I was not in attendance for the first round), because we grabbed “trained” Marines from other sections and made them share our pain. Missing files. Not enough permissions. Overheating computers. Removing compatibility packs.  Everyone thinks our job is easy when someone shows up and wraps up 2 days of hellacious work into a neat little phrase like “everyone needs office”. Yeah. And not to mention supporting it afterwards. I’m just glad everyone else got a taste. Scrumptious? Yeah, that’s the taste I’ve had in the back of my mouth for the past 4 years.

Eat up.

I realized today just how much I pay attention to advertising, even when not in the form of a bona-fide tv commercial or flashing banner.  A Co-worker came in last night with the need to save Microsoft Word documents in the Adobe Portable Document Format.  Solution #1) See if Adobe PDF Printer was installed, it was not. #2) See if Office 2007 SP2 was installed. It was not. Since I enjoy the way SP2 puts a button in the save dialog for .PDF, and the .PDF printer isn’t as blatantly obvious to the user, I chose to install SP2. And there I sat for what was to remember as the most uninteresting 2 hours of my life.

Oh, now that you mention it, it does appear that I left some form of “critical element” out of that last paragraph. Well then my dear reader, let me fill you in: I’m still looking for it too. The problem is with an Acer “One” netbook.  Now I never have had the pleasure of truly using one of these, sure I’ve opened up solitaire on a few, but that’s about the extent of it. Said user said it was slow. I’m good at fixing slow, since I was working on win95.  Not to brag, but every time I touch a user’s computer (that I have no qualms with), I usually make it noticeably faster.  It’s simple to do, and in the long run it makes everything better.

It’s no secret what I do: I clean up what’s running in the startup to almost nil (taking into consideration what programs that user needs). It’s easy, simple, and the results are instant once you reboot. For stubborn cases, I might pull out CCleaner and an anti-malware program. I’m way past that on this “One”, pulled out all the stops, and still havn’t made a dent. As of this writing, I’m using my favorite uninstaller, ReVo Uninstaller, to get rid of pretty much everything but Office and VLC. But boot times are still in the minutes. 2 roadblocks I’ve run into are that he purchased and installed McAfee, which seems to be the source of a few of the problems, and he has three versions of MS Office installed. I ran an Office diag and it told me that the versions weren’t conflicting, so here’s to hoping on that one.  (Update: I just spent 5 minutes furiously clicking the dude’s name to log on.)

It’s fun because I had to convince myself not to purchase one of these little machines before I came on this deployment. I had read up on the idea of making a mini “hackintosh” netbook. I thought it was a novel idea. But today I realize just how underpowered these things are, and that they really have no hope of running OSX to a point where the user can enjoy and appreciate the experience. Netbooks are just that : once you strip down the O/S, pledge to never install another program again, and shrink your hands by 2 sizes, then you’ll be ready to get the most out of your netbook.

I know not what ails this computer. I’ve cleared the CMOS and set it to run diagnostic startup. The one and only thing it can be is the McAfee, as it won’t let me disable it’s service, since I need to be an administrator or something? Yeah. The sad part? This user paid $40 or more for this software, and now it does more harm than good. From button to desktop, 1:52. Every. Time.

No idea. Probably going to format and reinstall. But enough about that. Enough of this post.

Out.

You all know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about space. In the spirit of the mass media (which I think is the result of a slow news week) I’m honoring the 40 year anniversary of the Lunar Landing. Hypothetical: CIC states that he wants this nation to have a man on the moon in 9 years time. In order to be accurate, I quote Former President Kennedy on May 25th, 1961:

“…this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”"

Nine years. Nine years ago, most people didn’t know Google existed. Everyone was gaming on Nintendo 64’s and Playstations. All the computers in the world were running MS Windows 98 or 95. News still came in paper format. The fruity-colored iMac had just come out 2 years prior. Nine years is quite a long time. But back in the 60’s, we did it. But could America handle everything involved to do it all again in the same time schedule?

“I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment.”

One Nation. One Mission. Get a man on the moon, whatever it takes. They pulled the entire nations resources and manpower to do this.

“But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon–if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.”

Does this Nation posses the leadership, the resources, and the determination to do it again? I say no. Aside from our nation’s economy I think we lack the common source of motivation and the sheer unadulterated American Spirit that this country had in the 60’s. A return trip to Earth’s only satellite  isn’t a priority present in the minds of the American public, or it’s governing bodies for that matter. Which is quite a sad statement. Just think about it. Colonizing mars? What a humbling thought!

“Dude, Matt, Lisa left me last night.”
“Who the fuck cares? They just entered Mars’ orbit an hour ago!”

I’m not saying it would dissolve international issues overnight, but no-one would be immune to the massive effect it would have on the planets 6 Billion+ population. There would be people, who are still living, born on Earth, who currently reside on another planet. That’s phenomenal. Unimaginable even.

The Final Frontier. It’s not just part of the opening sequence on Star Trek. It’s the truth. But sadly enough, we’re stuck on this planet fighting wars we don’t want to fight and struggling to keep our planet “green” by purchasing electric cars and wearing clothes made of hemp.  The populus needs to be reminded in a very real way that, although there might not be anyone else out there, there are places we havn’t explored yet. Planets. Galaxies. Destinations.

All that being said, I come to my point.  Astronaut James “Ox” Van Hoften is a fucking badass. Can I say that? The answer is yes. In so many words, this man stood on the shuttle’s “Canadian Arm”, caught a satellite, repaired it, and then proceeded to toss it back into orbit.

How’s that for a throwing arm? Screw Chuck Norris, this man is my hero.  And yes, this was the one thing I wanted to say from the beginning.

If you feel in any way offended or insulted by my article, or feel that my statements/opinions are unsupported and unjustified, then congratulations, you deserve to feel the way you do. But it’s not because of me.  I simply don’t posses the finesse required to put down all the thoughts in my head into a blog.

Yeah, about those updates. Status: Postponed until I get out of the black hole that is Apple.

I spent most of the day researching and learning about Macs and Mac servers, and setting up my dream connected pad. It started out as a simple wireless network with a SPI firewall, then tuned into purchasing a Xbox360 and a 32′ TV and a Mac Mini (with Mac OS X Server) and an AirPort Express and an iPhone. Sigh.

So I’ve noticed that I’ve gone thru different phases during this deployment; first it started out with research for upgrading my Datsun. Then on to guitars. Then to guitar amps. Then guitars. Then setting up my own studio. Back to cars again. Then I started this blog, setting up my own server from the ground up, then putting the content on it. After that came a few days of looking into PHP and CSS. Yesterday and today though, all Jobs’ brainchildren are floating thru my head. My head is a mess.

But I’m thankful for that. Because once I return to CONUS, I’ll have done all the research on all the products I WANT to purchase, and then start paying attention to money and bills, and only purchase the stuff that, well, REALLY WANT (I can’t say need, as I’m certain I’d be capable of living life without these things).  The one thing that’s on my mind big time is Mac OS X Server. It’s so shiny! But it’s a server, and thinking of that word conjurs up images of grey boxes with loud fans blowing, grey dialouge boxes that have a button labeled “Next” somewhere, and standard blue backgrounds.  When I start getting ideas like “How can I stream my music to every computer I own? How can I throw the movies that I have in file format up on a nice television set?”, I start thinking about what kind of backend I’d need. Can I use winamp to stream my music? Does my old modded first-gen XBox still work? Is there a way to make this all better? And there’s always a solution, an answer, or you can make your own creative solution (which is even more fun/time consuming). But the good ‘ol guys at Apple seem to have beat me to the punch. And they’ve made it all look good to boot. Not some creative solution (Read: half-assed hack) that only I know how to operate, but one that’s seamless and effortless. Or at least that’s how they market it. And they do a damn good job of it.

All that aside, I’d like to get my hands on a copy of OS X Server. Just to play around a bit, see what it can do. But then again, I cower even at the thought of that, as the last time I tried to get a Mac O/S running on non-apple hardware, it took 5 different versions and a VM to make it happen, and it’s painfull to use just the mouse, let alone any programs. Alas, my situation prevents me from doing such a thing. Almost every attempt at learning new things out here has been thwarted by the powers that be, telling us of tales where Marines were constructive and denounced our thirst for new knowledge as leading to us being hackers and other derogatory mis-used terms. Am I over-exaggerating? Yes. Is it still rediculous? Undeniably.

I won’t go without putting up a fight though.

I love music. How many times have you heard that? Everyone loves music, the world revolves to the beat of a drum. Today I find myself liking a particular song by Fall Out Boy, it’s called “Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner”. It reminds me of “El Scorcho” by Weezer, because of just how apparent the emotion is in the song. Either that, or I just really enjoy the guitar in that song, and want to call it something fancy. But in all seriousness, some people wonder why I like Weezer. I like Weezer because of the pure emotion bleeding from their songs, which isn’t something you hear every day. It’s definitely more apparent in the blue album. They make songs that you just want to sing along to.

On a different note, I really want a Mac. Dealing with 10 different types of computers on a daily basis, and having more computers than I care to remember in my life, it would be nice to have something that just works. And that’s exactly what Macs are famous for. When I return to CONUS, I plan on driving out to Los Angeles and visiting a bona-fide Apple Boutique.  I want the whole Mac “experience”. I plan on purchasing the base 13-inch Macbook Pro model, buying iWork09, and then getting Windows 7 put on it. I’m not sure if I’m going to go the BootCamp route, or the VMWare Fusion route.

Why would I go through the trouble of purchasing a MacBook if I’m just going to install Windows on it? I’ll tell you why. I’ve been using the 7057 build of Win7 for 6 months now, and quite frankly, I’ve fallen in love with it. Other than the taskbar occasionaly losing it’s nerve every once in a while (although I have reason to believe that the Intel Display Driver is to blame for this), I can find no qualms with this O/S. But then again, I’m the only one using it here. I’m sure that once the mass population gets a hold of it and installs all of their beloved internet toolbars and desktop buddies, I’ll be ever ready to fully move my day-to-day ops to Mac OS X.

Lastly for today, yes, I know the site appears broken. It’s kinda weird the way the page is layed out using css and php, but I’ll get the hang of it soon enough. Bear with me.