Month: March 2007

  • A little shadenfreude to brighten my day.

    Broadcasters have tentatively agreed to anti-payola settlements that could shake up music playlists at some of the nation’s largest radio chains. Four major broadcast companies would pay the government $12.5 million and provide 8,400 half-hour segments of free airtime for independent record labels and local artists […] the monetary settlement is part of a consent decree between the FCC and Clear Channel Communications Inc., CBS Radio, Entercom Communications Corp. and Citadel Broadcasting Corp.

    Oh. Shucky darn. I guess Entercom will have to drop-kick some more of their “overpaid” workers and staff up the sales department some more, eh? If I was a better man I’d probably feel bad about this news on some level, yet somehow I just can’t. Actually, I find it terribly amusing…

    (From: Stations agree on anti-payola settlement – Houston Chronicle, by way of Slashdot.)

  • Manic/Panic Monday

    Oh, where do I start?

    • Mom called, full of remorse that she’d missed my birthday but wanting to wish me a happy one nonetheless. Except, of course, she actually called three days early. I’m expecting another call Thursday.
    • My computer arrived, and my monitor! Yes, that makes this the best Monday in a long time, automatically.
    • Ben got in touch. Maybe that doesn’t sound momentous to you, but I’ll have you know it’s been years since I knew anything about what he’s been doing with his life. (Hopefully he’s been enjoying it, but we’ll find out.)
    • On the downside, my spiffy new X-Fi sound card? If it’s not actually pre-owned, the box contents have been riffled through. The installer CD is missing, as is the helpful sticker that’s supposed to go on the back of the sound card so I know which jack is what. As long as the card itself works, though, I don’t really care. It’s not like there aren’t newer, better drivers available at the manufacturer’s website, eh?
    • My “no-graphics” purchase option workstation came with… a graphics card. This card, I feel it necessary to point out, came with no cables and is missing one of its cable screw-in posts. I can’t make much use of it, but I wasn’t going to anyway. As long as I don’t get charged extra, I suppose I can just laugh it off. It’s not like I don’t already have a drawer full of video cards I never use, right?
    • Today is day one of my three-day work week. I’m taking my birthday and the following day off, partly as vacation and partly to help a particular someone move into her new abode. I’m such a great guy!
    • I sent a sales query to Infinity Internet on the 16th and the 21st of February regarding the possibility of getting some upgrades done on this webserver. The form-letter autoreplies (“we have received your query and will be contacting you, blah blah blah”) showed up in my email this afternoon… in reverse chronological order. Oh, goody.
    • Those magazine subscriptions I didn’t make but got dinged for anyway? I got my money back from them both. That’s the good news. Unfortunately it looks like I also “subscribed” to at least one more title (in this case, Time) so I’m facing the prospect of at least one more of those terribly entertaining phone calls. Argh. Remind me never to shop at Suncoast again, ever.
    • My boss gave me his old scanner. There’s nothing wrong with it, he just prefers his new sheet-fed scanner over the flatbed style he used to use. I guess this means I should actually clean my desk enough so I can actually use a scanner, doesn’t it?

    For hours, every time I thought I was done with this entry something else would happen which simply begged to be included in the list. Nothing new has come up in the last forty-five minutes, however, so I’m going to click “Publish” now.

    What a day, huh?

  • (Useless) Things You Learn By Watching CSI

    The thought had never crossed my mind that people might get implants for their buttocks in much the same fashion that they get breast implants. I learned this from an episode of CSI a few weeks ago, and this morning a stray thought crossed my mind:

    If you undergo this particular implant procedure, could I say that you’ve had a rebuttal?

    …Maybe not.

  • Upgrade Reds

    I just upgraded this site to WordPress 2.1.2…

    Wait. That reads a lot like the start of yesterday’s post, doesn’t it? Well, get this: Some asshat got their grubby mitts on the contents of the 2.1.1 installation package right on the WordPress server and snuck in some backdoor code. Nice security, wot? So, if you’re running 2.1.1 you should upgrade sort of immediately.

    I’m glad I didn’t get around to upgrading the rest of the WordPress sites on the server from 2.0.x yet, I suppose. If I’d had to go through a half dozen rounds of updates twice in as many days, I’d be even crankier than I already am. You get three guesses as to what’s on my plate for the weekend, folks…

  • Upgrade Blues

    I just upgraded this site to WordPress 2.1.1. I’d be happier about this if a) I’d had much of a choice in the matter, and b) the upgrade hadn’t broken the most important set of sidebar widgets I use. That’ll teach me to use seldom-updated German code, eh? At least I’m now protected from the known vulnerabilities in the core software. Yay.

    Links and buttons and a few other things are broken, and will continue to be broken until I can spend some quality time making things work again. I imagine I’ll have to do the fixes the hard way… dammit.