Something I ate yesterday really, really, really did not agree with me. I don’t know if it was the Mexican or the Italian, but it hates me now whatever it was.

I’ve been in the WC all morning, and was really worried about that last five minutes of my morning commute, which ended with me dashing into my office, dumping my things on the corner of my desk, and immediately duck-walking across the hall to the unisex.

And yes, I do realize that’s more than you want to know. But this is the Internet, after all: totally uncensored, innit?

Brett worked a half-day yesterday, taking the afternoon off to spend with Jeff Blount, who is in town with his 13-year-old daughter, Soma.

They showed up in the late afternoon. Brett and Jeff went off to pick Brett’s truck up from the shop, where it got new brakes and a couple of retreads, and Soma and I sat at my computer and geeked out on our iPods.

She has a second-gen iPod mini she bought in Japan. It’s green. So cute.

Soma lives in Australia, so her accent is TO. DIE. FOR. She’s smart and adorable and pleasant and has her mom’s huge blue eyes, and I really liked hanging out with her. She and I held the couch down, snacked on veggies and ranch dip, and watched sit-coms for a few hours while the men (Bo and Toby showed up) laughed outside.

When they went on a beer run, Soma and I made them pick up a couple of pizzas, so dinner was totally awful. Gas station pizza always sucks, and I’m always slightly shocked by it. Go figure. Continue reading People! They came over! →

Save your tunes with Copy Pod: “CopyPod is a lifesaver when sending your iPod for repair, in cases of computer/hard drive crash, or just to backup up to a different drive.” Plus Buzzdoctor uses it.

I just plain old didn’t do much today.

Slept in. Ate leftover Indian food. Had some almond tea. Had rockin’ nookie with my man – the kind that makes you grin sheepishly at one another and go, “Damn, baby!” Brushed my hair. Refined my home page’s layout. Napped. Ate half a Hershey’s chocolate bar. Cleaned out my photography cabinet. Surfed. Finished one book, started another. Had a discussion with Brett about going out and getting drunk tonight, then did nothing.

And here I am, sitting on my ass in front of the goblinbox. I have got to get a life or something.

Oh, wait, maybe I do have a life: someone sent a photo message of their genitals to my cell phone today. Hah!

Maybe it’s because I don’t own any copyrights? I don’t know, but whatever the reason, I don’t understand this.

It seems various groups are freaking about Google’s plan to scan and archive “millions of books from four top US libraries – the libraries of Stanford, Michigan and Harvard universities, and of the New York Public Library – by 2015,” so they’ve halted the project and agreed not to scan things publishers don’t want added to the project.

The trade body of the US publishing industry, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), said it still has “grave misgivings” about the project.

“Google’s announcement does nothing to relieve the publishing industry’s concerns,” said AAP president Patricia Schroeder in a statement.

Agreeing not to add the material they don’t want added isn’t enough?!

I could go on and ON about this, and the RIAA, and the movie industry’s absurd “loss figures,” but I won’t. I’ll let you read why Eric Flint and Baen give books away for free, and learn how well it works for them. (They give books away for free as loss leaders, and they can demonstrate profits from the practice.)

Hello! I really don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine this policy extended to music and movies. When someone doesn’t buy a movie, the movie industry isn’t losing money! That money isn’t theirs to lose. Gawd!

Ahem.

As for me, my experience with free data is essentially one of spending money. I download MP3s all the time and I buy CDs because of them. I have spent thousands of dollars on eBooks because Project Gutenberg’s free stuff got me addicted to reading on my PDA. I’ve spent a lot of money at Baen.com because of their Free Library, not in spite of it.

It’s trite, it’s anthropomorphic, but hell – I’ll say it anyway: information wants to be free.

I hate the way this layout looks. I like the background, and I like some of the ideas, but overall… I think it sucks.

Does anyone like this at all?

Seriously. Leave me a comment.

My favorite Windows error used to be “Keyboard not found, please press F1 to continue.”

Today I discovered I have a new one:

“Please go to the Control Panel to install and configure system components.”

Uh, okay. What system components? The ones that all worked yesterday? I haven’t added, removed, installed, uninstalled, or changed this system IN ANY WAY. What the holy hell are you talking about, you goblinbox, you?

The arrhythmia, it’s here today. I loathe it. I know it’s “just a symptom” of this never-to-be-sufficiently-damned panic disorder, but it still freaks me out when my rib cage lurches. Which makes me panic more, which makes the thumping and bumping worse, which is one never-ending goddamned cycle of utter crap. Continue reading Please, allow me to be neurotic →

Take that, you spamming bastard.

Since Buzzdoctor suffered a near-failure in his iPod world today, I been lookin’ up info on backing shit up. And this is what I found, and I find that it is good: Use a Smart Playlist to make regular backups of your music in iTunes. Yeah.