sentience?

my Rush obsession has come back to bite me in the ass, with a little help from Apple.

i uploaded a double live disc onto my iPod last week. something went wrong somewhere, as that album has replaced several songs. i've found two so far, both different artists. it plays as if it's Rush, but the tag info and duration show up for the "host" song on the screen. i've never had this happen in any other circumstance. just fuckin' weird.

a cautionary tale?

@#%@$J@#X$I@J#RW#OIJQX@IO#$JAW IRJA#I%YVOW%$JYIW$J%^J#$XIQO#RJSAEOI%TJ$^IOJhy!!!!

now that i have that out of my system...

it's snowing like bastard here and has been all night. in weather like this, my brain sometimes takes a leave of absence and i get the urge to go out in it and take pictures. i formulated a plan to travel to Graceland Cemetery, which is extraordinarily pretty in the snow.

since i'm such a lazy bugger, my memory card was still full from my trip to Seattle in September. i never reinstalled my Canon-sanctioned software for downloading my pictures, so i used Picasa instead. i picked a directory that i'd been using with Picasa before, so there were some pics already in it. one of the options was, "after photos are downloaded, what do we do with the card?" naturally i picked "wipe," since 1. i wanted to make room for dead people, and 2. i'm a massive bonehead.

photos downloaded, card was wiped, hooray. i went to check out my photos. ...except... where's the directory i just put them in? Picasa had deleted the whole thing. not moved, not put them somewhere else, not put the folder in the recycling bin, it deleted them all. why? why the fuck would it do this? why wouldn't it at least recycle them? and why did i have an outside program delete all my precious goddamn photos? now i have to see if i can recover them using some deletion recovery program which will probably eat half my hard drive. and, i'm not outside with dead people. fuck.

update: i managed to recover all photos off my mem card using FreeUndelete. mega-whew. Picasa, however, is now on my shit list.

CNBC: wtf?

it baffles me that CNBC, presumably one of the more high-profile finance channels geared towards bigwigs, would run scads and scads of infomercials. Billy Mays? gold dollar coins? the Snuggie? i've seen classier commericals during sporting events. with men in them.

rawrrr

it's the new year, and somehow i'm bereft of pithy clichés. highly unusual.

new(er) bits in the house of geekgrrl:

• i finally sold my soul and joined Facebook. the worst part? it's not that bad. i haven't put up any "flair" or thrown "snowballs" or "octopi" or anything at my "friends," mostly because i can't figure out how to get those things on my page. (i have poked someone, but that's a private matter.) i joined to legitmately flesh out the network of people i know. so far it's gone all right.


• i took up a 21-day trial at Fitness Formula Clubs, courtesy of my boss. looks like you get a lot of shit, but it also costs a lot of dough. it'd be nice to swim daily or take as many classes as i want, but i really don't know if it's worth $113 a month, especially when my office gym costs $20.


• my Rush obsession continues unabated. i tend towards compulsive thinking, but this is ridiculous: it's been almost non-stop since Thanksgiving. i've d/l'd several albums; i bought the "Moving Pictures" Rock Band 2 bundle; i have an all-Rush radio station running through my head. i'm even enjoying "Presto" (sorry Scott). it's really, really weird - and not very like me - to "rediscover" something like this, a band i've grown up with all my life. sure, i've grown up with the Beatles and the Who too, but this feels different.. a missing, yet omnipresent soundtrack to all the geek stuff that defines me. everything's clicking: the sound, the lyrics, the vocals, the musicianship, the subject matter.. it's all i want to listen to right now. to me it's beautiful and gives fire to my imagination. most of my obsessions fade out as quickly as they come on, disappearing as soon as something else grabs me. i hope this one sticks around.


• i've given brief thought to returning to school. very brief, in fact; i don't even know what i'd want to do yet. but a very generous Xmas bonus may propel me towards a refined education. stay tuned?

old bit:

• i still fuck up the first time i try to code lists.