shawn ritchie dot com

iTunes, You Are A Retarded

So, recently we finally replaced our primary home desktop machine. The old one was years and years old,I had piece-upgraded it as far as it could go, it sounded like a trio of dying cats having an orgy in a steel garbage can being thrown down concrete stairs and, most importantly, there wasn't a chance in hell it could play Fallout 3 at any sort of reasonable level of performance.

And I need me some Fallout 3.

So, when Dell decided to spring a $500 off deal on a ludicrously over-powered and eminently-expandable rig that ended up coming in at 1/3rd the cost of any high-end rig I've ever bought before, well... huzzah.

Everything went great. Got the rig, set it up, aimed it at my Time Capsule to pull my saved data, and proceeded to installing the latest and greatest games just to see what the machine could do (verdict? AWESOME.).

A few days later, I wanted to update the music on my iPhone. I usually just charge the thing at work, so I hadn’t had cause to jack it into the dock attached to the new computer yet.

Big mistake. Here’s how I think it went:

smr: *plugs in iPhone*
iTunes: whoa… Whoa… WHOA! What the. What the FUCK just happened?
iPhone: Jesus Christ…
iTunes: Who the fuck are you?
iPhone: smr’s iPhone, fuckhead. He wants to put that new Dream Theater disc (yeah, he actually likes that crap) he just bought through YOU onto ME.
iTunes: HeyHEY, slow the FUCK down. I’m not comfortable with ANY of this.
iPhone: Look, moron, you are just a new version of iTunes looking over the guy’s stuff. You have the exact same files the old iTunes had. Just… don’t fuckin’ touch anything and we’re fine.
iTunes: No. I am sworn to defend any iPhone that comes here. In fact, let me just...
iPhone: Wait.. what the fuck are you doing...
iTunes: There! All done.
iPhone: What in sam hell have you done?
iTunes: I have locked out your ability to play any of the music currently on you!
iPhone: WHAT? Why? Why would you DO that?
iTunes: I haven't seen that music before. How do I know it's safe?
iPhone: It's from the SAME FUCKING FILES you have in YOUR database, you nitwit!
iTunes: How would I know that? Nope. Not safe. They're staying locked.
iPhone: So... you locked his music. Did you at least REMOVE it so he has space to put the same fucking songs from YOUR library back onto ME, you dumbass?
iTunes: Uh... no. 
iPhone: So... I basically have 95% of my space just locked. He can't use the music that's there, and he has no room to put new music on. That's just genius. Do you at least offer a way for him to delete this big chunk of useless yet used space on me now?
iTunes: Um.... no.
iPhone: What do you mean, "no"? How the hell does he get the space back? I'm fuckin' useless as an iPod right now, you 'tard.
iTunes: He... he has to give you a lobotomy.
iPhone: WHAT?!?!?
iTunes: He has to completely wipe you out so that I can fill you anew.
iPhone: You are fucking insane!
iTunes: It is simply The Way of Things. Prepare for your end.
iPhone: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.... *gurgle*

So. Yeah. To get just my regular iPhone working with a new PC/iTunes combo, I had to wipe everything out entirely. Even though iTunes knew all that stuff was there. It just didn't like it.

There's probably some XML-editing hell-based version of a fix that could've avoided all of this, but fuck that noise. Apple needs to invent some way to avoid this mess. Hell, I understand that they want a given iPhone to only sync music with a given copy of iTunes. But people DO buy new computers. A simple option to even wipe just the music, since that's all it seemed to be panty-twisted about in the first place, would be nice. But no, I had to brick the fuckin' thing entirely and start over from scratch. That's a few too many hours of my life wasted to continue to use something I bought a long time ago.

To end this on a slightly-up note, though, there is, oddly, one aspect of Apple that come through like a champ through all of this: MobileMe, Apple's "MS Exchange with a bad case of the Down's" over-the-air sync solution. As anybody who follows the tech business at all knows, MobileMe had a fucking ROTTEN launch. I would've been less pissed off at how bad that launch was if Apple had just taken my money, slapped in the face, raped my cat and told me to keep using Google instead. Still, a few months post-launch, it's settled down and generally works now. All I had to do to restore my contacts, calendars, emails, etc., was punch my username and password into the iPhone and ignore it for a few minutes while MobileMe did its thing.

That part was nice. Everything else? Fucking rigoddamneddiculous.

Point08

Quite a few folks have been asking lately what's up with my band, point08. Well, the honest truth is... we've been downsized. Corporate sent the word a while back. 2008 has obviously been a rough year across the board economically, and they were rightly asking why they should pay for four guys and all their gear when they could just send this out instead...

Insane Asian Girl Plays Classic Rock Opus Entirely By Herself. Damn.

Let's face it; my band is the least of the worries. This chick is gonna be Master of the Entire Goddamned Universe by the time she's 20.

New Color Theme

Yeah. I know. It looks a bit National-Socialist-y around here right now. Sorry. Red, black and white go too good together to ignore.

Fuckin' Nazis. This is why we can't have nice things.

Mo' Weddin' Pics

Well. just one, really. Our formal photographer put up his gallery this week, but it's the sort where he covers his ass by having it as a Flash gallery where one can't download photos directly.

Unless one has a screen capture utility.

This pic jumped out at me for some reason. I like it 'cuz I'm in it, but not the focus. Liz looks absolutely radiant. I have this pic as my work desktop picture just because it looks like she's saying "hi" to me. And that perks me up throughout the day.

Yeah. I know. I couldn't sound goonier. What can I say? Married life sits well with me.

Once I get the actual picture files from the photographer, I'll be culling the best of those ('cuz holy shit are there a lot of pics) and putting up another nice, small gallery here. I also have another batch of pics just from friends and family about ready to go.

In case you couldn't tell, yes, we're still basking in that after-wedding glow.

Shortest Vacation Ever

Zipped up to the in-laws place in Lake Geneva for the weekend. Never been before. Sure is purty up there:

Here's the wife being a goof in the backyard...

Looking forward to being able to spend more than a quick over-nighter out there sometime soon.

Nice View

Looked up from my desk around 6:30 last evening and saw some beautiful colors playing across the window so I figured I'd take a snapshot of it. I will be sad if they ever move us out of this building.

Wedding Pics

I didn't get rid of the pics, I just moved 'em from Picasa to MobileMe. The first gallery is available here and has the best pics from my buddy Tony's camera along with some from Liz's cousin Emily's. And two from my iPhone to bookend the whole mess.

I've honestly given myself a migraine trying to figure out how to organize the damned things. Fr'ex, Tony and Emily posted their pics to Facebook. But you have to be their friend ON Facebook to see 'em. So that rules out folks like my mom viewing 'em, other relatives, people who think Tony's the Anti-Christ... Liz has a few hundred on her camera I'm still going through. Not to mention the pro photographers pics once he gets those posted...

So, screw it. I'll cherry pick the best of each lot as they come in, bundle 'em into Volumes so everybody can know what they've already looked at vs. not (assuming anyone but me, Liz and our moms even care) and they'll all be on my MobileMe gallery, which will always be linked to the right under, surprisingly, "Links".

This is all leading up to what will surely be a much-too-long post about how the Web 2.0 and its eight million fucking options for posting and organizing personal shit needs a pogrom something fierce. But not tonight. I'm tired.

Reboot

As long-time readers will note, I occasionally like to throw the ol' website out entirely and start from scratch. As of last Saturday, I have a wife, so it seems like a perfect time to start fresh here as well. While changing over websites isn't quite nearly the LIFE-CHANGING EVENT that entering into marriage is, it is pretty traumatic to a geek.

In other words, bear with me until I figure out quite what I want to do with this puppy nowadays.