Free Candy For Everyone

I’ve become enamored of So You Think You Can Dance, Fox’s dance competition reality show. In general, I don’t like reality shows. They’re frequently populated with manipulative people seeking fame (or infamy) whatever it takes. They want their time on camera and have little to share other than that empty goal.

I’ve been watching American Idol since the first season and it’s full of those people. I watch it for those few people who stand out for their genuine talent and lack of guile. They stand there and just shine with the thrill of singing. Watching those people find their voice and get better and better is always a joy for me to watch. I can’t stand the people who make it through week after week because of the hordes of tween fan girls dialing en masse because the guy has good hair. But despite what I want to see, I’ve noticed that the singers are almost entirely lacking in heart when they sing.

A little while ago I went to see The Swell Season in concert. This is Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, the two stars of the fabulous movie Once, which I cannot say enough good things about. I was so moved by their performance that I was in tears on a few songs. I almost couldn’t catch my breath a few times, it was just that passionate and amazing. After seeing them, going to watch American Idol was just that much more empty.

So when a friend recommended So You Think You Can Dance, I thought, “eh, another empty reality show.” But wow, was I wrong. On American Idol, anyone who was lucky enough to be born with fantastic pipes can walk into the audition and get on with a chance to win. Once on the show they get vocal coaches and stylists, but they didn’t have to put anything in to get there. Not the case on Dance. These people are all phenomenal dancers before they ever get on the show. They have to be amazing, with great training to even get past the first audition.

But even more incredible to me than their talent was their attitude. Watching the opening auditions, the auditorium was full for each performance - with other contestants I assume? The cheers and applause they gave each other were so fantastic. And watching the contestants that made it on the air, to the top 20, they constantly impress me with their extreme passion for dance, their genuine heart, and their graciousness under all circumstances. At the end of the show when the people are sent home, they’re given an opportunity to speak and they always talk about what an honor it was to be there and have that opportunity, to dance with these people. Now, that’s heart.

It’s refreshing to watch people who actually love what they’re doing and you can feel it in everything they do. I leave you with a fun number from the first week’s performances.

I took my beloved Macbook Pro in to the Apple store yesterday for an attempt to discover why it gets so hot it could cook bacon. That left me without a computer last night, and this was completely unacceptable. I decided to boot up my PC that has been pretty much sitting idle since I last spoke about it. Yeah, it kinda gets neglected.

After installing about a million updates for Windows, I tried to get World of Warcraft in a working order (while I haven’t spoken about WoW in a while I might possibly be more addicted to it right now then I’ve been in a long time, but that’s a topic for a later date). I decided to remove all my old UI addons and just start over since everything I had was so out of date. I was quickly hit with the dreaded User Account Control prompts. “Are you sure you want to do that?” quickly followed by “Do you want to allow permission to do that?” Um, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. After clicking about a million boxes just so I could delete some files I was getting frustrated.

Then I installed the WoWAce Updater. This is a nice program that will auto download and install addons for you. You just go in and select them and then it does its thing. Well, it was just erroring and erroring. After some searching on the forums I found that I needed to change the folder permissions on the Addon folder it was trying to download to. Hmm, ok, but I’m an Administrator, shouldn’t it just work? I check the folder permissions and admins have full permission, wtf? I decide “hell, I’ll give Users full permissions too.” And that seemed to do the trick, ok, cool.

I load up WoW and my screen explodes in a overload off too many addons, with error boxes popping up left and right. Hmm. I check and ALL MY OLD ADDONS ARE STILL LOADED. I search my harddrive, they’re not in the World of Warcraft Addon folder anywhere. HOW ARE THEY RUNNING? I poke around some more and find a backup directory of old addons in a random folder no where near the game, which I delete. I run the game and they are still all there. I search my ENTIRE HARD DRIVE for those files and they are NO WHERE. So now I’m getting pissed. I blame Vista.

I decide to remove my entire folder for Addons instead of just bits and parts. So I try to move it to my desktop. After clicking a bunch of times that yes, I really want to do that, it then pops up a dialogue telling me I don’t have permission. I AM AN ADMINISTRATOR!!!! I do some searching, change some permisions, and try again. And fail again. I AM AN ADMINISTRATOR!!! Vista doesn’t care, it’s “keeping me safe”. I try changing some other stuff after reading online but ultimately, I do what I should have done from the first, I turn off User Account Control. Thank you. It’s quiet now.

I move the folder and reboot WoW and no addons at all, that’s an improvement! I carefully copy back in everything piece by piece, waiting for it to find deleted addons, but it never does. After maybe an hour or more of fussing, I’m finally in game and ready to play. But boy am I tired.

Ultimately, the performance of my PC is lacking. I mean, that’s alright, it’s probably over 3 years old, it’s amazing it’s still viable at all! But I think I might upgrade the video card and that could be sufficient to keep it working well enough for a few more years. Provided I can find a copy of Windows XP to downgrade to.

Ok, I don’t mean to be turning into the all-about-Amazon blog, but this made me laugh so hard I had to share. One of the best things about Amazon are the reviews of some things that need no reviews. It began with the milk reviews. Oh yes! Go check out the Amazon page for Tuscan Whole Milk. Nothing currently at the top there that is all the hilarious, but the sheer amount of reviews for it are hilarious in and of themselves.

But yesterday my uncle sent me something to top it all. Denon has apparently come out with a completely silly new audio cable. It costs FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS and is really completely unnecessary. People have decided to go to town in the reviews of it. I cannot remember when I laughed so hard at something so silly.

Some choice quotes for your enjoyment:

“A caution to people buying these: if you do not follow the “directional markings” on the cables, your music will play backwards.”

I installed one of these cables between my gigabit ethernet switch and my Canon Pixma 6700 color printer. I know it’s not a sanctioned use, but I was looking for the ultimate in speed and color fidelity. I’m freaky that way.

The first time I downloaded a picture to the printer over this cable, the bits moved so fast the printer collapsed into a naked singularity, right there in my office.

Since then, I can’t find the cat, and my entire set of VAX/VMS 4.7 documentation (DEC Will Rise Again!) (Mmmmm, orangey!) has gone missing.

Please, for the love of God, please, do not use these cables! The very existence of Earth may depend on your decision!

This bit is great for all the Star Wars geeks (like me!):

“Marked down 1 star because it still won’t let you do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.”

Go on over and read them, it’s just great!

I like to stop by Amazon every now and again to see what books and music and more it recommends for me. It has a huge database of books and items I’ve bought, plus years ago I spent a long time rating items for hours on end (I can be a bit weird, I know). Today I stopped by for the first time in a while and clicked on the upcoming releases recommendations. Here’s one of the ones it had for me.

Yup, Amazon recommended the game I’m working on to me. I found that amusing. It was the only game recommendation, actually. I guess that’s kind of cool!

Some people have read about layoffs occurring at LucasArts and I’m getting lots of concerned emails from friends wondering if I’m ok. Just wanted to let everyone know that I’m still employed. I can’t speak to any of the rumors about what is going on or what projects we have going on, but I’m still here and expect to be for some time to come. Thanks for worry about me!