U-g-l-y, you ain't got no alibi, you're just ugly.

The new iPods? Fantastic! The new features in iTunes? Stupendous.

But WTF is up with the interface in iTunes v7? Seriously, the non-standard scroll bars, the atypical checkboxes, the abnormally dark selection bars...fugly. Just f-ing ugly.

For why hath these abominations been wrought upon us? What's wrong with the scroll bars in Mac OS X? Or the checkboxes? Nothing. Use them.

The new Cover Flow view is superb. (I like the similar UI in Omni Dazzle, too.) The reorganized Sources section? Genius. (I want that kind of categorization in Mail.) And iPod management within the application, instead of through Preferences? I wanna kiss someone.

But please, please, please, stop with the hideous scroll bars and lame checkboxes. They're just ugly.

And it appears I'm not the only one who thinks so.

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"U-g-l-y, you ain't got no alibi, you're just ugly."	Lyrics from Ugly by Fishbone

At Last

So now 54% of Americans think things in the United States are going either "pretty badly" or "very badly," according to a CNN poll conducted the last week of August 2006.

It's taken this long for a majority of Americans to realize things are going badly? Well, at least they've finally started paying attention.

The good news, though, is that they understand how to turn things around. According to the CNN report, that same poll found "[a] majority — 55 percent — said they are more likely to back a challenger in races on this year's ballot. Such anti-incumbent sentiment is higher than the 48 percent recorded as 'pro-challenger' in a similar survey in 1994, when the GOP took control of both houses of Congress."

So what's this mean for the Democrats? Again from the CNN report on 4 September 2006:

Democrats lead Republicans by a 10-point margin, 53 to 43 percent, among likely voters asked which party's congressional candidate they would support in November, and Democrats held a 56-40 lead on the same question among registered voters."

So perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train after all.

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At Last	Song by Etta James

Rip. Mix. Burning bush.

Even iTunes is prodding me into action, at least judging by how Party Shuffle put these two songs together.

With Gwen urging me on and Terry assuring me it's not "what" but "how," it certainly felt like a message. Guess one can find messages anywhere, should one look.

Five Months, Two Weeks, Two Days

Wow. It's been a long time since I've posted here. If I thought there were any regular readers, I'd apologize.

I've been distracted remodeling my house, which is weird since I'm not doing any of the work.

But while I've been without TV (as I didn't bother to try moving the satellite dish to the apartment in which I'm staying) I've been reading more, and getting more fired up about the many things going wrong these days. So I'm going to start ranting here instead of at the dog, on the off chance it would do more good. We'll see.

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Five Months, Two Weeks, Two Days	Song by Louis Prima

The Universe is a Spheroid Region 705 Meters in Diameter.

While I have been miserable at my current job for almost three years now, I have made faint effort to pursue other opportunities. A half-dozen inquiries about various positions, three actual interviews, but certainly not the significant effort you'd expect from someone so dispirited and bereft.

Similarly I'm not satisfied with several aspects of my personal life, including but not limited to, my fitness level, my housing stock, and various interpersonal relationships. Despite the obvious avenues of change for each of these elements, the last six years have seen little improvement. Not coincidentally, six years ago I started my current job, or (as I now realize) began ignoring my conscience and bartering my soul for money, stock options, and a 401(k).

In trying to figure out why I'm so slow to change, I've realized I am far too comfortable with facets of my current existence. The trappings of my job, free time in the evenings, the color of my walls...I've grown accustomed to these things. I've settled into a nice little world of familiarity.

I am the poster child for inertia.

But my growing distaste for some of the core elements of my little world is upsetting the balance in this control volume. So I'm developing a plan, starting with remodeling the house. Once that's done and I've assessed the financial impact, I can start looking seriously at a line of work that could provide some measure of personal reward, though likely less remuneration than my current soul-sucking career.

Yep, it's time to git 'er done.

Woo-hoo!

As of 00:01 this morning, I've officially broken my streak. That's right, for the entire month of March I did not receive a moving violation! Since November of last year I have received a moving violation each month, every month. A ticket a month for four months running, but March ended the madness.

However with the California Highway Patrol clearly now a revenue generation program for the state, I'm certainly not out of danger.

Unfortunately, despite the traffic in every urban area of California, the CHP seem unwilling or unable to enforce those parts of the Vehicle Code like §21654 (best summarized by the sign on every California highway: Slower Traffic Keep Right) that would help mitigate congestion. Instead they only pursue drivers who are attempting to alleviate traffic and free available highway capacity by quickly and efficiently proceeding to their destination. Not surprisingly, the fines for violation of speed-related sections like §22349 are significantly greater than those for violating other sections, such as the long-ignored §21654.

(Three guesses about who just recently completed eight hours of traffic school.)

Instead of using the current laws on the books to help clear traffic, the state can only suggest new, larger highways. But anyone who has even a glancing familiarity with computer networking knows that increased bandwidth isn't the only answer. More effective use of the throughput available can also result in greater capacity.

Look, right now most everyone accessing the Internet at home is doing so over copper wires. Many of us use the same copper wires that deliver our phone service. There was a time when those copper wires delivered data at 14.4 kilobits per second (Kbps). Right at this moment I'm getting 1.62 megabits per second (Mbps) over those same old, precariously hanging copper wires.

Remember, Kbps is a thousand bits per second while Mbps is a million bits per second. Without any new wiring to my house (no new highway, no greater bandwidth) I'm getting 112.5% more capacity. How? Better data transmission devices, better compression algorithms, more efficient data packet standards, in short: doing more with what we've got.

Applied to traffic, there are immediate corollaries. Where networking has seen better modems, travelers have available better cars, with faster acceleration, improved handling, and enhanced brakes. (At least for those motorists smart enough not to drive some clunky SUV.)

These modern vehicles allow us to motor more effectively, yet most people still drive as if they were behind the wheel of a 70s land yacht: leaving far too much space in front of them, reacting much too languidly to changes in traffic momentum, and braking much more often than required. So instead of driving efficiencies that correlate to better compression, we have inefficiencies that lead to congestion.

And while computer networks now rely on intelligent, optimized data packets that know their origin and destination and do nothing but strive to get from "A" to "B" in as little time as possible, highways are filled with drivers who are un-optimized, un-focused, and seemingly unwilling to make the effort to proceed.

In short, if we want to stop wasting time and money sitting in traffic, we should look to models of efficiency like computer networking and emulate those models as much as possible. We should stop penalizing those who are trying to optimize driving and start penalizing those who aren't.

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"Woo-hoo!"	Lyric from the song Song 2 by Blur

And blood did come forth out of the wine-press...

So now I've a new reason to hate Southwest Airlines.

Sure there's the usual litany: their steadfast refusal to assign seats, the cattle-drive loading process, a haphazard approach to cabin cleaning, the constant rough landings (which I've christened "The Southwest Slam"), et cetera, et cetera.

But on yesterday's flight I clearly saw their rabid anti-vegan streak. It starts with the seats, unnecessarily clad in leather. Then my three-hour flight came with a snack box: three items, each containing animal-based ingredients. And the topper, when I went to the restroom to wash the cabin filth off my hands, I'm confronted with lanolin in the soap. It's bad enough that I have to sit on dried bovine skin, and go hungry because Southwest can't bother to offer food without components of sentient beings in it, but now I can't even adequately clean my hands without soiling my karma.

What other gratuitous use of animal products can they find? Perhaps they'll start crushing puppies in the galley. You know, to add a little kick to the tomato juice.

Do Just Enough Evil.

As always a bit behind, I've been working on resolutions for 2006. First you need a theme for the year, then the resolutions follow. Thanks, then, to the folks at Google for helping me find the theme for 2006!

The company that says their motto is "do no evil" has found a way to support the wanton repression of the Chinese government. Leave it to the Googleplex geniuses to figure out how to attenuate evil.

“We actually did an evil scale and decided not to serve at all was worse evil,” said Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt.

Worse evil. Next they'll be working on a way to be a little pregnant. (Another innovation in service to the Chinese government, perhaps?)

So is 2006 to be the year of just enough evil? Will that be how I finally get the remodel started? Perhaps. Will it be the Democrats' secret weapon to recover in the midterm elections? Not sure if just enough evil can prevail in the face of overwhelming evil. (Yes, modifying absolutes is addictive.)

Let's just hope this theme for the Year of the Dog doesn't bite us in the ass.