I have had a lot of issues with iTunes just randomly losing track of songs: they’re in the library, the file exists and is in the right place, but iTunes has forgotten this fact. Out of many thousand songs, I only learn of this when a sync throws an error.

The sync says it can’t locate some files. OK, I go try to find the problem files. Sure enough some random song in some random album has a little exclamation point next to it. So I have to, by hand, reassociate the file with the library entry. And this could be made a lot easier.

How about looking for the damned file in the same folder as all the other songs on the album for me, hmm? You have 14 of 15 tracks that you’re sure are in this/folder, why not try to look in this/folder for that 15th track? How about providing me with a command to check the integrity of the library, so I don’t have to get surprised by this? How about allow me to drag a file from the Finder onto these bad entries in the library, a faster way than navigating your stupid file dialogue every damned time?

How about not letting the library fuck itself up every now and then? Sheesh.

(via reddit) Sums it up. The BBC, a news outlet. American cable news, a wankfest of commercial crap.

My aunt alerted me to the upcoming Pi Day, 3/14/15. You have some time to prepare to celebrate, at 9:26:53, when that day rolls around. Cool.

I love dates like that. I like that Mona was born on one of the last odd dates we’ll see for a loooong time, 9/11/1999.

Sad, sad news. Gene Porter, the man who made The Man, passed away.

Gene Porter ran Dixie’s, an excellent BBQ in Bellevue, WA. Run out of an old garage, with a limited menu, and you eat at picnic tables in the parking lot. Mr. Porter would then roam the parking lot with a beat-up little pot of The Man, verbally abusing anyone who made eye contact.

Basically he would question your integrity, your manhood, your worthiness to be where you were, if you didn’t try The Man. If you consented to try it, he would switch to colorfully informing you that you are waaay too pathetic to try The Man. Yeah, baby.

Dixie’s was where we would take out-of-town guests, to let them take the measure of themselves. The Man would mess you up: I like spicy food, but one drop of The Man would turn an entire 520 Special into a furnace that you eat. It was great time.

Sad to hear about Mr. Porter. Condolences to his family, and everyone who goes to Dixie’s for the first time from now on.

Order one DVD from them, and they will spam you for the rest of your life. They used to email me promotions every month or so, which, because I had ordered from them once, I would just trash. But since it has been a while, and I got two in one week, I decided to opt out of their mailings. Went to the website, opted out.

That, of course, made the promotional emails start coming every day. Opted out a few more times, no dice. Checked the account I created on their site, and discovered that, under account settings, there’s no place to say “don’t mail me”. Yeah, that bodes ill.

So I started spamcanning their mails, the shitbags. And yet a few have sneaked through my spam filters. Wow, what a way to drive me away, and shout about how shitty you are.

You don’t have insurance. You go to the hospital and there’s a $10k bill. What do you do? You pay $10k or you go to jail. Now you may very easily be dropped by your insurance, but whatever.

You have insurance. You go to the hospital and there’s a $10k bill. What does the insurance company do? Tells the hospital that they’ll pay $2k. The hospital says, “OK.” The hospital gets $2k for the care you were provided, and no one goes to jail.

This is the crux of why this individual-based insurance healthcare system is fucked up. People are powerless in this system, and are completely screwed by prices that aren’t real prices, they’re negotiating positions between corporate giants.

Fucked. Up.

Science writer Simon Singh is being sued by the British Chiropractic Association because he called chiropractic treatment for things like asthma “bogus”. He’s totally right, and chiropractic – the real deal, not the basically valid physical therapy that one often finds – is looney tunes witchcraft. Like acupuncture, it’s all about unobservable energy in the body, and vague concepts like balance. Whatever.

To have a real scientist call your crap bogus, and respond by suing him instead of presenting evidence that he’s wrong, is a sure sign that you’re a snake oil salesman. BCA, DIAF.

As seen through Adobe’s eyes. 20 Years of Photoshop.

I’m halfway through the Circle of Greed, and I’m done. I’m sufficiently pissed off at all the stupid jumping/swinging puzzles. With the infrequent saves, you’re forced to recollect relics and such, and then try the stupid fail-and-die jumping puzzle again and again. Collect the crap, jump, fall, die, restart, collect the crap, jump, fall, die, repeat several times before you successfully manage to air-steer your character correctly while it’s changing freakish camera angles on you as you try to jump.

Guess what? Not fun. Bored now.

Trying to install a couple of games for Mona, Sims 3 and Spore, and the EADM in OSX is just awful, and I mean awful. It’s hideously slow, it doesn’t support interrupted downloads, and it bombs out without warning all the time. I’ve tried updating Sims 3 about ten times now.

I’ve investigated their website, and can find no links to downloadable updates. They mandate use of their own downloader. Argh. Talk about a step backwards in terms of flexibility, customer friendliness, and usability. I’m downloading like it’s 1992!