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I think it’s time to stop living in the past and admit that I never access CDs after I have ripped them — and stop devoting so many square feet of wall to making them easy to get to. Since I never do. Here in the 21st Century, they’re solely for backup.

—jwz: kissing the CD goodbye.

We just spent a couple of days stressing over where, and how, to store our CDs. Look, there they are, on the wall.

Arms Race

For the last several months (probably since some OS X update), I’ve had this bizarre thing going on with my iMac where DNS queries take a ridiculously long time to complete. Web browsing is painful, incoming ssh connections are punished (lots of reverse lookups), and so on. None of the other Macs under my administrative control have the issue, so I figured it was just something weird about my setup. Then I learned that this is one of those widespread problems Apple won’t own up to [link to one of many Apple forum threads on the topic]. Fan-fracking-tastic.

The Darth Side (think of it as an impeccably-written Very Secret Diary of Anakin Skywalker) finishes its run with a gripping bit of introspection—written just before ol’ helmet-hair leaves Endor to take Luke to the Emperor on the new Death Star. (Note that Mr. Vader’s anonymous ghostwriter has been revealed.)

But until we have more information, I propose that we place the following stickers on all high school physics textbooks:

“The theory of gravity is a controversial topic, and the student is encouraged to evaluate the full range of scientific view that exist, including why gravity generates such controversy.”

These stickers will serve a vital function. They will draw the student’s attention to the controversy and help the student avoid jumping to conclusions. After all, if the student jumped, it’s controversial whether or not he’d come back down.

(Note: Special-purpose neural equipment may be required to comprehend.)

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Finally, the mysterious midday garbage-strewing device is revealed!

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Just finished clearing out a couple of boxes full of computer crap (so labeled, in fact) that I’d been schlepping around for a couple of moves now. Seriously, how did I accumulate all this stuff?

• seven standard computer power cords
• automobile tire valve extenders, pk. of 4 (not strictly computer-related but still quite random)
• serial cables:
  • 9-pin to 9-pin
  • 9-pin to 25-pin
  • 25-pin to 25-pin
  • 25-pin to mini-DIN-9
• PowerBook 1400 Disk Tools disk (two copies?!)
• product documentation (Getting Started, ClarisWorks, …) and other freebie inserts (AOL, circa 1998!) from an original iMac (again, at least two copies, which is odd, because I never owned even one)
• stack of ~100 static-cling color Apple logo auto window decals (old-skool!)
• Zip drive (SCSI)
• SCSI cables:
  • 25-pin
  • 68K-PowerBook era HDI30-to-25-pin L-adapter
  • centronics-50 (which connects to nothing I own)
• Modems:
  • 14.4 kbps, US Robotics
  • 33.6 kbps, Lucky Generic Brand
• Weird-ass PB5xx video adapter (weird low-profile port to old-skool Apple Display port)
• Other stuff I can’t remember now

And that was just one box.