Entries from June 2007 ↓

When I first got my MacBook Pro, I was a little flummoxed. How was my 85GB iTunes library going to work with my 80GB hard drive? So I got a 250GB USB drive, connected it to the XP machine, and siphoned off the whole library. I used a grep tool to find and replace all instances of “C:\Documents and Settings\Dan\My Music\iTunes Music” with “MYNEWUSBDRIVE::iTunes”, and when I got everything back together, it all worked nice and peachy.

I decided, though, that USB was too slow (I was using a hub), and then determined that I just didn’t like being tethered to an external drive whenever iTunes was open. I went through the same process (including grepping and finding and replacing) and restored my library to the hard drive of the XP machine. (This has advantages: the XP machine is on all day and connected, so it can grab podcasts. Any downloaded music pretty much comes through the XP machine anyway, and the power on the USB ports seems more reliable. If you’ve even closed the lid on a MacBook while an iPod was syncing or charging - heck, if you’ve ever gone to the Apple store and seen the majority of the iPods trying to shake themselves out of a “Do not disconnect” loop, you know what I mean.)

Of course, now the library is bigger, I depend and rely on my Mac more and more, they sell movies in the store, and there’s just no way that a MacBook drive could ever keep up with it. But, all about the convenience as I am, I figured the XP machine was just becoming the main fileserver of a home network - I’d pull MP3s wirelessly off the network like the cool kids do.

That meant sharing my MP3 folder across the network, but that’s something I already do. It also meant grepping through that stupid file again, right?

Turns out not so much. If you take an iTunes library file (it’s the one called “iTunes Library”, or, on a PC, “iTunes Library.itl”), and you move it to a new machine, it’ll complain that it can’t find any files. But if you go into “iTunes music folder location” and give it the name of the folder where it can find those MP3s, it’ll suddenly fly straight, apparently running that find and replace automatically. It said “updating library” for about 20 minutes over the wireless connection, but it worked, and less than 15 minutes later I was cursing myself - first, for waiting so long, and second, for thinking that I could keep an active connection leeching 320kpbs MP3s over a wireless connection that’s also trying to keep the phone line and everyone else’s internet afloat.

You might say that iTunes has a perfectly good “share playlists over the network” feature, but it doesn’t let me edit, modify, or even rate songs in the library. (It doesn’t bump the play counts - but that’s just a pet peeve.) You can look up people who’ve tried to throw their libraries on networks, or even Amazon’s S3, but I think the iTunes part of the digital hub works best when everything is tied down, or when the wireless machines are truly acting as satellites and not pretending they’re in constant contact with the base.

So the whole thing bombed out, but since I hadn’t actually changed any files, I just closed down iTunes on the Mac here and started it back up on the XP machine. As I said, it’s probably better that way.

Hey everyone. I really did quit my job. My last day included a well-attended lunch at a Chinese buffet, which was nice except for it didn’t summarize in a tidy hour everything bitter and sweet about leaving a job of eight years. I thought of it kind of as a birthday party for a while - everyone is paying attention to you, and you’re sort of a celebrity, but it represents the end of something, too. In that way, it’s like a graduation party, except you’re the only one graduating, and you have to be very diplomatic about the very act of graduating - almost apologetic, because it’s impolite to be as happy as I was about leaving. In the end, it was kind of like attending my own funeral, except nobody spoke.

My new job is great. They weren’t exactly ready for me on that first Monday, so they told me to show up on Wednesday and get paid for the whole week anyway. I really am not expecting to get paid for bench time ever again, but it was a great way to transition to our new life.

This first assignment is a six-week thing, which is kind of a bummer, because these new guys are way cool and there’s a lot to work on. I could easily see spending six months there, but if you start thinking like that, then you’re talking six years and dealing with the recruiters to place you somewhere else, starting every interview with “I’ve been at my current job as long as I can remember, and…”

I actually wouldn’t at all mind 6 week assignments, but the end of this one is going to mean interviewing for another one, because I’m not a known commodity. (In a year or two, this cool place can call back and say “is Dan available?” and I’ll head right over.)

Anyway, that’s work. I’ll let you know when it’s over. You and I can have lunch.

Two or three stories related to having two days off: I listened to a ton of Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” Official Mixtape, and for whatever reason, really dug it. If that makes me less “hard” in your eyes, the leak of the new Queens of the Stone Age is also crazy. That band inspires me.

There’s even new They Might Be Giants out, if you’re on iTunes, because it came out there six weeks before it’ll be in stores. They call that release schedule “experimental” but I think it’s just ridiculous. The CD will come with bonus material, which I suppose at one point was delivered as “B-sides” but is referred to in official emails as “favorites from the podcast”. Their podcast is excellent, by the way - I pretty much never listen to podcasts and they deliver the goods. The record is being described by enthusiastic iTunes reviewers as their best work in 15 years and a return to form in the full-band era. I did not come to that conclusion after three listens, but I didn’t really come to any conclusion.

But back to my two days off. I decided, since
a) I wasn’t going to really see anyone for two days, and
b) since I’d gone through four Rockstars a little faster than I’d wanted to, and
c) because my silly, nothing-to-worry-about, caffeine-makes-it-worse irregular heartbeat had my attention, and
d) I was going through a big-deal life-change anyway,

HEY! why not give up caffeine. I mentioned something about caffeine withdrawal around my grandma a year ago, complaining that it’s an unpleasant two weeks, but sometimes you have to do it, and she replied that it couldn’t be worse than two or three days, if that. It was two or three days, if that. The great thing is that I’m not fumbling around blind for Diet Coke (of all things) before I’ve taken a shower or put on a shirt. I never derived much pleasure from that ritual, I just knew I had to do it or I’d take something’s fucking head off. The flip-side of being out of the cycle at the moment is that I could snap at any time. So far, I haven’t.

Next post: games, maybe.

My first day was anti-climactic. On Friday, the people at my first assignment told me that they couldn’t possibly start me until Wednesday, so I better stay home. I read up on ASP.NET (I’m definitely into over-preparing now), went to the gym, made dinner, and moved some furniture. (Moving furniture is the surest sign of cabin fever, so the gym visit was really just therapeutic.)

Oh, and Twitter readers already know that I gave up caffeine for today. It’s probably been a year since I skipped a day, but after a Rockstar on Thursday, a Rockstar on Friday, a Rockstar on Saturday (to take care of my hangover, naturally), and Caribou yesterday, I am seeing those diminishing returns that stimulant addicts talk about. If I can stay clean until my job starts Wednesday, coffee / Rockstar might just be a weekend treat. (Or, if I resort to a daily Diet Coke, I’ll be no worse off than my wife, who doesn’t have any caffeine-related health concerns.)

Anyway, there’s a note to let you know what happened today.