Great Feature, Stupid Limitation

Like a good little Apple fangirl, I promptly updated my iPhone to 1.1.3, and happily and quickly customized my home screen(s), added webclip icons (including making a custom one for THIS blog, check it out you iPhoners!), and thrilled to the *reasonably* accurate location finder in Maps.

Software updates: yay!

But. As we speak I'm downloading a rental of The Simpsons Movie. I'll load it up on my iPhone so that I'll have something to watch on my bus ride this weekend if I get bored of listening to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me while the scenery rolls by. The catch is that once I start watching it, I have to finish watching it within 24 hours. So, for example, I can't watch half the movie on my way out of town and the other half on the way back.

THAT IS JUST STUPID. Let me repeat: the 24 hour window to watch a rental that is available for 30 days is STUPID. In case I failed to be quite clear: this restriction is DUMB, IDIOTIC, and downright BRAINDEAD.

I cannot see how this limitation solves any concern that either Apple or the movie studios might have about piracy. It's just pointless. And aggravating.

Desperately Needing Redesign

The user experience of cremation (for mourners, of course, not the deceased) is appallingly bad. This is the second time I've been through it, and I was once again outraged by how awful it was.

Your last experience of a loved one should not include someone dressed in shabby janitorial clothing. It should not involve machines that look like they more properly belong in a Nazi concentration camp or an execution chamber on death row.

While I'm sure there are some engineering and safety issues to be dealt with, there is simply NO EXCUSE for how poorly this extremely significant moment in vulnerable people's lives is handled.

It made me quite angry. For a second time.

Again

Nothing to see here. I'm an idiot.

Going to Albuquerque

I've decided that I need to be in Albuquerque for my Dad's cremation. It just isn't right for my sister to have to deal with this alone. I'll be back on Wednesday.

Gone

Harold Tovish (July 31, 1921 - January 4, 2008)

My father died this morning in Albuquerque, NM. He was a creative, intelligent, funny, and sometimes difficult man, who was loved and admired by many.

We will be planning a Memorial Service for friends and family to be held in Boston some time in the coming months.

Found Poetry

Okay, here's a meme for you all that I just made up, which riffs off the previous one. Use the aforementioned Random Quotes page and weave the final words of each quotation, in order, into a poem. The first line is the title.

The Future Invades Our Lives

Keep in the sunlight
Get off the ground
From blind belief in another

In lunatic asylums
It has been a fine day
You have tried to make it precise

If you find yourself up there
Wonderful
Be a nonconformist.

[Sources:

Change is the process by which the future invades our lives. ~ Alvin Toffler;

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at de sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums. ~ G. K. Chesterton

Wait until it is night before saying that it has been a fine day. ~ French Proverb

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise. ~ Bertrand Russell

I have just returned from Boston. It is the only sane thing to do if you find yourself up there. ~ Fred Allen

Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful. ~ A. R. Ammons

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson]

Here's another one:

Thinking Will Turn Into A Tune

Our individuality
Being an entrance somewhere else
For each other

Out at once
The truth
Took to blossom

Won't get much sleep
We change the world
Being thought unjust.

And one more (this is fun!):

A Way To Explore It

Obscurity is forever
According to our belief

Enjoy the work that you're doing
For general consumption

To fail in so many different ways
I am
Prepared for life

Among his opponents
We who inhabit the body lack.

Dada Rock Album Cover Meme

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band. (Fish Counter)


2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album. ("What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly." Thomas Paine)


3. A Creative Commons licensed photo* from Flickr will be your album cover. (photo by kevinch)


4. Use your favorite graphics software to throw them together, and post the result.

Meme via Chocolate & Vodka.

*The original version of this meme called for the 4th image from Flickr's "Most Interesting" page, but unless you find that photo JUST HAPPENS to be licensed for this kind of use, you should refrain, even for a goofy meme like this. Respect copyright, peoples!

Happy New Year!

It's a new day, it's a new dawn.

Many thanks, once again, to the lovely Kelly (and her fabulous family) for feeding me the requisite black-eyed peas to ensure a prosperous new year. I'm already in rich in friends... now a little filthy lucre wouldn't go amiss.

May 2008 be a blessing to us all.