Groovymarlin.com

I have posted previously on my love for my sexy MacBook. Technically, I bought it for my freelance work, and I’ll be using it for a deduction on my taxes, but I have to admit I use it for my personal stuff as much as work. There’s nothing better for editing movies and photos (I have some awesome footage of my daughter from last weekend to upload soon). I also got a game for it, The Sims Life Stories, which to be honest I’ve only played once so far. (Jeez, who has time?) This past weekend I finally bought Parallels, and started installing a Windows XP VM. Once I have it up and running, I anticipate using my Windows PC even less than I do now! Maybe it really will become a gaming-only machine.

Unfortunately, the extra copy of Windows XP that I had available (from a no-longer used Dell tower that I bought a few years ago) was only SP1. So I tried to download and install SP2 from Windows Update. What a hassle! I think I really screwed the thing up, as it’s not behaving right at all. So today I bit the bullet and ordered an OEM copy of Windows XP SP2 from eBay, in order to start over again. And since I was already in the upgrading mood, I bought more RAM. The black MacBook comes with 1gig to start, which is generally enough, but when you’re running VMs, especially Windows VMs, it always helps to have more. I got a great deal from MemorySuppliers, 2 gig of RAM for only $130! As I recall, that’s cheaper than it would have cost me to upgrade when I bought the laptop!

I’m also in the process of setting up my home office again, with much help from a professional organizer (who just happens to be a friend!). Once I get it set up, I’ll be able to hook up any of my laptops to this phat 22-inch LCD that my husband got a great deal on from Office Depot (somehow he got this thing for like $200). He tried it out, but the game he plays obsessively (Battlefield 2142) won’t support the widescreen resolution he wanted to use properly…so he went back to the old 19″ that he’s been “borrowing” from me for the past two years! Is he crazy, or what?

In more unfortunate developments, the office thing is sort of on hold while I figure out how exactly to reconfigure it. It’s a large spare bedroom that I’m using, so I’m going to set it up as a combination office and craft room. I plan to have two walls full of shelving, and multiple work surfaces. However, figuring out exactly how to do that is challenging. I’m trying to plan an elfa system from the Container Store, but they are overdue getting back to me with a plan/estimate, so I’m stuck. I don’t want to just go ahead and get ClosetMaid stuff from Home Depot until I’ve seen the estimate from Container Store, so now I must wait. And while I wait, I shred…and shred…and shred. Wow, I had a lot of useless paper laying around.

I can’t believe it’s time for yet another rant, but dammit if people don’t just keep pissing me off. Today the object of my ire is Expedia, the travel site. My husband and I offered to fly my mother-in-law in for a weekend this spring, so I wanted to go online and check for flights. The first site I tried to load was Expedia - and instead of seeing it I got warned to enable cookies.

Ooookay.

Usually I have Firefox prompt me about whether or not to accept cookies. What can I say? I’m paranoid. So anyway, I went into my Firefox settings and made sure that expedia’s URL was entered as an exception to “always allow” cookies. Then I reloaded the page…and got the warning again.

Seems that Expedia feels I should change my security settings completely, and accept all cookies no matter what, before they’ll let me use their site. I’m not kidding - their “advice” says to change your security zone. (Check out the offending page right here.) Then I noticed something else…the instructions given are for IE, and a link is labeled “click here for help with older versions of IE as well as other browsers (e.g. Netscape and Macintosh).” I clicked on that link and perused the list of browser instructions…IE 3, 4, 5, 6; Netscape Navigator; AOL…what’s missing from this list? That’s right, the only browser that makes any sense, Firefox! It’s like in Expedia’s Wacky World, there is no Firefox, it just doesn’t exist!

Kind of how in Groovymarlin’s Real World, Expedia no longer exists. Thanks anyway, tools. I’ll use Orbitz instead.

(Hint to web developers and companies with a web presence — if you want me to accept your cookies, tell me I need to accept them and let me accept them on a by-site basis. Do not ever presume to tell me to completely change my browser settings just for you, or I’ll tell you to go to hell.)

Well, no. Not really switched, exactly. However, I am now among the ranks of Mac users (and lovers) and I’m really enjoying it. Last week I bought a sexy, black MacBook at the local Apple store. I needed it for some freelance testing work that I’m doing, and I figured I could write it off on my taxes next year. And while I am definitely using it for my freelance work, I’m also enjoying it immensely. It’s small and light, yet powerful, and it runs like a dream. The only application that’s crashed on it so far is Firefox (I love my Mac but I really don’t like Safari very much). The built-in camera is so nifty, especially for unique applications like Delicious Library. I’m really starting to get the hang of the navigation now, and having a two-button mouse (or in this case, trackball) plugged in helps a lot for a veteran Windows user like me.

So I haven’t technically switched, because I’m still using (and loving) my PC (I’m typing this post on it now). But I definitely have a new appreciation for the Mac.

So I’m using this neat little web-based tool called “Joe’s Goals” to motivate myself to do some things and keep some resolutions. Here is my “badge” of results for this week so far. It’s really kind of cool. I have four goals set up. They are:

- Exercise
- Update blog
- Bring lunch
- Drink water

Is it working? I don’t know…I must admit, it does remind me to do things that I planned to. You can set the thing to email you if you’ve gone a certain number of days without updating your progress, which is kind of a nice little nag. I’m not terribly strict with myself, so it’s pretty easy to meet most of these goals, most of the time. For example, when I stop at Target in the morning and buy a sandwich to take to work and eat for lunch, I count that as “bring lunch,” because it’s much cheaper and better than the crap that I otherwise end up buying at the food place in the building. And as far as “drink water” - that’s totally open to interpretation, with no specific goal, just more of a reminder to myself to drink some fluids (I’m really bad at this for some reason).

Speaking of fluids, here’s a random observation: this afternoon I noticed that my car smells like coffee. I think it’s because I’ve spilled my Starbucks in there so many times. Pathetic.

Last night as I was playing The Burning Crusade, I had FX on in the background, and I caught a little bit of their new series “Dirt” out of the corner of my eye. This is the show that’s about a tabloid magazine, starring Courtney Cox, and supposedly produced by her and her husband David Arquette. I’m sorry I can’t give you complete details, because I can’t access FX Networks’ ridiculous website - seems my version of Flash Player on this computer is too old. Which brings me to the two things I want to rant about: the show itself, and the asinine website.

The show: from what I saw, it’s just weird. I saw a photographer hallucinate that he was living with, and having graphic sex with, a dead woman; then later he helped her labor and deliver…kittens? Further, one of his assignments this week was to take a picture of a dead rapper’s disembodied head, now hidden in a…fake cask of wine? Huh? And finally, Courtney’s character gave a toast at her mom’s wedding or something that mentioned the anniversary of her father hanging himself many years prior. Overall, the show was awash in surreality and weirdness — not necessarily a bad thing, but it left me feeling pretty confused. The reviews haven’t been terribly kind. Personally, I can’t decide if I’m kind of annoyed and disgusted by the whole thing, or intrigued enough to want to give it a chance. Dirt is currently taking the place of another weird-yet-good FX show, Nip/Tuck, which took me a LONG time (like three seasons) to warm up to, and I’m honestly still not sure that I love.

I think Slate’s review perfectly sums up how I feel about Dirt so far:

The show, a fantasy about tabloid magazines, might have been a madcap riff on scandal and compromise, frothy with soap and frothing with bile, if developed by producers with the right sense of humor or, in fact, any discernible sense of humor at all. But Dirt is far too busy cultivating its dour heavyosity to bother with funny business, and we must push away the thought of pleasure and poke at the dish we’re served, which is cold, bitter, and bloating, with a gritty aftertaste. Dirt is quick-moving but painfully solemn, somehow constituting a plodding romp. At their very best, the first three episodes play like bad Kubrick.

Yep, that’s spot-on. And here’s my second rant…

The website: is a prime candidate for “Web Pages That Suck,” because it depends COMPLETELY on the user having a recent version of the Flash Player installed. There is no html-only alternative (that I could find, anyway), no plug-in check that redirects you to a plainer text version of the site. It’s all Flash or nothing, baby, and that’s just plain stupid. I’d like to find out more about Dirt - but I can’t. Heck, I’d like to find out more about the new series apparently featuring Eddie Izzard that I saw promoted several times during Dirt - but I can’t.

This basically confirms my suspicion that other than rerunning Buffy episodes every day, FX kind of sucks (and even those got moved from the nice afternoon timeslot to the 7am ghetto).