Ray Gun Robot

Dear Logitech;

I am the happy owner of your Cordless Desktop Wave set. It’s not flawless; I don’t like the un-Mac-like numpad layout with its lack of an equals key, and I would have preferred if the keyboard and mouse used the Bluetooth hardware my laptop already has instead of requiring me to attach a USB dongle. Still, I made the concession that I’m living in a Windows-centric world where people use weird numpad layouts and retailers are still shipping boxes without Bluetooth built in for some reason, so I’ve overcome it to enjoy the media buttons, the nice key response, the fact that I can “unplug” the devices just by yanking out the dongle when I want to take my laptop on the go (I’d still prefer Bluetooth, though), and the ergonomics - I’m not quite convinced that they’re as good as ergonomic keyboards costing two or three times as much, but along with my wrist braces, it seems to have helped me avoid further wrist pain since I got the keyboard. And the extra buttons on the mouse come in handy when fragging fools in Urban Terror. I enjoyed it so much that I got the wired version to use at work.

You ship software to configure your devices, and that software is Mac compatible; for that I thank you. I have some concerns about it, though. First, let me just say that when I came to work this morning, I was notified that an update for both Growl and your drivers, so I installed both. Now either the Growl update or your update made it so Growl started working again; I never had the interference problem on my laptop, but it struck my work machine, so it was good seeing those working again. (Could it be because my work machine is still using OS X 10.4?) So either you fixed that or Growl worked around it; if it was the former, then I thank you.

However, I was incredibly miffed when I realized that your software update reset the settings I had set for your devices. After restarting, the pointer moved glacially slow, and the scroll wheel was practically useless. And it’s an absolutely stupid default to have the scroll wheel click mapped to double-clicking the left button instead of, you know, the actual standard center mouse button. I mean, really?

I guess it’s kind of my fault, though. I could have saved myself the few minutes of restarting and reconfiguring if I had been smart enough to remember that the same thing happened to me when I upgraded your software on my home machine a few days prior… and a few months prior…

So here’s the deal. Figure out how to make your software not wipe out my settings when I upgrade it. This shouldn’t be hard, since many other programs (including other driver-y things) that I have on my Mac are capable of this. Okay? Okay.

Surely I can’t be the only one who has noticed this similarity in ugliness.

When you’re taking visual cues from the Big M, something is wrong…

I like those kinds of weird movies that mess with your head. The ones with plot twists and turns and unpredictability; where you’re given the whole story one piece at a time and it’s never certain how they’re going to fit together in the end. Two movies I saw this weekend courtesy of NetFlix fit that bill, and I’d recommend them to everyone… of a certain age, anyway.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is further proof that Jim Carrey is at his best in a serious role. He plays a meek, timid guy whose life is turned upside-down when he meets an outspoken punk rock drunkard of a woman and falls madly in love with her - so when he goes to visit her at work one day and she acts like she has no idea who he is, he’s quite upset. He finds out that she had gone though a procedure in which all of her memories of him had been erased, so it was like she had never met him before. He opts for the same procedure so that he can get over his heartbreak; after taking a narcotic, he falls unconscious and the technicians go to work erasing his memory. However, during the procedure, he regains consciousness - though not the ability to move or speak - and relives his memories of her as they are wiped from his mind. He decides he doesn’t want to forget his dream woman after all - but he’s powerless to stop the complete erasure of his memories. Or is he?

I actually saw Being John Malkovich back in college; I think I rented it back then too. I couldn’t remember much about it, but I remember liking it, so I rented it again. This flick is about a burned-out puppeteer who gets a job filing on the 7½^th floor of an office building in New York. Things get weird, though, when he discovers a portal behind a filing cabinet that, when entered, allows a person to live life in the mind of real-life actor John Malkovich. Initially he schemes with his sultry chain-smoking co-worker to charge people $200 a pop to live life in a famous actor’s mind for fifteen minutes, but when his wife tries the portal and becomes addicted to the experience of being John Malkovich - and falls in love with his business partner while in John’s body - his life starts falling apart and he uses his puppeteering skills to become John Malkovich full-time.

Both of these flicks are rated R, with good reason, so keep the kids away. But if you’re in the mood for a flick that’s a bit off of Hollywood’s standard predictable pap, give one of these a rent.

(On another note, how can the weekend be almost over already? Didn’t it just start a few minutes ago?)

Dear everyone who produces DVDs;

I have been enjoying your products a lot recently since I’ve rediscovered NetFlix. Between that and my game consoles, I no longer miss cable. However, we need to have a little chat about the workings of your product.

You see, when I rent or buy a DVD, I am buying it because I wish to view the movie or TV show it contains. I understand that DVDs need menus so we can change languages or whatever. However, the menus should be just menus; they are not content in and of themselves.

What I’m getting at is that any time I have to watch some cheap animation or - even worse - a series of clips from the actual movie/TV show before I can get to the menu where I can actually start playing the movie/TV show, those are wasted seconds. I’m not being entertained; I’m not being informed. It’s like the cheap freezer pizza of media; neither nourishing nor tasty. Just take me to the damn menu as soon as I put the disc in.

Last night, I watched Night at the Museum (perfect example of how crap editing and pacing can ruin a good idea, by the way). On that disc, there was actually an interstitial screen before I could get to the menu. That’s right, I had to wait for an animation to finish before it would let me click a “Go to menu” button, and then it played another animation before it brought up the actual menu that had “Play” on it. What’s up with that crap?

Imagine all the millions of man-hours worldwide waiting for DVD menus to appear…

I expect this problem to be rectified immediately.

Love, your bestest friend, Garrett Albright.

I wanted to make a post today on how I overcame Drupal’s lack of ability to notify me when someone posts a comment by instead setting up a web feed of comments using Views, but instead, I filled out that “About me” page that was just a placeholder moments before now. It’s the latest abridged version of my life story. Check it out.

Drupal’s feeds don’t work in SigFeeder. Lame. I should probably rewrite SigFeeder using Drupal some time, but unlike setting up the Drupal version of this blog, that’s definitely not going to be a one-day affair… not even a one-weekend affair.

Maybe I’ll do the comments feed thing tomorrow, though if you’re familiar with Views 2’s weird new interface, you can probably figure it out yourself.