Devin on Earth

If you're already having the kind of day where you feel a bit dizzy, and you're walking through the parking lot at your place of employment after coming back from lunch, do not under any circumstances close your eyes for any reason.

No, I didn't fall, but I should have.

One of my friends on LiveJournal posted a meme. Now, I'm normally not the kind to participate in various memes, but I like this one: go here and pick out five random quotes that somehow resonate with you (keep going until you find the right five), then post them. Here are mine:

• If you want to catch something, running after it isn't always the best way.
     Lois McMaster Bujold, "Borders of Infinity", 1989
• Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.
     Ralph Charell
• Forgiveness does not always lead to a healed relationship. Some people are not capable of love, and it might be wise to let them go along with your anger. Wish them well, and let them go their way.
     Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, July 7, 2003
• Women and men have to fight together to change society - and both will benefit... Partnership, not dependence, is the real romance in marriage.
     Muriel Fox
• Never tell evil of a man, if you do not know it for certainty, and if you know it for a certainty, then ask yourself, 'Why should I tell it?'    Johann K. Lavater

Your turn! I'm pondering whether I should tag anyone specifically; it only seems appropriate to do so as an appropriate evolution off of LJ. If I were to tag anyone, I'd tag Stephanie, Paul, and someone who claims to be not so clever (but lies).

Steph alerted me to the existence of a very cool product -- a dock for Macbook Pro laptops that stands them vertically. This has two advantages: saves desktop space and promotes better cooling. Macbook Pro machines are industrious heat generators and you have to be really careful about what kind of surface you leave them on. I've found that mine will shut down or have BSODs (when running Windows) if I have it flat on a plastic or formica surface; wood seems to be okay. The best bet, though, is to put it on a little stand that elevates the rear of the laptop and allows air to cool the underside. So, yes, I was really keen to check this out.

What I found, however, was this dreck. I have to admit that it's a very sweet piece of machined aluminum; very pretty, matches the look of the Macbook Pro. However, this is not a dock; it's a stand with delusions of $305 grandeur. This is a dock; note the integrated plugs. That handy little lever at the top moves all of the plugs into matching position on the sides of the Macbook, allowing you to quickly and easily put the laptop in place and make connections (and here's the important bit) without having to manually plug and unplug all of the various cables you're using every time you put the laptop in or take it out. It's not as sexy, and it takes up more desk room (quite a bit more, which is one of the reasons I don't have mine actually in use yet), but it's functional.

That other block of aluminum? That's designer silliness. Sadly, I bet far too many Mac folks will fall for it.

Edit: okay, looking closely at the Balmuda page shows that they never call it a dock, simply a stand. Kudos for them -- however, it makes the price tag even more mind-boggling. Razzes to Apartment Therapy Unplugged for the mis-identification.

Man. Just shoot me now, because not only am I about to blog about Miley Cyrus, I'm about to defend her.

Yup, that's right. I, as a parent of a girl about to be a teenager, am willing to go on record and defend the already infamous photo shoot which has been characterized as the result of villainous Vanity Fair exploiting a minor to sell magazines.

What in the world can I be thinking?

Well, for starters, her parents and other advisors were on the set with her. There's another picture from the same shoot that's also drawing a lot of ire -- one person I read described it as a "disturbingly erotic photo...like one of those old Calvin Klein ads, except with incest" -- showing Miley reclining on the lap of her father, Billy Ray. I've seen the picture; I think it's disturbing, but not because it's somehow evoking incestuous thoughts. No, I just don't like Vanity Fair's visual style; they have this uncanny way of taking normal people and making them look alien. They reduce people to cold, otherwordly icons, rather than capture whatever it is about them that makes them human. All the kerfuffle about this picture is, in my mind, predicated on the growing bias and backlash towards males, the same socially acceptable prejudice that allows airlines to reseat male passengers who are sitting next to unaccompanied minors.

He's her father, y'know? By all accounts, he's a damned good one. He's involved with her career; he's got a good reputation for not just being a co-star on her Disney show, but for being a parent. I've never even heard a whiff of accusation against him before now, so why is it all the sudden acceptable to characterize a picture of a father and daughter as "incestuous"?

Oh, that's right. Because this particular teenage girl is owned by Disney. Shame on Miley for being a growing young woman who is just 3 years away from being a legal adult. Shame on Billy Ray and his wife for actually being strong parents who feel entitled to make decisions on Miley's behalf even if they don't always correspond with Disney's interests. Don't they know that they should have just ceded control of her career and future over to Disney? Disney would have preserved her in amber to make sure she never displayed even a hint of sexuality (with one or two exceptions noted below) until the day she turned 18. That strategy has worked so well for so many other Disney youth -- Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Hayden Panettiere come to mind. They're all healthy young ladies who have a responsible outlook on what it means to be an adult in an industry that promotes people based on their inner qualities.

And let's be honest -- Disney doesn't appear want its stars to have any healthy sense of sexuality at all, even when they're older than 18. Look at the recent kerfuffle with Vanessa Hudgens, who was 19 when she had pictures taken that Disney disapproved of. This smacks of outright hypocrisy on Disney's part; they're aiming squarely at the tween and teen crowd, and you can bet that "I want to be just like ______" is a large part of their planned market appeal. Ever taken a close look at the Lolita-ish designs of the Hannah Montana clothing lines? Ever heard a group of tween girls giggling about how some Disney boy is so "hot"? (I have.) Heck, ever watched Miley's stage show? The choreography is blatantly sexual. This does not match the "clean-cut" appearance that Disney seems to want its actors to portray so they can play the "family friendly" card, but somehow, nobody at Disney publicly protests these displays.

I'm betting that the genesis of Miley's apology was just after Disney's PR people saw the Vanity Fair photos and freaked. By all reports, Disney lawyers earn their pay; they write tight contracts. I don't even pretend to have inside knowledge, but I'm guessing that Miley and parents weren't "embarrassed" by the photos until Disney informed them that they were displeased and that Things Must Be Fixed. Is Disney really outraged on behalf of Miley, or are they worried about her earning potential somehow being diminished?

Now, having said all that, would I allow my daughter to take those pictures? At 11, not just no -- hell, no! At 15, probably not. But then again, I wouldn't let my daughter get up on stage and dance some of the routines that Miley Cyrus dances, either. Is the Cyrus family wrong to let Miley do it? Tough question, but the answer is ultimately theirs, not mine. I'm not Miley's parent, I'm Treanna's parent. My job as a father -- and from all reports, Billy Ray seems to have this one figured out pretty well -- is to teach my kids how to be healthy, responsible adults. As humans, we learn best from a combination of positive and negative reinforcement; some of our best-remembered lessons come from our failures. As my kids grow older, if I can't extend them increasing amounts of freedom and larger opportunities to earn and display responsibility, I'm doing something wrong. I can't protect them from consequences, but I must do my best to teach them about consequences before they learn them the hard way -- and then if they make the wrong choices, I have to let them take those consequences and meet them appropriately. I suspect Miley's learning all sorts of unintended consequences from this photo shoot, one of which is, "Don't cross Disney."

Stupid website, but it gives me a chance to taunt my co-worker Kevin. This morning I got a puzzled e-mail from him, asking me why this picture of me in Sydney from February (yes, that's Sydney, Australia; we were there for training for work) was the most-viewed picture in his online galleries (warning, probably not a worksafe gallery). I have no clue, but I think it's damned funny.

Kevin's a hard-core picture nerd; he's got a wireless card for his digital cameras that will automatically use any nearby open WiFi connection to upload pictures to his Web gallery. This means that on a trip he's usually got pictures uploaded before he gets back to his hotel, let alone before he gets home. That's pretty cool, even if (like me) you aren't inclined to take gigabytes of pictures everywhere you go.

On a break this afternoon with co-workers Jon, Kevin, and Ryan, the idea for a new reality show was born. I hate "reality" TV -- but I might watch this one.

It all started with Jon suggesting that it would probably be very entertaining to follow Wesley Snipes around prison, as he'd be likely to be jumping over tables and kicking drug dealers in the face. ("You're Wesley Snipes! What are you doing here?" "I killed vampires." "Cool!") Kevin chimed in with the idea of just putting cameras in and making it a reality show. Jon suggested adding Jean-Claude Van Damme to the mix. Ryan suggested that Christopher Walken needed to be in there somewhere, so I had to point out that he'd of course be the prison warden.

I also suggested that the show start immediately and run until December, just to give everyone an alternative to election nonsense. Oh, yeah, we'd get John McCain to host it.

Jon, bless his heart, has the perfect title: Snipe Hunt.

Email clients need to be more intelligent. For example, I can appreciate the Request Read Receipt feature that Outlook/Exchange and other email systems offer; it makes sense in a corporate environment, or when sending correspondence with business partners. However, all bets are off once you starting emailing the Internet in general. Why, oh why, do Outlook and Exchange continue to be so clueless about these wonderful things we call mailing lists?

It wouldn't be very hard at all for Outlook to notice when a message I've received comes from a real mailing list; they have all sorts of wonderful headers (at least, they do if they're compliant with RFCs) that easily distinguish them. It should then automatically change its behavior in several key ways:

1. Stop sending read receipt requests to that address. It's really bloody annoying to be reading along a mailing list and suddenly get the read receipt request dialog in my face, and all it does is make me think that the sender is an idiot.
2. Stop sending OOF (out of office/out of facility) messages to that address. That looks even dumber.
3. Offer to automatically create a new folder and rule to manage future messages from this list.

Dear iPod,

Over the years that I've had you (as your second owner), we've had our rocky times. You've worked well with both my Windows and Mac workstations -- that's a plus. Your battery life is damn near useless (and I understand that's not really your fault), but with the appropriate adapter therapy we've been able to work around that. I hardly ever use you with headphones, but that iTrip is a righteous score that allows you to rock the car, the house, and any other FM radio within distance. True, you're only a 3G classic model, but you've got 40GB and I've never even come close to running you out of space. All in all, we've been good for each other. Today, however, was something entirely different.

I now, of course, realize that you picking Bon Jovi's It's My Life when I was driving home through Woodinville was really a message. But I didn't get that message until after we got on to 522 through the funeral procession and slowly drove by the column of funeral-goers. Just as we drew even with the hearse, you switched to Chumbawumba's Tubthumping. Specifically, you blared the following line out the open windows:

I get knocked down, but I get up again
You're never going to keep me down.

That, dear iPod? Total awesome.

I was thinking about getting a newer model, but now? Now we'll see what we can do to replace that no-good battery of yours. You've still got years of life left in you with just a little TLC from me. You, iPod, rock.

Love,

Devin. 

All Hell is breaking loose in the Seattle area today because it's snowing.

Hello, people. We get a lot of rain here. This is the Pacific Northwest. There are real, honest-to-goodness volcanic mountains here (remember that lovely "view" thing you keep talking about to jack up your real estate?). Part of this means that during what is nominally known as "springtime" we get highly variable weather, including flurries of snow. This winter has been an unusually cold and wet winter, so the chances of us getting snow at the end of March are in fact higher (that is, 100%).

Here at work, we have big fat flakes mixed with rain, but the snow is not (yet) sticking like it is elsewhere in the Puget Sound (like the roads home, oh joy...) This led me to the following observation to a cow-orker: "It's not really snow, it's just rain with 64-bit extensions."
 

This has not been one of the best weeks I've had. That's not to say it's been all fire and brimstone -- it hasn't been an Old Testament kind of week -- but the victories and good things have been few and far between. One of them happened last night; I passed a needed certification test on my first try.

I just got word that my grandmother died. This is a call I've been expecting and would suck, except for the fact that she's been on the decline for a long time, including pretty severe memory loss. My immediate reaction was, "Thank goodness, it's finally over." A year or two ago, I was planning on driving down to see her (even though I knew that she wouldn't recognize me or remember who I was) and was pretty much told flat-out by my family not to bother. This was after several years of not making time to get down to see her before everything had slipped away, or writing letters on a regular basis.

So, yeah, I'm glad that her decline (and, at the end, physical suffering) has come to an end, and I'm glad that the family members who've invested such dedication into her these past several years may finally have a chance to get some semblance of normalcy back in their life, but I also feel more than a little guilty for being so short-sighted. I have awesome memories of spending time with this woman back when I was a kid -- she was fun, full of fire and life, and the only one I know who played multi-hand Solitaire (or Uno) to draw blood. Yet I don't grieve for her now...because that woman already died many years ago. What left us today was her shell.

I don't know how I should be reacting right now.

For the record, Aly & AJ's Potential Breakup Song is one hell of an earworm, but it sounds really good on my work desktop's speaker/subwoofer. I've got it cranked up loud before anyone else gets here.

I have finally found out what is more annoying than getting your ass kicked online by a nine year-old kid -- getting your ass kicked by an eighteen year-old girl who keeps giggling over voice chat every time she gets a kill. I mean, damn, girl's got skills, but does she really have to be quite so vicious about it?

Dear Big-Ass Bank,

Many years ago, we switched our accounts to you from one of your competitors because they had crappy customer service and you did not. In fact, your customer service rocked our socks off. Sadly, it has become clear that you're more interested in trying to grab customers from other banks than you are in retaining your existing customers. In fact, you are consistently engaging in extremely short-sighted "cost-cutting" practices while other banks are rejecting those same practices because they lose customers.

As an example, your phone menus. I should not have to be the Amazing Kreskin to figure out how to get to live human with my question that does not fit into any of your carefully thought-out categories. I can accept having to type in my account number before I get to that live human, but what the fuck is this "Telephone Access Code" you're now requesting? How come I didn't get a nifty brochure in the mail telling me all about it and how it would help keep my personal information safe from big bad identity thieves? Please don't expect me to believe that you care about the environment, because you don't hesitate to send me all sorts of paper and brochures about other items.

And since I've brought up identity theft, I have to say that while I appreciate the thoughtful tips you printed on the back of the paper that my new debit card came with, I feel compelled to point out that it does no fucking good when you insist on using Social Security numbers as default settings for access codes, PINs, and pretty much any other type of verification question you think up. Come on, seriously people -- the SSN is one of the main targets for identity theft precisely because you idiots (and your fellow idiots in the financial verticals) insist on misuing the SSN as identification. Have you ever even looked at a SSN card? It says right on there in big fat type that the SSN is not to be used for identification purposes.

No, I don't care if everybody else does it. No, I especially don't care if it's convenient. I'm the customer here, not you; your convenience is second to my security. By misusing the SSN this way, you and other banks (and the credit agencies, and insurance companies, and pretty much everyone else who feels obliged to collect my personal data) have guaranteed that bad people want to steal that number -- it's the key that makes comprehensive identity theft even possible. Congratulations, you scallawags -- you've made it more convenient for the bad guys to get to my financial data than you have for me.

Thanks for nothing, bank. Please be assured that we will be looking over our options. It's clearly time for us to part ways; this relationship is no longer working for us. And yes, it's totally you -- not us.

Sincerely,

Devin L. Ganger
 

We found out today that Alaric has a second set of armpits.

No, it's true. You and I would call them "elbow joints" but in Alaric's world, they're "second armpits."

Bet you didn't know that.

E. Gary Gygax died yesterday at the age of 69.

They say that anything you do more than once is tradition. I guess that mine is to offer the words written by Annie Lennox, Howard Shore and Fran Walsh, as sung by Annie Lennox, at the end of The Return of the King:

Lay down your sweet and weary head
Night is falling; you’ve come to journey's end
Sleep now and dream of the ones who came before
They are calling from across the distant shore
Why do you weep? What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see all of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms, you're only sleeping

What can you see on the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea a pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home.

And all will turn to silver glass
A light on the water; all souls pass

Hope fades into the world of night
Through shadows falling out of memory and time
Don't say "We have come now to the end"
White shores are calling; you and I will meet again
And you'll be here in my arms, just sleeping

What can you see on the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea a pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home.

And all will turn to silver glass
A light on the water; Grey ships pass into the West

As I have no words of my own, perhaps this image will do:

in 160x120
in 320x240
in 640x480
in 800x600
in 1024x768
in 1280x1024

Feel free to download and use it; just please don't remove the copyright notice. Also, please feel free to share with others; please, though, just link them here instead of simply passing the files on. If you download it, I'd very much appreciate it if you'd leave me a quick comment.

WOrking on my latest book, Mastering System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, was a long process. However, Monday I got to experience my favorite part of the writing process -- getting the box from the publisher with the author's copies. There's just something cool about seeing the final physical product; I don't think I'll get tired of that feeling after my 20th, 40th, or even 100th book.

It's a good thing I have this memory to buoy my spirits; today has been a day jam-packed of small annoyances:

• I was out yesterday with a migraine (neck was jammed in tons of different places), making me super pissy. Today seems to be a ramp back down from Pissy Devin, rather than a huge improvement.
• Updating the sidebar of my blog (if you're reading this via RSS or LiveJournal feed, you won't see that sidebar) with the Amazon link was WAY harder than it really needed to be, involving having to reboot the damn blog server to get one little graphic to show up (iisreset didn't do the trick).
• Getting my new wireless headset (which I won in Sydney at the training conference) working was, again, more of a chore than it really needed to be.

Here's hoping the day gets better.

Recently, we decided to do something about a problem we've been noticing with our kids. While they're both avid readers, they both tend to re-read the same books -- tens of times serially if we'd let them. Alaric was not happy when we temporarily banned him from yet another end-to-end re-read of the Harry Potter series (by this point, he's easily read them three times more than I have), and for a week or so has been ignoring the assigned reading we gave him off of our bookshelves. He was probably hoping we'd forget.

Well, he finally picked up the book we told him to read -- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Pretty soon, he was hooked (just like we told him he'd be). He even told me we were right, so let's hear it for expanding horizons! If you haven't read it, the book is about a future Earth that has been united only by the existence of aliens, insect-like beings colloquially called the Buggers. We've had two wars with them, both won only at great odds and narrow margins, and a third is inevitable. Earth's military complex is so desperate for talented fleet commanders that they've set in place a process to detect, requisition, and train young children; an exceptional 8 year old will be taken into space to Battle School where he (or the occasional she) begins years of training. Ender, the main character, is younger than normal, but also more talented.

We knew that once he got started, he'd love it; the process of getting him to expand his horizons is sometimes a struggle, but usually worth the effort. However, in this case he returned the favor. If you've read the book, you know that one of the neat bits is the little quotes Card opens every chapter with. Many books do this, but in Ender's Game the quotes are snippets of conversation between minor adult characters in the book. With one exception, all of the major characters in the book are children, so these snippets give Card a way to fill the reader in on the full political situation of which the children are ignorant. They are designed to be tantalizing at first, only fully coming into focus after the major plot points begin to be revealed, and it usually takes a re-read or two to be fully conversant with who is speaking in these conversations. Alaric, at first, thought that the Buggers were holding these conversations! He pretty quickly realized his error, but that really got me thinking about how cool it would have been if Card had pulled something like that off...

...and now I'm wondering if I can work that idea into any of my stories. Hmm.

• Chilling at the conference.
• The lovely brownie-tart thingies they fed us today.
• My work blogs posts.
  

The speaker just said, and I quote, "regular expressions, which are fairly straightforward."

That's, um, well, interesting. And wrong.

So, I'm in Sydney for a training conference that I'm talking about in my work blog if you're interested. There's a lot of interesting small differences that have more of a mental impact to me than the big ones:

• The exit signs inside buildings are green with white letters. I'm used to the opposite.
• Didn't find a single country radio station. Of course, this could be because the alarm clock/radio in my hotel room is cheap.
• Speaking of hotel rooms, holy crap are they small! I'm having flashbacks to the really crappy hotel room in London from a couple of years back.
• Did I mention that the hotel rooms have a distinct lack of ornamentation? Very small, very functional, but it feels like living in a cupboard.
• Apartment buildings are painted interesting colors.
• Window dimensions are subtly off.
• They've got Taylor Swift's Teardrops on My Guitar on the muzak system here at the conference center. I noticed an interesting lyrics change: the line "it's just so funny" is "it's so damn funny" here. Apparently, in the United Nanny States of America, the terrorist will win if a 17-yo girl says "damn" in a country song.
• The magazine in my hotel room had Nicole Kidman on the cover, but I've not yet seen a single mention of Kylie Minogue.
• Speaking of Nicole Kidman, she's done two movies with Daniel Craig -- The Golden Compass and Invasion, which I watched on the plane. Basically another cover of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, only they wimped out on the ending.

If you like the Discworld novels, you'll think this is cool.

If you like cake, you'll think this is cool.

You might think this is cool anyway.

The Discworld as a cake

Thanks, Nick!
 

In just a few more hours, I'll be on my way to do something I've never done before -- cross the equator. I'm just going to kayak down to the big black line floating on top of the ocean, nip across, spin around counter-clockwise, then nip back home.

No, seriously -- I'm heading to Sydney, Australia with my cow-orker Kevin to a week-long training conference. I think I might be able to survive the flight. I leave Seattle on the evening of February 2 and land in Sydney on the morning of February 4. By my calculations, that's nearly 40 hours of time -- but due to the vagaries of the International Date Line, I'll experience far less of that (Sydney's 16 hours ahead of us). In effect, I will not exist for February 3. That's right, folks, I'll be completely non-existent for my 12th wedding anniversary. Don't worry, though; I've been aware of this for long enough to have made (and executed) plans and all the proper observances have been made; Steph will not be shortchanged.

Other than survive my time in time-zone limbo and the grueling plane flight, I'm hoping to meet up with a longtime net.friend and fellow SJGames freelancer and maybe even get to do the Harbour bridge climb. So, if you don't hear from me for a week, it's all good -- I'm having fun down in the land of the Southern Cross.

Whoa. I just realized, that if I see any stars, they're going to be totally different.

I've been knocked off my sleep schedule this week -- I had to test some sleeping medication I need for an upcoming business trip and verify that I wouldn't have any unanticipated side effects before I was in Australia and unable to do anything about it. However, in the midst of all this, I had an interesting thought, spurred a discussion with my new office mate. We were talking about history and the traditional adage that "history is written by the winners." I disagree; I think it's something more like this:

History is interpreted by the winner's descendants.

1. That I've managed to successfully get myself back on an "into work by 6am" schedule for nearly three weeks now. Even though I am not a morning person, I find that this schedule has a number of benefits, the most important being that I feel like I get more work done (of better quality) and that I correspondingly have an easier time keeping work from taking over my life.
2. Seeing that my sleep schedule is finally starting to show signs of settling down against the previous point.
   
3. Call of Duty 4.
4. Writing while listening to Def Leppard Pyromania and the Halo 3 soundtrack.
5. Having finally had the uninterrupted hour to clipper and shave my head again. True, it was at 3:30am this morning, but it just made a nice start to the day.

It's been a while since I've blogged much. There's been a few reasons for that, but I just finished the lastest one last night. Yes, that's right, our Christmas houseguest and I have been working back through Halo and Halo 2 in Cooperative mode in preparation for Halo 3. Last night, Chris and I finished Halo 3.

WOW! Awesome game, great storyline. Anyone who says otherwise will be promptly ignored.

Wrote this Christmas 2007 newsletter over two weeks ago and forgot to link it here until now...

...blame the meds. 

I've been using Mac OS X for a couple of years now and I just today learned about Quicksilver, thanks to an offhand comment in a friend's blog.

Holy crap -- Quicksilver is so incredibly scrumptious and I'm not even running it yet! Haven't even downloaded it -- I've only got 10.3 on my Mac mini and the Macbook Pro is on 10.4. Apparently, I can't run the latest version of Quicksilver on 10.3, and I hate hate hate having to maintain two separate versions of software across multiple machines. (As an aside, this is one of my biggest pet peeves with the Mac world. It seems like every cool and useful application just drops support for previous versions of the OS, a year or two after the next release comes out.)

 

1. To finally learn (and never forget) how not to take my wife and kids for granted.
2. To write a sung SATB Eucharist liturgy and get it recorded with Alison Krauss, Sara Evans, Sting, and Josh Turner.
3. To always have a story to write that I'm passionate about.
4. To have the resources I need to help my family, friends, and the people around me.
5. To be content with my life without ever crossing the line into settling.
   

The more Steph and I listen to Brad Paisley, the more impressed we are. (Those of you who don't know who he is, he's a country singer. If you don't like country, that's fine, you can stop reading, although I suggest you go to the video section of his website and at the very least watch Whiskey Lullaby, the duet he does with the incomparable Alison Krauss.) Tonight, though, I came in the middle of a new song on our local radio station: Letter to Me. The basic premise is simple: the song is a list of the things the singer would tell his 17 year-old self.

The best line of the song comes in the bridge:

And I'd end up saying have no fear
These are nowhere near the best years of your life

I don't think I can tell you just how nice it is to hear one of these types of songs that doesn't wallow in that sugar-coated all-American myth that "your high school years are the best years of your life." Those years aren't your best years -- they shouldn't be, at any rate -- and if they are, you either need to pull your head out of your ass and look around to see how good your life is or you need to get in line for a serious kick in the ass.

Thanks, Brad. You continue to confirm that you are one of the coolest people in the music business.

Okay, I have a question for you Mac users out there.

Say you've got a Macbook Pro with an 80GB hard drive. Due to the accumulation of data, including a 30GB Boot Camp partition, you'd really like to upgrade the hard drive. Let's also say you can (or have) acquired a compatible hard drive 160GB or larger.

What software would you need to move your existing Mac OS X and (preferably) Boot Camp partitions over to the new machine and allow them to be expanded? That is, you should be able to boot up and have at least 80GB on your Mac OS X partition and the rest for your Boot Camp image. Can you do this with the utilities built in to Mac OS X, or do you need extra utilities? Do you need any hardware (like an external Firewire or USB 2.0 case for a hard drive)?

Bonus points if you can point me to a link on how to do the process. Note that while moving the Boot Camp partition is a "would be nice", not being able to do it isn't a deal-breaker.