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I never understood the problem with Gay Marriage.  Nor did I understand the difference between a civil union and a marriage (a rose by any other name…).  Either way, New Jersey’s Supreme Court has ruled that the legislation must either create a civil union for homosexuals or modify the existing laws to allow for gay marriage.  I agree with the ruling and wish it would happen more often.  To quote Justice Albin “the unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated”.

But the timing may be horrible.  The Democrats have a real chance at controlling both houses of Congress after the midterm elections.  For the first time in the Bush administration, they could wield power to stop the erosion of civil rights experienced during this “War on Terror”.  This ruling may prove to be the rallying point for disenfranchised Republican voters.  Because some many races are within the margin of error, it means that either side will have to convince their voters to show up on election day.  Till now it looked like the Republicans might not this year.  With this ruling, who knows.

Again, I believe in this ruling and what it stands for, but it may be the wall that stymies the Democrat wave to power.

I’ve taken out the Google bomb that was in this post before. I realized it represented what I feel is most wrong with American politics: win by any means necessary. As a result, I apologize for participating in such a childish maneuver to put Republicans candidates at a disadvantage.

Podcasts in iTunes and on the iPod are horribly designed. The design feels like it was shoved in without much planning. Let’s take a look at some of the problems I have.

1. There is no delete option on the iPod. When I finish a podcast, the iPod goes back to the main menu. There’s no way to indicate that I’m done with the podcast prior to completing it and when I’m done, there’s no indication on the iPod to tell iTunes to delete it. The “Delete Played Episodes” option only works some of the time and it doesn’t allow me to save an podcast episode that I found interesting and wanted to keep long term.
2. In iTunes, there’s no way to see which podcasts have been played. I can create a Smart Playlist that shows for all Podcasts with counts greater then 0, but that only catches some and missing others. Internal to iTunes/iPod, there is a difference between being marked as played and actually having played the episode to completion. Marking a podcast as played will not cause it to show up on the above playlist.
3. Podcasts can be episodic or serial. In the former, a single episode is contained, without dependence on other episodes. An example of this would be MacBreak Weekly. For the latter, episodes are linked together. They represent a whole story. The afore mentioned “return to main menu” when a podcast is finished interrupts the flow of these podcasts. Further, resume is done on a per episode basis instead of the podcast, so if I want to resume a serial podcast, I have to remember where I’m at among the episodes. And because podcasts are sorted by date, you normally have the latest episode at the top and the oldest at the bottom. This is the wrong approach for serial podcasts.

So I offer the following suggestions for each critique.

1. At the end of the podcast, give the user the option to delete a podcast. It would give the user to decide if they want to keep or remove a podcast. You can even make the choice an optional prompt.
2. Make “Mark as Played” and actually playing a podcast to completion the same and give the user a playlist parameter of “Played”.
3. Allow the podcast producer mark a podcast as serial or not. This allows the user to experience the serial podcast in the order the producer intended. If it’s serial, treat the podcast as a whole. If it’s episodic, play the latest.

I watched the South Park/World of Warcraft (WoW) episode and it piqued my curiosity about WoW, so I dropped by the local GameStop and picked up a 2 week trial for $1.99. After I installed it and then taking forever to download the updates, I created a human paladin. After about an hour I was bored. It wasn’t that the game was difficult (in fact it was easy), it was just that all I did was get a quest, run out and kill something, repeat. Been there, done that and it just doesn’t interest me anymore. I’m sure the social aspects are part of the draw, but, honestly, I just never enjoyed “gaming” with someone, even back in the day when I gamed on a regular basis. Ah, well, to each their own.

Let’s recap the last week.

1. On Monday, I lost my license
2. On Tuesday, I lost my camera
3. On Tuesday, I lost my brand new 2GB USB drive
4. On Wednesday, my wife’s iPod started acting strange.
5. On Thursday, I left my pill case in my hotel room.

It’s been an interesting week. Let’s start at the beginning.

Monday morning I was hopping a flight to San Francisco for work. I left a good 45 minutes before I needed to be at the airport, par for me. But because this was a weekday, rush hour was in progress. And the sun was blaring in the east bound traffics eyes, slowing it to a crawl. So, instead of arriving 15 minutes before I needed to, I arrived 15 minutes after. Rushing into the airport, I checked in at the automated kiosk. Because I was checking a bag, I had to show my driver’s license. After the attendant tagged my bag, he instructed me to take it to the security check. Ticket and license in hand, I trudged the, oh, 30 feet to the check area. Dropping my pocket knife into my bag, I handed it to the screener, who put it on the big machine. Turning around, I looked at the ticket to see what gate I needed to go to and realized I didn’t have my license in my hand. A quick check of my pockets and wallet didn’t reveal it, I scanned the area to no avail. I remember having it in my hand just a minute ago. Did I drop it in my bag? I looked across the way to the counter, but didn’t see it on the floor. I ran back to the attendant and confirmed he didn’t have it. I went back to the bag area, but didn’t see it there. I asked to see my bag, but here was the kicker, it was my parents bag so all I remembered was that it was either green or blue (it was early!). They instructed me to go to the other side of the area, which I did. Talking with the bag people, we looked for my bag (“was it green or blue, sir?” I don’t know!), but it had apparently already left the area. Great I was screwed. No id. Could I get on a plane without my id? Guess I’d find out.

Moving to the security area, I walked up to the first screener and handed her my ticket and explained I lost my license. She looked at me and said I needed to get a special ticket. Now I was really screwed. My plane was going to board in minutes. I ran back to the automated kiosk and talked to the clerk (after cutting in line). He printed me out a new ticket and then proceeded to stamp it multiple times. As I mumbled I was “screwed”, he said I was fine and would escort me to the right security area (thank you, Horizon).

At the “correct” security area, I was asked for my license before the security guy remembered why I was there. He told me to hold on until one of the other security people could come pick me up. We chatted until the other guy showed up. That gentleman took me to a machine, instructed me not to touch the sides or door and waived me in. Once inside, I was puffed with about 10 shots of air, looking for explosives, I assume. The lights on the door turned green and then the door opened. I was then escorted to the metal detectors, instructed to put my shoes and computers in a bin and send them through with my bag. Once those passed, the afore mentioned gentleman escorted me over to a table when he proceeded to wipe down every electronic device in my bag (of which there were quite a few) for explosive residue. When I asked what would happened it the test came back positive, he said “I would know it pretty quick”. Once my equipment was screened, I put everything back in my bag and made my way to the gate. My plane was a bit late. Guess I wasn’t screwed. Once in San Francisco, I check my checked bag, but my license wasn’t there. I’m sure some noble citizen will find a use for it.

So then we get to two and three. My camera was a Casio Z750. I’ve had it for over a year now. I used it for my wedding pictures. I planned on using it for when my son was born (not in the delivery room, my wife had established that early). Now it’s gone. At some point after 6pm it, and my brand new, just bought three days before, 2 gigabyte JetFlash V30 flash drive went missing from my demo area. On the latter, I’m willing to believe it slipped out of my pocket at some point. It’s small and easy to lose. The camera, on the other hand, was either on my demo counter (which it shouldn’t have been, but it was a busy night) or on my bag. Either way, it disappeared. Vanished sometime after the demo’s started up. It wouldn’t bother me as much, but as I was doing my demo, I noticed a guy had a camera that looked exactly like mine. I’m not saying he took the camera , but it sure would irritate me if he had and then stuck around to watch my demo.

Meanwhile at home, my wife was having problems with her 4G iPod. I had gotten it for free a couple years ago from TiVo as part of their rewards program. It served me well, but gave up the ghost about 3 months ago. I ended up buying a 5G video iPod as a replacement. Then my wife’s Rockbox MP3 player started acting weird, so I figured I’d try to revive the old iPod with a refurbed hard drive. I ordered one off of eBay for $60 that came with a 30 day warranty. Returning to the present, on Wednesday, my wife mentioned that the iPod had started making a clicking sound, a sign the drive had gone or was going bad. I figured I’d contact the seller when I got back the following night. When I got back home, I stayed up late to take care of some stuff, including contacting the hard drive seller. Bringing up my eBay account, I did a search for all purchases in the last 30 days. The drive didn’t show up and I could have sworn it should have. Then I brought up purchases for the last 60 days and there it was. 31 days old. Thursday was the thirty-first day. Wednesday, the day my wife, was day thirty. If I had sent the seller an email that day, I would still be under warrenty. On Thursday, I’m out of luck.

As for the last item, I was just forgetful and left behind my pill case.

So my trip to San Francisco was full of interesting things. The demo went well, I got to talk with a multitude of people and generate, I think, interest in some of the work I’ve been doing. I’m not upset at the things I lost, per say, as I am amazed at the shear amount of missing items over such a short period of time.

Now all that needs to happen is for my license to show up at an arson scene, my camera to be used by terrorists to photograph potential targets, and my flash drive to show up with child porn on it along with that copy of my resume sitting in my Personal directory. Fortunately all can be linked right back to good old Ben.

Anyone wanna by a dock for a Casio Z750?