This has been a busy week.

Computer Resources is hard at work on the Canby Ford and Wilcox Arredondo web sites and should have them finished soon. I've also been working with my own computer, attempting to diagnose that recurrent freeze problem.

Yesterday I visited a new client and attempted to solve a printer problem. I hate printers. I tell anybody that will listen that printers are not computers (the implication being that I'm not qualified to work with printers as I am with computers). Printers are a mystery to me, and this case was no exception.

The client upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows 2000, installing the OS on a new hard drive. He was unable to get his Lexmark Z11 printer to function. No problem. Using his 28k modem, I spent 45 minutes downloading the latest drivers (drivers that downloaded in 30 seconds at home on my cable modem!). I installed them according to instructions (typical Windows driver installation) and printed the test page from the printer's diagnostic tool. No problem. When I tried to print from an actual application, though, I got nothing. About 40 bytes of the document transfer to the queue and then the document vanishes. It never prints. Occasionally I can get something to print from Notepad, but not often.

This is frustrating. I spent three hours working with the client's computer before giving up. It's humiliating to admit defeat and then to skulk home. I spent an additional two hours rummaging through Microsoft's web site and through Usenet posts to locate a solution. Though I found many people with similar problems, I found no solutions. I have a couple of ideas to try, but I'm not hopeful that they will work. It's an utter mystery.

I've now had printer problems that I could not solve at:

• Home
• Custom Box Service
• Wilcox Arredondo
• Oregon Graduate Institute
• Wilcox Arredondo, again
• My new client

Printers are not computers. I hate them.

I made a new CD mix last night, and it's a good one. I needed to blow off steam after failing with the printer, so I just started throwing songs together in Winamp, and I realized a mix was brewing. The music is rather eclectic, and not easily describable. Kind of a world-beat/dance/ambient/funk. If the thought would have occurred to me earlier, I would have called the mix "Dream Thrum" (which is apt), but I chose "The Thinner the Air" instead.

Track list:

• Keep Hope Alive (The Crystal Method)
• Frem (Joi)
• Supersonic (Jamiroquai)
• Magenta (Hooverphonic)
• Porcelain (Moby)
• The Thinner the Air (Cocteau Twins)
• Everybody Say Yeah (Joi)
• Deep Asian Vibes (Joi)
• Drip Drip Drip (Chumbawumba)
• Nacer Do Sol (Kyoto Jazz Massive)
• Triatma (Joi)
• King of Silence (Cibo Matto)
• Montezuma (Cusco)
• Release (Afro Celt Sound System)
• Come On Baby (Moby)
• Fingers (Joi)

It's a mix best listened to loud.

It's also an example of why file sharing is one of the Internet's gifts to the world. Each of these songs is here because I found it while downloading other music. I would never have heard of these songs or artists if I hadn't stumbled upon them via Naptster or Morpheus, and now I own CDs from a couple of the groups. File sharing is here to stay. The multimedia transnats need to accept this, to embrace it, to make it part of their business model rather than to fight it.

Dane and I discussed a similar subject the other day. I want a small, cheap wearable mp3 player, one perfectly suited for using in the gym. This is a very feasible product, one that would likely sell well, yet there isn't one to be had. Nike had one, but it was expensive and has been discontinued. Dane points out that these types of objects are not likely to be produced; consumers may want them, but the transnats are not in the business of giving the consumers what they want, but of giving the consumers what the transnats want them to have.

Dane pointed me to some links (What's Wrong With Copy Protection, Description of "Content Protection For Recordable Media", Electronic Frontier Foundation's page on Copy Protection, etc., and a Slashdot discussion on DVDs as software). It seems that the media landscape is changing under the noses of the multimedia conglomerates, and they are desperate to cling to their old business models, models that don't consider the Real World, modern technology, the desires of consumers.

I like the MP3 format. I don't mind its lossy nature (I'm no audiophile). I want to be able to grab my music and go. I want to be able to easily transfer my MP3s from one location to another, and to be able to easily obtain new music. I don't want to buy entire albums from artists which might have only one song that interests me. I want to be able to hear the music before I purchase it. I want to hear strange, new music, not the music that the transnats have packaged and decided that I should hear. If the world were just, and the multimedia conglomerates were more than marketing machines, people like Aimee Mann would have a wider audience. Salon has a great article in which Courtney Love discusses the how difficult it is for a musician to make it in the current system, a system designed to promote a select few Stars to maximize corporate profits.

My right elbow is sore today. It feels like somebody is stabbing it with an icepick. Somewhere Andrew is laughing with smug satisfaction.

I'm preparing to roll my bicycle out of storage. It's not warm enough (or dry enough) to ride much yet, but I'm going to get the thing ready to go. I'm excited about biking this year; I'd like to ride 2000 miles.

A lot more computer work awaits me this weekend. We're also hosting our second game night on Saturday. Busy busy busy...

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — Audible   Every winter I budget a few hundred dollars to buy myself a present. This year I joined Audible (and got an iPod mini).

2003 — Drifting, Falling   The day of the Challenger explosion, I wrote a poem. It's a typical sophomoric teenage effort, but it Dad liked it. Why doesn't the loss of the Columbia affect me in the same way?