I have a bunch of random thoughts I sorta need to get down and they’re bigger than tweets but none really is big enough for a standalone blog entry. Most are non-technical, so… tune out if you like. At least for this one.

Had a great time playing Beatles Rock Band with my friend Jeff and my parents over Xbox Live on Saturday. Mom’s figured out how to get on Xbox Live all by herself which is super cool, and my dad came on later. Got 100% on Expert-level drums on “Do You Want To Know A Secret” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” which, while probably not the most-awesome-drumming-feat-ever, made me feel pretty good. (I got 100% on Hard-level drums on Rock Band 2 for “Livin’ on a Prayer” earlier in the week, which also made me pretty happy.)

Speaking of drums, I’ve been having some troubles with my Ion Drum Rocker kit lately and it’s been a pain to troubleshoot. For a while I was getting disconnected at random intervals from the console and the green pad would hit at random times without me touching it. Kind of kills your streak (and your mood). I switched my setup so I wasn’t running the drums through a USB hub and the random disconnects disappeared, but the random hits didn’t. Instead, it switched to be random hits from the kick pedal instead. (Actually, either the kick would stop responding entirely or it would hit like a machine gun without you touching it. Either way, still kills your streak.) I’ve been talking to both Ion support and Rock Pedal support and have been doing all sorts of troubleshooting shenanigans - rearranging cables, trying different USB ports on the Xbox, and even switching the sensor on my pedal for a new one. You can’t reproduce it on demand, though, so I have to play a ton to see if any of these things have fixed it. I haven’t seen any trouble since I swapped out the pedal sensor (after which I got all those good scores, noted above) so maybe that fixed it.

Now that I’ve typed that out, I’ve jinxed it, but still.

I picked up a Rubik’s Cube this weekend with this $5 Target gift card that was burning a hole in my pocket. I got the guts up this morning to mix it up. We’ll see how long it takes me to figure it out. Haven’t ever solved a Rubik’s Cube before so we’ll see.

One of my favorite things in the world: when you put a bag of tea in your cup and the little string pulls off. That’s happened to me twice in two days. Maybe I just don’t realize my own strength or something, but I’m thinking maybe they need to figure out a better way to attach those strings than staples.

I was talking to my sister yesterday about various podcasts that we listen to and it got me thinking about how iTunes podcast management blows. I always - always - have to manually delete podcasts I’ve listened to even though I have my settings such that it should auto-delete podcasts I’ve listened to. Not sure how a play count > 0 doesn’t constitute “listened to,” but it apparently doesn’t.

While I’m on iTunes, where’s the multi-user support on that thing? Multiple users, one computer, one library. Is that really so uncommon? As it stands, you still have to do a bunch of manual manipulation to get that working.

Other stuff that’s been bugging me…

Incorrect grammar and/or spelling. I don’t claim to be perfect on this stuff, but there are some that just get me. Lately:

• The phrase is “hear, hear!” when you agree with someone, not “here, here.”
• When you get provoked into doing something, you’re “goaded” into it, not “goated.” A goat is an animal. A goad is a stick used to prod an animal.
• You can ask me a question or you can make a request, but you don’t have “an ask” for me. “Ask” is a verb.
• The spelling for an informal affirmative that you’re thinking of is “yeah” (pronounced “‘yaə”).
  • “ya” is either an abbreviation for “young adult” or is an informal version of “you” (“What do ya think?”) and would be prounced like “‘yə”.
  • “yah” rhymes with “saw” and is the sound you make when you want to make your horse go. “YAH! YAH!” <cracking whip>
  • “yea” is pronounced “‘yā” and is used in formal voting (rhymes with, and is the opposite of, “nay”).

People asking for an opinion they don’t want. Sort of like if someone asks, “Do you think I should buy this shirt?” and you say “no” and they buy it anyway. If you already have your mind made up to buy the damn shirt, why’d you bother asking for my opinion?

OK. I’m done for now.