How art thou a pain in the ass? Let me count the ways...

I recently received an email telling me that my XBOX Live! account was going to be automatically renewed. Since I didn't remember activating automatic renewal when I originally purchased the subscription, it came as news to me. When I went to the XBOX Live! site in an effort to cancel the automatic renewal, surprise turned to anger as, first of all, the area to which one must navigate in order to cancel the subscription was deliberately hard to find and, secondly, I was subjected to page after page of "are you sure you want to do this?"

The PSN is free.

That is all.

One Month of Fatherhood

I'm not reinventing the wheel here, but I suppose I wanted to record my experience for posterity.

My version of the wheel now weighs about nine pounds. She was born weighing about seven and one quarter pounds. She lost almost three-quarters of a pound in her first few days, which means that she's gained well over two pounds in less than a month. That number doesn't sound like a lot until you consider that it represents over twenty-five percent of her original birth weight, which would be like me gaining around 45 pounds in a month. At her age, it makes everyone happy. At my age, it makes people start death watches.

The scale-topper doesn't like to sleep at night. At all. Which makes her exactly like her father, perpetuating that most ridiculous of curses: "May you one day have a child exactly like you!" What other type of child was I going to have? One like the milk man? DNA is funny that way: it likes to replicate itself, and in so doing makes us much like our fathers and mothers in almost every way. This comes as no surprise to biologists and to the great chagrin of rebellious teenagers everywhere.

Life is definitely different now. I'm not sure exactly how it is different beyond the sleep deprivation, but I'll let you know as soon as I come out of this haze.

The last rumination is probably the most obvious: she is instantly and irreversibly loved beyond words.

On Legitmacy

Digital content is not inherently free. It is not up to the masses to determine whether or not the creative expression of an individual is free. It is up to the masses to determine how much one should pay for said work of expression. Traditional economic factors of supply and demand play a very indirect role in much of digital distribution (e.g., one needs a digital medium on which to store the content, one needs a computer or some other form of access, and one needs communications gear), so the most significant driver of price can simply be called desire as a function of disposable income. That price is of course arbitrary, and difficult to predict, but one thing is certain: if the creator of such content does not give it to someone for free, and expects to be compensated for it, a price must be paid. The buyer has a simple question to answer: "is that piece of creative expression worth the price being asked of me?" If the answer to that question is "no," the next step in the algorithm should never be "steal it."

Route 219

Is it really necessary to extend a 4-lane expressway from Springville, N.Y. to Ashford, N.Y.? Western New York has a declining population, and constituents are constantly complaining about high taxes. Still, very few citizens seem to understand a very important correlation: the cost, per person, of maintaining infrastructure will go up as there are fewer people to pay the bill. There are two ways to mitigate this: attract more people or encourage those remaining to move into an urban center (and thus removing the need for expansion and, in some cases, maintenance of infrastructure). Given this context, spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in order to make living away from WNY's only urban center (Buffalo) more convenient does not strike me as the best use of funds.

Why not use this same money to lure businesses into the area? How about expanding the woeful public transportation system in Buffalo? How about giving the money to schools, or libraries, or...just about any other worthy endeavor?

This type of misappropriation of energy is demonstrative of the type that has put WNY into such a deep, dark hole.

To the people of Western New York: would you like lower taxes? Then, for the love of God, stop building new homes on the edge of the suburbs! Have you ever stopped to consider how much it costs, in time, labor, and money, to expand and maintain roads, bridges, gas lines, water lines, sewer lines, communication lines, bus routes, police departments, fire departments, libraries, schools, and a multitude of other social services to these areas? There is a lot (and I mean a lot) of top quality home stock already in the area -- hell, there's more of it than we need, obviously! So, please...pretty please, stop being stupid?

To the Government of Erie County: please, for the love of all that is holy, consolidate your local governments! There is absolutely no reason for the redundancy in staff that exists throughout all of your local townships.

...and stop spending money on new highways that go nowhere.

Patios-a-Poppin'!

Here's the patio. It is finished...the rest of the yard is not.

where art thou?

Why isn't Kilkenny sold in the United States?

I first tasted this beer in Rome, Italy, of all places, in the summer of 1998. In my humble opinion, there is no better beer in the world. There are many with more flavor (or flavour, if you like), but there are none to rival its combination of taste, feel and smoothness.

I experienced a few fine beers in Germany (a Munchner Dunkel served in the Rathskellar restaurant in Munich stands out...alas I cannot remember its name), and several fine varieties in Prague (most notably Budvar and Velvet); however nothing matches Kilkenny. Although I'm certain there are many connoisseurs who would knock each other over to argue my conclusion, as this is a matter of opinion, there can be no right answer but my own.

Regardless of one's opinion, it is, by all accounts, a fine beer; it is popular in many other countries, and it stands to reason that it might sell reasonably well in our neck of the woods. So, why not sell it here?

Perhaps the best reason is simple: if everyone that loves Kilkenny is anything like me, they don't actually drink that much beer. Well, I'm afraid I don't have a counter argument to that, except to say that I, on rare occasion, will go to Canada and spend about $60.00 on a case of the stuff. That must count for something.

I could say I told you so...

well well well, it's always nice to have my ideas corroborated by independent 3rd parties like this.

In case you don't feel like reading that article, the long and the short of it is that an independent auditing firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, has come to the conclusion that Internet delivery of instant-on HD content is still years away. I don't know where they pulled the year 2015 from, but it sounds as good as any, I suppose.

Some of you...ok the 1 or 2 of you that might actually read my drivel, might remember this post of mine, where I said the same thing and relied on the same reasoning to reach my conclusion.

the bottom line: most people don't have a fast enough connection to enable instant streaming of HD content of the same quality found on a blu-ray disk. I still think that Internet distribution is the future, but we simply aren't there yet, and now it would appear that we have bigger fish to fry.