Blu-ray, as you are likely aware, is the current standard for high-definition content.  High definition, as in more definition than a DVD.  That point becomes important in a moment.

Coincidentally, we have also just procured a home server, and I am currently in the process of ripping our collection of movies down to it so that we can watch them on any of the TVs or computers throughout the house.  This is the advantage of a media server; your movies are always at your fingertips, and you don’t need to trudge over to wherever you store your little plastic discs and stuff said disc into your movie player of choice.

I’ve started with ripping our DVD collection, primarily because I don’t yet have a Blu-ray drive attached to my computer that would allow me to rip high-def movies to the computer.  My goal, though, is to eventually have our entire collection on the aforementioned server to avoid the aforementioned trudging about with little plastic discs.  Imagine my intrigue, then, when the Watchmen movie I purchased boldly declared that it included a Digital Copy.

Hurrah!  thought I.  WB has heard my pleas, and is providing me a quick and convenient way to get this movie I purchased (and I do stress purchased) onto the server so that I can enjoy it anywhere in my home.  I will be able to enjoy its high-definition richness and surround sound awesomeness wherever I choose, at a moment’s notice, without the fetching of pointless pieces of plastic.

I should live so long.  First, the Digital Copy is on DVD.  DVD, as in “I’m a format that is capable of holding roughly one-tenth the content of a Blu-ray disc.”  DVD, as in standard definition.  As in not high def.  As in, “I could have sworn that my decision to purchase a Blu-ray movie would have been a strong indication that I have both the means and the motivation to enjoy high-definition film.”

And second, the [insert adjective of choice here - be creative] Digital Copy, so far as I have been able to readily see, can only be loaded onto one computer.  So you drop the disc in the drive, go through some arcane ritual involving typing in a product key and swearing to seven different deities that you’re an honest-and-true customer, and then wait while WB drags the movie over to your computer and then locks it there.  I suppose, technically, that I would repeat this process on each computer in the house, up to whatever limit WB has imposed, but doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a digital file?  What if I want to watch the movie on a PlayStation?

To me, it’s as though they had promised me a portable copy of the movie, and then shipped me the disc and a bottle of crazy glue.  “Just glue the disc to your laptop’s DVD drive”, they’d say.  “There.  Now it’s portable.”

I don’t want to watch this movie on my laptop.  I want to watch it on my TV.  Or a different TV.  Or on a different computer.  Or pretty much anywhere I want to watch the movie that I just bought.  I want to put the movie on my server so that it’s available to me wherever and whenever I want.

No, says WB, you really, really want to watch this movie on your computer.  This computer, actually.  And only this computer.  And not in high-def, because high-def is for suckers.

I must say, these guys are making it hard to be a customer.

photo credit: DeclanTM

Yes, text chat.  A feature that stopped being cutting edge fifteen years ago — and at least fifteen years ago we were using full keyboards, rather than the screen-based abortive hack of an interface that passes for an input means on the PS3.  In spite of this, we PlayStation faithful downloaded this used band-aid of a software update like so many piglets at the proverbial teat, and nobly installed it.  We knew that we could never return to the glory days of yore when we didn’t have the ability to awkwardly shuffle text messages to each other, but then why would one ever want to look back?

I have now an answer to that question.

I was willing to overlook the half-baked lameness of this update.  I was puzzled, but not bothered, by the rabid nature of the comments on Sony’s blog that heralded this as the greatest technological progression since we first trod on the moon.  I accepted this update as progress, even if it was progress that afforded me absolutely no benefit.  I was okay with all of this — until I learned that this update actually completely broke the media streaming functionality of our PS3.

You see, shortly after installing said patch, Elizabeth, Diggory and I decided to watch a movie.  We fired up the PS3, connected to Diggory’s PC-cum-server over our home network, and called forth a movie from the depths of the archives there.

The movie did not come forth willingly.  It was jittery, it was pixelated, it was slow, and it was a big, blocky mess.  Trying to fast-forward or rewind brought the system buckling to its knees.  “This is not ideal,” I commented mildly, shortly before giving up entirely on the film and moving on to the next.  When other movies yielded the same result, though, I began to suspect that something was up.

It says something that the PS3 was the one device in all of this that I did not suspect.  Perhaps it was the ethernet cable we ran to Diggory’s room, I ventured.  Perhaps one of our routers was glitched.  Perhaps Diggory’s PC has become so intensely focused on folding that it can no longer be bothered to share with us the movies it holds in the shadowy recesses of its memory.  Perhaps everyone just needs a quick reboot and some time to think, and all will be well.  I laid out a five-stage plan to tear down the home network, piece by piece, and test it at each and every point to find out what was standing between me and my consumption of video entertainment.

Diggory suggested, almost in passing, that maybe he could bring his PS3 upstairs and we could see if it experienced the same issues.  A quick test, we figured, which involved minimal unplugging of cables and locomotion of hardware, so we might as well try it out.  Up came Diggory’s system, still sweating from its day of folding proteins.  Thirty seconds later, it was connected to the network and streaming video like a champ.

I’ll skip over much of our troubleshooting and discussion, with its corresponding commentary on the state of technology and cultural development, and get to the point where we realized that the only difference between my PS3 and Diggory’s was that he had not yet installed the aforementioned update.  A quick search on Google confirmed our fears: update 2.70 trashed the media streaming capabilities.

At this point, the facts of the situation presented themselves to me like a hammer formed of concentrated light lodging itself in my cranium.  I had accepted an update that provided to me a meaningless feature I will never, ever use, and in return I had traded away the primary function for which our PS3 resides in our house.  What type of Mephistophelian exchange was this, I cried to the shiny black brick inhabiting the space beside our TV.  The echoing silence told me all I needed to know.

My point (if I have one) is to Sony, and it is threefold.  First, if you are going to foist software on a trusting and cash-bearing public, kindly test it before you do so.  Second, if you are going to compell us to install updates, might I ask you to make them worth our while?  And third (assuming you ignore one and two, which I’m fairly certain you will), if you do continue ramming pointless updates down our throats, at least for the love of all that’s holy do not break the very functionality that keeps our wives from just selling the damn thing on eBay.

photo credit: shagy6six6

I really hope we don’t develop the technology to travel to other life-supporting planets any time soon, because I’m pretty confident we’d just wreck those as well.

That is my rant for the day.  And no, I do not think I am blameless in this.

Though I really don’t recall having ever fired any trash into space.

photo credit: makelessnoise

I’m not sure when it happened, really.  A Mood seems to sort of steal up on one, when one is being lurched about the bloody country in a plane built for midgets with zero personal space.

It may have started as I left our house, in the early afternoon on a Sunday, to head to the airport for a business trip that once again bit a big, fat chunk out of our extremely precious weekend.

It may have been gestating as I went to the AirTran counter to see why I couldn’t get my frequent flyer number associated with my flight, to be told that they weren’t able to do it either, and that it was probably because my travel itinerary referred to me as “Mr.”, whereas I did not declare any specific gender-driven salutation when I signed up for the frequent flyer plan.

It may have been growing as I waited to board the plane and, checking my itinterary, realized I would not be getting into Houston until about 10 PM, which meant any form of decent supper was largely out of the question.

It may have been the guy adjacent to me on the plane, loudly snorting great fistfuls of mucus back up his nostrils as we taxied out the runway, that finally tipped the scales from being merely irritable to being in A Mood.

By the time we got airborne and the kid two rows back was yelling in a nonexistent language about one thing or another that was very top-of-mind for him at that point, I was starting to mutter under my breath.

Landing in Atlanta, I walked the length of the terminal looking for a place to eat, which didn’t help.  I finally got a sandwich and a Sam Adams, which did.  Then I went back to my gate 45 minutes before my connection and discovered there were no seats in the waiting area, which undid all the benefits of the Sam Adams and added a little more animosity besides.

I arrived in Houston and, walking out of the terminal, saw the shuttle bus to the Hertz rental lot pulling away.  No matter, I figured, they likely run every 5 minutes or so.

20 minutes later, as the Avis bus came and went for the second time while I waited for Hertz to reappear,  my language was shifting from generic English to a more colourful dialect, involving references to locales of eternal damnation and variously described forms of excrement.

When I got to the Hertz rental car lot, I saw my name on the “Hertz #1 Gold” board, which always makes me feel important, and trotted over to my waiting vehicle.  At which point I discovered that they had clearly and distinctly ignored my specific request not to have a navigation system, since my company will no longer reimburse for them and would rather I spend my night driving through a particularly sketchy part of Houston, most likely getting carjacked every third turn whilst I search for a hotel out in the middle of smack-ass nowhere.

At this point my language was devolving and I was now making frequent reference to sexual congress as it related to car rentals, airplanes, travel, Texas, people, the cheeseburger, and that bastard 10 years ago who kicked my leg on a bus in Ottawa.

15 minutes later (14 of those minutes being spent in line), I had a new car, and once again trotted out to my waiting vehicle.  It smelled like stale cigarette smoke.  Now, while I don’t like the smell of cigarette smoke, I am willing to tolerate it — but I am not fond of the idea of bringing back a rental car and being accused of smoking in a non-smoking car, thereby being required to cough up whatever cleaning fee it is that one is required to cough up.

Back to the counter for an exchange of ideas on how best to manage the situation.  It was agreed that I would simply note, on the rental agreement, that the car smelled like smoke.

While this worked for me, I had to wonder if, were I to wrap the car around a telephone pole over the course of my rental, I could just note “has large wooden pole wedged in engine block” on the rental agreement and expect things to turn out okay.

I fired up the GPS in my phone.  I plugged in the address for the hotel.  I dutifully obeyed as the phone guided me down the darkest, creepiest, most needle-strewn streets in the city in search of my hotel.  The phone also seemed to take delight in directing me to turn one direction, then immediately turn another direction after I had long since passed the intersection where said turn was supposed to occur.

I held the phone at eye level and provided, at middle volume, my assessment of its navigational capabilities.  This may or may not have included equating the phone to a woman of the night.

By the time I got to the hotel, where the parking lot was barricaded by swing gates that forced me to back down the drive and pull over to a little intercom to plead with the front desk to allow me inside the sacred grounds of Marriott, I was fully and officially in A Mood.  Screeching around the parking lot looking for a place to stow my smoky car did not help matters.

Now, having settled in — after a manner of speaking — to my room, and ironed my clothes for tomorrow, I have wandered online to peruse and reflect.  And it occurred to me that the more I express my agitation vocally, the worse I feel.  Cussing my phone out felt, in some ways, like a necessary venting of ill-will, but it wasn’t cathartic and it certainly didn’t help my mood.  I am now evaluating different options for expressing and managing a mood, which I think will involve a touch less profanity.

I’m not saying I’m going to do away with the profanity entirely, though.  After all, I still have not audibly equated my phone to one’s posterior, which I’ve been meaning to do for some time.

photo credit: timsamoff

It’s 9 PM, and my wife and I both just wrapping up work (having started shortly after 8 in the AM).  At this point, we have time to read a few pages of the book we currently have on the go, give the kitchen a quick tidy-up, and then head for bed.

Tonight, we have elected to forego the tidy-up of the kitchen, and are half passed out in the living room mulling over just how long we plan to keep this up.

My vote is to stick it out until the weekend, and then bugger off to Tahiti.

I’m travelling this week, and figured that while I was holed up in my hotel room, it would be a good opportunity for me to write a little.  Logging in to the WordPress dashboard, I noticed that a new version was available.  “No time like the present!” I declared cheerfully, and proceeded to download it.

I then tried to follow the convoluted, unintuitive, and wildly vague instructions on the WordPress site.  The first thing I did, of course, was back up my blog.  To do otherwise would just be silly.

You know where this is going.  Somewhere in between the “delete some stuff” and “copy some stuff” instructions, the whole site went entirely to pot.  Attempting to browse to the site would yield exhuberant error messages of a tremendous variety.  After a couple of hours of struggling vainly to restore functionality, I gave up and decided to just wipe out the site and start from scratch.

So I reinstalled WordPress on my SiteGround-hosted site, and fired up the restore button.

It restored precisely one month of posts.  That’s it.  Everything I posted from March through to October is gonzo.

I spent the next several minutes kicking a pillow around my hotel room and trying to figure who (besides myself) I could blame so that I could imagine them personified in said pillow.  Unfortunately, the exercise did very little to make me feel much better.

So, here we are.  It’s a fresh start, I suppose, for Siege Curmudgeon.

Incidentally, having gone through this violence-inducing experience, as I was re-installing WordPress I noticed a little “Upgrade me!” link buried in the admin menus of the SiteGround user interface.  Evidently one click was all it would have taken.  Which brought to mind this line from The Wedding Singer.

I think I’m going to go out into the hall and punch the first person I meet.

I should clarify that I am in no way a fashionista, so take these comments as coming from the layperson whose interest in fashion is purely pragmatic.  I want my clothes to keep me from being naked, keep me comfortable, and make me look good (insofar as that is possible), and in that order.  So when I’m flipping through channels and hear the thumping music announcing a model’s strut down the runway, and see a waif on the brink of starvation emerge from the fog wearing a truck tire held up by jumper cables, and hear the announcers talk about a designer’s bold choice of material and the clever commentary they’re making on the environment, I have to stop myself from banging my head against the coffee table and lamenting the global collapse of intelligence.

Clearly, these fashions weren’t designed for me.  But I have to ask – were they actually designed for anybody?

At least the article in the WSJ highlights some designers who are making clothes that could be worn somewhere other than the catwalk.

 There.  That’s my rant for the day.