If you didn’t know, they like to sue people. A lot. In fact, that seems to be their favorite pastime these days.

Don’t get me wrong – I am a fan of copyright protections. I know they protect artists and the revenue allows them to create more music, etc. I understand that. I buy music that I really like. In fact, I just bought a CD from this band that is local to Baltimore called The Bridge. I highly recommend checking them out.

Anyways, back to the RIAA and their seemingly limitless ability to be completely lame and attack all things awesome.

Their latest victim is a great little site called muxtape.com. Muxtape.com allows(ed?) you to upload several mp3′s and then it would stream them back to visitors of your site. Nobody could download the files you uploaded, but it was a great way to create random mixes to share with friends. We all made mixtapes back in the day and muxtape.com is a sort of Web 2.0 (I hate that term) equivalent.

The RIAA apparently had a problem with the site. I don’t know what it is. Their page simply reads:

Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.

I assume the RIAA‘s problem is something along the lines of: “People are enjoying music and we are not directly profiting nor did we give permission.”

See, the interesting thing is this – I found The Bridge through someone else’s Muxtape page. I bought their CD. I have recommended them to at least five different people since I bought their CD Saturday and I know for a fact that two of those people have also bought their latest CD. That is three CD sales as a direct result of muxtape.

You see, RIAA lawyers, your attacks on harmless sites like muxtape do nothing but prevent people from discovering new music or frustrate them into turning to piracy. Seriously.

I’d never recommend people illegally download music, but people do. All the time. Perhaps the RIAA should spend more time developing new and innovative ways of getting their music into the hands of music lovers and less time standing in the way of technological advances and suing people for finding creative ways to listen.

Music lovers will buy good music. Just don’t prevent us from enjoying it.

Link

Well, schools all over the country are eliminating competitive games (such as tag) from recess both for “safety” and to prevent damaging the delicate self-esteem of our children – not to mention the elimination of the honor roll and other constructions that pit students against one another.

It’s a wonder anyone ever made it through school. How did our fragile little minds ever survive?

THAT is how you take care of customers.

I took the kids through the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru yesterday. One problem: It is out-of-commission. Fortunately, this was Chick-Fil-A. They had two employees out there along the line of cars. One was taking orders on a notepad and passing them to the second person, who was on a cell phone to someone inside the store. She gave me the total and we proceeded to drive around and pick up our food. Even without a functioning drive-through, they were still faster than any other fast food place in town.

On a side note: someone told me that the reason they have great customer service is that they try to only hire people who actually want a job and want to work. They try to avoid people who resent the fact that they work at a fast food restaurant. I don’t know if it’s true, but it makes sense.

However, once an hour, the lifeguard blows the whistle and hollers, “Adult Swim!” OK, I get the idea behind it. There might be adults up there who want to swim laps or something without splashing / playing kids getting in their way. Fine. Whatever. The thing is, that NEVER happens here. Ever. When the teenage lifeguard blows his whistle, the kids get out of the pool and the adults either get out with them, or sit by the edge, trying to reassure their anxious children that it will only be a few more minutes until they can get back in the pool. The pool literally sits unused for the entire time.

Sure, my dad will occasionally swim some laps, but he would never ask for them to clear out the pool, and he also understands that a person can swim around the children if necessary. In fact, if you can’t swim around a few kids, maybe you shouldn’t be swimming in the first place. If you happen to be training for the Olympics or something, then more power to you, but find another pool. Adult Swim is a waste of time and serves no purpose other than to annoy the kids and to afford the lifeguard(s) the opportunity to flirt with a friend/girlfriend for a few minutes and pay little attention to the pool.

An interesting side note: last week we were up there, and as usual, when they called for Adult Swim, all the younger kids flocked to the “kiddie” pool, a smaller pool that is only like six inches deep. As usual, the lifeguards pay absolutely no attention to that pool. This time though, a young girl (like 3 or 4 years old) slipped and fell head first into the kiddie pool and hit her head on the bottom. Fortunately, my wife and sister were right there and they grabbed her and pulled her out of the water, as did other adults who were actually paying attention to the children. Thumbs up to the lifeguard crew on not even knowing anything happened.

My brother once suggested that we should get a group of adults to form a little uprising. Next time they have Adult Swim, all the adults in the pool would splash, jump around and make a ton of noise. Basically, we’d act like kids while the kids were not allowed in the pool. That could be kinda fun.

The whole thing is just pointless.

• Don’t over-speak. When you are in a meeting of peers or superiors, no one is going to be impressed with your knowledge of the topic at hand. If you can give a brief, concise answer, then do it.
• When the people who can answer a question are present, don’t throw out your thoughts on how you think something will work. Let the people who actually have the answer present the answer. Assumptions and educated guesses have no value when they are completely unnecessary.
• Don’t throw out negative statements about something unless you can back them up with absolute certainty. If you’re challenged on your assertions and you end up being wrong, you lose credibility.
• Chances are good that you were invited to speak to a very specific subject, so don’t offer your opinion on everything that is mentioned.
• If you’re not an authority or at least informed on a subject at hand, don’t continually say “Yes,” “Uh-huh,” or continually nod in agreement or disagreement with what is being said. You simply end up looking over-eager to impress people.
• Don’t cut people off or be aggressive with your opinions. Even if what is being proposed is incorrect, let the other participants finish their point(s).
• People don’t like long meetings. If what you have to say does not directly advance the agenda of the meeting/call, then say it later off-line.
• Unless you’re the leader of the meeting, simply sit there, take notes and offer your opinion/suggestions when warranted or asked. One of the most brilliant people I have ever met is virtually silent in meetings, while less-experienced co-workers “take over,” ramble incessantly and make themselves look desperate to show off their knowledge.
• Be prepared and bring the facts to the table. People that come well-prepared don’t have to stumble and say, “I’ll get back to you on that.” You’re in a meeting to discuss something; come ready and informed.
• On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with saying, “I don’t know.” If you honestly don’t have an answer or something is thrust on you unexpectedly, it is much better to just be sincere and tell everyone that you did not come ready to address that issue, but that you can get the answer and will do so as soon as possible. That is greatly preferred to trying to fake your way through it.
• Speak clearly and without rambling. Be precise and deliberate with your words.
• Don’t be the person that gives all the reasons something cannot be done. Be the person that explains how you can overcome the obstacles to make it happen. Bring solutions, not reasons and excuses.
• Finally, listen more than you talk.

Certainly, this is far from an exhaustive list. It’s just a few pointers that I’ve gathered from watching/listening to very good and very bad participants over the years.

• The pilot who flew us into Dallas/Fort Worth was amazing. When we landed, I hardly even knew we had touched the ground.
• Looking down on a lightning-packed thunderstorm from 38,000 feet is simply awe-inspiring.
• Dallas/Fort Worth Airport is insanely huge, yet it never seemed very busy. In contrast, Atlanta is huge, yet their airport is always absolutely jammed. I guess everything really does have to be bigger in Texas.
• The TSA and their policies are as ridiculous as the late-night comedians make them out to be. I felt no safer after seeing people have their bottled water, toothpaste and hairspray confiscated while the TSA people try to figure out if the X-ray machine is “actually working right“. Yes, I really heard that exact quote. If someone is determined to take down a plane, I have zero confidence that these guys are up the task of preventing it. We’d be much better off just issuing box cutters to every passenger, so that if there are terrorists on the plane, at least we’d all have them and it’d be like 250 to 4.
• Steve Jobs rules the world. Seriously, I must have seen 1,000 iPods in the airports and on the planes. Not a single Zune or anything else.
• Air travelers overwhelmingly prefer Dell laptops to other brands. This is a proven fact as revealed by my completely scientific study that consisted of me occasionally looking around.
• It stinks that they don’t offer peanuts on flights anymore. What if I were allergic to uncomfortable seats or little bags of odd off-brand chex mix? Would they get rid of all those, too?
• A $3 personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut will cost you $7.50 at the airport, but it’s still a better value than those vacuum-sealed “sandwiches” they offer.
• A 5-lb. hamburger is massive.
• Fried pickles are good.

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of my iPod. In particular, I love the playlist options in iTunes. I have created tons of them and tend to listen to my music that way unless I want to hear a particular track. There are two musical groups that have been my favorites since high school. The first is The Beatles. I just love their music, but that’s a post for another day. The other group is the Dave Matthews Band. They are, in my opinion, the best group touring today. I don’t want to get into a subjective discussion as to why because it’s, well, a subjective thing. Anyways, the other day a good friend mentioned how awesome one of their early CD’s, Crash is. I agreed completely. It’s a phenomenal album. He went on to rattle off the names of several songs and it dawned on me… When was the last time I had actually listened to a full album? I couldn’t remember. I typically listen to individual tracks or mix playlists that I throw together or that are automatically generated by iTunes.

So, I decided to listen to my three favorite albums from my two favorite bands.

The Beatles:

Rubber Soul
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Dave Matthews Band:

Under the Table and Dreaming
Crash
Before These Crowded Streets

Wow. It’s amazing what the right mix of songs can do. Listening to what the artists originally put together was great. Sure, I could listen to A Day in the Life, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and She’s Leaving Home on my playlist of favorite Beatles tunes, but they are so different in the context of an obviously planned and intricately-constructed album.

Pantala Naga Pampa and Rapunzel are great songs anywhere in a set list, but kicking off the beginning of Before These Crowded Streets with them serves as the perfect prelude to an excellent album.

I guess my point is this: There are many “artists” out there that are lucky to generate a single decent track on a given album. Then there are those who are truly talented and can sculpt an array of songs into a single, unified work that just flows perfectly. To my ears, there’s no better way to listen to great music. I’ll continue to enjoy my numerous playlists, but I’ll no longer ignore the option to just listen to a good “record.”

I discovered there was much more to computers than just gaming and I became obsessed with tearing apart the hardware and software of every PC I could get my hands on. Well, nine years later, I am still pretty much doing the same thing – only I get paid to do it now. I would put 1998/1999 as the time I really got into it though. I mean, that is when it was all brand new and exciting for me. Every reformat of my hard drive was an adventure. There were different operating systems to try: Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000 betas, BeOS and Linux. Everything technology was completely fascinating! I’d read everything within reach in an effort to learn as much as I could.

I was recently at my parents’ house and I discovered a few “old” magazines from 1999 and it was very interesting to look back on some of the hottest issues in tech from my “younger” days. There were great articles such as “Flat-Out Amazing” from the May 1999 issue of PC/Computing that marveled at the cheap ($3,199) 18″ 1,280×1,204 LCD flat panel displays. The same magazine sported a cautious review of the Sony HiFD “superfloppy” drive that could write to its own 200MB cartridges and the ubiquitous 1.44 MB floppies. It was a steal at only $199!

Their November issue had some great “Editor’s A-List Picks” as well. For web browsing, Internet Explorer 5.0 “doesn’t miss a trick.” Want a web server? “More stable than ever, Windows NT is the easiest way to set up a Web server.” He goes onto mention that it, of course, comes with Internet Information Server…“a winning combination.” For a national ISP, who could go wrong with Earthlink?

Finally, there are awesome advertisements for great products such as PC’s sporting 400MHz Celeron processors, 4.3GB hard drives and 32MB of SDRAM. Sweet!!!

I know many of you have been in technology a lot longer than I have, but for me, skimming through those old articles brought back a lot of memories…of fdisks, re-installing my OS and just exploring an exciting new world. It’s amazing how far things have come just since I’ve been involved. I can’t wait to see what we have at our disposal when I look back fondly at today’s technology and smile at how dated it all has become.