This bodes well.

You know...I haven't had a 3.5-hour-long conversation with ANYone in ages (and that counts random bouts of AIM bullshitting and link-trading on IRC as well). In fact, I haven't had two or three consecutive 3.5-hour-long conversations with anyone ever. Conversations that roam all over the place, varying in subject from music to cartoon characters to memories of the South Side and the awesomeness of wearing Hawaiian shirts to Goth nights.

That's pretty damned amazing. What a wonderful way to burn through most of my shift at work tonight...especially considering that tonight turned out to be an ad-less Work-Free Holiday without any need of intervention or action on my part!

Fun with Music to help me wake up

Hell, you know me...can't resist a music meme when it comes around. Thanks, eolh!

1. Total amount of music files on your computer?
Upwards of ten or eleven thousand now. If you count .wav sample files as well and all the Renoise files of songs I am currently working on, the total probably exceeds a million.

2. The last cd you bought was...
Mouse on Mars, Radical Connector.

3. What was the last song you listened to before reading this message?
Last night, it was Pink Floyd, "Welcome to the Machine."

4. Write down five songs you often listen to or mean a lot to you.
a. Gary Numan, "Cars"
b. Skinny Puppy, "Worlock"
c. Tears for Fears/Gary Jules, "Mad World"
d. S.P.O.C.K., "Technosapien"
e. John Prine, "All the Best"

5. What new music are you really excited for in the coming year so far?
The new Beck album, Guero. The possibility, however slight, of a new Portishead record. Hmm...other than that, I forget what all else is coming out, but chances are I'll have it!

6. What 6 people are you going to pass this baton to and why?
No one, really. Everyone I know has apparently done it already.

Your Daily News in Brief

These are just too news stories that I found particularly interesting today, and--surprise! surprise! surprise!--they're both about advanced technology:

1) Human X Chromosome completely sequenced. Finally, science may be able to tell me why every woman I've ever dated has been rabidly insane!

and

2) Europeans are scared of cybernetic implants. Got one word for you folks: CANDY-ASSES. Let's see how you compete with the rest of the world when it rides the augmented-reality bandwagon straight into the Year 3000 and leaves you in the dust with all your quaint old cathedrals and Medeival baggage. Suckers!

Oh my god, this makes my wang tingle--

Scientists may have created a black hole in a particle accelerator experiment!

"Horatiu Nastase says his calculations show that the core of the fireball has a striking similarity to a black hole."

TOTALLY sweet. Now I just need my own particle accelerator, and the earth shall tremble beneath my mighty, black-hole-making feet! Armies of the unconverted shall attempt to stand up to me, only to be swallowed in an instant by the ravishing power of my Black Hole Cannon of Doom(tm)....Now, the world truly SHALL feel the undeniable might and reason of Pegritzian Totalitarianism.

The Rebirth of My Liking of iTunes

After iTunes raped my mp3 library by messing up a number of ID3 tags and moving some files around in completely mindless fashion, I was prettymuch done with the accursed spawn of Steve Jobs for life...which is really a shame, because it is a really good mp3/AAC player: simple, but convenient, and easy on the memory and processor. Yesterday, though, I was idly scanning some online forums for info on tagging protocols and online CD-database searches, and I came across something interesting: namely, the reason iTunes raped my library.

A while backed, eolh had mentioned to me that, should I install said program, I would need to ENSURE that "Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized" under the Advanced tab in the Options menu was UNselected, or it would shuffle things around like a retarded, half-blind chimp with a deck of Zenner cards. Well, I obviously did so. Somehow, though, thanks to a weird bug in iTunes v4.6 for Windows, if you were to change the default iTunes music directory (which I did, changing it from the default "My Music" location to my external HD where all my ripped jams reside) it would reset that stupid-ass function to ON. And thence, the raping would begin.

Apparently, though, this has been fixed in the latest version of iTunes, 4.7 and above. Weird thing is...I thought that was the version I had. At any rate, I redownloaded the installer, confirmed that it was for v4.7, and reinstalled the program because, honestly, I've really grown to like iTunes. However, I still use MediaMonkey as my primary music library management tool thanks to its incredibly useful catalogueing functions. But iTunes is just a good, flatout player, and I dig that a lot. It still only plays MP3 and AAC files, which is kind of ghey considering how many other kinds of audio files there are...but I have a simple batch-converter program (dBpowerAMP, and, for that matter, MediaMonkey) to switch OGGs and MPCs over the standard MP3s, so that's good.

I swear, though, if some other kind of weird-ass bug shows up this time, I'm going after Crapple with a friggin' black hole.