The Story of Stuff

My wife pointed me to this site:



It's a 20-minute video that talks about why we have so much stuff -- why there's so much to buy, why we buy it, and what it really costs us.

You should check it out. It's worth the time.

The Whole Nine Years

Well, yesterday was Tara and my nine-year wedding anniversary. We didn't really celebrate it -- life has been consistently getting in the way. There are just too many things that we need to do to allow us to do the things we want to do.

We did take the kids out for some games and munchies at Lucky Strike, but that wasn't really an anniversary celebration. In fact, we weren't even thinking about our anniversary much. It was more of a consistently-appearing epiphany, a *DING* "it's your anniversary, stupid!" kind of moment, jumping up at odd times during the day.

So, to honor this momentous occasion, albeit a day late, I present to you the vows we made to each other on that day in June, nine years ago, standing outside the carriage house in Ann Arbor.

Tara Marie, I choose you
to be my companion, my partner, my lover.
I choose you to be my wife.

And to you, I make this vow:
I promise to love you.
I will be a pillar of strength in your times of sadness and trouble.
I will remember the love you hold for me when I feel anger or fear.

To you, I make this vow:
I promise to honor you.
I will hold you in the highest esteem in all situations.
I will support you in all your endeavors.

To you, I make this vow:
I promise to cherish you.
I will keep you in my heart at all times, whether we are together or apart.
I will let no other displace you in the vault of my heart.

Tara Marie, to you I make these vows.


Douglas Mitchell, I choose you
to be my companion, my partner, my lover.
I choose you to be my husband.

And to you, I make this vow:
I promise to love you.
I will be a pillar of strength in your times of sadness and trouble.
I will remember the love you hold for me when I feel anger or fear.

To you, I make this vow:
I promise to honor you.
I will hold you in the highest esteem in all situations.
I will support you in all your endeavors.

To you, I make this vow:
I promise to cherish you.
I will keep you in my heart at all times, whether we are together or apart.
I will let no other displace you in the vault of my heart.

Douglas Mitchell, to you I make these vows.

I love you.

Let the Paladin Be Avenged!

Yesterday (June 26), a freak, crazy storm passed through Plymouth while I was upstairs on the phone, working. Our power flickered and my call dropped, but she called me back on my cell phone.

While still chatting, I heard a huge gust of wind and a smattering of sudden rain, and with a *WHOOSH* it was gone.

I looked out the window at my neighbor's roof and saw some leaves on there and could just make out the rain hitting the shingles. I remarked on the rain, and my wife mentioned that the car windows were down.

Boom, we run downstairs and I go close the car windows, but by then, my wife had found it: the remains of our gazebo. The canvas top that goes over the wire frame was caught in the wind, came partway off, and was used to pull the poor thing over.

Here are the photos:




I may be able to resurrect it, but we'll just have to see after I have some time to examine and disassemble it.

And that's the end of the story. The mighty gazebo has finally fallen.

SmartFTP ... SmartWTF?

I just went to help my wife with SmartFTP, the program I've been lauding for several years. It's free, it works very well, and, well, its free. Heck, even LifeHacker promotes it as a great program.

They have this 72-day rolling upgrade schedule. If your install is over 72 days old, they want you to download the latest one with all the bugfixes. I've used this for many years, and I've updated it many times. Of course, now that I'm on the Mac, I use a different program, but for the PCs, it's been SmartFTP all the way.

So I went to help her with it, and it asked us to install the latest version. Cool. I did it. And then: Bing!



So they've converted to a pay version -- now you have to BUY it or it will STOP WORKING.

And they did this with no notice. It's another case of screwing the customer. I mean, I don't care if they want to convert to a pay version. It was a good program, they should make money at it. But to offer it for free for several years and then start charging with no notice, without giving folks an opportunity to just keep using the version they have? WTF?

Way to alienate your customer base, SmartFTP. Good job.

At least they responded in an apologetic, supportive way to customer concerns about it, and then provided alternatives to their long-time customers.

Oh wait. They didn't. They response was essentially, "F you."

... and then they closed the forum thread so no one else could express their anger.

I think this bloke sums it all up quite well:

The only thing worse than shareware is freeware that changes its mind and becomes shareware. ... Wonder how long smartftp will remain the most popular ftp client now? Not bloody long I would guess."

I am so angry.

Well, he recommends FileZilla, which I've seen before. I guess we'll try that. And not because SmartFTP is no longer free, but rather because their focus has changed from producing an excellent program to screwing the customer for a buck.

Satan's Long Reach

So I've been moving away from this whole spiritual thing and more into reality and understanding the world as it really is. But every now and then some of the old superstitions pop back up as though they were natural, and not learned behaviors.

For instance, today my 8-year-old daughter was cleaning her room and listening to some Disney CD she received as a gift -- you know, the kind with a bunch of pretty people groomed by professionals, doing covers of successful songs as though they were real artist, pushed on kids as part of the Disney exploitation machine -- when I heard a decidedly un-Disney-like song coming from her room: Runnin' with the Devil.

Now, I don't know this song, and it kind of caught me off guard. I mean, running with the devil ... you know, Satan, Lucifer ... that guy. I realize the song is pretty much harmless, but the whole devil thing struck a chord. I mean, she shouldn't be listening to songs about the devil, should she?

But then again, why not?

Not too long ago, I was watching the second season of the new Doctor Who. One duo of episodes was "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit." The episodes are about a crew on a planet that's orbiting a black hole. They're drilling to center of the world, but there's supposed to be an ancient evil down there.

And the Doctor finds it. It's a remarkably Satan-like demon-thing that looks like this:



My daughter was watching the show with me when they found some occultish writing, and when the doctor found the Satan-like dude. And it made me really uncomfortable. I thought -- this is wrong. She shouldn't see this, this ... demon-stuff ... it's ... eeeviiil.

But I realized that, since the devil wasn't real, it didn't really matter. I expressed this to my wife, who said, yeah, if it had been a giant robot, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. And my daughter was moved less by this CG monstrosity than she was by the evil woman in "Madeline: Lost in Paris" (coincidentally a Disney production).

It's weird how the prejudices and superstitions of our upbringing sneak in to our daily lives, jumping out of the shadows to remind us that they're still there. It seems we are the products of our upbringing, striving always to assert our individuality.

Big Brother Google

So there I was checking directions using Google Maps, and boom! I found that my house was hit by Street View:



Yep. That's my car. It was last summer, but there it is.

Couple this with the fact that I just applied for my passport and there's no denying it:

The Man. The Man has my number.

When I got my driver's license at age 18, I felt like I'd given away my freedom to the government. From then on out, they had all my info -- my name, number, height, weight, address, etc. etc.

I feel kinda like Big Brother has his hand on my shoulder.

Bwahahahaha! Firefox 3 Is Mine! MINE, I Tell You!

Okay, so my wife doesn't understand this whole "download Firefox 3" thing I'm doing. She doesn't understand why I'm so excited about it. She supports me, but I think it perplexes her.

Maybe she doesn't understand just how utterly useful Firefox really is. (I mean, she might, but it's not that big a deal to her -- she's been using it for over a year and you only miss the ones you love when they're gone, so if she lost it, boy would she miss it.)

Firefox is:

• The fastest browser
  
• Uses the least amount of memory
  
• The most extensible (and handles add-ons the best)
  
• Is open source software
  
• Works on all three major OSs
  
• Is considered the best browser on the market
  

Maybe she doesn't understand that little Firefox has gained ground since its release in 2004, capturing18%-39% of the browser market, depending on how you measure it.

Maybe she doesn't understand that Firefox began based on Netscape Navigator, the browser from the company Microsoft tried to kill with their "bundling" of Internet explorer that ended in an antitrust lawsuit.

Maybe she doesn't understand that Firefox represents the hard work of a fleet of
developers that are building the browser as open source software, pushing the envelope of performance, and creating true competition for Microsoft whose browser is successful not because it's better, but because it comes with Windows.

In any case, I now have Firefox 3 running on my MacBook Pro, and I am happy.

*SIGH*