new york new york new york

2004.08.21 7.32

I'm sitting in the cafe car that's attached to the Amtrak train taking me to New York. I haven't been there since January when I got to enjoy -12 celcius temperatures. Brrr. OktoberNight is waiting to meet up with me at the Empire State building. I thought I'd make attempt number two to update. Attempt number one was lost in a tragic 'Please click here to reboot your computer' accident.

I saw a couple films recently. "Garden State" starrin Zach Branff and featuring the adorable Natalie Portman. The guy wrote, directed and starred -- the triple threat. It was very quirky cool and funny and emotional and three-dimensional and character driven. Me likey. If you're a guy with a girlfriend or you're dating someone and want to pull on those special hard-to-reach heartstrings then see this film. If you're a girl and need to get weepy then see this film. If you'd rather have your eyes plucked out than see a chick flick then DON'T see this film. Loved the music. I will be adding this to my DVD collection when it comes out fo sho.

I need more coffee. We have another movie and a DVD review for Wonder Woman coming up (like you will notice that I'm gonna pause here).

When I arrived in Houston this past Friday night there was no pausing between going to the Texas Cattle steak house and then driving across the road to the Willowbrook 24 to catch "Alien vs Predator." This film was a servicable summer popcorn flick. Flat character development and poorly filmed action sequences, it was still somewhat thrilling to see two genre films intermix. "Freddy vs Jason" of last year was the first pairing that seemed to go well together. I can think of some other pairings I'd love to see. Doc Brown vs The Wizard (of Oz). Star Wars vs Star Trek (in fact many fan scripts were written and published on Usenet about this in the 80s and early 90s). Matt Damon vs Mark Wahlberg (two Bostonians are better than one), Kevin Smith vs Richard Linkleter (sp?), and last but not least, Men in Black versus The Agents of The Matrix versus The Blues Brothers. Nothing better than a bunch of dudes in black suits and sunglasses fighting each other. I'd put 50 bucks down on the Blues Brothers if it came down to it. So to sum up... Alien vs Predator is a one time see. If the DVD is super cheap and has lots of deleted stuff, I *may* get it. Maybe.

My quick Wonder Woman dvd review can be summed up quickly: Where the f--- is disc 2? I have *two* disc threes. What kind of sick joke was that? The receipt is long gone and I didn't notice this b.s. until just two days ago. Dammit! I want to know what happens to Wonder Girl? Part one of that episode was on disc 1. I suspect I may have to beg Best Buy to give me a replacement disc sans receipt, or else I may have to buy another copy and then switch them out. Ugh. I hate confrontation. Natalie Portman, however, I like, but you already knew that.

I'm now in Newark Penn Station one stop prior to NYC. My other highlight this past weekend was picking up my DeLorean with its brand new high performance mod engine. The sucker is quick and nimble -- nothing like when I first got it. I am still super paranoid about overheating although the car sat still in 95+ degree traffic for a long while on Saturday. I should relax more. The A/C in the car hasn't had a a charge since early 2000 so it's still a bit stuffy in there if you aren't moving. I will post exact numbers when I have them, but my HP increase went up from around 130 to just about 200. That's a lot, trust me. I have some plans for all my BTTF props when I return on Labor Day weekend. I hate waiting. Anyone want to race a DeLorean? See me after class.

I had another classic Old Grumpy Guy answers the landline moment on Saturday. More about that on my return trip. We are pullinh into NY Penn right now. Ciao.

Whew! I made it back here to Penn Station with three minutes before the train left. Nice. We did the tourist thing at the Empire State building even though our tickets were stamped with this unhappy face icon labeled 'zero visibility.' It was nice to be up there again and the view was definitely better than their forewarned visibility of zero. I picked up a King Kong shot glass and coffee mug from the gift shop. My freakin' camera battery died so I didn't get more than a few photos. Oktober's also died at the exact same time. Conspiracy? We headed out from there to find two Benihanas off 56th. One closed up at 2:30 while the other (located at 47 W. 56th St.) kept their doors open until 4. We both had The Happy Meal. No, McDonald's was not involved. Just before we hit Benihana we'd headed to Oktober's sister's apartment where we picked up the battery charger and left our heaviest bags. I got a couple of early birthday presents: the book "microserfs" and this funky cool glasses. I only own three wine glasses and a mug in Philly, so this is a landmark gift. Seeing as how I had so much stuff now, I left all my bags. We met up with her sister at work and then headed out to the improv at Chicago City Limits on 1105 First Avenue. We killed some time across the street (410 E. 61st St.) at Bed, Bath and Beyond where I bought a 9 volt battery. Is this too much info? We enter the improv at 7:45 and were entertained for about two hours. We then hit up a Mexican restaurant where I ordered something that sounded Mexican -- only it turned out to be beef stew. Foiled again trying to get the good Mexican food. After we finished up I hopped in a taxi and made it back here with only seconds to spare before the train left. The next train was at 3 AM. Yikes.

More later. Gotta get ready for The Work. Working on a Saturday? Yeah. Sunday, too. Gotta catch up. I attend a Prince concert on Sunday night with some friends I have here in Philly, so I'll get back with you on how that went.

defeating sony copy protection

2004.08.08 8.25

Guess what it takes to push me over the edge and update my blog? Politics? Life affecting issues? Women? No. CD copy protection.

I have a stack of CDs that are waiting to get imported into iTunes where they eventually end up in my iPod. Velvet Revolver's ''Contraband'' was the CD waiting on top of the stack for the last five weeks. A few days ago I worked out my issues with my iPod (it needed the latest updated software). I also learned that iTunes had import settings that would start an import as soon as a CD was placed in my drive and then pop open the disc tray when it was done, as if to say, ''THANK YOU SIR! MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?!'' Last night I returned to my apartment after *finally* visiting this fancy restaurant called Savona. My consulting company gave us gift certificates last year as a show of appreciation for the important project we've been working on for the last few years. The certificate expires in September so it was either go and use it or allow $150 of possibilities to vanish. I'll get into the dinner in a later paragraph. I was in a productive mood as a result and I spied the stack of CDs and saw them as another challenge. I imported 15 CDs. Haddaway, Weird Al, Marilyn Manson, Van Halen, Danny Elfman, Pushmonkey, and the aforementioned Velvet Revolver. After I made a serious dent in the stack, I decided to play some of the songs I'd imported. I picked ''Slither'' off Velvet Revolver. It started up and it sounded like Scott Wieland was doing speed. Not that I'm saying he wasn't actually doing it at the time, but the copy I had was super messed up. I'm like, WTF? I listened to Weird Al. Fine. Manson. Fine. Haddaway. Fine. Velvet Revolver was the only one screwed up. I did a search on the net and discovered that the dreaded CD Copy Protection Fairy had blessed this new CD with a visit. I thought I'd have noticed some CD putting the software that prevents duplication onto my machine, but apparently not. I went into START, Settings, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, and Computer Management. From there I clicked an icon under System Tools called Device Manager. Under View, I selected Devices By Connection and Show Hidden Devices. Isn't it weird that Windows allows someone to freakin' hide device drivers from you? After that's all done, scroll down on the right side until you see something called SbcpHid. If you right-click your mouse on this icon, you can then select the ''Do not use this device (disable) from the dropdown. Click the ''Driver'' tab and also select Disable under the dropdown for Startup. While you're here you can try to look at the driver details information. Guess what? There isn't any. The slimeballs that made this software don't want to identify themselves, so they left everything blank. Click OK after you've thrown your arms up in the air and yelled ''THE HUMANITY!!?'' Your computer will ask to reboot itself after all that (minus the yelling and throwing your hands into the air). Do it. The copy protection software is now disabled on your machine. Why was this on my machine in the first place? I was tricked into installing the software thinking it was one of those little flash movie things they have on some CDs (oftentimes containing extra songs or videos or both). Ooops. Another tip in preventing this issue is you can hold down the spacebar when you put in the CD. This will override the AutoRun feature which automatically starts the software when a CD is placed into the computer. A third option in preventing this is disabling AutoRun in your registry -- something which I've since done but I don't recommend to everyone since playing around with the Windows registry is akin to tossing live hand grenades to Stevie Wonder. Why am I bothering telling you all this? Because I don't think I should be able to go to freakin' Best Buy and plop down $15.99 on a CD that I can't import to the iPod that I bought from the *same* freakin' Best Buy. I almost don't want to buy CDs ever again thanks to this experience. There was a kid that wrote a paper on how to circumvent this copy protection awhile back. He was sued for $10 million by the record companies because he noticed you could hold down the spacebar to circumvent the protection (that is, if you knew your CD was going to have the protection software on it in the first place... which I didn't). Ugh. So, anyway, now I have the ''Contraband'' properly imported on my iPod and the CD is on the DONE stack waiting to be filed away for safe keeping. It only took me an hour to figure out how to do this, so I figure someone else using Google to search for Velvet Revolver Copy Protection will find this blog entry and benefit from it. Dammit.

Here are some illustrations for you verbally challenged owners of Velvet Revolver. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.