Independence Observed 5 July 2007
So really, what kind of crappy Independence Day falls on a Wednesday anyway? Stranded in the middle of the week, too far from the comforting shores of either weekend for me to extend a vacation bridge… it’s not fair to the holiday and it’s not fair to me.
Still, thanks to the HuffenCoopers and their ability to conjure a backyard barbecue at a moment’s notice, an abundance of grilled meats and imported beers, and the fact that threatened rain failed to materialize, the day was still salvaged.
And it’s a lucky thing that beer was such a handy replacement for patriotism, because the latter is in shockingly short supply around these parts. I realize that my love for life, liberty, mom, apple pie, and the American Way should not be dampened by the fact that our alleged President believes the Constitution to be his personal toilet paper, or that the Vice President wants us to believe that he exists in a secret all-powerful alternate dimension, or that Congress seems unwilling to take any real measures to correct the criminal excesses of these fuckrods and…
And I could go on like this, but I’m going to guess that you already have a litany of your own (and if not, wake the fuck up already) and don’t need it reiterated in detail and I’ll leave the fact that I’m currently snarling in frustration at every aspect of my government to be taken as read.
I’m going to be taking a first-ever trip to Canada at the beginning of August. The idea of staying appeals more and more.
iPhone Solution #1
Most of you won’t care about the following, but I’m posting it for the possible benefit of people like me who might be having the same issue and would like to find a fix for it. So:
My iPhone (that’s Li’l Jesus to you) was having bizzare issues syncing music and video with iTunes. It would claim that 1100+ songs were synced, but Li’l Jesus would claim to have only, say, 138 of said tracks. This led to long conversations with Apple support people, multiple software restorations and many swear words. But I figured it out.
See, at the same time, iTunes was giving me an error: “The iTunes Library file cannot be saved. An unknown error occurred (-50).” Since I was convinced that the problem was with the iPhone I kept dismissing and forgetting this. But this was, in fact the source of the problem. What I had to do was rebuild my iTunes library per these instructions. The save error subsequently disappeared and Li’l Jesus is now syncing like a champ.
Note, however, that doing this will eliminate some of your iTunes track information such as date added, play count, last played and such. If these things are important to you, you might want to hold off on the rebuilding and hope that Apple releases an iTunes fix for this error. If, like me, you just want to be able to put music on your iPhone, that’s how to do it.
See more: Unjustified Text, Miscellania