Read the signs

I'm about a week away from our big, expensive trip to Hawaii. Of course, I have very little planned, but I'm starting to be nervous about my parents' Hawaiian curse. This is the fourth time they've booked a trip to Hawaii.
The first 3 trips went up in flames because:

• My grandfather passed away
• I was born
• All flights were grounded (they were booked to leave September 15, 2001)

OK, I'm not very superstitious, but those are some crazy coincidences, right? Right? I mean, why are they in such a hurry to book another trip? But, almost 7 years have passed, and here we are planning again. This is the only plan that involves more people than just the two of them. I
believe it's also the longest trip and encompasses more islands than their previous plans.
So far:

• The intra-island cruise we booked was discontinued in February (travel agent has "never even heard of this happening...")
• Aloha Airlines (on which we had booked 2 separate intra-island flights) went bankrupt.
• Tiki had emergency surgery and now has to go for follow-up while we're away.
  
• Matt's research keeps throwing up bugs that are delaying his thesis. When we booked this trip, he couldn't imagine not being done by February...but he won't be done until end of June (we hope).
• There is a volcano erupting-ish.
  

Do you believe in signs? If you do...how screwed am I? (On a scale of 6-20)

I hate iTunes

I hate iTunes. Can I say that? I'm sure someone is going to jump out of the wall now and cart me away, but I freakin hate iTunes. It drives me nuts. I suppose I should start way back in '98, when I first started using my computer to listen to music. At the time, I had winamp, and I liked it. I would say, "winamp, play this song" and it would say, "ok." and that was that. All right, so there were some abstract designs and the occasional playlist and other tomfoolery, but it did what I wanted it to do, and I was happy. Then I was using windows media player for a while. I'm not sure why I changed over, but I did...it was ok. I was never thrilled with it, but it was convenient, so I used it for a while.

Then I tried to use iTunes for about a week, and I hated it, so for the last two years or so I've been using winamp again, and I was happy.

Also, and this goes to the core of my iTunes hate, I had a samsung mp3 player, and I am used to easily moving files on and off it, any way I want. Now, it wasn't perfect. I could only save one playlist at a time, and I had better select the songs in the order I wanted them played because once they were on that list, the only way to move them would be to unselect them and then go back into the folder with the mp3 file and select it again. Then it would be moved to the end of the list. There was no shuffle function. And, most importantly, it only had 256 kb of storage space, which can be pretty limiting. I got used to that, though.

Then it died and Matt got me an iPod. So now I am forced to confront iTunes again. Let me catalog my hate.

1. It cannot fathom that I move songs on my hard drive or that tags on the files update.
   
   This leaves me with duplicate files. Does iTunes then say to itself, "ok. I messed up. Let me fix this, or at least ignore the problem." No. No it does not. It gets to one of the duplicate files, realizes that the file is no longer there (because I moved it) and flips right the eff out. It can't do anything until I find the file or delete the duplicate.
   
   
2. It doesn't respect my organization system. Have an audiobook in mp3 format? Sorry. That's a music file. Can't move it. What? You're uploading a folder called "Exercise Mix?" Well, iTunes is just just going to distribute those files alphabetically. You can go in and collect them into a playlist later, right? Look, iTunes. Just leave my files where I put them. I put them there for a reason. They are my files. No touchie.
   
   This is becoming a big problem. Normally, if I have a number of songs by one artist, I will collect them in a file under the artist's name. iTunes does not respect this system. I know that I can sort by artist name in iTunes...but it seems to be confused. For example, I have three Matt Nathanson cds. I ripped them all using the same program. I store them in the same folder on my computer. I uploaded them all to my iPod. If I sort by artist, I should see all of these songs, right? BZZT! Wrong. Only one appears. Where are the other two? I don't know. Can I move them into the right folder? Why no. No I can't.
   
   Look, iTunes. I appreciate that you have all these cool ways to sort files, and I like that about you, but sometimes you mess up. Hey, it happens to all of us. All I ask is that you let me clean up any mistakes I find, ok?
   
   
3. It doesn't recognize all my file labels. Suddenly, I have a group of files called File recorded by Artist. I have no idea what these files are. I cannot find them on my computer because there is no file on my computer called File. Because I am not a complete moron. I suppose I could listen to them all and write down what they are, but that is not terribly helpful because I have no idea how to fix this.
   
   
4. It doesn't recognize standard Windows key commands. Let's say that I moved my Jump Around mp3 and I added it to a couple playlists, and now iTunes thinks I have 4 copies of it. I want to delete 3 of the 4 copies. They are right next to each other. Do you think I can shift click and select them all? What about control click? Should that work? Well, I'm using a PC. I'm running windows. I'm running iTunes for windows, so it should know that. And yet, notsomuch. Does not compute.
   
   
5. There are no hints to the user interface.Umm...hello, Apple, this is a little awkward, but do you have any UI standards? Why, yes. Yes you do. Could you...I don't know...use them? I would rather not click on every single icon just to see what it does, and I don't want to read through the whole Help file either. Just give me some hints and I'll be on my way.
   
   
6. I hate syncing.
   Here is how I added/deleted songs on my last mp3 player. Ready? Ok.
   - Connect to the PC.
   - Open the folder.
   - Drag and drop the new files.
   Want to delete something? See that Delete key on your keyboard? Why don't you hit that. What's that you say? The song is still on your computer? It doesn't matter. It will stay away from your mp3 player unless you drag the file into this folder. I know I can select manually sync, but why is this necessary? Go back to #2, iTunes. No touchie!

Seriously, why is this so difficult? Stop trying to control me. Stupid iTunes.

Outpourings of crazy III

Each year, 250,000 Americans die from illnesses caused by lack exercise. By working out regularly you are less likely to become overweight or develop diabetes, osteoporosis and cancer. Opting not to exercise is as bad as the other controllable health risk factors such as smoking, high cholesterol or high blood pressure.

Moment of crazy number 1. I kind of agree that opting not to exercise is the same as opting to smoke, but the rest of the paragraph is just crazy. There is no such thing as an illness caused solely by lack of exercise, unless you count bed sores. Second, I haven't run the numbers to see if she's including cancer deaths, but if she is, that's just wrong. As in factually wrong. And finally, every "controllable" condition she mentioned has a significant hereditary risk factor. You can work to control them, but you can't say that you got them as "punishment" for not exercising.


As always, the only cure is text-yelling:

HERE'S A FEW WAYS TO FIRE UP YOUR WORKOUT!!!

• UP THE INTENSITY. Revving your usual pace will help you avoid hitting a plateau. Example: Run, jump rope or run the stairs at any given day.

Hint: you can't show an increase if you don't have a baseline.

Wall stickers!

Like the geese? They're my new wall stickers! This is not my apartment, by the way. It's an image from the seller - michellechristina.etsy.com

I was debating between this one and a flock of swallows (and about a million others - let's be honest - but I eventually decided that I really wanted birds), but this won out because it has fewer parts. I literally spent two hours trying to position these on the wall, then left them tacked to the wall for two days before I actually stuck them there...and then one of them is not perfectly rotated, but I decided that it's good enough. (It's the one over the window in this picture. I think I stuck mine a little too parallel to the floor, if that makes sense.) Somehow, I saw this coming and decided that buying a pack of 50 wall stickers was not going to work out.