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Apple Care

I usually try not to use this web journal as a place for random gripes about things that bug me, but this is too much.

I called Apple Care with a service issue about my computer, namely that the power adapter basically almost caught itself on fire the other day. The cord seems to have gotten a short and blown out, causing a nasty electrical smoke to come out and stink up my living room.

The computer is under an Apple Care warranty, so it should be no problem to get it fixed. I set myself a time when I knew I had almost an hour to spare (having called Apple Care before and gotten stuck on hold for an insanely long time). And lo, here it went again. I spent almost 15 minutes holding for the noob* tech support guy. I talked to him for less than 5 minutes, and he put me back on hold for the l33t* tech support guy*. At the moment, I have been holding for another 20 minutes and expect to hold for another ten at least.

This, mind you, is to get Apple to replace the power adapter that almost set my house on fire. Something is not right here.

But there is also an object lesson in balance between the extremes of ideology to be learned here which is why I filed this post under politics and government.

Apple computers ‘just work’. This is because Apple are fascists and keep their technology to themselves. It means that everything is seamlessly integrated. It also, unfortunately, means that when there is a problem like the one I’m having (a known issue for Macbooks, by the way) you have no choice but to deal with Apple on their terms to get the problem fixed.

On the other hand, Microsoft is populist (at least in terms of hardware). Their products are shoddy, they don’t work, but someone with a little bit of knowledge can hack the crap out of them and Windows would run on a toaster oven if it had a CPU.

To complete the political metaphor, Linux is made by anarchists. This statement is not entirely metaphorical.

This is just like in the real world. Fascists are the best at ‘making the trains run on time’. But they’re a pain to deal with.

Anyway, at 47 minutes from my initial call I’m about to get off the phone so I’ll leave you with that thought.

*For the less geeky among us, these are geek jokes. Noob is someone who is new and inexperienced. L33t (also spelled 1337 and other variations) is pronounced LEET and is a shortened version of elite. These are mostly used by hard corps video game enthusiasts, of which I want to make clear, I am not one.

Winter Wonderland

It is snowing today in Eugene, Oregon. We live around the corner from the municipal golf course, which on our cinqannual (every five years - I may have made this word up) snow days becomes sled central for all the neighborhood kids for the obvious reason that it is a collection of big, open fields and small hills.

We walked up there with Arthur first thing this morning. He loved the snow, loved the feel of it on his tongue, and LOVED going fast down the hill on a sled that some nice people let us borrow for a few runs. Then he got very cold, and we had a hard walk home with him crying the whole way.

All of our other plans have bee alled off today and we’re sitting inside drinking cocoa and enjoying the view out the window of the across the street neighbors building a snow fort pirate ship (it’s got a freaking window in front - they have architectural plans and everything).

The weather report says the snow will keep going through tomorrow. I’m thrilled to the bone.

In bad news, the Nut Brown seems to have been infected by some bacteria or wild yeast or something and has developed a nasty unpleasant phenolic aftertaste. Hopefully a few weeks aging will sort of soak up the bad taste or at least hide it. I’m not counting my chickens.

Nutcase Maple In Bottles

This morning I put five gallons of Maple Nut Brown ale in bottles. It’s a good do, I think from the warm flat sample I had. It doesn’t have any marked off flavors, at least. The final stats.

OG: 1.051 (6.5% pot. alc.)
FG: 1.015 (1.9% pot. alc.)
Alcohol by Volume: 4.6%

As mentioned previously, the beer was bottled with Maple Syrup used as priming sugar to give it a woodsy, maple flavor once it’s had a chance to bottle condition. Reviews to follow, of course. In the meantime, here’s a fun quote.

When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So, let’s all get drunk and go to heaven!
— George Bernard Shaw

More talk about identity politics

From an opinion piece in the NY Daily News;

…race is real in America. So is gender. Racism and gender bias are serious problems. Democrats have to find a way to talk about these issues in honest language - without either mouthing platitudes or breaking out in hives.

So true. But I’m not sure how to do it. Talking about race and gender sometimes feels like trying to walk barefoot on a tightrope made of razor wire. No matter what you say, someone is bound to be hurt. Because there is so much hurt around these issues; centuries of pain are wrapped up in the skin we wear or the plumbing we came with.

I think we might need a sacrificial lamb or two; some political personalities to cut open on the altar of public opinion in order to exorcise the demons of the past.

But who?

Retraction

It looks like the president can cry and get away with it so long as he’s crying about something really terrible. I think this is a wonderful development; the most powerful man in America cries in public. Maybe we’re getting more enlightened after all.

**Note**

The article that I linked to above used to say that president Bush cried, and that he said we should have bombed Auschwitz to stop the killing. The tone of the article changed in the five minutes from when I read it to when I clicked on the link to make sure it pointed to the right place. The new text is;

Also earlier, Bush became misty-eyed as he toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The president, who first visited the memorial in 1998 when he was governor of Texas, was wearing a yarmulke as he rekindled an eternal flame and placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps.

The original text said;

President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel’s Holocaust memorial Friday and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial’s chairman said.

Some editor showed up to work late this morning.

Race, Gender, Politics

I’ve been wondering how long it would take before the pundits started really making hay about race and gender in this campaign, and how those concepts are likely to impact electoral outcomes and media narratives. Now that the primaries have started, it seems to have begun in earnest.

Hillary Clinton recently cried a little during a campaign event in New Hampshire. I don’t know how well a male politician would do who cried publicly. I know that thirty years ago it ruined Ed Muskie, and I doubt that we’ve changed all that much in the intervening years. Maybe some tears in public wouldn’t be the death knoll for Barak Obama, John Edwards, or John McCain - but it would be the subject of intense scrutiny and ridicule. And rightfully so, perhaps; what happens if the President gets a little misty in a meeting with a foreign head of state? It seems the whole country would lose face. Part of being in a position of that much power is the ability to keep oneself very closely controlled.

But the real interesting question, I think, is; are we going to hold Senator Clinton to a different standard than we would one of her male counterparts? If we are, is it to her advantage or to her disadvantage? This is uncharted territory; Hillary is a woman smack in the middle of the most heinously male dominated sphere in the history of anything. Will we expect her to behave in traditionally masculine ways in order to get the job she’s interviewing for, or will we have different expectations of a female president? And the value question; should we? What’s right in this situation - should our basis of comparison change for a candidate who is a woman?

Another, related question is; what special challenges does Barack Obama face on account of his race? Will the electorate hold him to a different standard because he is a black man? Perhaps more insidious, will the electorate have special expectations of him because he carries a Muslim name? There have already been questions raised about Obama’s loyalty to America on the basis of his Grandfather possibly having been a Muslim. These accounts seem to focus mostly on his name; ‘Barack Hussein Obama’.

It disgusts me that these things are still issues in American life, but I fully believe that they are, and that these candidates will have to address them. Actually, the democratic primary is a fascinating election to get to watch. Race, Class, and Gender are at once front and center and pushed to the side. Barack, Hillary, and John; a black man, a woman, and a very wealthy man who’s running a campaign about poverty. How much closer to the core dysfunctionalities of the American psyche could we have cut?

I’m excited to watch the returns come in from New Hampshire tonight. I’m interested to learn whether the media blames a poor showing by Clinton on her recent display of emotion. It’s a long way from over yet.