Shuffle, Step Two.

Returned, Renewed, Restored, Regressed.

Last week, I wasn’t much in the mood to blog. It wasn’t just the emotional stuff I was going through, flatlining my urge to blog. Simply, I was without my MacBook Pro, my mobile office, my digital pen and paper. Seems silly, but I’d grown accustomed to writing, blogging and corresponding only on my laptop. I tried writing on my work machine. The words didn’t flow as easily.

The week prior to last, I’d put in a call into Apple’s AppleCare unit. The MBP was well within its original warranty. Additionally, I’d paid for the extended warranty, so it was ridiculous not to call Apple and have them at least diagnose the issues I was having. It was a very pleasant experience. The AppleCare rep was courteous and open-minded, listening to my description of the problem.

Albeit I was a little surprised that he was aware of any such problems with the MacBook Pro line.
These problems have been documented and commented like crazy on the Apple Support Boards.
Perhaps Apple itself needs to monitor the boards more for content. Moderators should take notes and pass them along. Head trouble off at the pass.

During our support call, the Apple rep emailed me a data capture program to get a snapshot of the MBP functions during normal operation for the apple tech gurus to examine and diagnose. I did it gladly and waited for them to get back to me.

I was shocked and amazed that the rep called me the next day, saying that the Techheads were interested in “capturing” my computer for further tests. I’d have to ship it to them and they’d replace it with a new system.

Yippee, fantastic news.

Groan. I have to backup everything and “clean” the machine, but only so much. They needed the operating system in it’s current state to properly test and figure out the root of the problem.
It was a bit of a hassle but I had to do it.

SuperDuper! to the rescue.

Backed up and cleaned up, I bid adieu to my poor, ailing MBP on a Friday, leaving me un-mobile for a week.

The New MBP arrived yesterday. Much ballyhooing and celebration.
I tested it with my backed up drive and it was whisper quiet.
Restoration of my hard drive was straight forward and painless. Yeah. SuperDuper!

All was well.

Till today.

The buzz is back.

Sigh.

I’ve resigned myself to accept that it’s something to do with the hardware and the current version of OS. It’s inescapable.




I wrapped that up fast. I was beginning to bore myself.

Botched!

If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
I should remind myself of this often, but alas it’s too late.

Apple released a firmware update for the MacBook Pro 17“. Surprising. The MBP17 has been a solid computer.

I hadn’t said anything for fear of jinxing things. Yeah, I’m a little superstitious.

I’ve been pleased to not experience any of the reported noises and problems like that of the MBP15.

The update seemed innocuous enough. Better fan control for better heat dissipation and other benefits if applied purported the update text. I’d reasoned that Apple wouldn’t/couldn’t screw up the machine.

So I updated.

I’d used it last night without incident. Kicking my legs up on the desk and leaning back in my chair, I blogged away as it rested on my lap. Hmm… it did feel cooler. Hurray, the update is a good one.

However this morning, I plugged the AC adapter in. I immediately heard the low whine emanating from the MBP.

CRAP! They screwed up my computer. I now have the dreaded built-in isight hum.

I’m nonplussed. I’m pissed.

Sigh. Hopefully they won’t wait two months for a fix like they did for the Apple iPod with video.

Dancing with Apples

My friend working for Apple Cupertino is coming out to NYC. She’ll be the booking agent for the DJs playing in Apple’s Midnight Mix. It’s a Friday event, from 12-2 at the Flagship Fifth Avenue store.

This is exciting, but I can’t say I’m surprised. It is a 24 hour store and it seems almost natural for such a place to cater to the dance nightlife.

Next weekend, July 8th, she’s got Honey Dijon on tap. If anyone’s interested, I’m down.

Following weeks’ DJs
Roy Davis Jr.
3rd week - Jojo Flores
4th week - Anthony Mansfield
1st week in August - Mr. V

Gay Pride Wrap-Up

Goodness, where did the time go?
It’s Wednesday. Gay Pride has just passed yet it feels like it happened weeks ago.
The festivities and the parties have ended. Yes, Pride should be lived everyday. But we all need a little reminding, “Life is a party. take part no matter how you do it.”

I’d enjoyed myself the first nights (mornings) of the weekend with goods friends, good music and a fair amounf of dancing. They only whet my appetite for a more robust and full on experience for Pride. I knew the folly of such high expectations, but I wanted a party to knock my socks off.

I rested most of Sunday, waiting in quiet anticipation for Monday morning. By the time 3:30AM rolled around, I was done waiting. I was ready to go. Friend Frank asked I call to see if he’d be up to joining me at that time. He wasn’t, he’d meet me later. Fine by me, less for me to hassle with.

I rode in on the subway. It was a clockwork experience, moving easily from one train to the other with little wait.

I’d arrived in Chelsea around 4:45AM. I was a tad on the early side *sarcastic grin* but I wasn’t walking into the club with the sun peeking out in the sky. It’d been rising around 5:30.

I walked quickly as if in fear that the sun would ignite my skin. I’m not a vampire. Swear. Just a night owl. I have a tan line. Wanna see? :)

Anyway, arriving at Spirit, I breezed in. Club security was extremely lax. Not even a pat down. The will call woman asked my name and she looked through her stacks of enveloped tickets.
First stack, nothing.
Second stack nothing.
Third stack nothing.
Back to the second stack.

“There it is.” she exclaimed. “I wrote these myself. I know your name.”
“Err, you do?“ I questioned.
”Yeah, you buy from the website ALL THE TIME for ALL THE PARTIES.“
”Um, yeah. So how about a comp the next time?“ I said.

No, I didn’t really say that last part. I took my ticket and slinked away to the doorman.

Upon entering, the sound of hip-hop hit me. WTF?!? I headed for the bathroom (it was long train ride you know). The hip-hop music was playing right in front of the restrooms. There were people grooving to the music. I peed, quickly, and headed down to the main floor where I was greeted with the sound of proper progressive house being served.

YES!

Junior was purportedly coming on at sunrise. DJ Escape was opening for him and currently playing. He was having quite a time in the booth, bouncing and dancing around, having a fine old time with the homos. Escape was doing a more than respectable job. In fact he surprised me how good he was throwing down, to the point I worried that Junior would have a tough time following up his act.

Yes, he was that good.

But honestly, I had NOTHING to worry about. When Junior went on, he was on. His music selection was insane. It was relentless, it was inspired, it was uplifting. Junior mixed fluidly with nary a hiccup, at least none that I could perceive.

The crowd had been light when I walked in. Not surprising since Alegria was happening across the way. Still, it was a cute crowd. As expected an hour or two into Junior’s set, you could see the migration of boys/men from Crobar into Spirit. A muscley, handsome infusion beset the dancefloor and the vibe was elevated more as this took us into peak time. Such a wonderful time to be gay and dancing amongst our own. Hee.

I don’t think I ever danced so hard. There were times that sweat was pouring off my body, the tops of my jeans were soaked through. I worried that I’d over-exert myself but doing it as often as I do, I guess I shouldn’t.

I stayed till about 1:30PM. By then, RedBull was becoming putrid to me and I couldn’t mentally fortify myself to stay any longer. I left happy and content. The party ran till 5:00 which some people complained was too early. But I say whatever, the party has to end sometime. I was certainly happy to leave at 1:30PM. I didn’t want to take a train home wearing clothes that I’d sweat through at least three times over, with normal working folk. I reeked. No, that would have been unseemly and skanky of me. The trains were nice and empty in the middle of the day.

Arriving home, I peeled my clothes off, showered and slept, soundly.

I can unequivocably say, Junior’s Gay Summer Camp was exactly what I hoped it to be.

It has been an exhaustingly good weekend. I’ve been a state of fatigue, trying to catch my breath since Monday morning, only getting back to the gym today. My body refused to do my bidding yesterday.

Heh. Can’t wait to do it again next year. Who’s with me? :)

Gay Pride 2006… thus far

Happy GAY Pride New York!

Everywhere, my gay brothers and sisters, and our straight, ever so accepting, fun-loving friends are being themselves, going with the flow and the flow is good positive energy.

Thus far…

Friday
mr. Black
It was rainy and wet that night. I was tempted to go the big wussy route, stay home and dry. During a respite in the rain, I charged out of the house, contrary to my instinct and I'm glad I did.

Second time I've been to this little party down in NoHo. Meet up with H and N, and their friend, M. Lots of cute Village-y boys. Happy Coincidence, friend O and his band of friends were there as well, cutting up a rug. Music was surprisingly danceable, funky and fresh. Nice chunky, hard beats.

Saturday Night
Ok, it was more Sunday morning.
Evolve, Victor Calderone at Crobar.

The usual Friend Frank shenanigans withstanding (ie. say he'll pick me up 4:20 (late 4:38), have to stop at his apt. so that he can shower, have friends sit in car waiting for 10 minutes for no reason yada yada yada. TIRED!), we arrived at 6AM. (Ok, it WAS Sunday morning) I'd probably have arrived at that time had I left and taken the train in. Most likely untrue. I just wasn't letting Frank's antics give me a bad head.

Crobar was packed, more than I'd ever seen it for an Evolve party.
Hard to break into the solid mass of bodies on the dancefloor, but we did.
Nice and handsome crowd. When we'd arrived, you could see the exodus of straight people leaving. It was the gay squeeze as the usually mixed crowd, became gayer in the late morning hours especially for GAY Pride.

Victor was doing a decent job. He'd flubbed a few times which was surprising. In my recent memory, he hadn't ever messed up till tonight. He was using the stage DJ booth as opposed to the house booth, maybe that was it.

Anyway, the music? Good techy, progressive, tribal beats. I've heard him a few times in recent months and it's starting to sound repetitive. I'll need to take a long break from him.

During the morning, we learned that he was only spinning till 10AM. Bother. I wouldn't have waited for Friend Frank, opting to have arrived earlier, had I known. However, that explain why musically, something was missing. I never got fully engaged by Victor's spinning, music selection and programming. He spun like there was an end.
Still, had a good time but not the great time I hoped.

Well, here's looking forward to Junior tonight but I'm trying to keep my expectations low so that in any case, I'll be surprised.

Gay Pride Weekend

It is upon us. Well, at least for me and my NY readership.

They’ll be plenty of partying happening.
Bars, Parade, Dances, Boats. Oh My.

So many choices.

What to choose?
Choose your entertainment. Choose your poison, carefully and in moderation please.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve made my choices. :)




Pony up the cash. It'll be a great opportunity to stalk meet me. Please, please don't stalk me, I'll rip out your intestines and wrap them around your neck be very upset. Cross even.

I can't guarantee you'll see some skin… oh who am I kidding?… it's pretty much assured I'll be bounding around without a shirt on.

Join me for a dance and a prance. Yeah, I'll prance a little bit. Just a little. Once I get my dance on, keep up or step aside, have a seat and watch. I'll get back to you when I'm done.

It's Gay Pride baby.

I'm officially excited.

Pouring

No shortage of things going wrong for me.

Alright, I’m being melodramatic, but it sure isn’t a plethora of things going my way.

In no particular order:

MacBook Pro iSight
Inexplicably, I’m not getting a multi-way video chat icon next to my AIM Buddy icon. Meaning, I’m not capable of multi-way video chats. It’s certainly more of an oddity/anomaly/perturbance than any real necessity that I figure out why this is. I’m not looking to get into any hot, XXX multi-way video chatting, but I like to keep my options open.

Something about the MBP is incapable of serving up the multi-vidchat be it the hardware which would be über-irritating, he MBPs configuration or the network. Honestly, I shouldn’t be trying to test this here at work as the network and internet access are locked down fairly well with a firewall. Quite fruitless. Not to mention, my repeated logging on and off, is sure to pique those who have me on their buddy list.

Door open. Door close. Door open. Door close.

Probably leading to my immediate removal from said buddy list forthwith.

I’ll save any additional testing for when I get home.

Smashing Rosetta
In my infinite wisdom, I’ve managed to crash Rosetta, the PowerPC emulation software on the Intel version of Mac OSX. Sure, a restart sets everything right again, but I’ve replicated the problem. Whenever I fanagle the 3d app Swift3D to work under Rosetta, upon quitting, NO PowerPC application will launch.

Currently trolling the Apple User Discussion Forums for any ideas of how this happens.

It’s a problem in the vain of “It hurts when I touch it.” So perhaps I shouldn’t touch it.

Crashing PSP X-Men Legends II
I’ve replayed a section of the game four times, each time leading to a freeze of the PSP and shutdown. Very annoying. Fortunately, I’d the presence of mind, sending an tech support email to Activision.

However their reply was not well received.

Thank you for contacting Activision’s Technical Support. I'm sorry to hear about your problem. I will try as best as I can to help you. This can be caused by exceeding the number of items in your hero stash and inventory. To correct this:
1. Clear out all items from the hero stash and reduce your gear inventory.
2. Save the game.
3. Reboot the system to clear memory.
4. Load the save game back up and play as normal.

This is absurd. Essentially I have to unload all of the items I have lovingly collected. Anyone who has played RPGs knows that’s half the fun. Forget it. I’ll try selling some off and see if that helps.

Missing Jade
When I was young evilbuddha, I’d worn a jade charm. Shaped like a lifesaver, it led to an exorbitant amount of teasing from fellow children.

“Why are you wearing a lifesaver? Are you saving it for later?”
“It’s NOT A LIFESAVER!” I pouted, leading to more teasing. Yet, I wore it diligently. I secretly cursed my little jade charm.

When you’re a kid, it’s hard to live down. Trust me.

At age thirteen, I received from my mother my little jade buddha, the origin of my namesake. I reluctantly relinquished my jade lifesaver to my mother’s safe keeping.

Now, hoping to wear it again, it’s gone missing. My mother can’t find it.

We’ve done the back and forth,

“I can’t find it. You took it.”
“No, I didn’t. Please find it.”

Frustrating.

I really do hope to find it.

Aural Bug (Update)
Haven’t found the track in question.
What’s worse is, the noise in my head has now garbled what little I remember of it.
Struggling to get it back. Crumbs.

Positive End

Horoscope for Leo 06/12 on Astrology.com
Why won't your plans work? Just as you solve the situation with unprecedented ingenuity, it pops up again in a slightly altered form. Don't give up. The universe is trying to distract you from a beautiful surprise.

OOh… I hope it's something good.
I will wrap up all these little loose ends in my favor.