Saturday, May 10, 2003

It's over a month since my last ski day of the season (unless some magic happens in the next couple of months). Lots of cold snow have fallen in the West since. As usual, weather and my work and travel schedules were working at cross purposes. Still, that last day was wonderful. In the backcountry with a cool crew, we expected a couple of fresh inches on top of a foot of new over boilerplate, but it snowed steadily all day for another foot or more. By the end at 5pm, it was scary good. It wasn't the lightest of Utah powder, but that might have been better for safety. 3:38:46 PM

Can someone give a good explanation for the increasingly obnoxious proliferation of public music? Here in Philadelphia I now avoid several otherwise good restaurants because it is impossible to hold a conversation immersed in the din of piped music (made worse by the use of hard sound-reflective surfaces, another idiotic fashion). Restaurant reviews should include dB measurements. Gyms are also egregious offenders. I go to a gym that is conveniently close to home. Many of the clients use personal music devices, and the gym provides personal video/audio devices like a modern airplane next to most of the aerobic machines. Why do they have to add loud piped music? I suspect that these businesses have fallen for some supposedly rigorous study that claims piped music makes them more lively and attractive. To whom? Has conversation beyond shouted greetings and loud laughter gone out of fashion? 12:19:00 PM

For a while, my iPod would not hold battery charge for more than a day when turned off. This was a widely reported problem, which was fixed with software update 1.2.6. Recently, I installed the new AAC-supporting 1.3 version. The charge loss problem returned. Do they do regression testing at Apple? So I'm now waiting for it to charge so I can go to the gym, where I require it and the Etymotic earphones as an antidote to the gym's inane and loud music selection. Later thought: they were in such a rush to ship by the scheduled announcement that they didn't have the time to test properly the update for earlier iPods. I would huff and puff mightily if I had never been in similar situations (conference and code delivery deadlines). Still later: Others are seeing the same problem. I did find out that the Alarms option, which I had turned of before the upgrade, was back on. I turned it off. We'll see... 12:03:38 PM