I got pMachine set up today, but I wasn't able to get my blogger entries ported over. I got waylayed by work stuff this evening, so I lost several hours I had set aside for the conversion. Hopefully I'll be able to get to it this week (should be a crazy one, with the Grammys on Sunday, and several big product related releases next week).
@1:55:33 AM

We've got a runner!

As I rounded a corner on my way back from the gym, I saw that a policeman had pulled over a beat-down light-blue late-80's Corolla (?). The motorist was still in his car, and the policeman was standing on the curb next to the passenger door, with his arms crossed, scowling. No big deal, so I started to zone them out. Suddenly, the driver slammed his car into drive and sped off around the nearby corner. The policeman stood there for a split second, seemingly dazed, and then took off on a mad dash for his cruiser. As I passed the scene, the cop was on his walkie-talkie, apparently calling for backup.

There will probably be live coverage of this on every LA "news" broadcast at Noon.
@12:02:26 PM

Google buys Blogger. I happened to be in the audience at the "Live from the Blogosphere" event when Evan announced this.

It was definitely the big buzz item after the panel adjourned. Some attendees speculated that Blogger-powered sites would start getting priority in Google searches. I doubt Google will do that, as they seem to be hyper-sensitive to maintaining the integrity of their service. My guess is that Google will now 1) instantly update their search catalog when users post to their Bloggered sites, and 2) figure out a way to integrate blogging into the filtering for Google news.

On the drive home, as I thought through the implications behind this for Yahoo!, I also realized that I'd better get moving on my long-planned port of my site off of Blogger. So tomorrow I'm going to get pMachine up and running, and move my content over.
@10:44:30 PM

i'm not meant to own a bicycle. today, for the 4th time in my life, my bike was stolen. actually, this time it was two bikes: one that i bought, and one that an ex-roommate abandoned.

apparently either the door malfunctioned, or someone hacked it (eg, broke the chain that opens/closes it), and got into my buiding's garage. i had just moved my bikes down into the garage this weekend, as the building decided to get rid of the bike rack out back where i'd had my bikes parked and locked since i moved in. figuring that the garage was oh-so-safe, i didn't bother to lock my bikes up when i moved them down on saturday. oops.

not that a lock would necessarily have stopped these thieves. after a quick walk around the garage, it looks like they cut several other locks, and generally scavenged parts from various bikes in the garage. lame.

i'd been considering trading my mountain bike in for a beach cruiser, but i guess i'll just stick to hoofing it around for now.
@10:00:39 PM

oh yeah, Happy New Year!
@11:33:43 AM

I saw a great concert last night. It was KCRW's Sounds Eclectic Evening, featuring 6 acts, plus undisclosed "special guests", at Universal Ampitheatre. The six acts were: 1) flowin' rappers Blackalicious, 2) Mexican electronica band Kinky, 3/4/5) female crooners Beth Orton, Aimee Mann, and Norah Jones, and 6) the 11-piece, 5-singer electronica group Zero 7. Special guests included Pete Yorn, the Flaming Lips, and Beck.

To fit this many acts into a 4ish hour show on one stage, they'd rigged up one of those fancy rotating stages, so that one act could setup behind the scenes while another performed. Then when it was time to switch, there'd be no lag between the acts for setup time. Seemed like that worked out pretty well; didn't notice any snags.

All of the main acts did solid sets. Blackalicious and Kinky rocked the house. Beth Orton was especially charming and cute. Norah Jones and Aimee Mann were both very gracious and appreciative of the crowd response to their performances. And I would have enjoyed about another hour of Zero 7.

The highlights of the night for me were:

1. Beck & Sia (one of the female lead singers for Zero 7) belting out a cover of the classic Travolta/Newton John duet "You're the One That I Want". They definitely put their own mark on this cover. Rather than mimicking the bubble-gum style of the original, they did it slowly and soulfully. Hopefully this will get played on KCRW at some point.
2. Zero 7's performance of their song "Destiny". They didn't really do anything different or special to it. It's just an amazing song, and sounds even more amazing live.
3. Kinky's introduction: "'ello. We are Keeenky." Just tickled my funnybone. They followed through with a rockin' set.

The only big flop of the night for me was Pete Yorn. Yorn was doing his best Goatboy impression or something; all of his songs were extra warbley/whiney. Another musical flop happened when Wayne (lead singer from The Flaming Lips) brought Beck out to join him in a cover of Sonny & Cher's duet "I've Got You, Babe". Beck didn't know the lyrics, but Wayne insisted on forging ahead. "I've got you Beck"/"I've got you Wayne". Not exactly a magical musical moment, but they were having fun with it, and most in the crowd seemed to enjoy it.

There was also an after-party featuring Thievery Corporation and DJ Shadow. I would have liked to have seen them, but the tickets for the afterparty were sold out when I bought my tickets. That, and I was already pretty tired when the main show got over at 12:30am. We could have easily stood around for a while to listen to their sets (they were just spinning in a plastic tent right outside the Ampitheatre), but we were all dragging so we headed out, happy with the 4+ hours of great live music we'd already experienced.
@6:16:39 PM

stood outside for 45 minutes, but no confirmed leonid sightings. too much light pollution here in LA, i'm sure. ah well, back to bed...
@3:56:48 AM

i finally made the move to winXP at home last sunday. i got fed up with the constant instability of win98. the upgrade was fairly smooth, with the exception of an annoying application blocking issue.

i used to use an application called "SecuRemote" from Firewall-1 to connect to the network of a company i used to work for. i uninstalled that application 2 years ago when i left that company. winXP found some remnants of that application lying around my system, so i had to find the various needles in the haystack so xp could do its thing. not sure why it couldn't just say "want us to nuke this for you?"... instead, i had to spend 3 hours hunting for registry keys and random files.

after that, the upgrade went smoothly. and my system came up nice and snappily after the 90 minute upgrade was complete. but my dsl connection didn't work. nor did my dial-up connection. my nic and modem seemed to be fine by the xp diagnostics. five days, three calls to verizon tech support, and two hours of googling at work later, my home dsl connection is working again. turned out that the 3com nic i have (3C905C-TX) says that it works ok when you upgrade from 98 to xp, but you really have to install a new driver from 3com to get it to work properly.

seems like everything's fully operational again. xp seems pretty cool. love the snappy boot ups. and launchcast plays without stutters, something 98 wasn't able to do on my system for the past several months. will be kicking the tires on xp's photos features over the next few days.
@10:50:43 PM

has it really come to this? epic records (owned by sony) is sending out advance copies of two upcoming major releases in glued-shut walkmans. oh, and they even glued headphones into the walkman's headphone jack to prevent jacking into a digital receiver. smaaaaaaaaart.

talk about a low-tech "solution" to a high-tech problem. oh so many ways to defeat this... exacto kinfe? screwdriver? snip the headphone wire and attach a plug?

if their intention was just to focus attention on the issue, then this was brilliant. if someone actually thought this was going to be effective, they should put the lid back on the glue more tightly next time. the fumes are clearly getting to them.
@3:42:02 PM

hey look, i finally fixed it. no thanks to the staff at blogger, who i wrote several times and to their "support" newsgroups and system. i finally just motivated to re-code my template from my existing page. was fairly painless, actually.
@11:00:26 PM

still broken.
@11:48:43 PM

annoying error in blogger has kept me from updating my blog for several weeks now. this suuuuucks. finally got back into the mood to update, and software's keepin' me down. arg.
@11:32:12 PM