Magic Jewball

Most of my readers are from outside the New York area, but even you, I know, visit. For you and for residents of the beautiful neighborhood I call home, the Upper West Side, please check out my friend’s new blog My Upper West. It’s full of the things people in other NY ‘hoods have been enjoying on their own local blogs for years: news, events, store openings & closing, real estate reports, star sightings, and so much more. He and his wife blog all day and night, just for us.

Seriously, this place rocks and now we finally have a blog! Woot!

It’s been a busy week and I’ve been to both the doctor AND the dentist so you know it was another period of pain and Vicodin. But never mind that. While I was in the waiting room of the doctor’s office (and I mostly get the last appointment of the day because I work late so things are usually pretty empty), I listened to two kids making prank phone calls with the older kid’s cell phone. It was a tween girl and maybe a ten-year-old boy and the boy did the talking while the girl clasped her hand over her mouth to stifle uproarious laughter. In a thick Bronx accent, he would say, “Hello, I’m calling from Bank of Amerikuh and yo loan is expiuhed. Hello? Hello?” He seemed genuinely surprised each time someone hung up on him, which everyone did within three seconds. And then it hit me why kids’ prank phone calls fail. Because kids sound like kids! This may seem entirely obvious to you but it did not to me when I was an adolescent. I mean, say he had said, “Good evening, sir, I am calling from Bank of America regarding your loan, there is a problem,” it still would have come out in the voice of a ten-year-old. Click.

The other thing that struck me is, “your loan has expiuhed” has become the new “I have your sister locked up in my car.” Because these days, that’s a lot more terrifying and realistic. Even the youts know.

Title comes from:
Blondie – Hanging On The Telephone

You know how people who are afraid of dying in plane crashes are obsessed with plane crash news? Having worked on this blog for nearly three years, my fear is losing everything, and so I am obsessed with a blog service I’ve never heard of called Journalspace crashing and losing all its members’ blogs. Everything. Apparently they had a stupid (read: nonexistent) back up system set up by their sketchy IT guy who then erased everything right after he was fired. People, we can learn some lessons from this:

1. Back up your work!
2. Always escort fired employees out of the building.
3. Never lose track of what’s going on in your own world, even if you have delegated.
4. Back up your work!

True story, at one label where I worked, a guy got laid off, went to say goodbye to his friends on another floor, and got trapped in the stairwell when they cut off his card access. Security had to come rescue him. That was sucky. But this is a good segue to say, happy new year! How so? Well, think for a moment. Do you know anyone who had a good 2008? Because I surely don’t. And getting canned is one big reason it blew for lots of people. But it wasn’t just that, remarkably. Everyone seems to have their own unique reasons why it both sucked and blew. I know I do.

But the good news is, it’s over. Fresh start! I know where David Nalbandian is next week! The Yankees bought every free agent available! One day, no construction people will be expected at my home! Peace in the Middle East!

No, really!

And this is your year, dear reader. I’m sure of it. Unless you blogged with Journalspace. 2010 will work for you folks.

Morrissey – In the Future When All’s Well

Hope everyone had a delightful Purim and/or is having a happy Easter!

First off, the bake sale is over but thank you so much! It was hugely successful and we’ll have another one late this year with a different kind of treat (maybe rugelach will make a repeat appearance). Sorry for the lack of posts but I wanted that one to stay on top, plus I was busy baking. And will be for a while!

Second, for those who are interested in the aftermath of the Station Fire, there is a special tonight at 10pm on VH1. There was a tribute concert and excerpts of that will be shown as well.

Lastly, I did not, in fact, win the contest on Randa Clay’s site for my Just.Do.It post (boo! hiss!) but I think it was more meant for tech and practical blogs, rather than personal ones. As well, I was going to write that post anyway if not exactly framed that way, so it’s OK. And I was glad to inspire and get inspired by the various comments.

Oh, and an update on something I mentioned on a Page: Nalby lost at Indian Wells this week. But I don’t mind! He lost to Chokemaster Mardy Fish, my second favorite player who then went on to beat… Roger Federer! He’s in the final today. Godspeed, Chokemaster!

It’s Monday in Australia and you know what that means: tennis is back! Game on! So far I have nothing to say about that, though. Lucky for you, non-tennis fan. Tomorrow it’s Monday in the US and if you had as many tech feeds as I have, you’d know that Macworld begins. What does that mean for me? Nothing! Despite having a MacBook Pro and really loving it, I’m not a fanboy. Or fangirl, although I’ve never heard that term used. I don’t even use any of the programs that came with my Mac, other than iTunes and I’m actively looking for a replacement for that. So I thought I’d use this occasion to describe to you all my favorite non-Apple programs that fill my hard drive with utility. Also, lots of people probably got shiny new Macs over the holidays and your minds are fresh and open!

If you are a non-tennis fan and PC user, today is not your day on J-Ball. Come back tomorrow. No, actually, many of these are available for PC. And they’re all free! I’ll go in alphabetical order.

Adium is the program I use instead of iChat. Adium is the sister-program of Pidgin for PC’s and I can see all my AIM and gTalk contacts in on place. It also plays Crowded House’s “I get your tongue in the mail” line when I get e-mail. But that was my customization.

Audacity lets me edit song files. Make your own ringtones!

Burn does just that. It burns CD’s and DVD’s. This is how I make DVD’s because I find iDVD clunky and full of all kinds of stuff I never use.

Cyberduck is yet another bird themed program that I use for ftp.

DoubleCommand lets me remap my keyboard. I use that for precisely one thing: to make shift-delete do a forward delete. The fn key is way too far away to make this convenient the way Apple has it set up.

ffmpegx is what I use to convert video from one format to another.

FireFox is the browser I use instead of Safari. Safari makes sites look prettier but FF has all those add-ons that I can no longer live without.

Gimp is the open-source (read: free) substitute for Photoshop, if you do Photoshoppy type things.

Handbrake rips my DVD’s to my hard drive so I can load them onto my iPod. Then people can look over my shoulder on the subway while I watch The Simpsons.

Max is a program that encodes CD’s. That is, I use it to rip CD’s to my hard drive because iTunes doesn’t use LAME, what I consider the best encoder. You can also use it to encode in lots of other formats, like Ogg and FLAC and others. Occasionally, I use iTunes-LAME, which encodes right in iTunes.

MPEG Streamclip is what I use to edit video. I find iMovie iAnnoying.

Quinn is Tetris. That’s all you really need to know.

Senuti (read it backwards) moves songs from my iPod to my hard drive. Sometimes I rip a CD at work and then I want to listen to it on my home computer. And there we are.

Skype is a “phone over Internet” program. It’s free to call people who also have Skype and reeeeally cheap to call those who don’t. You’ll need a headset.

SuperDuper! is the back-up program I use. I don’t have Leopard but even if I did, it doesn’t make bootable back-ups. It’s free for the basic and like $28 for the version with the bells and whistles.

Thunderbird is the e-mail program I use instead of Mail. I use it because it’s cross-platform, so I keep it on a USB drive and tote it around between my work PC and home Mac. You need a special script to do that but it’s easy. Even easier is if you have either two PC’s or two Macs.

VLC is what I use instead of Quicktime. It plays lots of video formats that QT can’t or won’t.

Wiretap Pro (I have the paid version but the free one does quite a lot) records any sound the Mac is making. This includes cassettes that I want to import and make into mp3′s, Skype conversations with sketchy customer service people (check legality in your state – in NY only one person needs to give consent), Internet radio interviews, etc.

I should also mention Songbird, which is Mozilla’s (the FireFox and Thunderbird people) alternate to iTunes. But it’s in Beta and is full of bugs. So I downloaded it but never use it.

I also have lots of candy in my menu bar.

Alarm Clock makes the most expensive one you’ll own. I use it as a kitchen timer, actually.

Google Notifier tells me when I have Gmail.

You Control Tunes puts the controls to my music in the menu bar so I don’t have to switch programs when I’m in another and want to change songs or pause.

Show Desktop is something I missed from PC’s (actually, that’s their slogan: “The only good pc feature, now on the macintosh”). It automatically hides all your active windows so your desktop is clear.

If you have any others, please share! I’ll need something to distract me from Nalby’s foibles this week.

Title comes from:
The Who – Substitute