Entries Tagged 'We Like' ↓

Now, as my name is The Wife and I blog with The Husband (who I am, in fact, married to) I would like to tell you all about the joys of marriage. It rocks. Seriously. Yes, some people bitch and moan about their spouses, to the tune of several “take my wife please” jokes. But, at the end of the day, coming home to someone you love is great, but there’s a certain security in knowing that if something happened to The Husband, I’d be notified. If he was in the hospital, I could be with him night and day. I have the right to execute his Living Will, if he had one (which he doesn’t. We need to work on that.)

That, my friends, is why it is awesome that California got its head out of its ass and took a step toward joining Masshatachuttes as the second state to allow gay people to enjoy marriage!

“In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship,” Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote of marriage for the majority, “the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”

Link: California Court Affirms Right to Gay Marriage NYTimes

If you didn’t watch the news at all in the last year, and if The Smoking Gun isn’t bookmarked, you’re probably not aware of the bizarre story of Lori Drew, a suburban mother who posed as a teenage boy in order to taunt a neighborhood girl, Megan Meier. Posing as “Josh”, Drew and accomplices flirted with Meier and initiated an online relationship. Then in October of 2006, “Josh” turned on Meier, tore her apart, and Meier committed suicide.

One could imagine it was just a cruel joke gone wrong, that is until it came out that Drew knew about Meier’s history of depression! And the fact it was caused by a falling out between Meier and Drew’s daughter. And the fact that Drew has seemingly no remorse.

Drew stated she knew “arguments” had broken out between Megan and others on “my space”. Drew felt this incident contributed to Megan’s suicide, but she did not feel “as guilty” because at the funeral because she found out “Megan had tried to commit suicide before.”

Drew explained the neighborhood had recently found out her involvement in Megan’s suicide and her neighborhood has become hostile toward her and her family. Despite the recency of the suicide and several neighbors recommending she not confront the Meier family (especially on Thanksgiving), Meier stated she and her husband attempted to contact the Meier family three times, “banging on the door” although Mr Meier had already told them to leave.

She attempted to contact them on Thanksgiving, six weeks after she indirectly caused their daughter’s death. And that statement is from the police report Drew filed against Mr. Meier when he bused up a foosball table the Drews had asked the Meiers to store for them. Hell truly is other people, especially suburban helicopter mothers without a soul.

Today, however, the Federal courts have indicted Drew on conspiracy and fraud charges. Whether this will stick, of course, remains to be seen.

Salvador Hernandez, assistant agent in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, called the case heart-rending.

“The Internet is a world unto itself. People must know how far they can go before they must stop. They exploited a young girl’s weaknesses,” Hernandez said. “Whether the defendant could have foreseen the results, she’s responsible for her actions.”

Drew was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl.

_{Source: AP]}

According to the co-conspirity, Ashley Grills (who, if I may say so, has no right to make fun of someone what so ever) Lori Drew wasn’t going to just stop the torment. Oh no, she had better plans:

Salvador Hernandez, assistant agent in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, called the case heart-rending.

“The Internet is a world unto itself. People must know how far they can go before they must stop. They exploited a young girl’s weaknesses,” Hernandez said. “Whether the defendant could have foreseen the results, she’s responsible for her actions.”

Drew was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl.

_{Source:ABC News}

Here’s a problem from 2007 that’s making a comeback: a lack of connectivity when you update 10.4.10 or later updates for MacBook.

This was back during my honeymoon period with Apple, when I implicitly trusted them and allowed them to automatically update my OS whenever they told me I should. I mean, it’s Apple. It just works, right? I’d had no problems with my MacBook in the seven or eight months since I bought it, and all other updates worked flawlessly. I couldn’t believe anything would ever go wrong with it.

Then, there was OS update 10.4.10

Afterwards, I could connect to any open network after the install (which was helpful, as the neighbors have an open, unguarded network) but not any with WPA encryption. Frustrated, but too proud to call the Apple Care support line I paid for, I reinstalled OS X version 6 and upgraded to version nine, the last update that worked.

That was in July of 2007.

Then, a few weeks ago, I bought Final Cut Express for a project I was working on, which necessitated an upgrade to 10.4.10 or later, and because of the problems I’d had previously, I installed the next update, 10.4.11. Surely Apple would have fixed the problem, right?

Nope. Final Cut worked, but once again, my uber-encrypted home network was rendered useless. The solutions seemed to be either take off encryption (and thus leave others in the household unable to do their confidential work at home — and possibly compromise my anonymity) or keep leeching off the neighbor’s network until a solution presented itself, as Apple’s website seemed to be ignoring the problem.

A quick google search revealed that more than one user had found themselves in similar situation, but the only solution seemed to be to either go backwards to 10.4.9 or go forwards to Leopard. Could it be that Apple was deliberately ignoring the problem so as to either force people to pay for the phone tech support or force them to upgrade to Leopard? One individual took his MacBook (duo core) back to the Genius Bar. A week later it was returned working, though the Geniuses could find nothing wrong with it, supposedly. Hmmm.

I was tempted, but still too proud to call or go into the freshly-opened store in my area. It’s not that I’m an elitist — only that I’m a recent convert to Mac, and I’m still operating on my experience from PC days: fix it yourself or get a hacker buddy to fix it for you (usually, you can bribe a college student with food to do this for you, by the way,) because Microsoft products are a piece of shit and tech support is laughable.

After (two) weeks of (not so) diligent searching, I finally stumbled upon a solution that worked. For the record, I did this while simultaneously installing WPA2 so either one solution works independent of the other or they work in combination. However, the solution listed below seems to be one which most will find useful.

1. Download Pacifist
2. Download Airport Extreme update 2007-002 Later updates will not work.
3. Download the 10.4.9 Combo Update
4. Go to /system/library/extensions and copy appleairport.kext and appleairport2.kext to a backup location just to be safe and then delete them from the extensions folder.I used a USB drive for the backup task.
5. Also in the extensions folder you’ll find IO80211Family.kext and copy it to backup folder and then delete it.
6. Open Pacifist
7. Open Package and choose the airport extreme update
8. In Pacifist you will now see all the files that are in the package. Find system and expand it’s tree by clicking on the triangle. then expand library and then extensions. You will now see the IO80211Family.kext file. Click once on it so it’s highlighted and then click “Install”.
9. When it’s done copying files expand coreservices and then menu extras. Highlight “Airport Menu” and click install.
10. When it’s done copying close the window in Pacifist for the airport update.
11. Open Package and choose the 10.4.9 combo
12. Again find the system folder and expand it and then expand the library and extensions folders.
13. In the extensions folder you’ll see a bunch of files. Look for appleairport.kext and highlight it. Click “Install”.
14. Repeat the previous step with appleairport2.kext
15. Reboot FTW

You should be back up and running in no time!

Edit #100,000: If this post has appeared on your RSS feed reader a million times in variations, it is because WordPress does not handle certain commands particularly well and I had to go through the directions, line by line, to find which lines WordPress found objectionable and re-write them several times to edit out the confusing phrases.

Kids, set your faces to stunned.

The New York Times tech blog “Bits” is reporting that Apple have decided to “back down” on premium pricing for DRM free music and sell all music — crippled or not — for the same price: 99 cents.

For the record, there is no official announcement on the Apple “Hot News” page, but they’re too busy bursting at the seams over the release date for OS X Leopard (10/26 if you care) to post it, perhaps? Or perhaps it’s just a rumor that the NYT decided to run with. I’m assuming it is, for now, the latter (unless the NYT have an insider at Apple), as Coldplay (an EMI band and therefore part of the DRM free catalogue) “enhanced” (read: DRM free) tracks are still $1.29 on iTunes as of this moment.

My only question to Apple is: what are you going to do for all the people who paid an extra thirty cents per song up through today? Don’t think that you can ignore them, Steve. Remember the iPhone price-cut fiasco problem?