Day: October 16, 2003

Curses, and then curses

Hot on the heels of the Cubs’ disheartening fall (as so angrily and lyrically covered by Tony Pierce) comes tonight’s 11th inning loss of the Red Sox to the Team That Shall Not Be Named. Three days ago it could have been a World Series to care about, with one or both of the most cursed teams in baseball in the Big Game. After tonight, it’ll be another Yankees series, with the Marlins thrown in for extra-special “who cares” value.

Man.

When I was in Boston for the Patriots’ improbable run to the Superbowl, the town was alive. It shook off its post-September 11 fear and silence to roar in support of its team. In a way, I’m glad I’m not there tonight, but I’m sad too; I could have wandered into any joint in the city, grabbed a Harpoon, and knocked back a few for the Sox, cursing the Bambino at the same time.

Man.

Oh well. At least the Madpony sisters are there to lend some comedic perspective on the whole thing:

some teams in baseball are cursed. one team is cursed because they traded babe ruth and another team is cursed because they wouldn’t let a goat into their game. furthermore, if these two teams play in the world series some say it could mean the coming of the apocalypse. after my lesson on the game’s supernatural elements, i have officially decided that there is more drama in baseball than in daytime tv.

Oh hell

Prayer, if you believe in it (and maybe even if you don’t), is in order: Seattle’s blogmom Anita Rowland has diabetes and ovarian cancer…and no health insurance.

Folks, this is really bad news. Anita, as she is wont to do, is putting a really brave face on it, but this is not a good situation at all. I wish there was something we could do for her.

The rumors are true: iTunes for Windows

As rumored, the iTunes Music Store for Windows arrived today. Two significant parts of that announcement: the store is available to Windows users, and iTunes itself is available to Windows users.

I downloaded the software today, which includes QuickTime 6.4, and installed it. After a restart (probably necessary because I already had QuickTime installed), I started iTunes. It asked me whether I wanted to find MP3 and AAC files in my My Music folder, and whether I wanted to see the store right away. I said yes and no, respectively, and let it start finding music. About a minute later, it had populated 1473 MP3s into my library.

Note: It didn’t ask about WMA files. Not a problem unles you were already using Windows Media Player and ripping to WMA format. But support for the format is absent, unsurprisingly.

The music store looks slightly different from the Mac version, but the functionality is the same, including the two new features added today, Gift Certificates and Allowance (smart features for family and friends). One major problem: I couldn’t get purchased music that I had bought on my Mac to download to my Windows account. I’ll have to see if I can figure out how to do that… (Update: Looks like I’ll have to copy the files manually; see these Support Articles about moving music between authorized computers.)

Update 2: Holy crap, music sharing works too! Someone else in my building has downloaded the software, and his shared list just showed up in my library… I’ll have to wait until tonight to see how it works on our home network.