Month: September 2005

On tech support and 240-volt shorts

As I noted this morning, my luggage didn’t accompany me across the Atlantic yesterday—in fact, the Lufthansa representative at the baggage claim noted unapologetically that “more than half the bags on this flight didn’t make it aboard.” I’m not entirely sure how that happens, but in my case it might be because I checked into Terminal 1 at the Flüghafen in München rather than Terminal 2 where my flight departed. In my defense, I had no idea that I was in Terminal 1 at the time—there was no signage indicating the fact when I came up from the S-bahn.

At any rate, my luggage is here now, and about damned time as my only cell phone charger is in the suitcase. On to other problems: my laptop.

As previously written, my work laptop let its smoke out last week owing to an accident with a high-voltage outlet. Today Dell’s tech support came to fix it—as I watched, the guy took apart the laptop screw by screw, removed the CPU and all other removable parts, put in the new motherboard, and booted it up. It worked, except for the video, which was screwy—black bands across the bottom, image spanning off the right side and wrapping around to the left. But otherwise, I was able to boot the machine, get files off to a USB drive, connect the network—pretty much everything.

After he left—having ordered some additional parts for tomorrow, I thought to check the laptop connected to an external monitor. Sure enough, the image was completely normal. So despite having been immersed in a magnificent high voltage short circuit, the laptop was working after some fairly straightforward fieldwork—no damage to the RAM or the hard disk.

The point is this: before today, I don’t know that I would have given you 2 cents for Dell’s tech support. After today, they get big points from me. The guy, from a local subcontractor, was knowledgeable, funny, experienced, and personable—we compared notes about local singing groups, as he’s in a barbershop group in Worcester. It might have been that I was re-reading The Cluetrain Manifesto before his visit, but the difference between Dell’s tech support line, which gave us misinformation about the international support policy and showed no common sense about how to solve the problem—proposing to take three to six weeks in Germany to fix the problem when I was going to be there only a week—and the hands-on brilliance of the support guy I met today could not be more pronounced. It is, in fact, all about the conversation.

Back

I’m going to be busy today catching up, so this is just a quick note to say that I made it back, even if my luggage didn’t.

More later.

Do You Know What It Means (To Miss New Orleans)

I haven’t really been able to write about New Orleans. Part of it is that I’ve been on the road. But that’s an excuse. I haven’t wanted to think about it. New Orleans, even though I only visited once, figures so deeply in my growth as a young man that I can’t bear to think of what has happened to it.

I’ve written a little about my discovery of jazz. In the year or two afterwards I started diving in deeper—broadening my listening to many of the 60s-era greats, developing an appreciation for the avant garde. But I didn’t understand the roots of the music. (And I certainly wasn’t going to learn listening to Wynton Marsalis, who, though he was pretty well grounded in the traditions, was compositionally just as avant garde as his brother, in an extremely traditionalist sort of way.) So I was completely unprepared for what I found when we rolled into New Orleans and stumbled into the back of Preservation Hall.

To set the context, this was the same trip as our nocturnal visit to William Faulkner’s house. So, by the time we rolled into New Orleans we had been on the road for four days and several thousand miles, all on a bus and a small minivan, and were looking and smelling and feeling awful. We had a gig that first night, a concert at the Church of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (aka Holy Name) at Loyola, which is a story in and of itself, and then a reception hosted by the local alumni club with liquid refreshments, followed by a mass exodus to a local student watering hole. It was there that I had my first (and last, I think) Hurricane. But I still hadn’t really seen the city.

The next morning I walked with friends to the Café du Monde, through the French Quarter, past a voudoun shop or two, into a storefront for a po’ boy, out and along a levee. I particularly remember the levee, as the heat and humidity were really getting to me, but I was still awestruck by the scale of the thing. It didn’t look like something that could be broken apart like a cracker.

But the jazz? That night I don’t remember where we ate or anything else, just lining up with Poulson Reed and John McLaughlin outside Preservation Hall, where there was a crowd—despite the lack of drinks, or anything else that might pass for conventional tourist New Orleans, inside. What there was, was the band. Percy and Willie Humphrey were still there, in their 70s or 80s but still playing. A big sign behind the band said, “Requests $2. ‘Saints’ $10,” suggesting that perhaps they had been asked to play “When The Saints Go Marching In” one too many times. The music was rough, unpolished, sloppy in some ways, but amazingly compelling. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. This was both stranger and more wonderful than I could have expected.

The night ended some hours later in Pat O’Brien’s, but for me, it was over when we left Preservation Hall. A seed had been planted in me that led to my exploring not only older jazz but also other American musical experiences—the “old, weird America” that shared the roughness and power of the seven septuagenarians in a rundown old unpainted hall playing for a rapt audience on wooden benches.

And now, it’s gone.

Update: Greg points me to a story that suggests there is a happier ending.

Google Blog Search: No keywords on referrals

Does this bug anyone else? It’s possible with referrals from major search engines to get the search keywords that were used to find the page, which helps you to understand why people read your blog. But referrals from the Google Blog Search strip the keywords off.

A referral string from a regular Google search for “tim jarrett” looks like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22tim+jarrett%22&btnG=Google+Search

However, if you run the same search against Google Blog Search and click through a result, the referrer just shows what page was targeted:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.www.jarretthousenorth.com/

This is annoying for me, because I like to know why Google users find my site interesting. I understand technically why it happens—the redirect page, google.com/url, causes it because it loads in the user’s browser before loading the destination. But why does Google use the redirects on the search results in the first place? Is it to gather click statistics? If so, there are other, less intrusive ways. Or are they doing something else with the redirects, maybe something to do with stopping blog spam?

Some input from Google would be welcomed here.

500 errors = teh suck.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not using Bloglines. As I wrote a few days ago, I’ve been having problems with my feed in their service. Yesterday one of their support people left a comment on the post:

It appears that your server is blocking the Bloglines crawlers. When we try to fetch your feed, we receive a HTTP 500 error. If we receive a permanent error like this for 14 consecutive days, we assume the feed is dead and we remove it from the system. My guess is that this is what happened to your feed.

Sure enough, my site has the dreaded Bloglines [!] next to it in my list of feeds again.

And I’ve been having 500 errors accessing the site from my hotel, which is why I’ve been updating so infrequently this week—well, that and the fact that our coworkers have been extremely hospitable.

If someone is reading this site from www.www.jarretthousenorth.com, please try reading it at discuss.www.jarretthousenorth.com and let me know if you run into any problems.

Fiber is good for you.

WSJ: Verizon’s Fios Service Moves US Internet Beyond a Snail’s Pace. Um, me please. Though the economics are a bit tricky. Even at $45 for bundled Fios and local phone, we would still be paying more, net-net, when considering the impact on our Comcast cable prices without the Internet bundle.

Damn it, though. Getting higher throughput on the internal wireless network and 15 mbps wired?? I wan’ it. Sniff.

Google Blog Search

Google’s Blog Search is now live in beta. (As you can see from the link, it’s also localized in German.)

So far I’m the first Jarrett blog that shows up. That might change at some point.

Interesting: there seem to be a large number of spam blogs that appear pretty high in the rankings. Try searching on iET Solutions (my company’s name) and see the spam weight loss blogs that float up because of the search term solutions.

Rauchlaptop

I have a new motto for traveling, and it is this: Be careful with plug adapters when you are traveling in a country that is on 240 volts current. My work laptop’s power adapter is dual voltage, but its power plug has a grounding prong and my plug adapter, which allows it to use the German outlets, leaves the grounding prong exposed. Turns out that there is a nontrivial chance of shorting the grounding plug inside the outlet, and one of my colleagues (not me, thank goodness) managed to create the short.

Bam. The lights went out, a pop came from my laptop. And I smelled smoke.

Fortunately we have a good international support contract with our vendor, and the laptop should be fixed tomorrow.

But in the meantime I’m learning how to type on a German keyboard, and understanding how “Copy” and “Paste” are translated in the German version of Windows, thanks to the loaner laptop that our IT manager provided.

(PS: Rauch, in German, means smoke.)

Arrived

Well, I made it and I’m feeling better now, thankyouverymuch. But it was a long trip. I left Boston at 10 pm Saturday and flew into Frankfurt at 10:50 am Sunday local time, then ran through passport control to make my 12:30 connection to Munich. Then I took more than an hour and a half to take the train system (which is really wonderful here in Munich, by the way, no complaints) to my hotel.

After that, I took a shower, and things started looking up. Then my coworker Bob and I went out walking in the city center, and somehow (how does this happen to me?) ended up at the Augustiner brewery where we had dinner in their very excellent, very traditional “brästuben.” And when I say “very traditional,” I mean we sat at a table with a bunch of strangers, facing the oompah band in one direction and the horse stables in the other. Really. The traditional brewery horses had been brought in from their pastures to become accustomed to the city noises and traffic in preparation for Oktoberfest next weekend, and we could see them through a glass window. unfortunately, Bob got some other benefits—somehow some very persistent flies were making it over into the dining room and attempting to monopolize his attention.

Our company was excellent, too: two German speaking couples who were very kind with our lack of the language, and one pair of college age sisters from Ohio State—one new graduate and one freshman getting a head start on her beer drinking. We could probably get them into trouble, or at least embarrass them by mentioning how the younger one was drinking the older sister under the table, if we had gotten their names.

München or bust

As alluded yesterday, I’m about to board a plane for a week of business travel in Munich. Or, more precisely, I’m currently seated on the floor of Terminal E at Logan Airport, near gate 8A where apparently national security considerations have precluded providing sufficient seating for transatlantic traffic. Not that it matters. I will be sitting down for an awfully long time.

I should be fairly gleeful; I’m fairly resigned. Partly because of exhaustion—I drove Lisa and our dogs to the Jersey shore last night so that she could attend a family wedding today, and our dogs could have some supervision next week. Meaning that I drove the five hours back from New Jersey today, then caught my breath and started packing.

Partly, I think, because I’m just plain exhausted. When talking to my sister on Wednesday, she observed that I didn’t sound like myself. I’m tired. And this time I don’t have a job search, a coast-to-coast move, or anything else to blame. I’ve been on edge and anxious for months for no good reason.

The one thing I know is that I will be among colleagues when I get to Munich. Our company’s German office has sent more than a few people that I work with on business travel to the States in the past six months. So even if I don’t understand a word that anyone else says in the next week, I’ll at least understand my coworkers.

Right now, though, I’m hoping I can just get some sleep tonight. I need to meet my colleague, the company’s other product manager, tomorrow night in Munich for a beer, and it won’t look good if I’m passing out in the middle of a biergarten a full week before Oktoberfest begins.

I could write more—about the miserable failure of the iGo system, about pedal to the metal from 9 in the morning to 1:45 in the afternoon, meaning that I was coming close to some speeds I’ve previously only driven in Death Valley—but I’m probably saying enough considering that I probably won’t update this blog for another eight days. Feel free to use this as an open thread, all you regular readers (yes, you four). But if you’re a comment spammer, I hope you drown in your own pork by-products while I’m gone.

Nada Surf: The Weight is a Gift

nada surf the weight is a gift

Two years ago, a Nada Surf review would have begun by mentioning their 1996 novelty hit “Popular,” and their subsequent fall from grace (and the majors). Today, any review of a Nada Surf album has a different reference point: their brilliant 2002 release Let Go, held by Blogcritics and other reviewers to be one of the top 5 albums of 2003 after it was re-released on Barsuk. This shift in perception is both a blessing and a curse for the band. On the one hand, they spent years trying to escape the shadow of “Popular.” On the other hand, following up an album as richly melancholic, quietly epic, and idiosyncratic as Let Go is a tall order. With The Weight is a Gift, Matthew Caws, Daniel Lorca, and Ira Elliot have produced a worthy album that, while not on the same plane as the desperately yearning Let Go, has its own rewards.

If there is less desperation on this release, it is for a good reason: the band is tighter and more self-assured in its playing and songwriting than before. (They would have to be, to put in an 11 song set in under 40 minutes.) The band’s songwriting focus is more outward looking at the same time: where much of Let Go felt like internal monologues from one side of failing relationships, The Weight is a Gift paints a series of portraits of people in different stages of disassembly, from the burned out loveless loser of “Concrete Bed” to the control freak of “What Is Your Secret.” The elliptical, closely observed writing can sometimes mislead, as with the apparently happy “Oh f*ck it/I’m going to have a party” that starts “The Blankest Year,” before it becomes a a darker set of observations set jarringly against bouncy pop rhythms: “i”d like to return this spell/it’s not my size/and your lies are so much bigger/than my lies.” Other interviews with band members have suggested that the songs are inspired by Matthew Caws’ unspecified difficult experiences over the past year, but the lyrics escape the narrow focus of the personal to suggest universal pains and fears.

The standout cut for me at this stage is probably “Your Legs Grow,” which seemed forlornly out of place on last year’s polemic Future Soundtrack for America but which gains immeasurably by its surroundings on this album. Freed of trying to read political meanings into the lyrics, it reads as a lifeline thrown out to a troubled friend.

On most of the songs, the lyrics stand in contrast to the music: incredibly compact pop songs that veer from rocking to quiet ballads while burrowing a groove into your ears. This is some seriously catchy songwriting, with smart performances aided and abetted by the skilled production of Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla at his Hall of Justice studio in Seattle (as well as some time in über-multitracker John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone studios in San Francisco). There’s a depth to these recordings that repays deeper listening, both on the purely sonic level and lyrically.

If there is a flaw to the record, it is its insistence on keeping its true feelings difficult to find. Unlike Let Go, The Weight is a Gift doesn’t wear its heart on its sleeve, and where it gets guarded, it gets difficult to approach. But at the core it is a worthy successor, musically and emotionally, to an excellent album, and I don’t think I could personally ask for more.

The album hits stores on Tuesday the 13th. In the meantime, you can visit the band’s website to listen to three tracks and download “Do It Again,” the first single.

This review was also published at BlogCritics.

Note to Bloglines users

I have griped in the past about the dangers of lock-in, but never figured I would be directly impacted myself. A few weeks ago, my RSS feed started having problems in Bloglines. I’m not sure what caused the problems, but I suspect the Added Values plug-in, which redirected permalinks and may have redirected my RSS feed, is to blame.

At any rate, my feed stopped updating in Bloglines. Now here’s where it gets fun. I contacted Bloglines about the problem, and they said they fixed something with the feed and that it should now work. Unfortunately, it didn’t. So Craig pinged them. This time, Bloglines deleted the non-responsive version of the feed, and said that re-subscribing should fix the problem. Now the number of people subscribing to my feed in Bloglines—or at least the “working version” of my feed—has gone from 41 to 4. At the same time, my average daily traffic has dropped substantially. I think there are a bunch of people who only saw my content through Bloglines and who aren’t coming to the site to check in.

If this were an RSS issue, I might be able to do something to correct it at my end. But since it’s a Bloglines issue, I have no way to notify any of the subscribers of the problem—except to post it here and hope that someone comes across it. Please re-add me to your subscriptions if you want to continue to get information from this site!

The Publick House: great beer in Brookline

After months of cajoling, I finally convinced Lisa to try the Publick House, which I got excited about a year ago after reading the recommendation in the Globe. The reality: the beer is every bit as good as they say; the food is good, but not quite up to my elevated expectations; and the crowd is much much younger than I would have guessed.

Lisa and I arrived on Sunday night and hit the first hard reality: the place was packed and there was no host to give us an idea about wait times. Fortunately as I hovered I spotted a couple leaving the back room and we pounced on the table. Beers, in the meantime, were quite good: we started with an Ommegang Hennepin and a Whale’s Tail Pale Ale, both on draft, both excellent.

Perhaps it was just a “back to class” night, but we were just about the oldest people in the room, which isn’t a normal experience for me at beer-related venues. We shrugged and ordered, sticking on the “pub grub” side of things. Lisa’s andouille sandwich was excellent as were the fries; my upscale mac and cheese, topped with some undistinguished sausage or other, was good but not the “great 8” wonder that I was expecting from the menu. I wonder what the food experience would have been if we had tried some of the other menu items — sadly, the mussels promise in the Boston.com article were not on the menu.

Good fun. I think I’ll have to find someone else to go back with me next time, though. Niall, you interested?

Is 5

A new version number for an old friend, amidst news of nano iPods and iTunes capable phones: iTunes 5.0 is out. UI changes, major: you can now have playlists in folders (what a relief). UI changes, minor: the volume slider no longer sits under the forward/back/play/pause buttons. (For the latter: why? Perhaps people were hitting the big buttons by mistake when adjusting the volume, or vice versa.) UI changes, gratuitous: on Windows, the window now blends seamlessly into the title bar, which is good, but actually looks a lot less cool. Probably it will just take some getting used to.

Scary installer moment: this ad, which I first saw at an Apple store. I don’t really think the young woman looks happy to be sharing her tunes with her friend:

ipod ad. with woman who looks alarmingly like jessica alba.

More scary installer moment: the installer crapped out during the QuickTime install when it told me I needed to close Firefox—somehow it got trapped in an endless loop. I had to force quit the installer and reboot, and rerun the installation, at which point everything was fine.

Other impressions: parental controls ok, shuffle calibrator should put conspiracy theories of “is it really random” to rest, or at least confuse them, search bar looks useful, lyrics in tags looks good. Look forward to playing with the search bar on my home library.