eateggs

(really. there’s nothing interesting here. i’m just posting this for my own sake. of course, if you’ve already read everything else interesting on the intarwebnets today, read on…)

Bozeman is SO beautiful. Our long fall continues…

It seems the beautiful days in the fall are especially so– made more beautiful by the contrast of days of rain, of cold, by the quickly (but oh-so-slowly) baring trees…

So when we have days like today, I’m reminded that I owe it to myself to get outside and enjoy. To eat lunch outside, on a favorite patch of green grass by Linfield Hall … to take a walk, or go for a run…

It being a BEAUTIFUL evening (the sun set around 7:00, but it was still at least 55 degrees when I got home around 7:15), I was compelled to go run. Had to. Nothing could haev stopped me. Plus, there was a full moon last night, so there should be plenty of light– or so I thought.

Eschewing my typical Peet’s Hill route (for whatever reason) I headed south, merging on to Bozeman’s vast (but labyrinthine) trail system near the Museum of the Rockies. I took an East fork, ran through a few quiet blocks of subdivisions (it’s funny– I don’t know any college students that live south of Kagy… “it’s where Bozeman lives,” I thought as I ran through the dark and quiet streets…)

(One of my favorite things about Bozeman is the scarcity of light pollution. Most of Bozeman’s neighborhoods south of campus don’t have street lights, except on major intersections. So … it’s DARK at night. And SO quiet.)

Soon, I was back on a trail, again heading south in the dark. I should mention that it was dark–profoundly dark– the sun having gone down an hour before, and the moon being no where in sight.

It struck me, for the two-hundredth time, how beautiful Bozeman is. On a perfectly still evening, in the darkening sky, I could barely make out the blueish silhouettes of the Gallatin Mountains, in the southern sky, keeping watch…

I meant to turn off the trail on to the golf course (I’d been down this trail once before … in the daylight), but when I got to where the “turn off” was before (not an official turn off), it was so dark I couldn’t find it. I didn’t much feel like crossing the marsh in the dark, so I just kept running on the trail down path I’d never been on before … in to the great unknown.

The trail soon turned into dense and dark(er) woods. At first, I swatted imaginary branches (eager to poke out an eye, I was sure). Soon, though, I began to ride the adrenaline rush of running down a narrow trail, through thick woods, in near pitch darkness. Scared of tripping, of a branch I couldn’t see, of SOMETHING, I forced myself to run faster. And faster. Down unknown, twisting, turning, dropping and inclining trail.

And GOD, it was FUN.

The trail forked, and I suddenly found myself thinking “gee, this looks familiar”. I realized that it was a trail Kimbree and I had been down at some point, this summer, on a similarly dark night. Which meant that I was way south of town.

Sure enough, twists, turns, briers and brambles later, the trail suddenly dumped out on a pavement cross-street– Goldenstein. Well south of Bozeman. I went with it. I ran east, wondering where Goldenstein led … and ended up on south Church. I ran on Church–a narrow and busy road– for what seemed an interminable distance. Eventually, I found myself somewhere familiar, and took a short-cut on to the golf course.

Running across the golf course–running straight toward the low-hung Big Dipper–I was treated to two phenomenal meteors. Obviously, running, I was watching in front of me but both were so bright I noticed them in time to see their long, brilliant streaks across the night sky– two of the most spectacular meteors I’ve ever seen.

I ran across the Centennial Mall (on campus) and screamed like a maniac as I passed Montana Hall–perhaps the first time I’ve ever really felt a “runner’s high”.

And now I’m home, showered, fed and beered. I’m reminded, once again, how privileged I am to live in Bozeman– and how much disservice I do myself, every day I don’t spend an hour or more outside…

If you have some time, get yourself a cup of coffee and read this article, concerning the state of the music industry and the recent demise of OiNK:
http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html

“When Pigs Fly” is a thorough, thoughtful and balanced discourse on online piracy and file-sharing. It’s long, but full of insight and powerful ideas.

Here are a few quotes from the post:

For the major labels, it’s over. It’s fucking over. You’re going to burn to the fucking ground, and we’re all going to dance around the fire. And it’s your own fault.
…
Through sites like Oink, the amount and variety of music I listen to has skyrocketed, opening me up to hundreds of artists I never would have experienced otherwise. I’m now fans of their music, and I may not have bought their CDs, but I would have never bought their CD anyway, because I would have never heard of them! And now that I have heard of them, I go to their concerts, and I talk them up to my friends, and give my friends the music to listen to for themselves, so they can go to the concerts, and tell their friends, and so on.
…
4. Get political. The fast-track to ending all this nonsense is changing intellectual property laws. The RIAA lobbies politicians to manipulate copyright laws for their own interests, so voters need to lobby politicians for the peoples’ interests. Contact your local representatives and senators. Tell them politely and articulately that you believe copyright laws no longer reflect the interests of the people, and you will not vote for them if they support the interests of the RIAA. Encourage them to draft legislation that helps change the outdated laws and disproportionate penalties the RIAA champions. Contact information for state representatives can be found here, and contact information for senators can be found here. You can email them, but calling on the phone or writing them actual letters is always more effective. had to know this day was coming, right? Your very industry is founded on an unfair business model of owning art you didn’t create in exchange for the services you provide. It’s rigged so that you win every time – even if the artist does well, you do ten times better. It was able to exist because you controlled the distribution, but now that’s back in the hands of the people, and you let the ball drop when you could have evolved.

As you may already know, the popular private BitTorrent Tracker OiNK.cd was shut down a few days ago by Interpol. There seems to be lots of misinformation concerning OiNK floating around on the internet. For clarification: users did not “pay” for membership. Furthermore, the site did not exist solely for pirating pre-release albums. Inevitably, as a popular BitTorrent tracker, albums were often released on OiNK before their official release. http://tehpaine.blogspot.com/ seems to have it right, though, including an IRC chat log with OiNK’s 24 year old founder**, who is currently out on bail awaiting trail in December.

It’s been a sad few days for each of OiNK’s 180,000 active users, who anxiously await this latest turn in the cat-and-mouse battle against online piracy.

(** a vegetarian, by the by.)

We’ve had a few days of exceptionally nice weather in Bozeman (highs in the 70’s), continuing a long and beautiful fall. That last few days have been so nice, in fact, that I pulled my flip flops (my trusty Rainbows) and set out for my European Intellectual History class. ‘Bout 2:00 this afternoon (in Business Law, as it happened), I noticed something that had happened over the last three weeks or so of wearing shoes on a day-to-day basis: my toenails were ALL hideously long. Disturbingly so. I tried not to think about it… and hoped that no one else noticed. And promptly trimmed my toenails, as soon as I got home.

No flip-flops tomorrow, though: they’re expecting snow. Whoo!

Speaking of snow, I’ve happened upon a delicious beer for the coming snows: Snow Plow, brewed by Widmer Brothers Brewing out of Portland. It’s reminiscent of classic cream stout–dark, hoppy and smooth–but with a distinctive flavor of snow. I didn’t really enjoy it until tonight when I took one outside, under a snow-threatening sky in the dropping mercury.

Ah. Snow. Winter seasonal beers. And … snow. The end of the semester in sight. It’s a good season… a good time of the year.

It’s 3:46 a.m. Why am I still watching an Apple keynote from 1997? Why do I find Steve Jobs so compelling? Why do I idolize him so much?

But I can’t get enough. I can’t get enough of his vision– of his passion for Apple, his love for Apple’s core-user base, and his dedication to providing what he would describe as the “greatest products” in the world– products that aren’t just good enough, pretty good or good, but “insanely great”. InSANELy great.

And that’s what I believe in. Products that people can love. Products that inspire a fan-base, that become a lifestyle industry.

I love Apple. And, more than that, I love Steve Jobs. I don’t think I’ve ever idolized someone, before– ever had a “hero”, someone I unequivocally look up to and aspire to be like. But that’s Steve Jobs.

Watching this keynote from 1997, I realize that he made some hard and unpleasant decisions. I can’t imagine what it felt like to be Steve Jobs, in front of Macworld 1997, and be overwhelmed by the booing of the crowd, as he announced that Internet Explorer was to be the new default browser on the Mac. But he was right: IE was the best browser at the time. It was faster than Netscape, and had more support for more web pages than any other browser.

And how brazen: to include Bill Gates as part of his keynote! But he has such a clear vision. He’s willing to let go of petty rivalries: “we have to let go of this notion that, for Apple to win, Microsoft has to loose. We have to embrace a notion that, for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. … If we screw up and don’t do a good job, it’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s our fault.” He continues, “if we’d like Microsoft Office on the Mac, we’d better treat that company with some gratitude. … The era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over, as far as I’m concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy again, and being able to make incredibly important contributions to the industry.”

And he’s proved himself right. No, Apple’s market share has not grown significantly since 1997. But Apple, as a company, is healthy– a model corporation. While the stock prices of EVERY other significant computer industry corporation have declined over the past five years, Apple has emerged as victorious. And so, yes, I saw that the standing ovation Steve Jobs received at the end of his first keynote was well deserved. I wish I could have been there to stand among those industry professionals who first recognized Steve Jobs’ incredible vision for the future of Apple.

Yaar! I studied for 14 hours STRAIGHT for my Advanced Film Theory exam this morning… starting at 6:00 p.m. last night till 8:00 a.m. this morning…

And still didn’t do very well on the exam. Sheesh. My bad, though– shouldn’t have left all that reading until the last minute. Guess that’s my just desserts.

THEN, to add insult to injury, I got my Econ 302 test back, and someone beat me by 3.5%. Admittedly, I still got 100%, but … so much for fouling up the curve… yaar.

I think it’s time to go to bed for a few hours. Then, Sicko screening tonight. I really hope some people show up!