Mpls Wrapup

I’ve been in Minneapolis since Wednesday, and I haven’t had readily available internet access most of the time. I’ve been chilling out, writing code (iRooster and a little app for work), and catching up with friends and family.

iRooster 1.2 Beta 1 was released to customers yesterday. I haven’t received too much feedback on it yet, but it is Labor Day Weekend after all. More dogfooding of iRooster has revealed a few bugs I hadn’t even considered before, like what behavior should happen after an alarm with the snooze window up runs out of songs to play on the playlist.

Ben Folds’s new EP just came out about two weeks ago and I picked it up over the iTunes Music Store a few days ago. I sometimes forget how much I love his music; it never fails to make me laugh. Get Your Hands Off My Woman, one of the songs on the EP, includes catchy lines like “you were drunk and you were surly in Latino lover-mode,” and “Get your hands off of my woman, motherfucker!” I think it loses something in this form, but it’s worth checking out.

Regarding politics, I think I’m just as worried as every other Democrat about the evaporation of Kerry’s thin lead. Zell Miller, although sounding like a total nut-job, evidently did not stoop to the depths delved by Pat Buchanan back in 1992. Oh well.

The Dems need to get back on message: Bush Fucked Things Up. We’re really terrible when it comes to staying on message, since life is replete with gray areas that make it incredibly easy to wander off into pseudo-dissertation mode.

Strangely, I don’t think that doing things like that really help win over the lower-middle class families in Ohio (or Michigan, Washington, Florida, Oregon, Maine, New Hampshire, etc.) who got screwed over the past four years without really understanding why or how. Oh well. Here’s hoping.