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So, tomorrow is the last day of our lease on the apartment. After work today, Adam and I are going over there to get the grill and Dee’s cooler, and any mail that the USPS has forgotten to forward to us at home. I will be glad to be rid of the five extra keys on my keyring that are only adding extra weight and awkwardness to my IWU lanyard. Oh, and I won’t have to worry about going back there to clean or anything, either. YAY!

No, she’s not some girlfriend I have on the side. I opened my New Music Tuesdays e-mail from the iTunes Music Store tonight and one of the new releases was an album by Katy Rose. The title of her album is Because I Can, and from the sample tracks I’ve heard on iTMS, she’s good. It’s a bit reminiscent of Avril Lavigne when she first came out: a cute young girl with a rocking sound. Then I stumble across this review at CANOE, a Canadian website. I haven’t listened to enough of Katy’s music, but CANOE had this to say:

If there’s a weak link in the whole campaign, it might be Katy’s inferior vocals, which are flatter than her hair, flimsier than a teenager’s excuses and shallow as the cast of The O.C.

Despite the overuse of crappy metaphors, it seems like a valid point. Again, I’ll have to listen to Katy’s music more before I can totally agree, but what appears to be her first single, Overdrive, sounded pretty good to me. But then again, I’ve recently been in a minimalist rock mood, with a little bit of an angsty itch here and there. I can’t tell you the number of times Liz Phair’s Rock Me from her self-titled album has come up on my iPod and I’ve cranked the stereo in the Benz as I drive home. It just hits me and makes me wish I had a 12″ sub in the back and some room to jump with the music. That’s kind of how Overdrive struck me when I heard it; I just want to rock to it.

Of course, these are first impressions and are not, by any means, a thorough review of either Liz or Katy. I guess I just like hot chicks who rock.

Chris and I went to Office Depot today because she needed to pickup some stuff for school. Since she didn’t really need me for this part of our long journey around town, I was free to roam the store (i.e. peruse the computer section). I didn’t go there expecting to pickup anything, but then I saw this Office Depot In-Store Special for a Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM ATA/133 hard drive with an 8MB buffer, all for under $60 after $60 of rebates and a $10 instant savings. Chris even said, “Wow! That’s a good deal!” I couldn’t pass it up.

Unfortunately, someone grabbed the last one in the store, the very one I had been hovering around the display to get myself! I was able to talk to one of the store managers, and she said that she could check delivery stock of the drives for a Tuesday delivery. She brought me to the front of the store, and in just one minute, we had my shipping information updated in their computer (they had my Normal address still) and my order was processed. Then she went to the back of the store to pickup a printout of my receipt and rebates, and I was good to go. On Tuesday, I’ll be waiting for my hard drive If you want one, you’d better hurry; the deal ends on January 31st.

So far, Saturday is sucking big time. This morning, I woke up early with Chris so I could move the Celica so Chris could take the Benz (all her fabric stuff is still in the trunk). It was cold.
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While it’s technically not computer hardware, as the Hardware category is meant for, it’s still a geeky device. The device I speak of is the Roomba. I was clicking on things on my website (cause I do that sometimes when I’m bored), and I clicked on the Amazon.com link on the homepage.
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I was reading this article at bubblegeneration (elsewhere on the site I found a link to this article about underhanded RIAA tactics). I had actually meant to read the article way back at the end of November, but all the packing and the holidays got in the way (there’s actually a lot of unpacking left for me to do, but I’ve set it aside today until I could finish reading the article. It’s a fairly good read about the failure of the current business model used by the recording industry, and it proposes several alternatives.

Fundamentally, I’m going to argue that consumers download music, as much to derive extra value from getting something for free, as they do because they want insurance against buying something they didn’t want in the first place. File-sharing is as much about risk-sharing as it is about the ‘theft’ of value. Technological changes have made this possible – but the way the business model of the music industry is at odds with the implicit contract it signs with listeners is what makes it probable.

Umair Haque, the author, hit on one of the many reasons I no longer go out and buy CDs left and right: I didn’t like buying a CD to find that the one track I heard on the radio was the only desirable track on the entire disc. I wanted to be able to preview a CD before buying it, knowing that I’d be getting my money’s worth if I purchased it.
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Well, looking at this entry, Grant’s been pretty busy over in London. I have nothing else to say, really. I just wanted to play with the TrackBack ping stuff.