It’s alive!
It’s alive… alive!
The new “old” 500mb SCSI drive has been successfully installed, replacing the dead 120MB drive (that had replaced the original 20MB disk). System 6.0.8 has been successfully installed, and my little SE is now running just as smoothly as it did on the day I got it in mid-March almost 20 years ago. Better, even, because I didn’t get it upgraded from 1mb to 4mb of RAM until Fall ‘89 (at a cool $250/MB from the UNC-CH Tar Heel Bookstore!).
Also nifty to to note is that I was able to resurrect some files from an 18 disk (1.44mb format) full backup of the 20mb hard drive that I made back on 12/25/90! That is pretty darned neat. I remember how very cool & impressive I thought that 20MB hard drive was back when I got it. It was my first computer with a hard disk, and I was in heaven, because I didn’t have to worry about boot disks, system disks, data disks, and all the juggling thereof. I couldn’t imagine ever filling all that space. Even so, I was very careful about keeping everything backed up, just in case. And it only took 18 years to have such vigilance vindicated!
Now I just need to get my next project done — a “bridge” Mac of some sort, so that I can get all of my old word processing files (Mac Word 3.x, natch - I used Mac Word long before WinWord even existed, and even remember my first exposure to PC Word, when I was aghast at what a character-based piece of garbage it was…) migrated over from the SE-era floppies onto the MBP. I’m thinking something running, maybe OS 9.x. It’ll interesting, though, because my experience with MacOS jumped from 7.1 (in 1990) to 10.x (in 2002). I pretty much had no exposure to, or experience with, 7.5, 7.6, 8.x or 9.x, so whatever I decide to go with will be a learning experience.
-ghp
AI:7 - Hollywood 2
The road to the Top 12 guys & the Top 12 Girls — the AI Semifinalists.
Simon is a bit cranky. What that means, I’m not really sure about, at least as the show gets started.
Lots of tension. Lots of drama. Lots of angst. A typical Top 24 reveal show. That said, I don’t ever recall Paula torturing someone like she did Carly Smithson. That was actually kind of cruel, and not in a good way, if you know what I mean.
Homeless Boy Josiah thought he’d make it, and he didn’t. I’m not surprised, even though he was. Like I said yesterday, I think he’s incredibly talented, an artistic savant - a tortured genius, even. He just doesn’t have the emotional stability necessary for a meat-grinder like AI. And maybe not even for what is normally considered a “good/regular/normal” life.
Kyle “The Cheesy Politician” Ensley was the last guy eliminated. I have no problem with that. Oddly enough, though, Simon did, and voiced his strong disapproval of Kyle’s elimination. That surprises me. That said, I think we all just dodged another “Chicken Little” situation. And that’s a good thing…
Top 12 Guys:
- David Cook
- David Archuleta
- Danny “Sanjaya ‘08″ Noriega
- Jason Castro
- Luke Menard
- Michael Johns
- Robbie Carrico
- Garrett Haley
- Chikezie Eze
- Jason Yeager
- David Hernandez
- Colton Berry
Top 12 Girls:
- Carly Smithson
- Amanda Overmeyer
- Kristy Lee Cook
- Brooke White
- Alexandrea Lushington
- Ramiele Malubay
- Syesha Mercado
- Kady Malloy
- Amy Davis
- Alaina Whitaker
- Asia’h Epperson
- Joanne Borgella
This has the potential to be a pretty darned good Top 12. That said, I’m sure America will go stupid at some point, and Votefortheworst.com will exert their wicked spell over the proceedings. Even so, I think it’ll be fun to watch unfold.
Not having heard any of them really sing, I think that David Cook, David Archuleta, Danny Noriega, & Michael Johns will make the finals, as will Carly Smithson, Ramiele Malubay, Syesha Mercado, Asia’h Epperson. That leaves 4 other spots up for grabs.
Next week, it begins. America gets the chance to get stuck on stupid. I can’t wait.
-ghp
New hosting in place
After a year with A Small Orange, I have switched over to Precision Effect for my web hosting.
I wasn’t really dissatisfied with ASO, in that I can’t say anything bad about them. ASO’s support & community forums are outstanding resources. The main reason for the change is that I wasn’t all that thrilled with the performance I was getting out of ASO. I don’t know if they put me on a server that was overloaded or what, but over the past 6 months, I’ve been noticing fairly regular slowdowns, both in how fast my blog was getting served out and in how quick the response was (or wasn’t) when I had to do admin tasks.
So, I decided to investigate alternative hosting options, as my contract with ASO was/is just about up. After a bit of investigation, particularly at WebHostingTalk.com, I got it narrowed down to MediaLayer & Precision Effect, both of which are getting rave reviews on that forum. Precision Effect’s hosting plans & pricing mapped just a little better to my needs than MediaLayer’s, so they got my business.
Hopefully, the worst of the DNS propagation is over with, as I made the DNS change to PE’s servers, after backing up & moving over my site, around noon today.
As of this moment, things feel quite snappy to me, and have throughout the day as I’ve been working on getting things up & running. Hopefully, that will continue…
-ghp
AI:7 - Hollywood 1
Let’s begin phase two of this shindig, paring the 164 down to 24, shall we?
I’m not really too sure how I’ll be writing these next two installments, because they don’t have all that much structure to them. Largely, they’ll be written as a ‘live blog’ with most of my observations getting written while I watch the show (a luxury afforded by the Territorial MacBook Pro…), with a slight bit of editing afterwords.
I do know this much: the train-wreck portion of our program — where the bad, the weird, & the publicity-whores garner most of the spotlight — is over. Now, we may still get a truckload of drama, but it will at least be centered on folks who have a modicum of talent.
And that, dear readers, is progress…
But, with every silver lining, there must be a cloud. To wit: In an early happy birthday to bigsis (gee, I just turned 40, so what does that mean for you, hmmmmm? Heheheheheh!), FOX announced that, beginning with the March 13 installment, all results shows will be one hour in length.
Anyway, back to Hollywood week…
Days 1 & 2: The 1st cut
- Either make it through to the final day, or try and fight out of the loser’s bracket. Rough.
- While self-accompaniment worked for a few, and certainly sounds like a good idea, it really seems to have hurt a lot of folks. Hint: don’t sing Blue Swede (Hooked on a Feeling) while playing the drums.
- Some good, lots of bad, and the inexplicable forgetting of lyrics. I just don’t get it. How can you forget your lyrics, especially for your first song? I agree with the Territorial Wife on this: for the first cut, if you forget the words, you should be gone. Period.
- It’s amazing how bad some folks can sound, especially after they sounded so good during the initial audition round. The judges have got to wonder what they were thinking.
- Homeless Boy Josiah - dude has skills. I really like him. This contest, however, will eat him up & spit him out.
- Day 2 seemed to have better talent and/or performances than Day 1.
- If they’re going to sing Bryan Adams, why couldn’t they have chosen something he did, you know, back when he didn’t suck?
Day 3: The Loser’s Bracket - Population 116
- A cappella, in groups of 10? Brutal.
- The two single-parent sob-stories didn’t make it. Not surprising, but still too bad, ’cause they seemed like nice folks.
- And being a high school dance captain, shockingly, wasn’t enough to avoid the ziggy.
- The backstory focal points of the initial auditions have been dropping like flies…
- Lots of tears, and even some bitterness, not surprisingly.
- Angela Martin - wow, what a lot of adversity, and to then still get cut? Whew, what a bummer!
Day 4: The Final Day
- Another little, mini-cut and/or getting through to the final 50. Rough. But I’d rather have this type of drama & tension than the manufactured kind pushed at us during the phase 1 auditions.
- Sucks to get a migraine, lose your voice, or have any other kind of physical breakdown. But the adversity does give one a chance to shine & overcome, doesn’t it? Syesha Mercado could be a player well into the top 12.
- Bohemian Rhapsody, as channeled by Michael Bolton? Technically OK, but I wasn’t that impressed, even if the judges were. Michael Johns is going to make it through to the top 24, as it looks like the judges have got a big old crush on him.
- Carly Smithson is also on the fast track to the top 24. Controversially so, as she has done an album in the past (as Carly Hennessey).
- Paula put the hammer down! The pageant Gator Girl got cut! Paula earned some serious cred points with this display of backbone. And to think that it only took 7 seasons…
- Homeless Boy Josiah was crumbling under the pressure & went on unrehearsed, kicking the band off of the stage. This dude is seriously eccentric & talented, almost to the point of being a ‘tortured genius’. It’s why I don’t think he can survive the competition. His social skills seem to be stunted, and/or held captive by his artistic skills, and that doesn’t bode well for being able to succeed in the AI pressure cooker.
Surprisingly, no one has jumped out at me yet, in terms of thinking that, “Oh yeah, they’re gonna go far, if not win it all…” Usually, I’ve ID’d someone by this point. 16 y/o David Archuleta is close, but I just don’t know if a 16 y/o can’t not get abused by the rigors of this contest.
Tomorrow, we get (after a long, drawn-out, and overly dramatic & angsty process) our Top 24 semifinalists.
-ghp
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