Birthday!

[thedeadlyhook]

Happy Belated Birthday to bogwitch!!! I never seem able to get these on time. Hope it was a great one, dear - lots of love and tentacles.

The coffee shop refuge I discovered the other day is much busier in the morning. The regular clientele seems to be mostly medical professionals - I'm surrounded by animated discussions about research publishing. The cafe mocha here is a bit creamier than I like, but there's a well-stocked bookshelf with M.F.K. Fisher and William Goldman's screen memoirs, plus a second friendly older gentleman behind the counter, and the classic music is still soothing, even if I'm overriding it with earphones as I am now. I think I'll be giving this place a healthy trial run, see what I can get done.

On a slightly related note, I seriously hate the new iTunes upgrade. There seems to be no way to turn off or minimize the prominent Music Store display window. It's probably a good thing I'm not a beta tester for this sort of thing - I'd have physically thrown a machine carrying a prototype version of this at the head of whoever designed it. Excuse me, but get your frickin' billboard the hell off my library browser. Marketing synergy, my ass.

Toys appears to have nothing more serious than a virus. And one that's on the mend, finally - last night, we both had the first decent night's sleep for what seems like a week or more. No sweats, chills, or mysterious headaches. Not so inexplicably, I'm feeling a lot perkier today.

rahirah has a neat post about what does or doesn't constitute "dark" in BtVS fiction and canon, here.

I may need more coffee.

ETA: I've found the button to turn off the Music Store display. Mysteriously, right after I posted this, a helpful message and arrow pointed it out to me. Hmm. One does have all sorts of paranoid thoughts these days, you know?

Comments

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

Completely agree re: itunes store evil thingy. There is however a way to turn it off (and back on if some some reason you would ever want to do that) There should be a new button on the lower right hand side. It's the left most button of these, and it looks sort of like an "Eject" icon. Anyway give it a try!

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Yeah, I saw that button almost the moment after I posted. It appeared mysteriously at the same time my music listings disappeared - software bug? But still... grr.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it wasn't there before; and I don't remember doing a software update. That actually scares me!

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

At the bottom right, near where the equalizer is, there's a weird rectangular icon with a little triangle in it that turns the Music Store off.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Yep, I've spotted it now. Still annoying that it's the default. Argh.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

It was fine. Thanks.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I'm glad. (blows celebratory noisemaker)

[elyvern.livejournal.com]

Oh goodie, survey time. Do you actually buy music from iTunes? Because I'm just blown away by the price of music apple charges. I don't understand how they can remain profitable when so many other mp3 services are soooo much cheaper. Recently, I got my entire office hooked on this service -- http://www.allofmp3.com/. Some of the songs here sell for as low as $0.03 and a 10 song album cost about $1.00. Best thing is it's totally legal and the site is a beauty to use. Don't mind my shameless pimping but with an account you get to listen to entire albums for free, not just 30s previews and they have this nifty program that downloads albums you buy in the background for you.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I've never actually bought music online as yet - I still have stacks of CDs I've yet to encode, so between that and borrowing from friends, I haven't felt much need. But that does sound like a good deal - I'll have to check it out!