Spring has Sprung?

Sunny and 50 degrees at work today. All the snow from the weekend is gone and we are back to dead grass and piles of black shmutz. Work has been completely dead, as in sitting in the office for eight hours so I can spend 15 minutes on a return and the rest of the time reading stuff on the web. It's supposed to be like this for the entire month of March. I'm definitely bringing a book with me. The whole thing seems a bit nuts, but the money spends just like a real job.

We stuck to our plan for the weekend and, other than Debbie making a short excursion to work and the store so we wouldn't starve, we never left the apartment. To paraphrase Peter Gibbons, "We did nothing and it was everything we thought it would be."

Many are nervously watching Europe's PIIGS, wondering what the impact will be if one or more of them topples. Yet those same people don't seem to realize that California is at least at bad and maybe worse. Keep in mind that California would be one of the top 10 world economies if it were a separate country. This cannot end well.

It seems the buzzards are circling ABC. Actual news teams will be replaced with guys out running around with Zip Camcorders or some such. I'm sure that will dramatically improve the already-stellar news-gathering at ABC.

Unemployment will be higher in February, but it will be because of the sucky weather, not the sucky economy. Um. Yea.

As a result of one of the various ways that Amazon's tentacles reaches into my daily life, I get an e-mail with a link to free music once a week or so. Usually, it's 20-30 songs with maybe one or two that don't completely suck. This week, the list has nearly 1,600 songs on it. Even if the usual suck-age percentage holds, I look to score 50 to 100 free non-sucking songs. Not bad. The only downside is that I have to download each one individually; no way to grab the whole bunch all at one go. But it's free.

One problem is that on a few of the tracks, I can't change the meta-data under Win7. This has nothing to do with security settings or what particular program I'm using to change it. It just flat doesn't work. The data is there; I can see it in iTunes, Windows Media, etc. But there is no way to change it. Unless I bring up the same file under XP, then I can do whatever. Google-ing around took me to a number of sites where people describe similar problems with Vista. The only solution that works is to keep an XP machine around to edit the meta-data on 2% of your MP3's. It's not a show-stopper or anything, but it is a real pain in the butt.

I'm dozing at the keyboard, so I probably should go to bed.